His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Cafeteria Catholic.

he valu­able Mike Lewis at Where Peter Is has the sto­ry on Car­di­nal Burke’s lat­est brazen dec­la­ra­tion of dis­sent from the Mag­is­teri­um. I’ll get to all that, but first it’s nec­es­sary to remind our­selves that Burke has gone down this road before. Back in 2016, Burke spoke with reporters and declared that we can over­look Nos­tra Aetate because it’s “not dog­mat­ic.” Of course, it does not mat­ter whether it’s “dog­mat­ic” or not; it’s the teach­ing of a Church coun­cil, and Burke is on inde­fen­si­ble ground if he thinks Catholics can just wave their hand at the teach­ing of a coun­cil. Specif­i­cal­ly, Burke called into ques­tion these words:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, liv­ing and sub­sist­ing in Him­self; mer­ci­ful and all-pow­er­ful, the Cre­ator of heav­en and earth, who has spo­ken to men; they take pains to sub­mit whole­heart­ed­ly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abra­ham, with whom the faith of Islam takes plea­sure in link­ing itself, sub­mit­ted to God. Though they do not acknowl­edge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also hon­or Mary, His vir­gin Moth­er; at times they even call on her with devo­tion. In addi­tion, they await the day of judg­ment when God will ren­der their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Final­ly, they val­ue the moral life and wor­ship God espe­cial­ly through prayer, alms­giv­ing and fast­ing.

Burke rejects this as “not dog­mat­ic” because he has a fond idea that Mus­lims wor­ship a dif­fer­ent god than Catholics do. I am afraid he is on inde­fen­si­ble ground there, too. “Your god and ours is one and the same,” said St. John Paul II. “We are broth­ers and sis­ters in the faith of Abra­ham.”

I find it end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing that Faith­ful­Catholics™ who look to Burke as though he’s pope and not Fran­cis wor­ry their fin­ger­nails raw over the Vat­i­can’s sup­posed rejec­tion of John Paul II’s teach­ing. And yet here’s Burke quite open­ly reject­ing it him­self.

And of course we all know about Burke’s pub­lic “cor­rec­tion” of Amor­is Laeti­tia; I wrote about that here.

•••

And now His Emi­nence Car­di­nal Ray­mond Leo Burke has come out and declared him­self opposed to the pope’s Mag­is­teri­um on the death penal­ty too. This occurred dur­ing a Q&A ses­sion at the Napa con­fer­ence, as Mr. Lewis reports in his arti­cle for Where Peter Is. Burke denies that the change to the Cat­e­chism is “offi­cial teach­ing.”

You know, call me crazy, dear read­er, but it’s in the Cat­e­chism. How much more “offi­cial” does it have to be? What would be required for it to be “offi­cial,” in Burke’s view? Would the angel of the Lord need to appear to Burke in a dream, or is that not enough? Would he have to read it at Fake Site News or on Patrick Coffin’s Twit­ter feed? If the Cat­e­chism does­n’t make it offi­cial, what does? Does Burke need a Eucharis­tic mir­a­cle to con­firm this? Would he have to set his cap­pa magna out all night and wake to find it dry and not cov­ered with dew?

The pope, Burke says, can’t make his per­son­al opin­ion offi­cial teach­ing.

Which is true, but the Cat­e­chism is not a book of the pope’s opin­ions. It is, as John Paul II called it, “a sure norm for teach­ing the faith.” Why is Car­di­nal Burke hush­ing up the lega­cy of John Paul II?

Burke quotes the new lan­guage that the death penal­ty is “inad­mis­si­ble,” and then frets: “This is sim­ply not any lan­guage.” Sor­ry? I don’t fol­low. (They say the pope is con­fus­ing.) If it’s not lan­guage, then what is it? Music? Art? Tulips? “What does it mean,” Burke won­ders, “to say that some­thing is inad­mis­si­ble?”

Well, okay. I’m here to help you out. I go to the dic­tio­nary and I read “not allow­able.” I read “for­bid­den.” I read “pro­hib­it­ed.”

But “inad­mis­si­ble,” says Burke, is a “rel­a­tive term.” Now, he does­n’t explain rel­a­tive to what, so your guess is as good as mine. “Either say it’s intrin­si­cal­ly evil or it’s good,” Burke demands.

This is just moral inco­her­ence, and I’m sor­ry to hear it from Burke. There is a vast ocean that lies between what’s “intrin­si­cal­ly evil” and what’s “good.” Aquinas under­stood this: “Although there is neces­si­ty in the gen­er­al prin­ci­ples [of the moral law],” he said, “the more we descend to mat­ters of detail, the more fre­quent­ly we encounter defects… In mat­ters of action, truth or prac­ti­cal rec­ti­tude is not the same for all, as to mat­ters of detail, but only as to the gen­er­al prin­ci­ples; and where there is the same rec­ti­tude in mat­ters of detail, it is not equal­ly known to all. … The prin­ci­ple will be found to fail, accord­ing as we descend fur­ther into detail.” The appli­ca­tion of moral­i­ty to indi­vid­ual cir­cum­stance is com­plex. Burke either does­n’t know this, has tem­porar­i­ly for­got­ten in a fit of Pope Fran­cis Derange­ment Syn­drome, or—but I leave that to your imag­i­na­tion.

Burke final­ly attacks Pope Fran­cis’s descrip­tion of the death penal­ty as an affront to the invi­o­lable dig­ni­ty of the per­son. “It’s not!” Burke cries. “What’s the cita­tion?” he raves on. “What’s the doc­tri­nal cita­tion? A speech of the pope on Octo­ber 11 2017.”

Now I’m sor­ry to have to point this out, in the midst of the holy guf­faws of Faith­ful­Catholic™ laugh­ter at the pope Burke’s sar­casm gen­er­at­ed, but Pope Fran­cis did not cite only him­self. Take a look at the let­ter to bish­ops if you doubt me. I point­ed this all out myself, last year.

• Pope Fran­cis cites Evan­geli­um Vitae. “Not even a mur­der­er los­es his per­son­al dig­ni­ty,” John Paul II writes, “and God him­self pledges to guar­an­tee this.”
• Pope Fran­cis cites John Paul II’s Urbi et Orbi mes­sage of 1998, in which John Paul II urged an end to the death penal­ty. “The dig­ni­ty of human life,” he said, “must nev­er be tak­en away.”
• And Pope Fran­cis cites Bene­dict XVI’s Gen­er­al Audi­ence of Novem­ber 30, 2011, in which the now emer­i­tus pope also urged an end to the death penal­ty, since it does not con­form to “the human dig­ni­ty of pris­on­ers.”

So I’m sor­ry to dis­ap­point Cafe­te­ria Catholic Burke, but this is not some­thing Pope Fran­cis just dreamed up one day as a pri­vate opin­ion of his own and then decid­ed to defile the Cat­e­chism with it. John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI taught the same thing. And Pope Fran­cis sites both of them—not just himself—in his let­ter to bish­ops.

Either Burke was slop­py and did not both­er to acquaint him­self with the con­tents of this let­ter, or—but I leave that again to your imag­i­na­tion, dear read­er.