Pope Francis Derangement Syndrome XXIII: Cardinal Burke & four rebel bishops create parallel Magisterium.

hey’ve been in a com­pro­mised posi­tion for some time. But now Car­di­nal Burke; Arch­bish­op Athana­sius Schnei­der; and bish­ops Janis Pujats, Tomash Peta, and Jan Pawel Lenga have all signed a new cor­rec­tion of the Holy Father. (No doubt it’s fil­ial. These things always are.) The cor­rec­tion is titled “Dec­la­ra­tion of the truths relat­ing to some of the most com­mon errors in the life of the Church of our time.” So, you know: Wow. I think it’s a total dis­grace. Fake Site News and the For­mer­ly Catholic Reg­is­ter are, as you might expect, doing cart­wheels over this fake mag­is­te­r­i­al text. Pentin can bare­ly con­tain his glee:

The doc­u­ment is just the lat­est in a series of dec­la­ra­tions, fil­ial peti­tions and cor­rec­tions from bish­ops, aca­d­e­mics, priests and laity con­cerned about the ambi­gu­i­ty of teach­ing and asso­ci­at­ed con­fu­sion that have arisen dur­ing the cur­rent pon­tif­i­cate.

Fake Site ejac­u­lates in a sim­i­lar vein:

Some of the 40 truths which are elu­ci­dat­ed in the dec­la­ra­tion implic­it­ly ref­er­ence state­ments made by Pope Fran­cis, while oth­ers relate to points of con­fu­sion that have arisen or inten­si­fied dur­ing the cur­rent pon­tif­i­cate. Still oth­ers address moral errors in soci­ety that are grave­ly harm­ing lives, as much of the hier­ar­chy stands by.

Now, Burke and the rebel bish­ops do not men­tion Pope Fran­cis. But it is evi­dent to Fake Site and Pentin at For­mer­ly that the rebels want round five against papa. For indeed, sev­er­al items among the forty plagiarize—and I mean verbatim—both the Fil­ial Cor­rec­tion of 2017 and the much more shame­less accu­sa­tion of heresy last month. They think they’re so cute.

And this lat­est “cor­rec­tion,” regard­less of how much truth it may con­tain, has no Mag­is­te­r­i­al author­i­ty what­ev­er. Let this be clear­ly under­stood: The text has no more author­i­ty than this blog post. Per­haps less: Bish­ops have author­i­ty to teach, but only when they teach in union with the pope. I’m not a bish­op, but at least this blog is in union with Pope Fran­cis. Here is Lumen Gen­tium 25:

Although the indi­vid­ual bish­ops do not enjoy the pre­rog­a­tive of infal­li­bil­i­ty, they nev­er­the­less pro­claim Christ’s doc­trine infal­li­bly when­ev­er, even though dis­persed through the world, but still main­tain­ing the bond of com­mu­nion among them­selves and with the suc­ces­sor of Peter, and authen­ti­cal­ly teach­ing mat­ters of faith and morals, they are in agree­ment on one posi­tion as defin­i­tive­ly to be held.

And here is the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church §883:

The col­lege or body of bish­ops has no author­i­ty unless unit­ed with the Roman Pon­tiff, Peter’s suc­ces­sor, as its head.” As such, this col­lege has “supreme and full author­i­ty over the uni­ver­sal Church; but this pow­er can­not be exer­cised with­out the agree­ment of the Roman Pon­tiff.

Bish­ops have no author­i­ty to cor­rect the pope. They fight author­i­ty, author­i­ty always wins; the first see is judged by no one, says canon 1404. Car­di­nal Burke does not sit on the CDF. He’s not God. The rebel words are not approved by Pope Fran­cis. Its mag­is­te­r­i­al weight is zero. Burke and the rebel bish­ops have no author­i­ty to teach in this doc­u­ment. It is pri­vate opin­ion. The doc­u­ment may very well con­tain truth, of course (just like this blog post), but it has no author­i­ty in the Church.

It’s also unclear what state­ments of the pope the rebels are try­ing to cor­rect. When the fil­ial cor­rec­tion came out two years ago, at least the authors cit­ed some text from Pope Fran­cis that they believed con­tained heresy. They nev­er got around to telling us which here­sies they found in which cita­tions; but at least they made some effort, in their own slop­py way. This time, Burke and the rebel bish­ops don’t quote Pope Fran­cis at all. They are slop­pi­er. They list forty the­ses, end stop. They get lazy and don’t even go on to a full nine­ty-five. So one real­ly needs to guess what Pope Fran­cis has said that con­tra­dicts any of them. And I’m not con­vinced.

Now, if the truth be told, there’s lit­tle prob­lem with the forty the­ses as such. (I do have a few quib­bles.) But I do dis­pute that Pope Fran­cis has said any­thing, any­where, that goes against any of them. Fear not, dear read­er: I’m not going to review all forty (at least not in this post) but I have select­ed nine.

• 5. Mus­lims and oth­ers who lack faith in Jesus Christ, God and man, even monothe­ists, can­not give to God the same ado­ra­tion as Chris­tians do, that is to say, super­nat­ur­al wor­ship in Spir­it and in Truth (see Jn 4:24; Eph 2:8) of those who have received the Spir­it of fil­ial adop­tion (see Rom 8:15).

Who says they can? Recent­ly Pope Fran­cis said that God wants “sol­i­dar­i­ty” between Catholics and Mus­lims, but God wants sol­i­dar­i­ty between all peo­ple. That’s dif­fer­ent than say­ing Mus­lims give God the same ado­ra­tion as Catholics; I don’t know any­one who thinks that. Nos­tra Aetate and Lumen Gen­tium say that Catholics and Mus­lims adore the same God; they don’t say that the ado­ra­tion is sub­stan­tive­ly equiv­a­lent. And I can not find where the pope teach­es that it is.

• 9. The reli­gion born of faith in Jesus Christ, the Incar­nate Son of God and the only Sav­ior of humankind, is the only reli­gion pos­i­tive­ly willed by God. The opin­ion is, there­fore, wrong that says that just as God pos­i­tive­ly wills the diver­si­ty of the male and female sex­es and the diver­si­ty of nations, so in the same way he also wills the diver­si­ty of reli­gions.

Great. The pope has not made this claim. Indeed the pope clar­i­fied—and to the wery same Bish­op Schnei­der who signed this lat­est doc­u­ment that he meant God’s pas­sive will, not his pos­i­tive will. Fake Site News announced it with a blast of trum­pets on March 7. So if Athana­sius Con­tra Fran­cis­cum is sign­ing on with the rebels now to claim the pope still meant oth­er­wise, he is being disin­gen­u­ous.

• 12. A jus­ti­fied per­son has the suf­fi­cient strength with God’s grace to car­ry out the objec­tive demands of the Divine law, since all of the com­mand­ments of God are pos­si­ble for the jus­ti­fied.

Yes, and in Amor­is Laeti­tia 295, Pope Fran­cis affirms that wery same thing: “For the law is itself a gift of God which points out the way, a gift for every­one with­out excep­tion; it can be fol­lowed with the help of grace.”

• 14. All of the com­mand­ments of God are equal­ly just and mer­ci­ful. The opin­ion is, there­fore, wrong that says that a per­son is able, by obey­ing a Divine pro­hi­bi­tion — for exam­ple, the sixth com­mand­ment not to com­mit adul­tery — to sin against God by this act of obe­di­ence.

This one, like the pri­or one, comes ver­ba­tim from the fil­ial cor­rec­tion of two years ago. And, as I point­ed out then, that’s not what the text of Amor­is Laeti­tia says. AL 298 does not say that aban­don­ing an irreg­u­lar union is of itself a sin. What is does say that aban­don­ing an irreg­u­lar union may require aban­don­ing one’s chil­dren, and that that would be a sin.

(Since I have already answered many of these “cor­rec­tions,” I will let my links be suf­fi­cient to direct you to the full refu­ta­tion. I won’t go through all my points here; I’ll just give the gist.)

• 15. There are moral prin­ci­ples and moral truths con­tained in Divine rev­e­la­tion and in the nat­ur­al law which include neg­a­tive pro­hi­bi­tions that absolute­ly for­bid cer­tain kinds of action, inas­much as these kinds of action are always grave­ly unlaw­ful on account of their object.

This one also comes from the fil­ial cor­rec­tion of two years ago. But I again point­ed out then that I do not find this denial of neg­a­tive pro­hi­bi­tions any­where in the pope’s writ­ing. On the con­trary, §297 of Amor­is Laeti­tia speaks of “objec­tive sin.” In §303, the pope says irreg­u­lar unions are “objec­tive­ly con­trary” to Catholic moral teach­ing. In §305, he speaks of “an objec­tive sit­u­a­tion of sin.” The pope could hard­ly talk that way at all if he believed that neg­a­tive pro­hi­bi­tions do not exist.

• 19. Mar­riage is by Divine ordi­nance and nat­ur­al law an indis­sol­u­ble union of one man and of one woman.

Great. Pope Fran­cis has taught this too. In Amor­is Laeti­tia 52, he says that mar­riage is “exclu­sive” and “indis­sol­u­ble.” He repeats the word “indis­sol­u­ble” in AL 62. In AL 218 he says that mar­riage is “irrev­o­ca­ble.”

• 20. By nat­ur­al and Divine law no human being may vol­un­tar­i­ly and with­out sin exer­cise his sex­u­al pow­ers out­side of a valid mar­riage. It is, there­fore, con­trary to Holy Scrip­ture and Tra­di­tion to affirm that con­science can tru­ly and right­ly judge that sex­u­al acts between per­sons who have con­tract­ed a civ­il mar­riage with each oth­er, can some­times be moral­ly right or request­ed or even com­mand­ed by God.

Once again, two years ago, I refut­ed the claim that Pope Fran­cis thinks God com­mands cou­ples in irreg­u­lar mar­riages to con­tin­ue hav­ing sex. Dr. Dawn Eden Gold­stein and Dr. Robert Fastig­gi also pro­posed a dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tion of the pas­sage in ques­tion. What God wants, accord­ing to Pope Fran­cis, is not con­tin­ued sin, but a step in the direc­tion of con­ti­nence even if it is imper­fect and a cou­ple con­tin­ues to stum­ble now and then.

• 22. Any­one, hus­band or wife, who has obtained a civ­il divorce from the spouse to whom he or she is valid­ly mar­ried, and has con­tract­ed a civ­il mar­riage with some oth­er per­son dur­ing the life­time of his legit­i­mate spouse, and who lives in a mar­i­tal way with the civ­il part­ner, and who choos­es to remain in this state with full knowl­edge of the nature of the act and with full con­sent of the will to that act, is in a state of mor­tal sin and there­fore can not receive sanc­ti­fy­ing grace and grow in char­i­ty.

This is a ref­er­ence to AL 301: “It … can no longer sim­ply be said that all those in any “irreg­u­lar” sit­u­a­tion are liv­ing in a state of mor­tal sin and are deprived of sanc­ti­fy­ing grace.” The pope does say that. But the con­text of the dis­cus­sion at this point is specif­i­cal­ly fac­tors that mit­i­gate cul­pa­bil­i­ty. The pope is not talk­ing about peo­ple who have “full knowl­edge” or “full con­sent of the will.” Again, I point­ed this all out two years ago. The pope thinks in some cas­es no mor­tal sin is present; he does not think that mor­tal sin is nev­er present.

• 28. In accor­dance with Holy Scrip­ture and the con­stant tra­di­tion of the ordi­nary and uni­ver­sal Mag­is­teri­um, the Church did not err in teach­ing that the civ­il pow­er may law­ful­ly exer­cise cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment on male­fac­tors where this is tru­ly nec­es­sary to pre­serve the exis­tence or just order of soci­eties.

Great. And the pope nev­er has said that the Church erred in its teach­ing. The key part of this is “where it is tru­ly nec­es­sary.” The recent teach­ing of the Mag­is­teri­um, start­ing with St. John Paul II, has been that the cas­es in which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment “is tru­ly nec­es­sary” are “very rare, if not prac­ti­cal­ly nonex­is­tent.” So the whole thing rather begs the ques­tion, does it not?

For Burke and the rebel bish­ops: You need to grow up and be sons.