What began as Four Cardinals became Four Cardinals and three bishops. Over the past two weeks, three more Cardinals have added their voices in support of the dubia, the most recent being Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, who has joined Cardinals George Pell and Paul Josef Cordes in publicly backing the effort.
At The Wanderer, 1P5’s Maike Hickson reports:
Yesterday, the Italian website La Fede Quotidiana published a short interview with the Italian Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, the former President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. When asked specifically about the dubia recently published by the Four Cardinals, Cardinal Martino responds with the words “I do not see anything bad here.” He adds: “It is legitimate in terms of doctrine to turn to the pope and express an opinion – and it is also just that he would respond.”
Cardinal Martino also reiterates the Catholic Church’s traditional teaching on marriage when he states with regard to the question of Sacramental Communion for the divorced and “remarried”: “No, the doctrine has not been changed and cannot change. The Sacrament of Matrimony is indissoluble.” Martino also adds that “the case-by-case approach mentioned in Amoris Laetitia can lend itself to dubious interpretations.” In the same interview, the Italian cardinal makes it clear that, in the eyes of the abiding teaching of the Catholic Church, both cohabitation and a second civil marriage after a divorce are the same inasmuch as they are both “irregular” relationships and not a Sacrament.
A few days ago, a former member of the Roman Curia, Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, had made a similar statement. He said in an interview with the Austrian Catholic website Kath.net, as follows: “With an objective tone, the four cardinals have asked for the removal of doubts about the text [Amoris Laetitia]. They were met with a disproportionate protest. I was not able to understand this indignation; I also had doubts that these indignant persons were motivated by a desire to discover the truth.”
It’s hardly a landslide, but every means of additional support matters very much in this battle of David vs. Goliath in defense of God’s truth.
May the good example of those who are willing to defend the Truth despite the oppressive regime occupying the Vatican give good courage to many more Cardinal’s, Bishops and Priests who uphold these same Truths themselves and have not yet spoken. Amen.
Amen.
The Holy Spirit at work.
As He did on US 2016 presidential election. God hears people crying out. Trust in Him who will work perfectly.
More. More. More speaking out. Now.
Not enough to fill a school bus so far.
I have a feeling we’re all going to have to weigh in, in the near future. I’ll be on that school bus.
Count me in!!!!!
Dear Pope Francis,
My birthday greetings to you: Repent and believe in the Gospel (Mark 1:15). Get behind me Satan for you do not think as God does (Matthew 16:23) You are a false prophet (Matthew 7:15) and your false teaching that tickles men’s ears is not from God (2 Timothy 4:3) Recant your lies (John 8:44) and stop bullying those brave shepherds (Jeremiah 3:15) who are accompanying us on the straight and narrow path of holiness to heaven (Matthew 7:14). You Pharisee and your friends the Sadducees (Matthew 23:13-15), stop leading poor sinners on the wide and easy road to hell (Matthew 7:13). May Jesus and His Holy Mother intercede for you (John 2) and all you have led astray, you false shepherd who does not guard the flock (Jeremiah 23:1). I pray you will turn back and strengthen the brethren (Luke 22:32), manfully pick up your cross and follow Christ as His true disciple (Matthew 16:24).
That Matthew 16:23 citation is just sooooo apt for this fiasco.
Amoris is really a man’s thinking, not God’s. A fallen man’s thinking – one corrupted by the deceiver.
Well quoted. Francis is a false prophet who comes from Satan and works for Satan. The situation is quite hopeless.
Lifesite news says there are about 20-30 cardinals who support the cardinals who authored the dubia. While I wish they would speak out, l think they are trying to give Pope Francis as much time as possible to respond.
Perhaps when more formal action is taken these cardinals will put their names to the more formal action
Dear MSDOOT, you made a good point, they are offering their patience but in the end Pope Francis will accept the truth.
In the meantime that s**t bag satan is going to do his best to discourage the faithful, however the 100 years of evil is rapidly coming to an end! and the truth shall prevail!
It doeshn’t matter really althought it would be nice.
The truth is the truth even if no one believed it. We started with 4 and that is good enough. God will give the numbers necessary when He sees fit.
Yes. The Truth cannot be escaped as long as one good and holy cardinal speaks.
Dear Marc,
Exactly, Jesus Christ started with 12 Apostles and 1 screwed him over. The truth of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit will always prevail.
You wish don’t you?
NO. hand across your heart. Not being sarcastic: Really .. how many? Not ideally, spiritually or any other way you like it. Materially..How many? Listen .When the SSPX left, they were quite a few of them. And they grew from there to where they are today. Are you sure many . will follow Crdl Burke?
I was very young when the SSPX left, very young. Only began to even know it existed over the last three years. So, I cannot speak to how many there are now and were then. Only, I wish this had not been so.
I, like many, and I dare to say Cardinal Burke and the others DESIRE to follow the Pope.
It is in a Catholic’s blood to do so, don’t you agree?
Personally, this has been very difficult for this lay woman, and I can only imagine the burden, the responsibility, and yes, the great angst by Cardinal Burke to issue this Dubia, along with the others. I heard a young diocesan priest say once there are two camps, ” The Kasper Camp and the Burke Camp?” This is not good, I said to him. There is only One Camp to follow. What else is there?
So you see, it really isn’t about following Cardinal Burke per se. It is about having fidelity to Christ, His Commandments, and His Word, ” If you love me, you will keep My Commandments.”
Who follow? I haven’t any idea who or how many, or what will happen.
I suppose we shall have to pray, and ask ourselves that question that was asked by Christ of our First Pope, Peter, ” Quo Vadis.”
It really is between each of us and our Lord now, as it always has been.
The priest was wrong if I may, and this is what the traditionalists sector has failed to see from the start.there are the two extremes, what you call libs and trads ,numerically very small and then there is the rest of the RCC, somehow in the middle path.that is where Francis comes from.and is the the RCC that exists everywhere and that ,.right or wrong acknowledges this as a rebellion sadly.although the RCC has always had factions.always. Burke will have no option but to leave after his so called correction
The ” middle path” is a grave error.
I know the Church has been embracing this path for a very long time now.
It is the path of the world and a very seductive one.
Be careful of its charms, for they deceive the ” do gooder” with a false sense of compassion and quell the thirst of the unrepentant sinner with false mercy and a lack of true penance with ordering one’s life toward God.
There is only one path the Church is to follow if men are to live as Christ has so commanded them to.
I hope you are wrong about Cardinal Burke leaving after this correction.
Wel,, call it something else,. The way of the common folk, who may run to church to pray for help, health atc. Who on Saint’s feats, St Expedite, being a favourite, fill Churches to the rim and make offers, where in massive marches , lots of milles are walked to the shrines yes .We are not learned, as sinners that we are, we fail the Lord over and over .Catholic schools are THE option if you do not wan tthe public system-Catholicism is in the air. So maybe we are not as righteous as traditionalists could be , I do not know. But these two sectors , libs and trads, are basically not present here, very rare in Latam, Only exception made of the SSPX. that is what I meant.
While both “trads” and “libs” may exist in the church, it is very important to not simplify the “middle ground” that exists between these two extremes. It seems like you are simplifying the middle ground so that any traditional Catholic who likes the TLM or who appeals to church tradition prior to the 1960’s should be immediately branded as a “trad.” But there does exist a viable option for Catholics that does not undermine the ordained authority of the magisterium nor does it prevent Christ from continuing to develop His Church. I believe that many of these Catholics, including many of the youth and also holy men like Pope Emeritus Benedict and Cardinal Burke, exist today, even if they are still in the minority.
It is both fallacious and historically ignorant to think that the middle ground, or the majority position, is the correct position just because it is in the middle. What constitutes the middle at one time was the radical position at another time in history (the average position during the times of the arian heresy was to deny Christ’s divinity!). And so we must look past statistics and cultural movements, and instead seek the the Truth of Christ that He has been developing in His Church for millennia. I mean developing in the sense that Cardinal Newman meant it in “Development of Christian Doctrine:” Church Tradition is to be slowly refined and added on to, but never rejected or fundamentally altered. Many Catholics, like myself and Cardinal Burke, are worried that this developing tradition is being left behind, and so are faithfully trying to guide the Church back towards it. It is important to recognize this position as one of faithful Catholics, instead of as prideful schismatics.
I am only branding trads as trads as you say, but because you brand yourselves as such, at least colloquially,. For where we live, they do not exist practically. And there is about 50% of the RCC here.
What I don’t understand is even if the four Cardinals were malicious in their requests a pontiff should still charitably answer them. But Francis refuses to answer because he doesn’t want to and his mouthpieces come up with all sorts of excuses as to why he won’t. To pope Francis: just answer the questions and it will be all over. It will take you 10 minutes.
How can he answer them if he doesn’t believe the answers that the Church has always taught? Every indication we have had from him is that his personal opinion is at variance with the Catholic faith, He isn’t going to want to expose that openly.
Exactly. And now certain bishops have met with the priests in their diocese and have instructed them to handle these matters on internal forum. Some of the older priests, and one that I talked to personally said :”this isn’t something new, we have been doing this since I was Ordained”.
My question is, is this what the seminarians have been teaching their future priests for years?
As a convert to the fullness of the Faith from the Greek Orthodox Church, one reason I left seminary as a deacon to be Catholic was over the issues of birth control and the doctrine which allows up to three marriages.
Coming from an “older” priest doesn’t mean as much now as it did 10 or 20 years ago, as they were in their teens and twenties when the bogus ‘spirit’ of Vatican II was let loose. Playing devil’s advocate for what the priest may’ve meant by saying “we’ve been doing this since I was ordained”, is possibly in counseling a couple who want to return to the Church in a second, civil marriage – if it comes out that the first ‘valid’ marriage was canonically null in his judgement (too young, forced marriage whatever) he could direct them to petition for an annulment. This is off the top of my head, but surely in a parish setting the pastor or associate priests would get to know intimate details about some of the families and be able to suggest, if he sees a reason for it, that they make the effort to ‘regularize’ their situation. But having said this, 50 years ago when I was 14, the priests and nuns had already drunk the Kool-Aid, so in this regard, “older” doesn’t help much.
I sympathise as I escaped from a protestant sect 29 years ago into what I believed was the One True Church. I am very angry that these two-bit modernists are trying to turn the Catholic Church into just another heretical sect – although this has been their aim since before Vatican II. They are de facto liberal protestants and their MO is identical to that used by the liberals in their destruction of “mainstream” protestantism. It always begins with the relativizing of Holy Scripture and the interpretation of it which the Church has always taught in her Sacred Tradition.
Unfortunately the “internal forum” solution is very widespread and it is something which JPII specifically forbade in VS. You will probably find that these older priests have never read VS, FC or Evangelium Vitae. But as they mostly seem to believe that nothing they do will affect their eternal fate, why would they?
Dear Deacon Augustine, They most probably think that what they are doing is enlightened and those who oppose are rigid. Eventually the truth shall prevail and maybe due to the confusion over Holy Communion some people that may think it’s okay to receive, may choose not to because they are reading about what Holy Communion is and why we do not take communion without the correct preparation via confession. Our Priest often says that receiving communion is not receiving a bonbon.
We watched a very good film about Saint Augustine of Hippo yesterday, We enjoyed the whole film and really enjoyed the part when he took on the Dolomites.
I wish that we had more films being made about the Saints.
Dear Christopher, yes we can hope that this will be resolved in a way which corrects all the abuses which have taken place “under the radar.”
P.S. As the Dolomites are a range of mountains, I really hope that it was the Donatists who St Augustine took on in that movie. 😉
Dear Deacon Augustine,
Thank you! you make an excellent point about communion because I was living the life that communion was open to everyone regardless of the situation that I was living in. (Not the Priests fault it was my fault for being a badly formed Catholic). So maybe we are actually facing a joyful confrontation of what participating in communion actually is, and the truth will prevail!!! I hope that everyone hears the truth as Saint Augustine did and he became a Great, Great saint!
Sorry, I was thinking of the Triumph Dolomite…………….
I do remember that Saint Augustine also took on the Vandals!
In Christ and will keep you along with many others here in my prayers!!!
Christopher.
PF is a master game player of hiding, delaying, confusing, ignoring, covering up and lying. Keep attacking and praying hard for God’s intervention.
Dear Julius, Yes in an ideal world everything that you have written is great, however if I was the pope which I’m very happy not to be, my character may behave in the same way, which in reality wouldn’t be a good thing because it’s possibly interior pride blocking a response from the Pontiff.
Thank God for the good cardinal. Hopefully more will continue to add the voice, with every passing day. We faithful Catholics must continue to pray for the Church.
I think this situation was covered in the Beatitudes but apparently many ‘Princes’ of the church do not wish to be exiled to somewhere like Malta. God bless the few, the True and the brave.
Part of the uproar over this situation is that not many people know that dubia are presented to the pope regularly.
This is a normal administrative tool to answer questions of confusion, doubt and to give clarity.
The problem is that sometimes the dubia reveal errors being taught on the highest level because they are the pet-projects of popes and bishops.
For example, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer sent a dubia to Pope John Paul II about religious liberty as articulated by VII.
As you can imagine it went unanswered and why? For the same reason that Pope Francis won’t answer this dubia, because neither pope wanted to admit that they were contradicting sacred tradition.
Due to the complexities of religious liberty doctrine and the obscurity of Archbishop Lefebvre his dubia didn’t get as much publicity, but if it had at the time perhaps we wouldn’t have a Pope Francis now, as we would have learned our lesson 20 years ago that Popes can’t use the Church as their play-thing, but are meant to repeat and protect tradition.
but how many cardinals has Bergolio added?
To rally to the side of Truth requires courage (and given who is needed, probably a good amount of strategy.)
There may be a snowball effect, slightly different on either side. Hopefully, whatever Bergoglio does to instill fear in the episcopate (to stay on the side lines) will not be effective or adequate.
We need to keep praying, offering this to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which will triumph in the end..
These are v4ery difficult times. It’s sad that it’s the Pope himself who’s causing all thgis.
as i seek to discern the meaning and the truth behind this kerfuffle, I am troubled. It does appear to me the articles here and the commentators are substantially all of one rigid preset mind.
Did Pope Benedict not say that yes, even muslims can attain heaven? Does this not speak to “mitigating circumstances of life”? While you may quickly assert your disdain for “moral relativism”, are you sure this is the demon all around us? Is Pope Francis not calling out to the spiritually sick to come home to God and His Church? Are you so certain in your condemnations of Pope Francis? I see much support for Pope Benedict, yet what about Pope Benedict’s assertion that others not of the specific Roman Catholic faith might yet attain eternity with the one God? This does not seem to fit into (most of) your diligent firm beliefs.
At what point do we become the Pharisees, so certain in our legalistic condemnation of others?