It's pretty simple. Right now, Cardinal Burke holds a pretty important position in the Roman Curia, which is the governing administrative body of the Church. He's essentially head of the highest appeals court for the Church.
According to this report, he is being removed from his current position and moved to a position that is mostly an honorary title. It is usually a position that is an "add-on" to more substantial jobs in the Vatican. The new position is also not a part of the Curia, so he will no longer participate directly in the governance of the Church.
It not only is a big demotion, but removes him from any nexus of real authority in the Church. Hope that helps.
sitetest
Okay, so *IF* Burke is demoted .... color me extremely unhappy.
HuffPo LOVES, LOVES, LOVES Francis. I find that troubling.
I'm not Catholic, but from what I'm reading, his "crime" is that he's holding people to the precedent of past decisions?
-PJ
You have described this whole thing with Cardinal Burke well...the Catholic hierarchy sucks.
sitetest:
Pope’s, some more than others, sometimes do have thin skins, and it seems some of Cardinal Burke’s public stances could be taken as criticism of Pope Francis and thus the demotion. Is it because he is a Traditionalist or Leans Traditionalist. Cardinal Pell, also a “Ratzinger protégé” has not been demoted and a protégé of Cardinal Pell was just appointed as Archbishop of Sydney Australia, which usually is a Diocese that gets a Red Hat.
One gets that any of Pope Benedict’s appointees who publicly criticized, or perceived to have publicly criticized Pope Francis are getting re-assigned, some back as Bishops, which happened in Madrid last month [not a bad thing having a Benedict appointee as Bishop of Madrid] and in the case of Cardinal Burke, it appears, to the Catholic “outer limits”.