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| Francis I and Obama |
"It is
impossible for the Church to change her teaching in matters concerning the
indissolubility of marriage. ...The Church, the Bride of Christ, obeys His
words in chapter 19 of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, which are very clear
insofar as they concern the nature of marriage. No one disputes the fact that
these are the words of Christ Himself, and after the response of the
Apostles, the import of these words for those who are called to married life
is quite clear. ...It is difficult to say how many marriages are null from
the moment when consent is exchanged. … There is no justification for saying
that a certain percentage of marriages are null. ...That would open the door
to a mentality favouring divorce, which would dissolve some valid marriages because
no one investigates whether there are grounds for the request for a
declaration of nullity." ...The U.S. government "wants citizens to
obey unjust laws, such as requirements that Catholic hospitals commit
abortions and dispense contraceptives. To that, I reply: "We cannot do
it", because "there are situations in which the Christian must
disobey when civil law commands an action contrary to the moral law." (Raymond
Cardinal Burke).
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There are just a very few churchmen today who still care to say the
truth. Raymond Cardinal Burke is just one of them, as the article below as well
as his various words and actions show. BUT what these churchmen need to do—and
do so urgently—is to REJECT Vatican II and EVERYTHING it has to offer,
including the scandalous New Mass. Vatican
II is still being presented as a good Council that is merely being misinterpreted by "some", and a pro-young people in the sense that it makes
the Church’s doctrines—especially the New Mass—more “acceptable” to them. But,
ironically, Cardinal Burke says in the article below that he has
noticed the younger generation craves more traditional forms of worship and are
“thirsting to hear the truths of the faith”!
Cardinal Burke: Gender theory is ‘madness,’ transgender bathrooms
‘inhuman’
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| Cardinal Burke |
Contraception is at the root of the culture of death and the defence
of family is inseparable from the defence of life, Cardinal Raymond Burke says
in a broad book-length interview.
In his lengthy interview with French journalist Guillaume
d’Alançon, titled Hope for the World: To Unite All
Things in Christ,
the American cardinal calls gender theory “madness,” addresses the question of
Communion for the divorced and remarried, and offers remedies for the crisis in
the Church.
Burke is the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta
and the former Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court.
“I do not see how it is possible to talk about the family
without talking about the defence of human life,” Burke said. “It is
fundamental. Contraception and abortion are two stages in the attack on
conjugal love. In contraception there is a fear of new life, and this practice
often leads to abortion. It is of fundamental importance to associate works on
behalf of the family with pro-life works, because marriage is the source of new
life.”
“The Lord created man and woman to love each other and to
marry, and they express their love more fully in conjugal union, which is by
nature procreative,” Burke explained.
"Gender theory" is an attack on this
truth, he said.
“Gender theory is an invention, an artificial creation. It is
impossible to have an identity that does not respect the proper nature of man
and that of woman,” Burke said. “It is madness that will cause immense damage
in society and in the lives of those who support this theory. With gender
theory, it is impossible to live in society. Already today, in certain places
in the United States, anyone at all can change identity and say, ‘Today I am a
man; tomorrow I will be a woman.’ That is truly madness. Some men insist on
going into the women’s rest rooms. That is inhuman. In the schools, you can
imagine the confusion. … Nowadays there is enormous confusion, which is based
on the false idea that there are practically an infinite number of possible
sexual orientations. The twofold expression of the human person is not
heterosexuality and homosexuality, but male and female. This is the authentic
theology of anthropology: that God created man: ‘male and female he created
them.’”
Burke warned that Christians must defend the natural law from
legislative attacks that contradict what “is inscribed in the heart of man by
the sovereign will of God.”
“Not to speak about the natural law is to deny reason,” he
said.
Similarly, people who experience same-sex “attraction”
deserve authentic pastoral care, Burke said, care that doesn’t cause them harm
by encouraging them to follow “inclinations against the natural law.”
Homosexual acts ultimately cause suffering, he said, because
they go against the natural “complementarity of the sexes and the sexual
faculty’s potential for procreation.”
In addition to the dismantling of natural law, Burke said Islam’s inability to peacefully coexist with other
religions and President Obama’s attacks on religious liberty pose threats to the
Catholic Church.
“President Obama wants to push the Church back behind the
walls of her church buildings and to prevent her from applying her law to her
own hospitals and schools,” the cardinal cautioned. “He claims that the Church
may not intervene on the question of abortion, of homosexuality, but that the
State alone must manage these questions.”
The U.S. government “wants citizens to obey unjust laws,” he
said, such as requirements that Catholic hospitals commit abortions and
dispense contraceptives. “To that, I reply: We cannot do it,” because “there
are situations in which the Christian must disobey when civil law commands an
action contrary to the moral law.”
‘There is no justification for
saying that a certain percentage of marriages are null’
“It is impossible to say anything other than what John Paul
II said” on the question of whether non-abstinent divorced and remarried
couples may receive Holy Communion, Burke insisted.
He addressed the controversial topic that has been the source
of a heated debate within the Catholic Church by quoting the late Pope’s
exhortation Familiaris Consortio, which reiterated the Church’s longstanding
teaching of not admitting to the Sacraments the divorced and civilly remarried
unless they live as brother and sister.
“The state of life of divorced-and-remarried Catholics is not
consistent with the mystery of the union of Christ and the Church,” Burke said.
Liberal prelates such as Cardinal Walter Kasper pushed for
the Church to admit the divorced and remarried to Communion at two contentious
synods on the family. Pope Francis brought up the topic in his April 2016
exhortation.
Many see Pope Francis’ exhortation Amoris Laetitia as having poured gasoline on this
fire with its seeming suggestion that in some cases the Church will
allow those living unrepentantly in situations it labels objectively sinful to
receive Holy Communion.
“In the recent synod … the tendency was sometimes to dwell at
length on all the problems of the family, at the risk of speaking only about
that, giving me the impression that the family I knew as a child, that the
[healthy] families I met during the first years of my priesthood no longer
exist,” Burke said. “I can tell you that there are many magnificent families
that function well!”
After the exhortation’s release, Burke wrote in the National Catholic Register that it must be read through the lens of Catholic doctrine.
No pope could change the Church’s moral teaching even if he
wanted to, Burke told d’Alançon.
“It is impossible for the Church to change her teaching in
matters concerning the indissolubility of marriage,” he said. “The Church, the
Bride of Christ, obeys His words in chapter 19 of the Gospel of Saint Matthew,
which are very clear insofar as they concern the nature of marriage. No one
disputes the fact that these are the words of Christ Himself, and after the
response of the Apostles, the import of these words for those who are called to
married life is quite clear.”
As one of the Catholic Church’s most well-established
canonists, Burke has spent a good part of his career in the Vatican working on
cases of marriage validity. In other words, Burke has defended unions as being
valid marriages and reviewed cases when the Church declared that a marriage
never actually existed and thus is null.
Pope Francis made waves in June when he said that the “great
majority” of Catholic marriages are “null.” The Vatican subsequently altered his remarks in their official transcript of his
speech, and numerous canon lawyers and theologians responded that his remarks were incorrect.
Although d’Alançon did not mention the pontiff’s remarks
explicitly, he asked Burke if “many marriages” are “actually null from the
start.”
“It is difficult to say how many marriages are null from the
moment when consent is exchanged. … There is no justification for saying that a
certain percentage of marriages are null,” Burke said. “That would open the
door to a mentality favouring divorce, which would dissolve some valid
marriages because no one investigates whether there are grounds for the request
for a declaration of nullity.”
Poor
catechesis and ‘unrecognizable’ liturgy have contributed to Church’s crisis
Throughout Hope for the World, Burke spoke warmly of the love
for the Catholic faith that his parents instilled in him as a child.
He lamented the “invasive secularization of the culture”
which he found had also “entered into the life of the Church” as the biggest
obstacle to his ministry as a bishop.
Bad catechesis and changes to the liturgy falsely believed to
have been sanctioned by the Second Vatican Council or the “spirit” of it have
contributed to this crisis, Burke said.
“I remember that in the years after 1968, I attended
liturgical celebrations that had retained almost nothing of what could be a
Mass,” the cardinal recalled. “I had gone to the Netherlands, at that time, and
witnessed a Mass in which the priest arrived in civilian clothing. The whole celebration
was totally unrecognizable as a Holy Mass.”
“More and more man became his own idol, making his subjective
impressions the judge of good and evil,” he said. “Very often he has forgotten
or denied the sense of mystery, and therefore he has no longer been able to
marvel at it. Along with mystery, the sense of the faith and of the sacred has
gradually faded. At the same time, people have suffered cruelly from a lack of
formation and, at best, have kept up a rootless formalism, whether in their
human relations or in their liturgical practice.”
“Worship centred on man is a self-contradiction, and this is
what led many people to stop attending Sunday Mass and other sacramental
celebrations,” the cardinal noted.
Burke said he has noticed the younger generation craves more
traditional forms of worship and are “thirsting to hear the truths of the
faith.” Growing up in a secularized culture, rather than the Christian one in
which the prelate was raised, has stifled and in many cases wounded young
people. The divorce of parents, pornography, and “‘liberation’ from morality”
contribute to these wounds, but many are still “looking for true love” and God
nonetheless.
“I observe also that many of these young people, who live in
this world from which God is excluded, feel a great attraction to a beautiful,
holy liturgy that is celebrated with the dignity that befits the Holy
Sacrifice, whether in the Extraordinary Form or in the Ordinary Form of the
Roman Rite, provided that there is great devotion and the sense of
transcendence that indicates that we are turned toward the Lord and that the
sacrifice on Calvary is being renewed,” Burke said.
He also echoed the sentiment of Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Prefect for the Congregation
for Divine Worship, that receiving Holy Communion kneeling and on the tongue
fosters respect for the Eucharist, which the Catholic Church teaches is the
literal body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.
Post-abortive women ‘told me that
at night they would hear the cries of their unborn child’
In addition to the restoration of the liturgy, Burke said
people must reject “narcissistic individualism,” rediscover the meaning of
family life, and promote virtue in order to fix the deep crises the modern
world faces.
“Lack of moral life” is more grave than material poverty,
Burke said, and he noted the “emotional frailty” that many young people
experience after having multiple sexual partners.
“Emotional instability is a terrible form of poverty,” he
said.
Burke encouraged Catholics to never cease defending life and
family. “...Calm and strong” pro-life witness “bears fruit,” Burke said, and
pro-life activists would do well to look to converts to the pro-life cause like
former abortionist Bernard Nathanson and Roe v. Wade plaintiff-turned pro-life
activist Norma McCorvey.
And pro-life advocates can never forget to show compassion
and mercy toward those who have participated in abortion, he said.
Burke said that throughout his priesthood he has encountered
many people suffering from abortion and several post-abortive women “told me
that at night they would hear the cries of their unborn child.”
“We must understand and listen to the great suffering of
women who have experienced an abortion and stand beside them as witnesses of
divine mercy, of the unfathomable love of Jesus, who opens the riches of His
Heart to those who, despite their sin, dare to turn to Him with trust,” he
said.
Burke also revealed in Hope for the World that a doctor pressured his mother to abort him after she became seriously ill while
pregnant, but his parents believed that “Christ would give them the necessary
help” and he was born in good health.
Source: LifeSiteNews
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