LifeSiteNews‘ Lisa Bourne conducted an exclusive interview with Cardinal Raymond Burke in which she asked about the a timeline for the promised formal correction in the absence of a response from Pope Francis on the dubia related to Amoris Laetitia. Burke responded:
“The dubia have to have a response because they have to do with the very foundations of the moral life and of the Church’s constant teaching with regard to good and evil, with regard to various sacred realities like marriage and Holy Communion and so forth,” Burke said during a telephone interview.
“Now of course we are in the last days, days of strong grace, before the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord, and then we have the Octave of the Solemnity and the celebrations at the beginning of the New Year – the whole mystery of Our Lord’s Birth and His Epiphany – so it would probably take place sometime after that.”
The cardinal, who is the patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta, said the format of the correction would be “very simple.”
“It would be direct, even as the dubia are, only in this case there would no longer be raising questions, but confronting the confusing statements in Amoris Laetitia with what has been the Church’s constant teaching and practice, and thereby correcting Amoris Laetitia,” he said. [emphasis added]
A timeline that places the correction after the Epiphany means that the next step in this process will fall in 2017. Many Catholics devoted to the Fatima message have been increasingly concerned that 2017 — the 100th anniversary of our Lady’s final appearance to the three shepherd children and the Miracle of the Sun, which took place on October 13, 1917 — will usher in a chastisement in accordance with Our Lady’s various warnings through apparitions like Fatima, or the lesser known Akita warnings, the last of which also took place on October 13th of 1973.
At Akita, Our Lady is said to have told Sr. Agnes Sasagawa:
“The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres…churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.”
In a video released last year before the second portion of the Synod on Marriage and Family, Cardinal Burke echoed the words of the Akita message (see time marker 26:35) when he said:
“If this means that cardinals will be opposed to cardinals, then we simply have to accept the fact that…that that’s the situation which we find ourselves. Certainly for my part, I don’t look for this kind of conflict, but…if in defending the truth of the faith I end up in a disagreement or a conflict with another cardinal what has to be primary to me is the truth of the faith and to, as a teacher of the faith, as a pastor of souls, to defend that truth.”
Whether or not the sort of chastisement many fear is imminent, we are unquestionably faced with deep and harmful divisions within the Church that are headed straight for a confrontation of historic proportions.
