Cardinal Burke, heterodox on primacy, is not papabile.

pec­u­la­tion, which the pope’s right-wing crit­ics have sud­den­ly found them­selves addict­ed to [see here and here], is all but use­less unless it some­how helps clar­i­fy your think­ing. I’m not sure it clar­i­fies theirs. No one can guess the future and prob­a­bly no one should try.

THEOLOGY ON TAP

Alt, you say a pope can’t teach error. The Holy Spir­it pre­vents it. But what if a heretic—or some car­di­nal who enter­tained het­ero­dox views—became pope? What then?

Well, I sup­pose God could strike Boni­face X down before he could issue any false teach­ings. That’s one way.

You mean, the car­di­nals elect­ed that one? God frets. Guess I bet­ter arrange for an unfor­tu­nate heart attack to occur.

I’ve heard some peo­ple seri­ous­ly sug­gest that that was why God killed Albi­no Luciani. But no. Seems to me it would be far sim­pler and far less messy for the Holy Spir­it to just pre­vent the elec­tion of poor Boni­face X in the first place. We’ve had some bad actors on the Chair of St. Peter, but there’s no cred­i­ble argu­ment that we’ve ever had a heretic there. Sin­ners, we’ve had; heretics, no.

But what if, Alt? What if? We’re just hav­ing some drinks at The­ol­o­gy on Tap. What if a future pope decid­ed one morn­ing to declare that Jesus is not the Son of God? Would you real­ly fol­low that just because the pope said so?

The cor­rect answer is that the pope is not going to say that. There is no “what if.” Anti-Catholics like to play this game to try to prove that Catholic teach­ing on papal infal­li­bil­i­ty could poten­tial­ly put Catholics in con­flict with essen­tial truths of the Chris­t­ian faith. Pope Fran­cis’s Catholic crit­ics fall into the same mind­set when they imag­ine a need to defend Catholic doc­trine against Pope Fran­cis, as though the two are or could be in con­flict.

My posi­tion has always been the hermeneu­tic of con­ti­nu­ity.

But, Alt, you say Burke holds het­ero­dox views. Would­n’t it be a prob­lem if he were elect­ed pope? What if you were faced tomor­row with Boni­face X? Would­n’t you then be the one try­ing to defend the Church from the pope?

No. My posi­tion is: Burke is not papa­bile in the first place. He’s not going to become pope. The very fact that he holds the views he does means that he will not—not now, not tomor­row, not in the life to come, not ever—sit in Peter’s chair. There’s no rea­son to spec­u­late fur­ther.

BURKE THE HETERODOX

It’s easy to know what Burke thinks because he leaves a paper trail at Fake Site News so long I mar­vel the world can con­tain all the band­width.

Burke pro­vid­ed the fol­low­ing sum­ma­ry of his views at a con­fer­ence in Rome enti­tled “Catholic Church: Where Are You Head­ing?”

Accord­ing to Sacred Scrip­ture and Sacred Tra­di­tion, the Suc­ces­sor to Saint Peter has pow­er which is uni­ver­sal, ordi­nary and imme­di­ate over all the faith­ful. He is the supreme judge of the faith­ful, over whom there is no high­er human author­i­ty, not even an ecu­meni­cal coun­cil. To the Pope belongs the pow­er and author­i­ty to define doc­trines and to con­demn errors, to make and repeal laws, to act as judge in all mat­ters of faith and morals, to decree and inflict pun­ish­ment, to appoint and, if need be, to remove pas­tors. Because this pow­er is from God Him­self, it is lim­it­ed as such by nat­ur­al and divine law, which are expres­sions of the eter­nal and unchange­able truth and good­ness that come from God, are ful­ly revealed in Christ, and have been hand­ed on in the Church through­out time.

So far so good. That is all cor­rect. A pope can’t teach just any­thing he pleas­es; his teach­ing must be in con­for­mi­ty with the entire­ty of divine rev­e­la­tion. A pope is not free to teach that Jesus Christ is not the son of God; a pope is not free to teach that Mary was not immac­u­late­ly con­ceived; a pope can’t decide to throw out the sev­en Deute­ro­canon­i­cal books; and so on.

But Burke goes amiss when he imag­ines that a pope could teach error—that it’s pos­si­ble to begin with—and when he spec­u­lates that the pope would have to be cor­rect­ed in such a cir­cum­stance.

There­fore, any expres­sion of doc­trine or law or prac­tice that is not in con­for­mi­ty with Divine Rev­e­la­tion, as con­tained in Sacred Scrip­ture and the Church’s Tra­di­tion can­not be an authen­tic exer­cise of the Apos­tolic or Petrine min­istry and must be reject­ed by the faith­ful. As Saint Paul declared: “There are some who trou­ble you and want to per­vert the gospel of Christ. But if we, or an angel from heav­en, should preach to you a gospel con­trary to that which we preached to you, let him be anath­e­ma.”

Leave aside Burke’s mis­use of Gala­tians 1:8; that’s a sep­a­rate blog arti­cle. The first thing we can reject here is the sup­po­si­tion that any exer­cise of the papal Mag­is­teri­um could be “not in con­for­mi­ty with Divine Reveation.”

The Church’s teach­ing is not that the papal Mag­is­teri­um has author­i­ty only when it is in com­for­mi­ty with Divine Rev­e­la­tion. The Church’s teach­ing is that the papal Mag­is­teri­um has author­i­ty because it can’t be out of con­for­mi­ty with Divine Rev­e­la­tion.

This is true whether it meets the tech­ni­cal cri­te­ria for infal­li­bil­i­ty or not.

The peren­ni­al tra­di­tion of the Church is that a pope will nev­er teach con­trary to the Catholic faith; that the assis­tance of the Holy Spir­it is assured in this regard; and that Catholics owe the authen­tic Mag­is­teri­um of the pope “reli­gious sub­mis­sion of mind and will,” even when the pope is not speak­ing ex cathe­dra.

• Pope Inno­cent III, Apos­toli­cae Sedis Pri­ma­tus (1199): “The Lord clear­ly inti­mates that Peter’s suc­ces­sors will nev­er at any time devi­ate from the Catholic faith, but will instead recall the oth­ers and strength­en the hes­i­tant.”
• St. Alphonse Liguori: “We ought right­ly pre­sume as Car­di­nal Bel­larmine declares that God will nev­er let it hap­pen that the Roman Pon­tiff, even as a pri­vate per­son, becomes a pub­lic heretic or an occult heretic.”
• Pope Pius IX Tuas Liben­ter: “Even when it is only a ques­tion of the sub­mis­sion owed to divine faith, it is not lim­it­ed to those things which are express­ly defined by the decrees of the Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cils or of the Roman Pon­tif­fs and of this Apos­tolic See; but it extends also to those things which are hand­ed down by the ordi­nary mag­is­teri­um.”
• Pope Pius IX, Syl­labus of Errors 22: “The oblig­a­tion by which Catholic teach­ers and authors are strict­ly bound is con­fined to those things only which are pro­posed to uni­ver­sal belief as dog­mas of faith by the infal­li­ble judg­ment of the Church.” [Note that this is a con­demned error.]
• Pope Pius IX, Syl­labus of Errors 23: “Roman pon­tif­fs and ecu­meni­cal coun­cils have wan­dered out­side the lim­its of their pow­ers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defin­ing mat­ters of faith and morals.” [Note that this is a con­demned error.]
• Pope Leo XIII, Sapi­en­ti­ae Chris­tianae: “Where­fore it belongs to the Pope to judge author­i­ta­tive­ly what things the sacred ora­cles con­tain, as well as what doc­trines are in har­mo­ny, and what in dis­agree­ment, with them; and also, for the same rea­son, to show forth what things are to be accept­ed as right, and what to be reject­ed as worth­less; what it is nec­es­sary to do and what to avoid doing, in order to attain eter­nal sal­va­tion. For, oth­er­wise, there would be no sure inter­preter of the com­mands of God, nor would there be any safe guide show­ing man the way he should live.”
• Pope St. Pius X: “When we love the Pope, there are no dis­cus­sions regard­ing what he orders or demands, or up to what point obe­di­ence must go, and in what things he is to be obeyed; when we love the Pope, we do not say that he has not spo­ken clear­ly enough … we do not lim­it the field in which he might and must exer­cise his author­i­ty; we do not set above the author­i­ty of the Pope that of oth­er per­sons, how­ev­er learned, who dis­sent from the Pope, who, even though learned, are not holy, because who­ev­er is holy can­not dis­sent from the Pope.”
• Lumen Gen­tium 25 [here]: “This reli­gious sub­mis­sion of mind and will must be shown in a spe­cial way to the authen­tic mag­is­teri­um of the Roman Pon­tiff, even when he is not speak­ing ex cathe­dra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme mag­is­teri­um is acknowl­edged with rev­er­ence, the judg­ments made by him are sin­cere­ly adhered to, accord­ing to his man­i­fest mind and will.”
• Don­um Ver­i­tatis [here]: “The will­ing­ness to sub­mit loy­al­ly to the teach­ing of the Mag­is­teri­um on mat­ters per se not irreformable must be the rule. … When it comes to the ques­tion of inter­ven­tions in the pru­den­tial order, it could hap­pen that some Mag­is­te­r­i­al doc­u­ments might not be free from all defi­cien­cies. Bish­ops and their advi­sors have not always tak­en into imme­di­ate con­sid­er­a­tion every aspect or the entire com­plex­i­ty of a ques­tion. But it would be con­trary to the truth, if, pro­ceed­ing from some par­tic­u­lar cas­es, one were to con­clude that the Church’s Mag­is­teri­um can be habit­u­al­ly mis­tak­en in its pru­den­tial judg­ments, or that it does not enjoy divine assis­tance in the inte­gral exer­cise of its mis­sion.”
• Pope St. John Paul II, Gen­er­al Audi­ence, March 17, 1993: “Along­side this infal­li­bil­i­ty of ex cathe­dra def­i­n­i­tions, there is the charism of the Holy Spirit’s assis­tance, grant­ed to Peter and his suc­ces­sors so that they would not err in mat­ters of faith and morals, but rather shed great light on the Chris­t­ian peo­ple. This charism is not lim­it­ed to excep­tion­al cas­es.”

Burke is also defi­cient in his view of the mech­a­nism for cor­rect­ing a pope, even assum­ing that a pope could fall into error (which a pope can’t). Canon 1404 says that “the first see is judged by no one,” and nei­ther Burke nor any­one else has sug­gest­ed any coher­ent way out of this. The pope, Burke con­cedes, is “not sub­ject to a judi­cial process.”

Even Burke’s favorite source [See update at end of post.], a thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry canon­ist named Hen­ry of Segu­sio (aka Hosten­sius) knew this. A hypo­thet­i­cal­ly hereti­cal pope, accord­ing to Hosten­sius, “should be warned of the error of his ways and even pub­licly admon­ished, but he could not be put on tri­al if he per­sist­ed in his line of con­duct.” By “pub­lic admon­ish­ment,” the Col­lege of Car­di­nals would act as a “de fac­to check” upon a pope who had wan­dered into heresy.

Only, that’s a the­o­ry that has­n’t been test­ed because we haven’t had a hereti­cal pope, don’t have a hereti­cal pope, and could­n’t have a hereti­cal pope.

And when I say “we could­n’t,” I’m not claim­ing that what­ev­er a pope says is auto­mat­i­cal­ly ortho­dox because the pope said it. I’m claim­ing that the Holy Spir­it would pre­vent a heretic from ever becom­ing pope, or at a min­i­mum from ever teach­ing heresy as pope.

As late as 1961, a canon­ist and Church his­to­ri­an named Beste assert­ed that “no exam­ples can be found” of a pope teach­ing heresy.

This the­o­ry that the Col­lege of Car­di­nals could be a “de fac­to” check upon a pope has not been test­ed, and not even Burke is try­ing to test it now (not real­ly), because the Col­lege of Car­di­nals as a body is doing noth­ing. Burke and a hand­ful of mal­con­tents are tak­ing it upon them­selves to issue thor­ough­ly refut­ed charges of heresy through Fake Site News, but that’s hard­ly an offi­cial act of the Col­lege of Car­di­nals. Rather, it has all the hall­marks of the sput­ter­ings of a cou­ple of frus­trat­ed, inef­fec­tu­al old men.

BURKE THE IDEOLOGUE

Burke has gone far­ther than the above, how­ev­er.

• In 2019, he ques­tioned Vat­i­can II, say­ing that Nos­tra Aetate was “not dogmatic”—as though Catholics could reject it for that rea­son, regard­less of what Canons 752–753 might say to the con­trary.
• Also in 2019, on Patrick Coffin’s radio show, he enter­tained spec­u­la­tion that Pope Fran­cis might not be the legit­i­mate pope.
• Also in 2019, in an inter­view with Ross Douthat, Burke accused the pope of lead­ing a schism, with­out explain­ing how that’s even pos­si­ble. A schism, by def­i­n­i­tion (Canon 751) is “refusal of sub­mis­sion to the supreme Pon­tiff.” How can the pope lead a schism against him­self? Can Fran­cis cast out Fran­cis? Burke admit­ted this was a “con­tra­dic­tion,” but he stood by the absurd claim any­way.
• In 2020, Burke (who is now recov­er­ing from COVID-19) spec­u­lat­ed that COVID might be God’s pun­ish­ment for “gen­der the­o­ry” and relat­ed “sins.” Burke cit­ed no actu­al Church teach­ing that a God of vengeance goes around pun­ish­ing sin­ners with pan­demics.

I could cite more exam­ples, except that all the blogs in the world, I sup­pose, could not con­tain them.

Giv­en Burke’s will­ing­ness to shoot off his mouth this way to major media sources like Fake Site News and the New York Times, he’s sim­ply too much of a light­ning rod, too much the voice of a minor­i­ty fac­tion with­in the Church, to get any­where close to enough votes in the Col­lege of Car­di­nals to become the suc­ces­sor of St. Peter.

And he has the added strike against him that he is Amer­i­can.

There’s sim­ply no cogent argu­ment why Burke is papa­bile. The only rea­son that any­one seri­ous­ly talks about Burke as a papal con­tender is because Edward Pentin of the For­mer­ly Catholic Reg­is­ter named him in a recent book, but the fact that Burke is pop­u­lar among a fac­tion does­n’t make him a cred­i­ble con­tender. Fac­tions don’t attend the con­clave; only the Col­lege of Car­di­nals attends the con­clave. And the Col­lege of Car­di­nals would not elect an Amer­i­can fac­tion­al­ist as leader of a glob­al Church.

The fact that Burke is so pop­u­lar with a faction—a fac­tion that’s giv­en to strange views that con­tra­dict tra­di­tion about the papa­cy and that makes war on the cur­rent pope—is an argu­ment against him being papa­bile, not in favor of it.

Burke will not ever become Pope Boni­face X, or Pope Any­body Else. Not gonna hap­pen.

My per­son­al view—if I were wont to predictions—is that the next pope will either be Car­di­nal Ouel­let (tak­ing the name Paul VII) or Car­di­nal Parolin (tak­ing the name John Paul III).

But what do I know? Those who go into the con­clave a pope come out a car­di­nal.

•••

Update. Read­er Tom Sun­daram, him­self a canon­ist, adds the fol­low­ing cor­rec­tion (he would know this; I had not known it):

Hostien­sis is not just Burke’s favorite source, he’s one of the most influ­en­tial fig­ures in the his­to­ry of law itself, not just canon law; he’s respon­si­ble for the vig­or­ous uphold­ing of many and basic posi­tions in legal his­to­ry which are now so sacro­sanct that the civ­il law accepts them as giv­en with­out dar­ing to ques­tion them, but which, at one point, were con­tentious argu­ments not just between lawyers, but between the­olo­gians, lawyers, and prelates. (Via Ostiense in Rome is named after him.)

For exam­ple, he’s lit­er­al­ly one of the first for­mal pro­pounders of the “Val­jean rule”, the right of a poor per­son to take food for neces­si­ty rather than starve as part of what we now call the uni­ver­sal des­ti­na­tion of human goods. “One who suf­fers the need of hunger seems to use his right rather than to plan a theft.” He’s also one of the most foun­da­tion­al thinkers in the notion of juris­dic­tion and sov­er­eign­ty, and his insights are core to the notion of eccle­si­as­ti­cal and tem­po­ral pow­er in the Church’s self-under­stand­ing.

I won’t say every­thing he said was right, but he’s not just “a thir­teenth cen­tu­ry canon­ist”, he’s the realest of real deals.

Tom’s the kind of read­er it’s valu­able to have, because even when he has crit­i­cisms, you take them (and him) seri­ous­ly.