[Grem] Card. Burke: ‘Populist rhetoric’ associated with Pope Francis undermines Catholic doctrine

[Emoke Greschik]

 Cardinal Burke: ‘Populist rhetoric’ associated with Pope Francis
undermines Catholic doctrine
------------------------------
Cardinal Burke criticized ideological ‘rhetoric’ that is becoming commonly
used in the Catholic Church, warning that it seeks to replace the Church's
‘irreplaceable’ teaching.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-burke-populist-rhetoric-associated-with-pope-francis-undermines-catholic-doctrine/?utm_source=daily-catholic-2023-08-11&utm_medium=email
[image: Featured Image]Cardinal Raymond BurkeYouTube screenshot

Thu Aug 10, 2023 - 12:31 pm EDT

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews <https://www.lifesitenews.com/>) — Cardinal
Raymond Burke has issued a detailed critique of “populist rhetoric” often
“attached to language used by Pope Francis,” which he said are “slogans of
an ideology replacing what is irreplaceable for us: the constant doctrine
and discipline of the Church.”

The former prefect of the Apostolic Signature delivered his analysis of the
relation between canon law and current verbal arguments via a statement
dated May 9 but published
<https://www.cardinalburke.com/presentations/discipline-and-doctrine> on
his website on August 9. Entitled “Discipline and Doctrine: Law in the
Service of Truth and Love,” Burke highlighted what he referred to as a
process undermining the Church’s “canonical discipline.”

“In the period immediately preceding the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council
and, even more so, in the post-Conciliar period, the Church’s canonical
discipline was called into question at its very foundations,” he said.

This “crisis,” he wrote, was born from the same errors “inspiring a moral
and cultural revolution in which the natural law, the moral *ethos* of
individual life and life in society, was questioned in favor of an
historical approach in which the nature of man and nature itself no longer
enjoyed any substantial identity but only a changing, and sometimes naively
considered progressive, identity.”

Emboldened by the reforms made to the 1917 Code of Canon Law, heterodox
canonists and theologians began to question the ecclesiastical law, wrote
the American cardinal. “The so-called ‘Spirit of Vatican II,’ which was a
political movement divorced from the perennial teaching and discipline of
the Church, exacerbated the situation greatly,” he stated.
*‘Populist rhetoric’*

This current of questioning or rejecting the Church’s law is aided by a
“populist rhetoric about the Church,” Burke stated.

In the past few years, law and even doctrine itself have been repeatedly
called into question as a deterrent to the effective pastoral care of the
faithful. Much of the turmoil is associated with a certain populist
rhetoric about the Church, including her discipline.

Burke stated how “new canonical legislation has also been promulgated which
is clearly outside of the canonical tradition and, in a confused manner,
calls into question that tradition as it has faithfully served the truth of
the faith with love.” As an example, he cited the current process of
declaring a marriage to be null, “which, in turn, touches upon the very
foundation of our life in the Church and in society: marriage and the
family.”

Continuing, the 75-year-old prelate referred to many of Pope Francis’ key
talking points, stating that such words have been employed within the
Church in a way that appears to replace the “irreplaceable,” namely “the
constant doctrine and discipline of the Church.”

Over the past few years, certain words, for example, ‘pastoral,’ ‘mercy,’
‘listening,’ ‘discernment,’ ‘accompaniment,’ and ‘integration’ have been
applied to the Church in a kind of magical way, that is, without clear
definition but as the slogans of an ideology replacing what is
irreplaceable for us: the constant doctrine and discipline of the Church.

Noting that some of these words do indeed “have a place in the doctrinal
and disciplinary tradition of the Church,” Burke warned that in their
current usage “they are now being used with a new meaning and without
reference to the Tradition.”

For instance, pastoral care is now regularly contrasted with concern for
the doctrine, which must be its foundation. The concern for doctrine and
discipline is characterized as pharisaical, as wishing to respond coldly or
even violently to the faithful who find themselves in an irregular
situation morally and canonically. In this errant view, mercy is opposed to
justice, listening is opposed to teaching, and discernment is opposed to
judgment… The perspective of eternal life is eclipsed in favor of a kind of
popular view of the Church in which all should feel ‘at home,’ even if
their daily living is an open contradiction to the truth and love of Christ.

<https://www.lifefunder.com/campos>
*‘Language often used by Pope Francis’*

Cardinal Burke, known for his tact and discretion, did not shy away from
naming Pope Francis as a key figure in the spread of such “populist
rhetoric.” He noted that “the rhetoric is often attached to language used
by Pope Francis in a colloquial manner, whether during interviews given on
airplanes or to news outlets, or in spontaneous remarks to various groups.”

However, Burke distinguished between critiquing Francis as an individual
and as Pope, noting how criticism of Francis as a man often leads to the
accusation that one is “speaking against the Holy Father,” leading to
temptations to “remain silent or to try to explain doctrinally a language
which confuses or even contradicts doctrine.”

He observed how “Pope Francis has chosen to speak often in his first body,
the body of the man who is Pope.”

In fact, even in documents which, in the past, have represented more solemn
teaching, he [Francis] states clearly that he is not offering magisterial
teaching but his own thinking. But those who are accustomed to a different
manner of Papal speaking want to make his every statement somehow part of
the Magisterium. To do so is contrary to reason and to what the Church has
always understood.

The cardinal pre-empted criticisms of his differentiation, stating that
differentiating between the two voices of Francis is “in no way
disrespectful of the Petrine office,” but “on the contrary, it shows
ultimate respect for the Petrine office and for the man to whom Our Lord
has entrusted it.”

With that in mind, he warned how the continued and uncorrected use of
“populist rhetoric” enables “more confusion [to] enter[] into the life of
the Church.”
*Catholic teaching on law and doctrine*

Wishing to propose an authentic Catholic interpretation of the relationship
between law and being pastoral, Cardinal Burke drew from Pope John Paul
II’s 1990 address
<https://www.cardinalburke.com/presentations/discipline-and-doctrine> to
the Roman Rota, observing how the application of law is directly linked to
pastoral care:

The juridical and the pastoral dimensions are united inseparably in the
Church, pilgrim on this earth. Above all, they are in harmony because of
their common goal – the salvation of souls.

Expanding on the Polish pope’s words, Burke again quoted from the 1990
address, saying that “any opposition between the pastoral and the juridical
dimensions is deceptive.”

In the Church, true justice, enlivened by charity and tempered by equity,
always merits the descriptive adjective pastoral. There can be no exercise
of pastoral charity that does not take account, first of all, of pastoral
justice.

Burke joined Cardinal Gerhard Müller earlier this year in warning against
false applications of “integration,” when he issued a firm condemnation of
Germany’s Synodal Way vote approving same-sex “blessings.”

He wrote that “the faithful have never needed more than today priests who
announce to them the truth, who bring them Christ, above all, in the
Sacraments, and who guide and govern them in the way of Christ.”

The prominent cardinal described the current times as ones in which
“Bishops betray the Apostolic Tradition,” resulting in suffering for the
faithful members of the Church: “faithful Bishops, priests, consecrated
persons, and lay faithful will necessarily suffer greatly precisely because
of their fidelity.”
--------- következő rész ---------
Egy csatolt HTML állomány át lett konvertálva...
URL: <http://turul.kgk.uni-obuda.hu/pipermail/grem/attachments/20230812/64a7c2fd/attachment.html>