Perhaps Cardinal Burke has been silenced by francis - recall the 2 met but no details were given of the reason for the meeting.
Recall that the office of the Pope is the highest See. No one can remove a Pope.......he can only remove himself by preaching heresy.
I believe Cardinal Sarah's interview is highlighting this quite dramatically and emphatically. Below are the excerpts of the interview and one notices the word 'heresy' pop up and the condemnation of the way the Francis papacy is heading.
Cardinal Robert Sarah has given his first in-depth and public interview on Fiducia Supplicans, the controversial new document on same-sex blessings from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) released in December.
The former Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship, the Vatican’s Liturgical Office now headed by former Bishop of Leeds Cardinal Arthur Roche, has spoken to the veteran Italian Vaticanista Sandro Magister at the Settimo Cielo blog, giving his reflections on the DDF’s declaration and its significant fallout in the Church and around the world.
There can be no doubt his comments constitute a firm rejection of the Vatican’s declaration, but they also reflect the dismay of many Catholics regarding the tenure, self-contradictory content and poor timing of this document.
Directly quoting Pope Francis on the nature of division and confusion introduced by the devil, the cardinal laments how at Christmas, a time when Jesus brings us peace and, as the Word of God, truth, we have error and confusion issuing from the Vatican:
“It is precisely confusion, the lack of clarity and truth and division that have disturbed and darkened this year’s Christmas celebration.”
The cardinal’s reflection, which reads like a Papal Letter, excoriates bishops who endorse Fiducia supplicans, with Sarah saying:
“They do the work of the divider….sowing doubt and scandal in the souls of the faithful by claiming to bless homosexual unions as if they were legitimate, in conformity with the nature created by God, as if they could lead to holiness and human happiness. They only generate errors, scandals, doubts and disappointments. These bishops ignore or forget the severe warning of Jesus against those who scandalize the little ones: ‘Whoever scandalizes even one of these little ones who believe in me, it is better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and to be thrown into the depths of the sea’ (Mt 18.6).”
Cardinal Sarah seems to turn Pope Francis’s own words against him. He affirms the Pope’s words regarding dialogue with the devil, but at the same time the cardinal qualifies the rejection of the declaration by asserting: “We do not enter into discussion with the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, nor with its various uses that we have seen multiply. We simply respond with the Word of God and with the magisterium and traditional teaching of the Church.”
The former Prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship goes on to clearly state Church teaching on same-sex attraction, highlighting the clear contradiction between what the Catholic Church has always taught and the new direction taken by the newly appointed head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández. Cardinal Sarah quotes Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pope Saint John Paul II’s monumental Encyclical Veritatis Splendor as well as other sources from the CDF (as the DDF was known from 1965 – 2022).
He then thanks those who have rejected Fiducia Supplicans, stating he shares their “firm opposition” and positively encourages other national or regional bishops’ conferences, along with every bishop, to do the same. Cardinal Sarah explains that the rejection he advocates is not a rejection of Pope Francis, but a firm and radical opposition to “a heresy that seriously undermines the Church, the Body of Christ, because it is contrary to the Catholic faith and Tradition”.
He cites Benedict XVI’s opening homily of the second special assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops, 4 October 2009: “Africa represents an immense spiritual ‘lung’ for a humanity that appears to be in a crisis of faith and hope...
He goes on to say: “‘Beware of men’ (Mt 10:17), says the Lord Jesus, because all this confusion, aroused by the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, could reappear under other more subtle and more hidden formulations in the second session of the Synod on synodality, in 2024 , or in the arguments of those who help the Holy Father write the post-synodal apostolic exhortation. Didn’t Satan tempt the Lord Jesus three times? We will have to be vigilant about the manipulations and projects that some are already preparing for this next session of the Synod.”
Cardinal Sarah’s position appears to indicate the growing concern among senior clergy regarding the opacity and therefore the validity of the whole synodality process, which, it has been suggested, is merely cover for a progressive agenda already worked out by Pope Francis and his team. This is perhaps best evidenced by reports that Cardinal Fernández had already written Fiducia supplicans before the synod.
Cardinal Sarah next directly addresses one of the most concerning dimensions of the Francis...Pontificate, the consistent introduction of confusing sophistry and a refusal to clarify, stating:
“...Any other path would inevitably be truncated, ambiguous and misleading. At this moment we hear many speeches so subtle and twisted that they end up falling under this curse pronounced by Jesus: ‘Whatever is more comes from the Evil On’. New meanings of words are invented, Scripture is contradicted and falsified while claiming to be faithful to it. We end up no longer serving the truth.”
Cardinal Sarah says it is pointless to quibble about the meaning of blessing, directly attacking the false distinction set up by Fiducia Supplicans between so-called “liturgical blessings” and “spontaneous blessings”. He states: “It is obvious that we can pray for the sinner”, as the prayer of the Church is not denied to anyone. “But it can never be diverted into a legitimation of sin, of the structure of sin, or even of the proximate occasion of sin,” he says.
Finally, Cardinal Sarah alludes to the fact that the direction of travel indicated by Fiducia Supplicans is a direction which fears rejection from the secular world and our adherence to the truth should not be concerned with seeking the approval of those who reject Christ and His teachings.
His reflection constitutes a firm rejection of the direction of the Pontificate of Francis while avoiding an open attack on the office of the Pope. It demonstrates that Cardinal Sarah has paid great attention to what Pope Francis has taught over the last decade and is concerned with an attempt to mitigate the Gospel message to make it seem more acceptable to the world.
sourceIn the end, all that such a compromise can do is render the Gospel message impotent, which, perhaps, is just what the devil and the secular world are seeking to achieve.