The Remnant Interview of Cardinal Raymond Burke [Catholic Caucus]

The Remnant Newspaper ^ | January 9, 2017 | Michael Matt/ Raymond Cardinal Burke

[ebb tide]

MJM: I want to address the 900-pound gorilla in the room—the controversy surrounding Pope Francis’s post-Synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (AL). The document, especially Paragraph 305, has been described by various priests and theologians, you know on EWTN and elsewhere, as “dangerous,” “very disturbing,” “very problematic,” “a big mistake,” “a direct contradiction of Pope John Paul's Familiaris Consortio,” and so forth. First of all, Your Eminence, how authoritative is AL, and are we talking merely about scandal here, or do these problematic paragraphs savor of heresy?

[T-Bone Texan]

I came to this thread hoping for Leo DiCaprio to get raped by a bear, but I confused Remnant with The Revenant.

[bboop]

This Pope is very unsettling. So glad that good men and good minds are grappling with this.

[Buckeye McFrog]

[ebb tide]

Cardinal Burke: “With regard to the question of heresy, one has to be very attentive to material heresy and to formal heresy. In other words, material heresy: are there actual statements in the text which are materially heretical? Are they contradictory to the Catholic Faith? Formal heresy: did the person—namely the person of the pope who wrote the document—intend to proclaim heretical teachings? And the last thing, I don’t believe myself at all.”

Here below, the cardinal seems to contradict himself:

Cardinal Burke: “And so what he wrote in that letter (to the Bishops of Buenos
Aries) simply means that this is his personal understanding of the matter.”

[Hieronymus]

Interesting times.

I recall from 30 years back in High School Gresham’s Law of Social Change:

When moderates are forced out, radicals move in.

The Holy Father is forcing people to look to their roots, which is leading to some people discovering that they are not strange bedfellows.

[FourtySeven]

His Eminence seems to be saying the same thing you have said, namely that Pope Francis may be a material heretic but not a formal one.

[Hieronymus]

If it was his authoritative understanding, it could be read in the AAS (Acta Apostolic Sedes—the official publication of the Holy See). There may be some nuance to this, and certainly there are degrees of authority within the AAS, but if it isn’t there, he is spouting off non-authoritatively, that is to say, personally/privately.

[ebb tide]

Amoris Laetitia is "non-magisterial"? Not so fast ...

[marshmallow]

Cardinal Burke: Well, this notion of accompaniment certainly has no classic theological or doctrinal meaning.

Ka-pow!!

The Good Shepherd does not "accompany" his sheep as they wander over a ravine or into the path of wolves. He leads and guides his sheep.....keeps them out of harms way. Protects them.

"Accompaniment", as Francis uses this ear-tickling term, is nowhere to be found in the New Testament.

[Bigg Red]

Prayers for Holy Mother Church.

[ebb tide]

{NB: Relevant to this question is Pope Francis's landmark speech on "decentralization" that he delivered on October 17 last year. During this speech, which he addressed to the Synod Fathers, Francis made clear that at the end of the Synodal process, he intended to pronounce authoritatively: "the synodal process culminates in listening to the Bishop of Rome, who is called upon to pronounce as "pastor and teacher of all Christians," not based on his personal convictions but as a supreme witness of “totius fides Ecclesiae” (the whole faith of the Church), of the guarantor of obedience and the conformity of the Church to the will of God, to the Gospel of Christ and to the Tradition of the Church." NOTHING in Amoris Laetitia takes back or reverses this statement of intent. Now, the fact that Francis intended to pronounce authoritatively on the matters of discussion taken up by the Synod does not, by itself, make his pronouncement automatically "magisterial", but it also means that it is highly unlikely that this lengthy document was written in such a way that it can be dismissed as a mere expression of papal opinion.}

[ebb tide]

"Look, I wrote an encyclical—true enough, it was by four hands [with Benedict XVI]—and an apostolic exhortation. I’m constantly making statements, giving homilies. That’s magisterium. That’s what I think, not what the media say that I think", Pope Francis.

[BlatherNaut]

Giving Bergoglio enough rope...

I suspect that at this point, appealing to various weak, foolish, and/or cowardly fence sitter prelates who would prefer to excuse Bergoglio on the slightest pretext requires bending over backwards to (charitably) give Bergoglio every benefit of the doubt before plainly being forced to take this legally to the next level.

“For thou shalt heap hot coals upon his head, and the Lord will reward thee.” (Prov 25:22)

[T-Bone Texan]

Well, there’s a remnant I can groove on, even if it lacks Leo getting the bear ass pounding he royally deserves !

[Hieronymus]

I’m more concerned about keeping the letter to the Bishop as private/personal, which seems to me quite doable, than attempting the same with AL, which seems difficult, at best. There are otherways of finessing AL, but it is good to limit the number of fires one has to lavish attention on. (I teach theology, though thankfully not in areas this Pope deals much with.)

[Hieronymus]

I’m more concerned about keeping the letter to the Bishop as private/personal, which seems to me quite doable, than attempting the same with AL, which seems difficult, at best. There are otherways of finessing AL, but it is good to limit the number of fires one has to lavish attention on. (I teach theology, though thankfully not in areas this Pope deals much with.)

[ebb tide]

Why should Bergoglio keep his heresy personal when he’s been publicly promoting it for the past three years?

[ebb tide]

I’m sorry. I thought you were referring to Pope Francis’ letter to the Buenos Aries bishops. My mistake.

As far as the dubia, the cardinals gave Francis plenty of time to respond before they went public.

It’s now been 113 days since the dubia was submitted to the Pope, with no response.

[Hieronymus]

I’m sorry. I thought you were referring to Pope Francis’ letter to the Buenos Aries bishops.

---

Not originally—but thanks for the opporunity to provide a contrast between two types of statements by the Pope. One good thing about Francis is that he helps to illustrate such distinctions, and aid one in making such distinctions in the future.