Cardinal Burke fires warning
shots on behalf of tradition
In his recent interview with Raymond Arroyo of EWTN, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke fired two distinctive warning shots directly across the bow of the Good Ship Francis, even as most observers seem not to have noticed.
Much of the commentary concerning the interview seems to focus on two areas in particular, the first being Cardinal Burke’s insistence on the necessity of denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians, a subject he has addressed any number of times in the past.
When news broke on Monday that the pope had not renewed Cardinal Burke’s membership in the Congregation for Bishops, and had newly appointed his polar opposite when it comes to placing Our Blessed Lord in the blood stained hands of pro-abortion politicians, Cardinal Wuerl of Washington, D.C., some posited that the interview had played a role in the move.
While I seriously doubt that this was the case as this decision was almost certainly made well before the interview, it is at one and the same time unsurprising and significant.
Secondly, a lot of attention has been given to Cardinal Burke’s reaction to the Holy Father’s statement that it’s not necessary to speak about issues such as abortion and homosexuality “all the time.”
“It’s a text that’s not altogether easy to interpret,” Burke said in the interview.
Now, let’s be clear, Cardinal Burke is not implying that there are issues regarding the way in which the comments were translated from Italian to English; rather, he is saying that it’s not easy to reconcile what the pope actually said with the concrete realities of the world in which we live when viewed in the light of Catholic teaching.
His Eminence explained:
“My response is what could be more essential than the natural moral law? In other words, these acts that are always and everywhere evil; they’re the first commands of our conscience, to respect human life, to respect the integrity of the family and to respect conscience. And so to me the pope can’t be saying… I can’t interpret that phrase of his as saying that these are not essentials,” he said.
“I’m not exactly sure why he mentioned it,” Cardinal Burke continued. “One gets the impression, or it’s interpreted in this way in the media, that he thinks we’re talking too much about abortion; too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman, but we can never talk enough about that.”
Even though many traditionalists were longing for Cardinal Burke to abandon all nuance in addressing the foibles of Francisco, one should appreciate the fact that, as far as “cardinal-speak” goes, these comments are about as close to a public rebuke of the pope as we’re going to get from the likes of Cardinal Burke, for the present moment anyway.
In time, I suspect, rebukes of this nature will become, by necessity, more plainly delivered, which brings me to the most significant, but largely overlooked, portions of the interview.
Warning shot number one:
When asked by Arroyo, “What has the ‘Francis Effect’ been from your vantage point, and what are you seeing among the Curia, particularly as he moves these reforms forward,” His Eminence took aim.
“I’ve made this statement, and I believe it is correct, I cannot imagine a reform of the Roman Curia that would not somehow be continuous withPastor Bonus, the Apostolic Constitution which has governed the Roman Curia since I think 1988, when Blessed John Paul II reformed the Roman Curia,” he said.
“Because the Church is an organic Body, and the service of the Roman Curia is part of the very nature of the Church, and so that has to be respected. And so I cannot imagine that somehow the Roman Curia is going to take on a completely different figure. It just doesn’t make sense.”
This, my friends, is a pretty clear warning shot from Cardinal Burke in the face of the Holy Father’s “synodal” aspirations. He is reminding all concerned that the Church’s hierarchical structure is not an extension of any given pope’s personal preference; rather, it’s reflective of her very essence.
In a very concrete way, Cardinal Burke is confronting – again, about as directly as one can expect at the present moment – the notion put forth by the Holy Father’s handpicked head of the so-called “C-8,” Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, who said in a recent interview with Fr. Thomas Rosica, “[Pastor Bonus] is over, now it is something different. We need to write something different.”
