A majority of today’s Bishops will be called to account for their silence in the midst of crisis
Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider have issued a statement asserting why they believe they have a duty in conscience to speak out against an “almost general doctrinal confusion” in the Church today, and why such criticism is made out of “great love for souls” and for Pope Francis.
In the three-page Sept. 24 statement entitled A clarification about the meaning of fidelity to the Supreme Pontiff (see full text below), the patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta and the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, say their consciences do “not allow us to be silent” in the face of ambiguities and doctrinal errors of this pontificate.
They refer in particular to the indissolubility of marriage and admittance to Holy Communion of those “cohabiting in irregular unions,” the “increasing approval of homosexual acts,” and what they say are doctrinal errors in both the recent Human Fraternity document signed by the Pope, and the instrumentum laboris, or working document, of the upcoming Amazon Synod.
Out of “respect and love,” they say they are calling on the Holy Father to “unequivocally reject” such errors, and “not consent to the practical abolition of priestly celibacy” in the Latin Church (the Amazon synod will discuss allowing the ordination of married men in order to bring the Eucharist to remote areas of that region).
They note that in “recent times” a prevailing “almost total infallibilization” of papal statements has emerged, leading to “no more possibility of an honest intellectual and theological debate,” and a “disregard for reason and, therefore, for the truth.”
Read more at National Catholic Register