Bad day for American rightwing evangelical converts to Catholicism, good day for the Church. https://t.co/bSXPjcPjA0
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 28, 2023
I left The Chuch fifty years ago (the day after my parochial school graduation, held as part of a mandatory Mass). But it still tickles me when ‘radical traditionalists’ discover that Papa Francis actually takes the whole ‘teachings of Jesus’ part seriously. What good is a theology where they’re required to treat weirdos and perverts as members of *their* community?!?…
Per the NYTimes, of course, Burke is a modern martyr — a faithful apparatchik who spent many years steadfastly climbing the bureaucratic ladder, running a quasi-feudal barony, and finally accepting a comfy retirement where he could snipe at the kids these days ex cathedra. Heartbreaking: “Reports Say Pope Francis Is Evicting U.S. Cardinal From His Vatican Home” [unpaywalled gift link]:
Almost as soon as Pope Francis became the head of the Roman Catholic church in 2013, Raymond Burke, an American cardinal, emerged as his leading critic from within the church, becoming a de facto antipope for frustrated traditionalists who believed Francis was diluting doctrine.
Francis frequently demoted and stripped the American cleric of influence, but this month, the pope apparently finally had enough, according to one high-ranking Vatican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Francis told a meeting of high-ranking Vatican officials that he intended to throw the cardinal out of his Vatican-subsidized apartment and deprive him of his salary as a retired cardinal.
The news of the possible eviction was first reported by the conservative Italian newspaper La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, which is close to Cardinal Burke and recently sponsored a conference featuring the prelate criticizing a major meeting of bishops convened by Francis. The newspaper’s report comes only weeks after Francis removed another vocal conservative critic, Joseph Strickland, the bishop of Tyler, Texas, after a Vatican investigation into the governance of his diocese…
Some conservatives have attributed Francis’ disciplinary activity to the new head of the church’s office on church doctrine, the Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández. But supporters of Francis assert that he had exercised prodigious patience with criticism over the last decade, in the interest of opening up healthy debates, but that it wore thin as the critiques became ideologically tinged and, they say, seemed intent on dividing a church headed in a direction traditionalists did not support.
