The soon-to-be “former Prefect of the Sacred Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura,” Cardinal Raymond Burke, isn’t letting his alleged “demotion” to head the Knights of Malta get in the way of his speaking out about the scandal caused by the first round of the Synod on the Family. No, it seems that the Cardinal is speaking out even more forcibly.
In his most recent interview posted at CNSNews.com, Cardinal Burke speaks about the “very serious responsibility to try to correct as quickly and as effectively as possible the scandal caused by the midterm report.”
And that wasn’t all Cardinal Burke had to say. About Church teaching regarding marriage, he said:
We have to recognize that if we don’t get it right about marriage–in other words, if we’re not faithful to the word of Christ, to the truth which Christ announced to us about marriage–in the Church, I don’t know how people can trust us with regard to teaching the truth of the faith in any other matter.
We’re talking here about the very foundation of the life of the church, the first cell of our life, in the marital union and the formation of the family and if we don’t uphold the sanctity of the marital bond we have really not only abandoned the Catholic faith but really abandoned the Christian faith in the sense that we are abandoning the natural law itself.
Crucial in the Cardinal’s understanding of the Church is its essentially conservative nature. Popes and bishops cannot “invent” or “change” Church teaching because it is divinely revealed, coming from Scripture and Tradition. Instead, Popes and bishops must fearlessly proclaim Church teaching–in this regard, concerning marriage and sexuality–by relying upon what the Church has already produced to explain its teaching rather than abandoning it for new, untested theories like that of “gradualism.” Cardinal Burke said:
The Church must now in this period hold up the beauty, the splendor, of this teaching for the sake of her own members that they not be confused about the truth but also for the sake of our world and the church’s call to serve the world by proclaiming the truth and by giving witness to it.
And, so, I’m praying very fervently that this coming year that this confusion will stop and instead that there will begin to be a strong emphasis on the beauty of the truth of the Church’s teaching on marriage and on human life and human sexuality.
If there was any scandal, it wasn’t generated by the Synod’s final midterm report but the mainstream media’s manipulation of the contents of the discussions transpiring within the Synod and the first midterm report which contained statements that were well-suited to advance the mainstream media’s agenda. However, with those statements deleted from the final midterm document, the mainstream media couldn’t but relish the opportunity they were provided to pit one midterm report against the other, painting the former as more sensitive, inclusive, and understanding of and merciful to humanity while identifying their bogey-man as Cardinal Raymond Burke.
If the members of the mainstream media think Cardinal Burke is one who is easily going to back down when the issue concerns Church teaching, his recent interviews suggest they’re barking up the wrong tree.
Hopefully, this most recent interview portends more of what’s to come if the scandal generated by the mainstream media isn’t stopped dead in its tracks.
To read the CNSNews.com interview transcript, click on the following link:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/cardinal-burke-i-m-praying-very-fervently-coming-year-confusion-will
To read The Motley Monk’s daily blog, Omnibus, click on the following link:
http://richard-jacobs-blog.com/omnibus.html
When Cardinals Pell and Burke removed themselves from the Magisterium, they unintentionally took with them “infallibility” from Pope Francis, the speaking from ex-cathedra in conformity with the bishops of the church.
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Pope Francis will have to come over to Cardinals Burke and Pell to again achieve his infallibility. Without infallibility, Pope Francis speaks his mind, not the mind of God.
“…Pope Francis speaks his mind, not the mind of God”
That pretty much sums up this Papacy.
Fortunately Cardinal Burke’s being sent to Malta cannot be a life sentence since life sentences are no longer life sentences. That’s the upside to the new thinking. The downside is that catechism may need another revision in ccc 2267 to note that bloodless means of protecting society have an expiration date.
We need the Amish to speak next year at the family synod. They have the divorce rate now that we had for centuries but they have it in a no fault milieu. And they make great potato salad sold at Walmarts. Obama said a month ago about the Russians…” they don’t make anything”. Well the Amish make great potato salad and noodle salad and have about 1% divorce rate…maybe. They could speak at the synod to Cardinal Kasper about permanence ( ” love is not love which alters when it alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove”) and to Archbishop Forte about their gifts of potato salad which they bring to Rome.
The Pope’s and the liberal prelates gang’s inventions/opinions are not Truth.
Plato had it correct. “Opinion is not Truth.”
Edit: Change “liberal prelates” to “progressive prelates.”
Bill Bannon wrote, “They have the divorce rate now that we had for centuries but they have it in a no fault milieu”
No-fault divorce caused not so much as a blip in the inexorable rise in the divorce rate throughout the 20th century.
Taking the figures for my own country, Scotland, in 1930, there were 469 decrees. A generation earlier, in 1890, there had been 87. That is a five-fold increase. There were 890 decrees in 1939, but in 1949, there were 2,447, an increase of 175% over 10 years.
In the 1950s, the annual average was 2,071; in the 1930s, the annual average had been 597, representing a 250% increase on the 1930s average. So much for the family-friendly ’50s
There were only 1,828 decrees in 1960, but in 1965, there were 2,691 and in 1969, there were 4,246.
In 1970, there were 4,618 decrees and in 1974, the last full year before no-fault divorce, there were 7,221, a 168% increase on the 1965 figure. In 1976, the first full year of no-fault divorce, there were 8,692.
In the 1980s, the annual average was 11,824, a 64% increase on the 1974 figure and in the 1990s, it was 12,381. In 2011, there were 9,862.
Michael PS,
That’s a lot of work ( but narrowly oriented) to contradict me….but….Is Scotland revelatory of all countries worldwide? You have those scotch terriers that keep families together over there.
“We have to recognize that if we don’t get it right about marriage–in other words, if we’re not faithful to the word of Christ, to the truth which Christ announced to us about marriage–in the Church, I don’t know how people can trust us with regard to teaching the truth of the faith in any other matter.” – Card. Burke
….
It cannot be summarized any more clearly than that.
MPS, I would imagine that your figures have to be normalized for number of decrees out of the total population of married. In other words, it is not a question of how many people got decrees, but how many people out of the total number of married people. Then plot that line in percent on a graph in Excel and see what you have. Saying there were a few score of decrees in the 1800s and thousands in the late 1900s may mean nothing because we don’t know from the figures you supplied what the total number of married people is – did that number stay the same, go up (as seems likely with population increase in general) or go down?
Bill Bannon wrote, “ That’s a lot of work ( but narrowly oriented) to contradict me…”
It is a topic that has long interested me. The figures were easy to discover in a country where there was only one court (Court of Session) hearing consistorial cases. The only significant legislative change was that cruelty was added as a ground of divorce in 1938, in addition to adultery (since 1560) and four years’ desertion (since 1573).
Paul W Primavera wrote, “ we don’t know from the figures you supplied what the total number of married people is…”
The marriage rate is difficult to estimate in a country where marriage required no notice, no formality and no record of any kind. However, there is nothing to suggest that marriage rates varied significantly between 1891 (87 decrees) and 1952 (2,737 decrees) or 3,046%, a period in which the population rose from 4,025,647 to 5,095,969 or 27%. No one suggests there was a thirtyfold increase in the number of married couples!
The population of Scotland showed a 28% increase between 1891 and 1961: 4,025,647 in 1891, 4,842,989 in 1931 and 5,179,000 in 1961. It shrank to 5,062,000 in 2001.
http://www.marriagedebate.com/pdf/imapp.nofault.divrate.pdf
Michael PS,
The above link is a study of studies of the US and no fault divorce…the USA which contains many nationalities. Page 4, col. 1 finds that one study out of 24 found an 80% increase in divorce from no fault…other studies found 5% to 30% increase….with 17 studies finding increase….7 not.
Scotland contains one nationality generally that in the case of one island off Scotland lived off the Atlantic Puffin for many generations. People who can eat puffin every day and decorate with puffin beaks can endure any marriage. And I knew a Scot who endured a very chilling marriage til death and one wherein the Church would have recommended separation and therapy.
Pope Francis is the Vicar of Christ. Christ came to do the will of His Father in heaven.
“My food and My drink is to do the will of My Father in heaven.” If Pope Francis, as the Vicar of Christ, does the will of God in heaven, Divine Providence will care for the poor.
Divine Justice: Joseph Stalin died of an asthma attack two weeks after he executed his personal physician. The American Indians were put on barren reservations under which billion of gallons of oil were detected…
Cardinal Burke[‘s] recent interviews suggest they’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t think they can tree Burke.
Bill Bannon
What the Scottish statistics show is a rapidly accelerating divorce rate throughout the 20th century.
Yes, there was a 64% increase in the 1980s, following the introduction of no-fault divorce, but compare that with the 175% increase between 1939 and 1949, or the five-fold increase over forty years between 1890 and 1930.
That is why I say that no-fault divorce appears to have little or no impact on an existing trend.
Francis, the humble, is using Cardinal Burke’s very public and lengthy demotion
to persuade other rigid clergymen from opposing and criticizing Francis’
fundamental transformation of the Catholic Church.
I wonder how many clergymen faithful to Christ’s teachings will participate in
the next synod. None, I should imagine. I, also, wonder if Francis has accepted
Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor’s argument that men are burdened by free
will to choose what is good and are too weak to be faithful to Christ’s teachings.
Men, instead, should seek happiness in the fulfillment of their desires.
Contemporary culture has informed society that the teachings of
Christianity opposes human nature. Sex is no longer an act of procreation,
but a fundamental human impulse that Christianity represses. So if one
wishes to be true to one’s nature and truly free, one will have to reject
the repressive teachings of Christ on sex, marriage and the nature of
homosexuality. I wonder if Francis has embraced such contemporary
ideas. After all God is open to new ideas.
“After all God is open to new ideas.” Yes – He like surprises.
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I like your term “Francis the Humble” How about “Raymond the Stalwart”
Franco’s comments 11/1/14 (“, also, wonder if Francis has accepted Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor’s argument that men are burdened by free will to choose what is good and are too weak to be faithful to Christ’s teachings. Men, instead, should seek happiness in the fulfillment of their desires…” et al..
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Scorchingly honest, Franco. The Janus-like Pope Francis (smiling to the the liberal, mostly non-Catholic world, dictatorially repressive to “traditionalists”) appears exactly so. It is just “too hard” to repress one’s impulses today: let us rejoice and be glad.