A few months ago, Fr. Chad Ripperger made the rounds on some very popular podcasts, most notably those hosted by Shawn Ryan and Tucker Carlson (who have a combined 12 million subscribers on YouTube alone).
Following his appearance with Carlson, I wrote that Fr. Ripperger – to whom I referred as the “ecumenical exorcist” – was presented with a tremendous opportunity to deliver a message to a huge non-Catholic audience and he blew it. Specifically, I noted “how incredibly uncomfortable conciliar churchmen are with the actual Catholic faith, almost as if they are embarrassed by it, even the parts that they themselves hold to be true.”
Not to be outdone, Cardinal Raymond Burke recently joined Ryan for a series of programs (ostensibly) on the Catholic faith. The first installment, a two-hour plus episode on the Old Testament, was published on September 8th.
One reasonably assumes that much, if not most, of Ryan’s audience is likely comprised of Protestant viewers – that is to say “Bible Christians” of varying degrees of seriousness – and those who “were baptized Catholic, but…”
In other words, Cardinal Burke was granted yet another magnificent opportunity to present and explain the Catholic faith to those who desperately need to hear it, but like Fr. Ripperger before him, the occasion was lost due to weak-kneed conciliar style ecumenical sensitivity.
Before addressing exactly how Burke chose to tiptoe through the minefield of heretical falsehoods rather than correct them, it is important to recognize that when a Protestant hears or invokes the phrase, “the church,” they neither understand, nor intend to refer to, the Holy Roman Catholic Church. In fact, quite the opposite.
In Protestant parlance, the church is broadly held to be the Christian community of baptized men and women who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and it is a concept of “church” that factors heavily in their erroneous assumptions concerning Sacred Scripture.
Cardinal Burke most certainly knows this to be true and yet, as we shall see, throughout the interview his words were not only left the door open for Protestant misinterpretations, rather, he all too often affirmed them.
In the first forty minutes or so of the interview, Ryan, who recently announced his desire to return to the Catholic (conciliar) faith of his youth, wisely (and evidently quite sincerely) posed questions aimed at establishing the Bible’s pedigree, its origins, its authorship, and its claim to being the inspired word of God.
As you read the following citations taken from the transcript (with the approximate time stamp in parenthesis), I encourage you to do so, as best you are able, through Protestant eyes, that is to say, with the presuppositions and errors that they necessarily bring to the table.
BURKE: “We have 72 books all inspired by God that over the centuries the church has recognized as truly the word of God and therefore should be treated as most sacred. The Bible came to birth in the church.” (25:15)
To the relatively well formed Catholic, these words might seem reasonably defensible. Remember, however, that doesn’t describe the entirety, much less the majority, of persons viewing this interview.
So, one wonders, did Burke mean “the Church” capital “C”?
Maybe, perhaps even definitely, but Ryan’s viewers, most especially his Protestant viewers, cannot possibly “see” as much.
With this in mind, it is not entirely accurate to say that the church has come to recognize the Bible as God’s word, nor is it sufficient to say that the Bible came to birth in the church, not without first identifying and defining what the Church of Christ is and from where its authority comes.
But even if we assume that Burke meant to speak of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, it’s not true that she simply recognized which books are rightly considered God’s word, rather, she authoritatively judged them to be such.
The former opinion – which is little more than the flippant expression “if you know, you know” applied to the canon of Scripture – is precisely what Protestant Bible scholars hold to be true.
For example, popular Protestant scholar Wesley Huff, who has also appeared with high profile podcasters like Joe Rogan, Shawn Ryan and others, makes the following claim:
Christians did not pick or vote on which writings had the authority to grant them scriptural/canonical status but recognized the authority these documents already possessed.
At no point in the interview with Shawn Ryan, did Cardinal Burke say anything that might help a sincere Protestant seeker of truth come to understand that the authority of the Catholic Church preceded the New Testament, and that the latter is known only by virtue of the former.
Rather, he doubled down on the false “recognition” criteria roughly a minute later.
BURKE: “And so it’s important to understand the inspiration of the word of God and that nothing in the Bible can lead us astray. That every word that’s in the Bible, even the most minute details in some way can lead us closer to God. And that the Scriptures are those that the church has recognized over the centuries that are handed down to us.” (26:30)
Notice that Cardinal Burke threw yet another bone to the heretics by speaking of the Bible as if it is a standalone authority capable of interpreting itself, with the implication being that “every word that’s in the Bible” is self explanatory.
Would Cardinal Burke insist the same of authoritative Catholic teaching, namely, that nothing proposed by the sacred Magisterium, even if not infallibly so, can lead us astray? That’s the truth, but no, of course he would not. He’s a man of the Council who has come to accept that the men he calls “pope” and the institution he calls “the Church” can lead us astray.
Shawn Ryan (by the grace of God) was not yet satisfied. He pressed further, asking directly, “How were the books chosen?”
BURKE: “They were chosen by the priests, by the faithful who read these books, uh and realized, recognized that they, that these, that this was not ordinary writing. Sometimes there was a controversy about one book or another and then the authority, uh either in the Hebrew Jewish faith, the authorities decided which books were to be recognized as the word of God, and others perhaps good books, but not the word of God.” (30:00)
There he goes again with the idea of Christians – the lay faithful by name even – recognizing divine inspiration. Evidently with the Old Testament in mind, notice that Burke was oddly comfortable claiming recourse to the Hebrew Jewish “authorities.” This is the only instance of Burke citing an authority capable of distinguishing between the word of God and a really good book.
In truth, though it hardly needs to be said on these pages, the canonicity of the books of the Old Testament does not rest on any authority other than that of the Catholic Church.
It gets worse. Burke then volunteers, without even being asked, to downplay the grave sin of Martin Luther who took it upon himself to truncate the canon of the Old Testament.
BURKE: “And you may know that there’s a little difference between what’s sometimes referred to as the Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible.” (30:38)
A little difference…. You tell me. Luke 1:28:
And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. (Douay Rheims Bible)
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. (King James Bible)
Does Our Lord consider this “a little difference”?
BURKE: “There are seven books that were part of a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. And some branches of Judaism don’t accept those as revealed. They accept them as holy books but not as revealed. But the church has accepted them even though they were written in in Greek and not Hebrew originally, uh the church uh has accepted them as inspired and they’re some of, they are some very beautiful books there and we can understand why the church understood it was the word of God.” (30:52)
In this, Burke has moved from the church recognizing to the even more passive accepting of divine inspiration.
Despite applying this to the seven books absent from the heretic Bible, this too is Protestant fluff; he’s speaking as if the canonical books have a quality that imposes itself on the believer, such that the early Christian community could not help but acknowledge their divine pedigree, and this apart from any ecclesial authority.
BURKE: “But in any case, it was through the, uh in in the, in the church through the ecumenical councils and so forth that the books were defined as truly the word of God. So we can rely upon that.” (31:53)
Several minutes later, he described the canon of Sacred Scripture.
BURKE: “It is the list of those books of the Old Testament and … the New Testament that are declared by the church to be divinely revealed to be the word of God.” (35:13)
This – as lame as it is – is the closest Burke came to providing a Catholic explanation. What Protestant ears hear, however, is that a Cardinal of the Catholic Church is relying on some council to confirm what the community of ordinary believers long since recognized and accepted. Big deal.
Once again, Burke delivered exactly nothing of substance that might benefit a sincere Protestant seeker of truth.
Shawn Ryan, though he has already publicly stated his intention to embrace what he considers the Catholic faith, strikes me as a man on a mission to discover the truth.
Despite all that has been said to this point about the canon if Scripture, Ryan pushed further.
RYAN: “Well, I guess what I’m getting at is several different authors over thousands and thousands of years. And it formulates one story. That references itself over 62,000 times. But how do we know this is the word of God that it’s been, because it’s been, written by man?” (37:00)
Shawn Ryan, likely without even realizing as much, is practically begging Cardinal Burke to expound upon the absolute necessity of the Catholic Church’s divinely instituted teaching authority. But alas, it was to no avail as the sincere and crucial question, how do we know? was answered as follows.
BURKE: “Because Our Lord Himself teaches us that . He says that He has come to fulfill the law and the prophets is referring to the to the Old Testament. And he tells us to do not think that I’ve come to destroy the law and prophets. I’ve come to fulfill them and insists on attention to the very detail of the word of God. And then Our Lord acting through His church, uh, has verified for us that these exact books are divinely inspired.” (37:35)
Did you see that! Cardinal Burke cited the Lord acting through His Church! That’s Catholic!
Stop it. Put yourself in Protestant shoes. This statement is perfectly acceptable to even the most closed-minded heretics insofar as they firmly believe that the Lord routinely acts through His church when two or more are gathered in His name. In this way, the Protestant will insist, He has indeed verified that the early believers did well to recognize and accept the divine inspiration of the Biblical books.
That said, notice Burke’s immediate response to the question, How do we know?
Burke: “Because Our Lord Himself teaches us that. He says that He has come to fulfill the law and the prophets…”
Where are those words of Our Lord to be found?
In the Bible, of course.
Note the circular reasoning: We know this is the word of God because of the words Jesus said as recorded in the word of God.
Later in the interview, Shawn Ryan asks Cardinal Burke, “Why were some of the books removed for the Protestant Bible?”
The answer he received is stunning.
Burke: “They were part of, they weren’t, not for all of the Jewish people. Some accepted these seven books, some did not. Um, and, uh, they, the principal reason in short was that the whole Old Testament was written in Hebrew except for these books and then, let me get go back. The whole Old Testament was written in Hebrew.” (1:13:06)
Let’s stop here for a moment to set the record straight. “Some accepted these seven books” is a gross understatement. The impetus for translating the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek was the fact that the great majority of Jews at that time (3rd century B.C.) lived outside of the Holy Land and no longer understood Hebrew. Rather, they were Greek speaking.
Needless to say, these Jews – not to mention the seventy-two rabbis that carried out the work of translating the text – had no qualms with the seven books under discussion.
Secondly, it is not an undisputed fact that the whole Old Testament was written in Hebrew.
The venerable Fr. Cornelius a Lapide, S.J., for example, observed that portions of the Old Testament were composed in what he called “Syriac/Chaldean,” we would now typically refer to as Aramaic. That said, let’s move on.
BURKE: “Then there was a translation into Greek done by, they say, seventy-two scholars. It was called the Septuagint and it’s the word of God but translated into Greek. And in that edition of Septuagint, these seven books were included, but they don’t have a Hebrew original. They were written originally in Greek. And so for some of the Jewish people, they excluded them because they didn’t have a Greek original, excuse me, a Hebrew original. But the Church [in this case, the Catholic Church] uh said, ‘No, they don’t have a Hebrew original, but these are divinely inspired books.'”
So, what has Cardinal Burke just provided? A Protestant apologetic.
Recall how, at the 30:00 mark, Burke spoke positively about the Hebrew Jewish authorities and how they “decided which books were to be recognized as the word of God.” Here, like an attorney for the defense, he points to that same authority to explain why Protestants reject the seven books under discussion!
Left unmentioned, of course, are the doctrinal motives behind Luther’s decision to truncate the Old Testament, e.g., the Biblical basis for offering prayers and sacrifices for the dead as found in 2 Maccabees.
One suspects that we will see more of the same from Cardinal Burke in upcoming episodes. At present, I’m not planning on watching them, but if I change my mind, I’ll be sure to let you know what he has to say about Martin Luther adding the word “alone” to his German translation of Romans 3:28.
