Catholic social media is all abuzz with news that Cardinal Burke, squashing rumors to the contrary, has confirmed that the long awaited “formal act of correction” of Francis is still on track.
Don’t you believe it.
During an engagement at a Washington, D.C. area parish on Friday evening, Cardinal Burke was asked what he and the other Dubia Brothers will do if Francis fails to provide an official response to the five dubium that were submitted to him over six months ago.
This same question was posed by Edward Pentin of National Catholic Register back in November, to which Cardinal Burke replied at the time:
“There is, in the Tradition of the Church, the practice of correction of the Roman Pontiff. It is something that is clearly quite rare. But if there is no response to these questions, then I would say that it would be a question of taking a formal act of correction of a serious error.”
Now, pay very close attention to the answer that was given by Cardinal Burke on Friday:
“Then we simply will have to correct the situation, again in a respectful way, but simply to say that, to draw the response to the questions from the constant teaching of the Church and to make that known for the good of souls.”
Has something changed?
If one assumes that Cardinal Burke chose his words carefully in both instances, which given his legal background is rather likely, you better believe something has changed.
In November, the cardinal essentially promised a “correction of the Roman Pontiff,” and for the simple reason that he is teaching “serious error.”
On Friday evening, he sung a rather different tune; saying that the cardinals “will have to correct,” not the pope, but “the situation.”
And how exactly how might the Dubia Brothers do that?
By taking it upon themselves to provide answers to the dubia – a “Catholicism 101” quiz that any moderately well-formed adolescent can ace.
Does that sound like a formal act of correction of a Roman Pontiff who is teaching serious error?
It certainly doesn’t sound that way to me.
This most recent response comes on the heels of similar comments made by Cardinal Burke in an interview with the Remnant in January.
When asked by Michael Matt what the promised “formal act of correction” might look like, Burke replied:
“Well, it doesn’t look too much differently than the dubia. In other words, the truths that seem to be called into question by AL would simply be placed alongside what the Church has always taught and practiced and annunciated in the official teaching of the Church. And in this way these errors would be corrected.”
Notice how the tone has become progressively softer over the last four months:
– In November, it was the Roman Pontiff who would stand corrected in light of his serious error.
– In January, it was truths that only seem to be called into question (“these errors”) that would be corrected.
– Now, in March, it’s merely a “situation” that must be corrected.
At this rate, God only knows what May will bring.
In any case, as I wrote following Cardinal Burke’s Remnant interview:
If the bitter experience of the past five decades has taught us anything it’s that simply juxtaposing truth alongside error without plainly condemning the latter (in this case, Amoris Laetitia) and its purveyors (Francis chief among them) is a fool’s errand.
If Cardinal Burke confirmed anything last Friday evening it’s that he and his confreres are men of the Council – that regrettable event wherein the Apostolic duty to condemn both heresies and heretics was jettisoned in favor of religious diplomacy and dialogue with the proponents of evil.
That being the case, I’m no longer expecting an awful lot to come from this dubia dust up.
Please join me in praying that I’m wrong.
As I have stated before, Modernists do not condemn Modernists. They leave their condemnations solely for Traditionalists.
Cardinal Burke visited Kansas City two weeks ago. During the Q&A, Cardinal Burke was given a hand written question, “Do you recommend that Catholics go to the Traditional Latin Mass”? Cardinal Burke answered, “Just go to Mass”.
Louie,
Bishop Rene Gracida, Bishop Emeritus of Corpus Christi, TX diocese, just published my friend’s (Mr. John J. Arechiga) article on Universi Dominici Gregis. Will you now publish the commentary on your website? For reference, Bishop Gracida’s blog website is: https://abyssum.org/
Cardinal Burke and his cohorts- COWARDS- one and all. This is what Modernism get us. It seems that the posh lifestyle and guaranteed retirement is simply too much to lose for these men wearing red. I am feeling sick now.
This ill-natured denigration of a valorous Cardinal is sickening.
Cmon, what did you truly expect? It was NEVER going to happen. For the umpteenth time, Modernists do not condemn Modernists. Stop feeling sick and upset. I placed my hope in a modernist once before (Ratzinger). Never again.
I agree with this article but when ordinary Catholics bring up the validity of PF’s election to the Papal Office – Sankt Gallen Group (Mafia) confession of canvassing & repudiation of JPII’s rules – on Traditional Catholic websites one gets barred.
The question has to be asked why is this so?
I believe, as the author of this article does, that everything should now be on the table for close examination by all concerned in order to determine the validity of PF’s election & also the possibility of PB’s abdication being invalid. It can no longer be left to a Modernist Hierarchy & Episcopate alone to determine.
Ana, the reason folks get barred from a lot of these websites is because of the outright fear that it will lead to: Schism; the challenging of the Infallibility of the Papacy; challenging the Indefectibility of the Catholic Church (will never happen); or that one is advocating Sedevacantism or some form thereof; and/or any combination of all of these. What is at stake is Charity- fraternal correction, else excommunication, and the possibility of eternity in Hell. Too many people remain terrified.
I agree. There has been a very nasty edge to all the discussions at Trad sites regarding Cardinal Burke…more than just impatience or disappointment.
Placing trust in a Modernist is futile. It doesn’t matter if he is a full-blown Modernist or a semi-Modernist, the true faith just isn’t important. Burke is a Modernist. There is no such thing as a semi-Catholic.
How is accusing Burke of modernism being nasty? The way I see it, I am more upset with fellow trads who look for solutions to Church problems from the very people who created the problems.
Such a lost opportunity to save souls. I know so many Catholics who need the wake-up call to have Francis confronted with his heresy. Imagine a respectful but public rebuke of the man “to his face” so to speak. I imagine it would be a moment of saving grace for many. Pray, people, that it still might come. The sheep are bloodied and shivering Cardinal Burke! Please come to our aid!
I fully agree with Louie that a Dubious Dubia correction of Pope Francis is not forthcoming. The church hierarchy, including Cardinal Burke, have chosen to be politically correct at the expense of being doctrinally correct — but I will not refer to Cardinal Burke as a coward. If there is a schism, it is because of the church modernists and not the Dubia.
Louie,
Can you name ONE bishop who is NOT a man of the council??
One.
I believe after V2 and the NO traditional Catholics were faced with two equally objectionable choices. Either explicit schism or implicit heresy. Those who chose sedevacantism realized that there is no compromise with heresy so the only choice was to believe that Rome was the actual ones who left the Church when they adopted heretical ideas. The other choice of implicit heresy was adopted by most traditionalists since they feared schism and rationalized that there had to be a way to explain the obvious heresy without calling it heresy. So began a rewrite of historical figures and events to demostrate the Church errors of the past provided precedent for the unprecedented time we find ourselves in now. The only way I see out of this mess, short of divine intervention, is to accept the schism that has occurred de facto and restore the Church with the remnant of traditional assets that exist. To wait for divine intervention is lukewarm in my opinion. While I agree with most sedevacantists, I am dissapointed that they have not had the courage to elect a Pope, since that is the next logical conclusion after adopting a position that there is no Pope. You can’t have it both ways. If you think there isnt a Pope, then elect one!
Bishop R. williamson?
There are also quite a few others, such as Bishops Faure, Aquinas, Kelly, Pivarunas, Dolan, Sanborn, etc.
The schism happened decades ago, when the NO Counterchurch was created. While it’s possible that some of the NO hierarchy and clergy still have the Catholic faith, the fact that they defend the Counterchurch (and pretend it’s the Catholic Church and the true Faith) and promote and celebrate the NO ‘mass’ gives us enough reason to be very suspicious of their orthodoxy. And we certainly cannot count on them to denounce the false church.
Nice call TC. Archbishop Thuk. What about the Polish Cardinals banned from attending the council, imprisoned in Rome after false trials, then released. It all fits Rome’s heretical agenda. I would give the Cardinal and his Dubia colleagues, time, they have more than Francis has. Time is against his collective, and history, somehow against their longer game, success. St Anthanaisas ? against the Arians, he played a longer hand in the same general corrupt game. The Faith was restored.
Sometimes we overate the evil doers, but do as they can, they can’t succeed.
Death always intervenes. Smoke announced the fire in Rome P6 (hellish in this context) and smoke passes when their embers have cooled. Devastation on all sides perhaps, but the residue, that cant be extinguished. Its coincidentally one of the laws of thermodynamics. The remnant remains, Our Lady, St Michael and the other saints who rally around the Crucified Christ [ notice how those words are not mentioned by modernists to any degree] they are our consolation in these times. Ora pro nobis.
Louie, Michael Matt at The Remnant late last night posted that this story if not true. Can you vet if the story about Burke is true or not? Credibility is needed as well as accuracy in today’s Church.
I would contend that the schism started some time ago & it is unacceptable to Catholics (of whatever hue) for our prelates to keep ignoring that fact. PF does not respect Papal Infallibility or the Unity & Tradition of the CC, giving permission to Bishops to decide for themselves what Commandments, Sacraments etc.they will recognise & those they won’t. Articles in to-day catholicherald.co.uk. “Cardinal’s plan for laypeople to lead parishes” & Pope urges EU leaders to ‘blaze the path of a new European humanism’ in yesterday’s edition, demonstrates the point.
As the average Catholic to-day is un-catechised, it simply isn’t good enough for Card. Burke to state that the opinions of the pope are just that & the pope cannot change doctrine when these ‘opinions’ have been made binding & therefore become part of the ordinary magisterium. The four cardinals need to publicly condemn Amoris Laetitia outright as it contains statements which directly contradict the authoritative teaching of the CC & further statements which undermine it without directly contradicting it. Abp. Bruno Forte said this was deliberately done. There was also the rigging of the Synod on the Family & the writing of the final document prior to the start of the Synod.
This whole ‘threat of schism’ charade being directed at Traditional Catholics is stoked by the Modernist clique who fear their livelihoods may be coming to an end. They should not be listened tom& the four Cardinals should know better than to d so.
I got a question. How is Schism defined and why some call the New Mass a Schismatic Mass?
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13529a.htm
A good source for definitions is the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia.
I believe it was Innocent III and/or Eugene IV who said that if a Pope was to change the Sacraments (ie the rites of the Sacraments) into new ones, he would put himself into schism. Don’t have the exact quotes at hand but I’m sure they can be looked up.
Also, the Council of Trent solemnly (infallibly) condemned and anathematized anyone who says that the rites could be changed “by any pastor of the Church whomsoever” (ie Pope including) into new ones.
So given that the handed down rites of the Church cannot be changed into new ones, a Pope who creates new rites would technically be in schism (and would put himself outside of the Church). At least that seems to be how the theologians and Popes of old understood it.
I believe I heard that in one of Fr Hesse’s you tube videos too. He made a big deal about “whomsoever.”
So a validly elected Pope can be a Schismatic not just a heretic?
Well, a validly elected Pope could (most likely) fall into heresy or schism, but by that very fact he would place himself outside the Church and lose his Pontificate. That’s the most widely accepted theological opinion (shared by saints, Doctors, etc over many centuries). However, it’s not a defined dogma; indeed some theologians did not believe that a (validly elected) Pope could ever fall into heresy or schism.
The simple truth. But nothing but diabolic disorientation from bishops, priests, leaders in the Faith.
Amen!
Williamson is a paid Anglican provocateur who endorses the blasphemous “Poem of the Man-God”.
His end-game is to bring down the SSPX from within and let the Novus Ordo reign supreme, eventually leading to unity with the Anglican “Church” and the approval of sodomite marriage and women priests, something Chaos Frank would love to see.
Full details here:
https://onemillimeterpeter.wordpress.com/2017/03/30/the-anglican-conspiracy/
stevesojac:
That is a lie. You are calumniating a good man, a good priest, a good bishop. It’s a most terrible thing to do.
I calls them as I sees them, good TC.
We are in for interesting times, and they will shed a relentless light on things that have been hidden for too long.
Watch this space and pray that I am wrong.
TC, I was willing to keep an open mind about bp Williamson until I saw a video where he was asked if one could go to the NO fake-mass. His answer was modernist doublespeak, ambigious, and went on and on and on. He should have answered the question with one simple word, “no.”
Tom, I didn’t like the answer about the New Mass either BUT, have you read the article steve wrote about the Bishop (accusing him of sodomy and having AIDS)?!? It’s beyond calumny – it’s utterly demonic.
I pity us all. We are standing around waiting for leadership that is just not likely at all to show up. I guess we will never stop hoping. We’ve had a long time to believe that in our Catholic Church we had something truly apostolic, and now we see, this is really not so. One can in no sense say that what is being taught or proposed today is in in line with what has been taught, so, there has been a clear and obvious rupture. Yet the remnant still hopes, the faithful shepherd/s will act, and save the day. I am one of those too, so I am not mocking, but for some reason, right after Malta, I stopped believing at all that a formal correction was forthcoming.
We are sometimes like the musicians on the Titanic, if they argued about what tune to play while the ship goes down, that would be us, bickering about what is okay to say and what is not. While we debate decorum and proprieties, these men rape the faith and tear it into pieces, propose or commit blasphemy, sacrilege, or insult Christ, teach error, or look the other way while the deeds are done. All of them. All of them. We can see what the few good men are up against, an entire organization full of sodomites and effeminates who are typically horrendous dissenters against the faith.
Some minor credit can be given to some bishops who have made some comments along the way, but no one has spoken or acted with the kind of directness and zeal for God that any of us would have predicted five short years ago. Five short years ago we saw Cardinals wearing the red and felt these men would of course shed their blood for Christ if called to. Now we see they will do absolutely nothing that may cause themselves unpopularity or inconvenience. None are heroic.
I am a simple layperson, not a theologian. I do not need to be one to know a courageous martyr when I see one. I have read many stories of the martyrs and I know (as well as all of you do) what martyrdom, whether red or white, looks like.
Not one of these men is willing to do either. I’m not saying Cardinal Burke has done nothing, he has tried to stem the hemorrhage. But he has tried to stem the hemorrhage with a Band-Aid, when we see we have a huge, gaping wound. A doctor who puts a Band-Aid on a huge, gaping wound cannot be said to be heroic. They have done something, but not nearly enough. The patient may die while people look on. I do not know of course what plan God has for His church or people. But the suffering of the remnant is exceedingly hard to watch, as is the enormous success of these…people. A pox on them! May the ground open up and swallow them, before they are able to do any more damage to souls or the Church.
Hang on to what we know. That’s what we have friends. Jesus, have mercy on us. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Most of us went along with the v2 “reforms.” By Grace there were those who saw the truth years ago. They were called wackos and crazies. But today they are seen and prophets. All traditionalists will one day see that the Church has been infiltrated and those in charge are not catholic and the See is vacant. There is no other explanation.
Eventually heresies lead to a crisis of faith for many. Where else would they lead. Are we to believe that the Roman Catholic Church “got it wrong” for 2000 years, and that we are now finally blessed with the man and magisterium who REALLY understands what God intended all along? All those prior papacies and theologians, they knew nothing, men like Aquinas and Bellarmine, dense men who didn’t really understand Catholic theology. Finally, we are blessed to have Truth revealed by…Jorge Bergolio!
Or, is it more likely, that this man, and these men, are raging heretics, who have taken the Church completely off course for their own nefarious ends. I say the latter. But, the longer this goes on, this is where the potential crisis of faith may come in. After all, why would God intend for His Church to be taken over so blatantly by heretics.
It still seems a portentous year, 2017. Please God, there will be an answer to the madness of the world, and the evil that is being worked against the faith.
The men who called V2 what it was were 100% correct, as were all the mom’s and dad’s who saw the latest dances in the 50’s and denounced it as diabolical were actually right. They were and are mocked and scorned as hysterics, but they knew, start here and you end up there. Innovators can’t help themselves, and like the “Telephone Game” the message that comes out at the end is often vastly different from what was started. Once you start giving in to the world, where does it end. It doesn’t, it keeps morphing to conform to the world. But that’s not it alone. This is about conforming to evil, calling good evil and evil good.