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| Cardinal Burke, by Terry Nelson |
Like many gay Catholics, I have mixed feelings about Card Burke. He dresses the part from time to time and occasionally walks the walk. But even so, one feels reluctant to put one's trust in princes, including Princes of the Church. In the past certainly he's proved less sound than some may have liked, and his bust-up with Steve Bannon a few years ago might suggest that he's also liable to go wobbly as soon as real-life "politics" rears its ugly head. Back in the day, Terry Nelson gave a brief personal opinion of Burke (and his supporters) on his blog here.
Personally I find Burke's smirking and simpering nauseating - not to mention the banality of the issues on which he deigns to speak out. (It does seem that such issues are mostly to do with the Sixth Commandment. It would seem that Burke's trying to form a grand alliance between latter-day traditionalists and the prudes and family values neocons of John Paul II's time, without any real inkling of quite how rickety such a coalition will be. And no, the "transgender nun" story does not surprise.) So good luck with that counter-reformation! (I can't see oafs like Steve Bannon taking much interest in it!)
I would be interested to know though why one cardinal out of 247 touches such a raw nerve. And is Fatima "dubious"? Has it discredited the papacy and the magisterium? I'm not sure that it is, or has. In fact the only person who's really damaged the papacy in recent years has been the most recently deceased successor of St Peter, who from time to time would either treat the institution as so much pointless tedious mummery (because the papal tiara and palace were silly anachronisms, pontifical protocol was a waste of time, the Swiss Guard were beneath his contempt, as were the altar-boys in St Peter's, etc.) or use it as a platform for irrelevant woke nonsense (Third-World immigration, climate change, etc.) that had absolutely nothing to do with the spiritual challenges facing Catholics in the world of today. As for the magisterium, rather more damaging that anything Card Burke (or Dr Taylor Marshall) could have said or done was a Vicar of Christ stonewalling (and I use the term advisedly) on some of the Church's most basic teachings. (His answers to Burke's dubia never saw the light of day.)
Card Burke was also far from the only one peddling conspiracy theories about the "St Gallen Mafia" - the sources for which "theories" tended to have been the more outlandish claims of people like Austen Ivereigh and Catherine Pepinster. (Personally I consider them not so much theories as the idle boasts of a hubristic liberal clique, but there you are.) Yes, if the Church really has been "infiltrated" then it's been infiltrated by the likes of Card Dolan and Burke himself, not to mention you and me and millions of other bad Catholics going back to Judas Iscariot. But it's hard to blame the likes of Dr Marshall for seizing on such memes.
Finally, I trust Nelson realises that the "post-conciliar Church" and (presumably) the pre-conciliar one are one and the same. It's perfectly legitimate to think the Catholic Church took a wrong turn in the 1960s. (Ditto civil society, for that matter!) And obviously it's perfectly legitimate to suggest that whereas every Mass has the same intrinsic value some Masses will have more extrinsic value than others. So it's hardly illegitimate to hope that at some point good and holy men will arise who will lead the Catholic Church out of her current doldrums and into happier, saner times ahead.
Personally I find Burke's smirking and simpering nauseating - not to mention the banality of the issues on which he deigns to speak out. (It does seem that such issues are mostly to do with the Sixth Commandment. It would seem that Burke's trying to form a grand alliance between latter-day traditionalists and the prudes and family values neocons of John Paul II's time, without any real inkling of quite how rickety such a coalition will be. And no, the "transgender nun" story does not surprise.) So good luck with that counter-reformation! (I can't see oafs like Steve Bannon taking much interest in it!)
I would be interested to know though why one cardinal out of 247 touches such a raw nerve. And is Fatima "dubious"? Has it discredited the papacy and the magisterium? I'm not sure that it is, or has. In fact the only person who's really damaged the papacy in recent years has been the most recently deceased successor of St Peter, who from time to time would either treat the institution as so much pointless tedious mummery (because the papal tiara and palace were silly anachronisms, pontifical protocol was a waste of time, the Swiss Guard were beneath his contempt, as were the altar-boys in St Peter's, etc.) or use it as a platform for irrelevant woke nonsense (Third-World immigration, climate change, etc.) that had absolutely nothing to do with the spiritual challenges facing Catholics in the world of today. As for the magisterium, rather more damaging that anything Card Burke (or Dr Taylor Marshall) could have said or done was a Vicar of Christ stonewalling (and I use the term advisedly) on some of the Church's most basic teachings. (His answers to Burke's dubia never saw the light of day.)
Card Burke was also far from the only one peddling conspiracy theories about the "St Gallen Mafia" - the sources for which "theories" tended to have been the more outlandish claims of people like Austen Ivereigh and Catherine Pepinster. (Personally I consider them not so much theories as the idle boasts of a hubristic liberal clique, but there you are.) Yes, if the Church really has been "infiltrated" then it's been infiltrated by the likes of Card Dolan and Burke himself, not to mention you and me and millions of other bad Catholics going back to Judas Iscariot. But it's hard to blame the likes of Dr Marshall for seizing on such memes.
Finally, I trust Nelson realises that the "post-conciliar Church" and (presumably) the pre-conciliar one are one and the same. It's perfectly legitimate to think the Catholic Church took a wrong turn in the 1960s. (Ditto civil society, for that matter!) And obviously it's perfectly legitimate to suggest that whereas every Mass has the same intrinsic value some Masses will have more extrinsic value than others. So it's hardly illegitimate to hope that at some point good and holy men will arise who will lead the Catholic Church out of her current doldrums and into happier, saner times ahead.
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