“I am sure that there is gossip, but I don’t think we should necessarily trust it.”
Sometimes that clerical/hierarchial “gossip” is pretty reliable. You needn’t credit it at all of course. Can you see how someone like Burke, disfavored among American hierarchs, a martinet and with a tendency to at least be perceived as a violator of the canons might become an embarrassment to the Vatican in other areas and with other people?
“...it would surprise me if that court was such a bad assignment that it was fully stocked with ecclesiastical ne’er-do-wells.”
All things considered, its probably not; no heavy lifting, that’s for sure and for someone with no pastoral ability it may have been viewed as a safe backwater. That said, there is a tradition of getting problematic American hierarchs, especially prominent ones, out of the country and off to Rome. Cardinal Law’s appointment to the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, with the title of “Archpriest” springs to mind.
Sometimes that clerical/hierarchial “gossip” is pretty reliable. You needn’t credit it at all of course. Can you see how someone like Burke, disfavored among American hierarchs, a martinet and with a tendency to at least be perceived as a violator of the canons might become an embarrassment to the Vatican in other areas and with other people?
But, is there even such gossip in this case? If Raymond Burke embarrassed anyone I cannot really see how it would have been anyone that the Holy Father himself is not embarrassing with regularity. Who do you think he upset that had such pull in Rome? And, if that happened, why would Rome then allow him to constantly travel around to give interviews and talk about his views, as he has done here? I just don't see any evidence of what you seem to be suggesting, either about canonical violations regarding his comments on this funeral, or that the Vatican was forced by embarrassed people to move him to Rome.