Posted on 11/19/2014 6:10:33 AM PST by marshmallow
Cardinal Raymond Burke has urged Pope Francis to take the issues of Communion for the divorced and remarried, cohabitation and same-sex marriage “off the table” for next year’s Synod of Bishops.
Addressing more than 300 delegates at a family and marriage conference, organised by Catholic Voice, in Limerick on November 15, the American cardinal said these issues had distracted the work of the synod in its first session in October.
Warning that Satan was sowing confusion and error about matrimony, the cardinal patron of the Knights of Malta said, “Even within the church there are those who would obscure the truth of the indissolubility of marriage in the name of mercy.”
The 66-year-old former archbishop of St Louis instead recommended that next year’s synod devote itself to promoting the church’s teaching on marriage.
Cardinal Burke also ruled out any easing of the restriction on Communion for those divorced and remarried without an annulment of their original marriage.
“I fail to be able to comprehend how — if marriage is indissoluble and someone is living in a state contradicting this indissolubility of marriage — the person can be admitted to holy Communion,” he said.
He urged the Catholic faithful to write to Pope Francis and Vatican and Irish church officials to make their views known.
Lashing out at the “so-called contraceptive mentality,” he warned it was “anti-life” and blamed it for “the devastation that is daily wrought in our world by the multi-million dollar industry of pornography” and the “incredibly aggressive homosexual agenda,” which he claimed could only result in “the profound unhappiness and even despair of those affected by it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicherald.co.uk ...
Now that Frances has stabbed Burke in the back and kicked him to the curb, Raymond is free to be a real thorn in Frances’ side.
A future Pope in the making?
God bless & keep Cardinal Burke! He’s a courageous and edifying example to all who want to reclaim a spine in the midst of persecution...
I always thought Burke would be the first American pope.
May God watch over your servant Cardinal Burke and keep him safe! Preach on Cardinal!
Cardinal Burke is right, and right on so many levels, and so often.
My only question would be pastoral. How does the Church minister to those who are in an irregular marriage, but still seek God? If their divorced spouse is still alive, and open to living again as husband and wife, how does that person go about divorcing their current spouse? Doesn’t that create a circle of sin?
I don’t know the answer, but it doesn’t hurt to discuss situations.
Finally, he is absolutely right the Devil sows uncertainty and doubt. That should be avoided, without question.
I just don’t know how to either address or how one is to provide pastoral care to those in irregular marriages.
The only way I see and this is just my opinion, is that these cases have to be taken case by case and not lead to some all encompassing "new" doctrine. The doctrine is what it is. Married until death.
I think that there is to much pressure to marry people who maybe should not have been married in the first place and more marriage prep is needed.
We all know the ones that show up at Easter and Christmas and do just enough to get the kids through the Sacraments, as if they are a right of childhood passage rather than an article of faith. Then these same kids show up and demand to get married and they just are all starry eyed and just want to get married in the Church to please Grandma. They have no real intention of coming to Mass. UNITL they have kids and the whole thing starts over again.
Can you tell I am a former rel. ed. teacher? It's very frustrating!
My wife and I were discussing the differences in Dolan and Burke. Dolan acts like an overgrown kid who wants to be the life if the party. He’s really an embarrassment to the Catholic Church. No one would ever mistaken him for a Catholic bishop. Then you have the the studious, reserved Burke, who actually acts like a grown man, who carries himself with the utmost dignity, always telling the truth of the gospel. He does not back down from anyone, even when that person might be the Pope. I pray that this Holy man of God will one day be Pope.
Yet right now, all eyes are focus on a midwestern town in a midwestern state which is waiting a verdict in a shooting case. Sadly, both those “poisoned” east and west coasts have come to “flyover” country. Heaven help us.
I sense that he could very well be in the next few years. For one thing, Pope Francis is not young and at best, could do another 2 or 3 years tops.
For instance, movies used to premier only on the coasts. If the movie stunk, it never made it to the Midwest. Same for music, I remember my cousins making fun of us for talking about "new" songs, that had already faded on the coast, before we even heard them the first time.
I have a friend out here in the west. He is a transplanted and reformed New Yorker. You should here him talk about it! He's so happy out here amongst the bitter clingers he can barely contain it. Now if we could just do something about his accent. :) Just kidding.
Yep, the midwestern cities are not anything to e-mail to home about either. The only thing about Cleveland I like, it is not saying much, is the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, that is it.
Never been there. I left 30 years ago and never looked back. Of course my parents moved away from there as well, so that made it real easy. What is funny in a sad way, is take Youngstown, Ohio for example. ,p> I went to college there. They still live in the past. They still vote crooks into office, nothing much ever changes there. It’s a pit and it’s been a bit for over 30 years. Nothing changes. Sad. They are still waiting for the “jobs” to come. They have lost about a third of the population. The smart ones left along time ago.
I moved out of there 14 years ago and never looked back.
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