Confusion at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church

I’ve had a number of links open on my desktop for the last week or so, trying to write a story that’s going to be very significant, and yet, I’m not quite sure how to approach it, because it seems to be a story in flux. It’s occurring at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church (popes and cardinals), and it’s full of he-said-he-said intrigue that seem to be moving far more quickly than the Roman Catholic Church typically moves.

You may find this a bit surprising (!), but “Pope Francis” is causing some trouble. Of course the New York Times has positioned this as “a race against time”, with the suggestion that, if “Pope Francis” lives long enough, he can replace all of the “conservative” cardinals named by his predecessors with “liberal” cardinals. Of course, the man is 79 years old, and he seems destined to lose that race (by their reckoning). Literally. Can he “appoint enough like-minded cardinals to assure that his vision of the church will endure after he dies?” The ostensible news event to prompt this kind of ghoulish speculation is a “consistory of cardinals” that will be held today, in which another 17 cardinals will be named, from all over the world.

But the deeper intrigue meshes with some of the back story, the not-so-easy-to-follow rumblings that are going on in public, but somewhat behind the scenes. The NY Times subhead is, “Pope Francis Has Appointed About a Third of the Cardinals Eligible to Choose the Next Pope”. That may be true enough – after today he will have appointed 44 of the 121 who are eligible to vote (they become ineligible to vote after age 80).

Back in September,

Cardinal Burke: “YOU HAVE WON $25 MILLION DOLLARS”

Oh, wait. It’s NOT QUITE what he said. However, given the “circumspect” nature of how Roman prelates talk, he may as well have said something very much like that. In fact, the actual headline began:

Cardinal Burke: ‘I will resist’ the Pope … .

But notice the headline: it’s conditional. It’s written in the same way that the Publisher’s Clearinghouse writes their headlines: “If you return the winning number to us, we'll tell you that 'YOU HAVE WON $25 MILLION DOLLARS'.”

Of course, it’s true that guys like Kasper are looking for ways to “reformulate positively” this dogma. And so, if they come up with some convoluted explication (as they had done with the “outside the church” rule), then Burke (and the Roman apologists with him) can say, with relief, “THE POPE UPHOLDS ROMAN CATHOLIC DOGMA”. Whoopee.

The article said:

February 9, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Vatican watchers were surprised this weekend when Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the leading voices for orthodoxy in the Church, said he would be willing to “resist” Pope Francis if the pontiff were to attempt to change the practice of the Church in denying Communion to those in “second marriages.”

Speaking to France2 television, Burke, who was recently removed by Francis as head of the Church’s highest marriage court, said, moreover, that there was no analogy between homosexual activity and marriage.

“I cannot accept that Communion can be given to a person in an irregular union because it is adultery,” the American cardinal said. “On the question of people of the same sex, this has nothing to do with marriage. This is an affliction suffered by some people whereby they are attracted against nature sexually to people of the same sex.”

Asked, “If, perchance, the pope will persist in this direction, what will you do?” Cardinal Burke replied, “I shall resist, I can do nothing else. There is no doubt that it is a difficult time; this is clear, this is clear.” The cardinal agreed that the situation is “painful” and “worrisome”…

Someone posited somewhere that now that Burke was in charge of the Order of Malta, and free from “official” duties, that he “would enjoy a freedom that he did not have” in his more official positions.