Dean of top Court: Cardinal Burke & companions could lose Red Hats

Dean of top Court: Cardinal Burke & companions could lose Red Hats November 29, 2016

By Pufui Pc Pifpef I via Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Pufui Pc Pifpef I via Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ (July 20, 2016). An Interview with Guillaume d'Alançon.  Ignatius Press via Amazon. Click here to buy.
Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ (July 20, 2016). An Interview with Guillaume d’Alançon. Ignatius Press via Amazon. Click here to buy.

“What they have done is a grave scandal,” Mons. Vito Pinto said of the decision by Cardinals Raymond Burke, Joachim Meisner, Carlo Caffarra, and Walter Brandmüller to make their dubia public this month.

This “‘could lead the Holy Father to remove their cardinalate,” Vito Pinto said.

On Monday the 28th of November, Mons. Pío Vito Pinto gave a presentation at the Ecclesiastical University of San Damaso in Madrid titled “The new process of matrimonial nullity in the context of pastoral attention to failed marriages: The contributions of Pope Francis.”

During the presentation, Mons. Vito Pinto told attendees that while the Pope has not directly responded to the four Cardinals who made their dubia concerning Amoris Laetitia public earlier this month, with Cardinal Burke – one of the four – considering a formal correction of the Pontiff, Francis has nonetheless “told them indirectly that they only see in white or black, when in the Church there are many shades of colors.”

Pio Vito, en el centro junto a Carlos Osoro. Via Religión Confidencial.
Pio Vito, center, next to Carlos Osoro. Via Religión Confidencial.

Speaking to Religión Confidencial, Mons. Vito Pinto asked, “What Church are these Cardinals defending? The Pope is faithful to the doctrine of Christ.” Then he warned, “What they have done is a grave scandal which could lead the Holy Father to remove their cardinalate [capelo cardenalicio] as it has happened in the Church’s past.”

The Dean of the Roman Rota then qualified his remarks by stating, “This isn’t to say the Pope will retire their Cardinalate, but he could do it.”

Mons. Vito Pinto is the head, or Dean, of the Roman Rota, also known as the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota. The Roman Rota is the highest appellate tribunal concerning judicial trials in the Catholic Church and the highest authority for cases of marriage nullity.

In other, perhaps unrelated, news, Pope Francis discussed doubt during last week’s general audience. Crux reports:

“We do not need to be afraid of questions and doubts because they are the beginning of a path of knowledge and going deeper; one who does not ask questions cannot progress either in knowledge or in faith,” the pope said Nov. 23 at his weekly general audience.

The pope, with a voice that was a bit hoarse, focused on the spiritual works of mercy of “counseling the doubtful” and “instructing the ignorant,” which he said was not meant as an insult, but simply as a description of a person who does not know something.

The work of mercy of counseling the doubtful involves attempting to “soothe that pain and suffering that come from the fear and anguish that are the consequences of doubt” about the goodness of life and God’s love.

“I think someone would ask me, ‘Father, I have many doubts about the faith, what should I do? Don’t you ever have doubts?” the pope said. “I have many,” he said, “there are times when everyone has doubts.”

The key, he said, is to see those doubts as a call to deepen one’s faith either through study or through seeking the guidance of another believer.

“To do this, it is necessary to listen to the word of God and understand what it teaches us,” he said. “But, at the same time, an equally important path is that of living the faith as much as possible.”

But when faith is lived and shown in service to others, the pope said, “then many doubts vanish because we feel the presence of God and the truth of the Gospel in the love that, by no merit of ours, lives in us and that we share with others.”


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