Things are heating up…
“Cardinal” Burke: Francis Not in Heresy, but Heretical Pope would Lose Office automatically
The Amoris Laetitia controversy is far from over. If anything, it’s entering now into its hottest phase yet.
American “Cardinal” Raymond Burke has recently given some interviews on the dubia and their non-response by “Pope” Francis and explained what is to happen next if the dubia remain unanswered. Previously Burke had already threatened a “formal act of correction” against Francis, but without giving details or a timeline. Now Burke has upped the ante.
On December 15, 2016, EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo interviewed the Novus Ordo cardinal on his nightly news program, The World Over. Just below you can watch the full interview. A transcript and accompanying article can be found here.
A few days later, Mr. Burke granted an interview also to Life Site, in which he suggested that this “formal correction” of the “Pope” would probably occur some time after Christmas:
“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.
(Lisa Bourne, “Cardinal Burke suggests timeline for ‘formal correction’ of Pope Francis”, Life Site, Dec. 19, 2016)
This isn’t going to go over well with Francis, that’s for sure. In fact, we may perhaps anticipate that Jorge Bergoglio will lash out — in his inimitable semi-cryptic style — at the dubia supporters in his upcoming Christmas address this week. If the past is any indication, the sparks should be flying again this time.
It is curious, of course, that Mr. Burke thinks that cardinals can correct the Magisterium of a Pope. The way it works in the Catholic Church is that the Pope teaches all, and the cardinals do not teach him, because the Pope alone is the universal teacher of all Christians. Let’s recall just two important papal quotes on this, something you won’t find at the web sites of The Remnant, Catholic Family News, the Fatima Center, or the Society of St. Pius X:
Nor is it any less a matter of praise that in matters pertaining to ecclesiastical discipline you are distinguished by that perfect obedience of execution, of will, and of judgment towards the Holy See, which is such a mark of “the … authentic guidance of the Holy Spirit” [St. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., L. III, c. 3].
Let no one take from you the glory of that rectitude in doctrine and fidelity in obedience due to the Vicar of Christ; among your ranks let there be no room for that “free examination” more fitting to the heterodox mentality than to the pride of the Christian, and according to which no one hesitates to summon before the tribunal of his own judgment even those things which have their origin in the Apostolic See.
(Pope Pius XII, Allocution to the General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, Sept. 10, 1957; excerpted in Papal Teachings: The Church, n. 1483, p. 760.)
This chair [of Peter] is the center of Catholic truth and unity, that is, the head, mother, and teacher of all the Churches to which all honor and obedience must be offered. Every church must agree with it because of its greater preeminence — that is, those people who are in all respects faithful….
Now you know well that the most deadly foes of the Catholic religion have always waged a fierce war, but without success, against this Chair; they are by no means ignorant of the fact that religion itself can never totter and fall while this Chair remains intact, the Chair which rests on the rock which the proud gates of hell cannot overthrow and in which there is the whole and perfect solidity of the Christian religion. Therefore, because of your special faith in the Church and special piety toward the same Chair of Peter, We exhort you to direct your constant efforts so that the faithful people of France may avoid the crafty deceptions and errors of these plotters and develop a more filial affection and obedience to this Apostolic See. Be vigilant in act and word, so that the faithful may grow in love for this Holy See, venerate it, and accept it with complete obedience; they should execute whatever the See itself teaches, determines, and decrees.
(Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Inter Multiplices, nn. 1,7; underlining added.)
In connection with the issue of a Pope being corrected on matters of doctrine, the case of the fourteenth-century Pope John XXII is often brought up, for this Pope proposed the error — not heresy at the time — that the soul who dies in the state of sanctifying grace does not see God until after the Last Judgment at the end of the world. While this case deserves some very close examination and we will therefore treat it in depth in a separate article as part of our ongoing series The “Heretical” Popes (see Part 1 here), we must point out that Pope John XXII did not allow this error to enter into his Magisterium. Rather, “after gathering an assembly of cardinals and learned theologians, he gave up his [erroneous] opinion. Shortly afterwards (December 4th, 1334) on his death-bed, he publicly retracted the doctrine he had uttered, not as head of the Church, but simply as a private theologian” (Rev. Fernand Mourret, A History of the Catholic Church, vol. 5 [St. Louis, MO: Herder Book Co., 1945], pp. 91-92).
Let’s get back to “Cardinal” Burke, however. On December 19, The Catholic World Report also published an interview with “His Eminence”, and this one contains the most explosive contents yet:
CWR: Is there a Scriptural basis for rebuking a pope?
Cardinal Burke: The classic Scriptural basis is St. Paul’s rebuking of Peter [in Galatians 2:11ff] for his accommodation of the Judaizers in the early Christian Church. Saint Paul confronted Peter to his face because he would be requiring things of the Gentile Christians that are not inherent to the Christian faith. And Peter actually agreed with that, but when he was with the Judaizers he would feign the other position and so Paul corrected him, as he said, to his face.
…
CWR: Some critics say you are implicitly accusing the Pope of heresy.
Cardinal Burke: No, that’s not what we have implied at all. We have simply asked him, as the Supreme Pastor of the Church, to clarify these five points that are confused; these five, very serious and fundamental points. We’re not accusing him of heresy, but just asking him to answer these questions for us as the Supreme Pastor of the Church.
…
CWR: Some people are saying that the pope could separate himself from communion with the Church. Can the pope legitimately be declared in schism or heresy?
Cardinal Burke: If a Pope would formally profess heresy he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope. It’s automatic. And so, that could happen.
CWR: That could happen.
Cardinal Burke: Yes.
CWR: That’s a scary thought.
Cardinal Burke: It is a scary thought, and I hope we won’t be witnessing that at any time soon.
…
[CWR:] Back to this question about the Pope committing heresy. What happens then, if the Pope commits heresy and is no longer Pope? Is there a new conclave? Who’s in charge of the Church? Or do we just not even want to go there to start figuring that stuff out?
Cardinal Burke: There is already in place the discipline to be followed when the Pope ceases from his office, even as happened when Pope Benedict XVI abdicated his office. The Church continued to be governed in the interim between the effective date of his abdication and the inauguration of the papal ministry of Pope Francis.
CWR: Who is competent to declare him to be in heresy?
Cardinal Burke: It would have to be members of the College of Cardinals.
CWR: Just to clarify again, are you saying that Pope Francis is in heresy or is close to it?
Cardinal Burke: No, I am not saying that Pope Francis is in heresy. I have never said that. Neither have I stated that he is close to being in heresy.
(“Cardinal Burke: ‘No, I am not saying that Pope Francis is in heresy'”, The Catholic World Report, Dec. 19, 2016)
Let’s go through this step by step.
First, regarding the argument that rebuking the Pope is scriptural: Of course the Pope, being a sinner, can be rebuked if he sins, especially if his sin is public and causes scandal. This is all that Galatians 2:11-15 is about, as we have shown in our appendix to this post. Besides, St. Peter’s sin was only “a venial fault of imprudence”, as St. Augustine teaches. The passage has nothing to do with usurping the Pope’s magisterial authority and correcting him on a matter of doctrine. So, arguing Galatians 2:11 is entirely beside the point.
Next, Burke says he is not at all accusing Francis of heresy. This is not only unfortunate but also bizarre, since there are a number of heresies contained in Amoris Laetitia, as even 45 Novus Ordo pastors and academics had already pointed out in a public letter to the college of “cardinals” and its head, Angelo Sodano, back in June. So why is Burke not accusing Francis of heresy?
Next, Mr. Burke brings up the case of a Pope who were to become a manifest heretic: “…he would cease, by that act, to be the Pope. It’s automatic.” There we go, just as we sedevacantists have been saying. If it is possible for a true Pope to become a heretic (something that cannot entirely be ruled out as a possibility, although it does not seem likely), then such a heretic will, by that very fact alone, immediately cease to be Pope, without any sort of legal declaration or “judgment” by anyone. (On this, please also see our important post, “The Impossibility of Judging or Deposing a True Pope”.)
This same position — that of a Pope automatically ceasing to be Pope if he becomes a manifest heretic — was recently also confirmed by Novus Ordo canon lawyer Ed Peters:
Peters is not just any canonist in the Vatican II Church, by the way. In 2010, “Pope” Benedict XVI appointed him Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura, which is basically the “Supreme Court” of the Vatican, of which Raymond Burke was the prefect until Francis demoted him in 2014.
In short, all this is really bad news for John Salza and Robert Siscoe, whose false and incompetent arguments will now come under ever closer scrutiny as real authorities in the Vatican II Church — which Salza and Siscoe definitely are not — weigh in on these matters and effectively expose these two men as charlatans.
As far as the issue of who is competent to declare a Pope to have fallen from office due to heresy, Burke says it is the college of cardinals. Given the context, it is clear that Burke is talking here about making a legal declaration that a Pope has ceased to be Pope, which then opens up the way to electing a new one in conclave. The necessity of such a declaration is relative, however: It is needed only to be able to establish legally that the Holy See is vacant and a new Pope has to be elected. It is not needed to be able to know that the See is vacant (to say otherwise would involve one in a self-refuting proposition, for then the cardinals themselves could not know that the Pope has ceased to be Pope, hence they could not declare it, either).
For this reason, Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law says: “Any office becomes vacant upon the fact and without any declaration by tacit resignation recognized by the law itself if a cleric publicly defects from the Catholic Faith” (emphasis added). For an in-depth treatment of this canon and the surrounding issues, please see our lengthy essay, The Chair Is Still Empty: A Response to John Salza on the Alleged “Errors of Sedevacantism”.
But then again, in the Novus Ordo this is nothing something they need to worry about, because Mr. Burke assures all that not only is Francis not in heresy, he’s not even “close to being in heresy”!
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Speaking of the possibility of a heretical Pope is highly speculative. I mean, what’s the point at all of having a religious institution with a supreme authority that has the fulness of power over that institution, and then, when push come to shove, not sticking to it? Disputing a supreme authority simply makes no sense and is self-refuting. So either you have a system with a supreme authority and you stick to it no matter what, or you reject the system. In the the first option the possibility of a heretical Pope is excluded, in the second option there can be no Papacy at all.
Almighty God is the “supreme authority that has the fulness of power,” not a Pope.
Yep, it is not the Pope’s or any man’s church. The Pope (a real one) is charged with guarding it. The post Pius XII popes are (or were) merely taking up space, freeloading, and “trying” to destroy it!
That line of argument would imply the possibility that the Faith has no objective, universal dogmatic content. That the Petrine authority can reform the irreformable. Then could a Pope deny essential doctrinal truths of the Catholic Faith? The Resurrection? The seven Sacraments, the indissolubility of the marriage bond, et alia?
The pope has no authority over the divine constitution of the Church. It is this constitution that defines the papal office and the conditions necessary to receive and to retain it.
It’s comparable to civil society: the supreme civil authority may belong to one man, the monarch, but he operates within a moral and legal framework that he cannot remake at his own pleasure. He cannot require anyone to commit a sin, nor can he regulate matters that are outside the sphere of the temporal power. Under certain conditions he loses his office automatically under the natural law, as, for example, if he were to become insane.
At least not yet (prior to formally establishing the heresy, as by an imperfect council? canonical trial?).
The interviewer should’ve asked him what would establish his heresy.
An imperfect council is entirely different from the college of cardinals. Burke said nothing about an imperfect council. But although it could be legally declared that Francis isn’t Pope (assuming for a minute that the Novus Ordo Church were the true Church), a canonical trial is impossible, for two reasons: (1) if it is not certain whether the “Pope” is a heretic, he cannot be tried because no one has power to subject him to a trial; (2) if it is certain that he is a heretic, no trial is needed.
So in other words, if he’s a true pope, no one can judge him, but if he’s a false shepherd, no one needs to tell you (because sensus Catholicus says heretics, schismatics, and apostates aren’t Catholics); is that right?
That’s the way I began to understand things…
Burke said (some?) “members of the College of Cardinals,” not simply (the entire) “College of Cardinals,” which makes me think he might be referring to an imperfect council.
But an imperfect council would have to include all the bishops, no? I think even that whole thing is more on the level of theory or hypothesis than established fact. Who would call the council and make it binding on anyone? What if people don’t show up or refuse to accept the declaration? Etc. It’s messy.
What Abp. Lefebvre and Thuc did is probably more effective than convening any sort of council.
“We’re not accusing him of heresy”… yet!
Which is a very strange thing for him to say, since at the recent conference in Rome where “Bishop” Schneider spoke and Mr. Burke attended as well, Schneider accused Francis of dispensing from the Sixth Commandment. Obviously, we’re talking about heresy here.
That is precisely the unsolvable dilemma of the neo-trad position, as you say. And that’s what we lay out in our article on the impossibility of judging or deposing a true Pope: http://novusordowatch.org/2016/03/impossibility-judging-deposing-true-pope/
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! This crowd are an absolute bunch of clowns. Scneider calls it the joy of adultety, Francis says what he likes rven when it is sheer bunkum and yet it’s not heresy.
Inventor of Christianity? On December 17th, the anti-Catholic Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, to whom Pope Francis talks regularly, revealed in La Repubblica how Francis answered the question which saint he prefers. Francis said, “The first is obviously Paul. He is the one who constructed our religion.”
Lutheran theses coincide with what happened in the first centuries: At the end of his article, Scalfari writes, “In the early centuries of Christianity, the sacraments were celebrated directly by the faithful and the priests only served.” Scalfari continues, “Francis agrees on these Lutheran theses that coincide with what happened in the first centuries.” The Vatican did not deny Scalfari’s claims.
https://gloria.tv/video/w94aRUKVPR9V3ZM7ia6V6YB7S
the muhammads and the synagogue also agree.
So, you can Imagine what kind of stuff would flow out from Frankie’s mouth when he gets near heresy, according to Mr. Burke…
Heh, heh. True.
This is a very simple argument to dispute. The Divine Law is that a man cannot be Pope if he is a public heretic prior to his election. You could make this argument for all the V2 “popes” but especially Francis. We aren’t deposing a true pope, we are making the obvious statement that he isn’t a Catholic so therefore he was never pope.
I’m confused. Burke states, “No, I am not saying that Pope Francis is in heresy. I have never said that. Neither have I stated that he is close to being in heresy.” But isn’t it binary in that you either are or are not in heresy? What does “close” even mean in this context?
And isn’t it fair to say that there are numerous examples of Bergoglio heresy, apart from Amoris Laetitia? So why is Burke being evasive? Does he think Jorge will declare himself to be anathema? Or does the bishop of Rome have some kind of leverage over Burke that is nonpublic to this point?
If only members of the College of Cardinals are “competent” to declare Bergoglio to be in heresy then who is going to step forward? Do the cardinals intend to wait until Jorge has done irreparable damage to the church? He and his sycophants arm themselves for battle every day. They are relentless and It’s clear they intend to destroy the Church from within and, in the process, lead many souls down the wrong path.
“Every Star has its own Nature, which is “Right” for it. We are not to be missionaries, with ideal standards of dress and morals, and such hard-ideas. We are to do what we will, and leave others to do what they will. We are infinitely tolerant, save of intolerance.” It’s easy to imagine these words belonging to Jorge Bergoglio but the quote belongs to Aleister Crowley, freemason and occultist, and someone often described as the wickedest man to have lived. Bergoglio is foisting the same ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ on the unsuspecting faithful. He is exhorting “rigid” Catholics (and members of all religions) to adopt a philosophy that eschews faith for doubt and embraces total sexual liberty. In my view, the issue with Francis goes beyond heresy and is the most fundamental one of good versus evil.
It’s clear there is a war raging in Rome but where is God’s army?
“And isn’t it fair to say that there are numerous examples of Bergoglio heresy, apart from Amoris Laetitia?”
Certainly. But material, not manifest. Burke’s process will establish if Bergoglio is pertinacious and manifest.
Burke’s “process” cannot establish anything in the legal realm, since the Pope cannot be subjected to a trial. All Burke can do is establish pertinacity on the factual level, but that has long been done. Bergoglio is as pertinacious as they come — that much has been manifest for a long time.
it seems Burke wishes to follow what Bellarmine speculated on regards a heretical papal claimant.
It’s funny how Burke has a problem with “communion” for adulterers but not for Protestants.
Who knows where this will lead. Burke and his group may start to see more dominoes fall once they push this first one over, and it could go all the way back to include Vatican II, the Novus Ordo, and even the rite of Holy Orders.
Supplied jurisdiction for common error over the past 50 odd years could make room for habitual jurisdiction become the norm once there are validly ordained, professing Catholics returning to the hierarchy and the Chair of Peter.
Am I over-optimistic? Probably, but looking for possible solutions can prevent finding oneself in an unnecessary schism when the crisis ends (whenever that may be), without giving the Faith away in the meantime, or by thinking Bergy is the pope.
You are wrong about that. Anyone with the Faith, and has the use of reason, is capable of knowing Francis is not a true pope…and many, many Catholics are willing to state that. Myself included. The situation is a dilemma, but not unsolvable.
Robert, I said it “unsolvable” for the pseduo-Trad position, not unsolvable in itself.
Your discussion fails to acknowledge that the Church has already definitively held, which JPII simply restated, that those who willfully continue to live in adultery cannot receive sacraments. #NotAnOpenQuestion
If he promotes Boff heresy he would be a heretic.
We can see a house burning to the ground before the firemen arrive and make a “formal declaration”: “this house is on fire! Get out!” If the “pope” teaches ambiguous, misleading or false doctrines concerning, say, the indissolubility of marriage, et alia, or, say, the necessity of good works, along with faith, for salvation, one can see this without a formal condemnation and clarification by “the Cardinals.” Also, It appears, going back to the trial of Pope Damasus, that even for criminal acts, the Pope may not be judged by ecclesiastical courts or secular courts and deposed, whilst he lives. One can resist him and apply moral pressure, but not extrude him from the chair of St. Peter. As for a living pope who falls into manifest heresy, he falls from office through divine judgement, not the determination of an ecclesiastical court. Exemplum: even if you regard Pope Honorius as a manifest heretic, he was condemned posthumously. Prima sedes a nemine iudicatur.