Cardinal Raymond Burke has said that if the family synod opened the way for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion then it has “departed from Catholic teaching in a very fundamental matter”.
The cardinal, patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, made the comments in an interview with Mass of Ages, the quarterly magazine of the Latin Mass Society.
He cited a recent article by Fr Antonio Spadaro, editor of the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica, which said the synod had “laid the foundations” for remarried Catholics to be admitted to Communion.
Fr Spadaro, said Cardinal Burke, “goes through this whole confused argument about a ‘penitential way’ and ‘internal forum solution’ to say that now the way is open for all this. So I believe that Catholics should be very concerned.”
Cardinal Burke said: “If, in fact, the synod is taking this position, then it has departed from Catholic teaching in a very fundamental matter. The teaching of the indissolubility of marriage is based on the very words of Our Lord in the Gospel.”
The cardinal was asked by the interviewer what concerned Catholics should do. “I think Catholics should simply say: ‘I cannot accept this teaching as it goes against what the Church has always taught and practised.’
“I don’t think Catholics should permit themselves to be driven away from the Church by those who are not upholding the Church’s teaching.”
The cardinal describes that Pope Francis’s annulment reform as from Church practice.
The cardinal, a leading canon lawyer and former prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Church after the pope, said: “The reforms are a radical departure from what has been the consistent practice with regard to the examination of a claim of nullity of marriage.”
He said also bishops should not be asked to judge marriage nullity cases, as will be the case under Pope Francis’s reforms.
“Many bishops are not canon lawyers and there is nothing wrong with that, but they shouldn’t be asked to do things they haven’t been prepared to do,” he said.
The cardinal said he was “not an enemy of the Pope and never will be”, explaining: “You won’t find a single statement of mine in which I am speaking against the Holy Father. I just don’t do that.”
But he suggested that Pope Francis’s liking for language that was “unusual, colloquial and catchy” at times led to confusion.
“The danger of it is that because of who he is, the Supreme Pontiff and Bishop of the Universal Church, this language can be taken and used against the Church. This is certainly not the Holy Father’s intention.
“So, I think perhaps that’s one thing – and people have pointed this out to him – where he could be more attentive to resist that desire to speak in this way as it does cause confusion.”
As examples, Cardinal Burke cited the famous phrase “Who am I to judge”, which he said had been “misused to insinuate that the Church’s teaching had changed”, and the Pope’s speech about the spiritual ailments of the Curia, used by anti-Catholic groups to show how “sick and corrupt the Church is”.
Holy Doors to open in cathedrals across Britain
Cathedrals around Britain will open their Holy Doors over the weekend to mark the beginning of the Year of Mercy.
The celebrations began last Sunday in Liverpool with the opening of a Holy Door at the Metropolitan Cathedral.
This Sunday Holy Doors will open at Clifton Cathedral, Bristol, at Arundel Cathedral in West Sussex and at Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire, as in Westminster Cathedral.
Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury will open a Holy Door at St Anthony’s Church in Wythenshawe, Cheshire, on Saturday. The diocesan Holy Door will then transfer to Shrewsbury Cathedral at Easter.
Even the Church of England marked the start of the Year, with the opening of a Holy Door at Chichester Cathedral, attended by Bishop Richard Moth of Arundel and Brighton. An evening Mass scheduled to start the Year of Mercy at Lancaster Cathedral, however, was cancelled due to flooding.
In a pastoral letter Bishop Moth called for a renewal of Confession and for the diocese “to reach out to those who are estranged from the Church or who, for whatever reason, have not heard the message of the Gospel”.
The bishop said the Holy Door “must be a reminder to us of the door of the heart and the Gospel calls us to open the doors of our hearts and minds to the gift of mercy. We must be bearers of that mercy to the refugee, to the asylum seeker, to the prisoner and the victim of crime, to the one who is homeless, to the one who may have a roof over their head but seeks the peace and mercy that comes in knowing Christ.The Corporal Works of Mercy (our responses to the physical needs of our brothers and sisters) and the Spiritual Works of Mercy are central themes for this Jubilee Year.”
Nun stars in television series
A presentation sister in Manchester was the unlikely star of a BBC documentary this week.
Sister Rita to the Rescue, which aired on BBC One on Monday and will be available on iPlayer, shows the daily life of Sister Rita Lee, 70, at the Lally Centre she runs in the deprived area of Collyhurst. Sister Rita, whose nickname is “Attila the nun”, founded the drop-in centre eight years ago.
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