Interview With Cardinal Burke..The Faithful Are Suffering….But Schism Can Never Be Right

The Wanderer ^ | 12/5/18 | Peggy Moen

[marshmallow]

(Editor’s Note: This interview took place in Rome on October 22, 2018, the Feast of St. John Paul II, during the final week of the October 3-28 Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment and before its conclusion. See The Wanderer, November 1, 2018, p. 1 for an article based on this interview.)

Q. Your Eminence, the first thing I wanted to ask is, many Catholics, following this Summer of Shame, think they are living through the worst period of Church history. Do you agree?

Cardinal Burke: It’s certainly among the worst, if not the worst. The Church has had other periods of great scandal. But this has dimensions about it that seem to be equal to or greater than other scandals that the Church has endured.

The primary scandal with the situation of Theodore McCarrick is, it’s clear, that he was able to lead this life of abuse of young people as a priest, and as a bishop, because he was protected and promoted. This is the source of the greatest scandal. And so, I think that we’ve reached a moment of terrible crisis that has to be addressed.

Q. If you had to pick, which other troubled period of Church history would you compare this one to?

Burke: One would think of the Renaissance, which involved both financial and sexual scandals that corrupted the clergy.

We know for instance, with regard to this plague of the homosexual agenda, that St. Peter Damian [born 1007, died 1073] wrote a whole treatise on this because of the scandal in the Church of his time. So I think, above all, there’s the need for a consciousness of this difficulty of homosexual activity in seminaries, in the clergy, and even in the hierarchy.

And that has to be addressed in a very thorough......

[I-ambush]

When the white smoke went up after Pope Benedict’s resignation, I prayed Raymond Burke would step ontothe balcony.

[NRx]

St. Maximus the Confessor said: “Even if the whole universe holds communion with the [heretical] patriarch, I will not communicate with him. For I know from the writings of the holy Apostle Paul: the Holy Spirit declares that even the angels would be anathema if they should begin to preach another Gospel, introducing some new teaching.” The Life of St. Maximus the Confessor.

“Chrysostomos loudly declares not only heretics, but also those who have communion with them, to be enemies of God.” St. Theodore the Studite, Epistle of Abbot Theophilus.

“Guard yourselves from soul-destroying heresy, communion with which is alienation from Christ.” St. Theodore the Studite, P.G. 99.1216.

“Some have suffered final shipwreck with regard to the faith. Others, though they have not drowned in their thoughts, are nevertheless perishing through communion with heresy.” St. Theodore the Studite.

[ebb tide]

“It is not to be excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church.” Pope Francis