The reasoning, as always with FrancisChurch, is absolutely atrocious. Coming as it does from the Dean of the Roman Rota – the very man Francis sacked Cardinal Burke to replace with – is all the more disheartening. Via LifeSiteNews:
While the dubia of four Cardinals concerning clarification of Amoris Laetitia spreads wider and wider ripples in the Vatican and worldwide, the dean of the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota, the highest appeals court of the Church, says that they might lose their Cardinalate.
“The action of the Holy Spirit cannot be doubted,” he says. “[The Cardinals] question not one synod but two! The ordinary and the extraordinary,” Mons. Vito Pinto explained during a conference in the Ecclesiastical University of San Dámaso in Madrid, Spain. [OK. Whether or not the exhortation following the Synods – Amoris Laetitia – is Magisterial (normally it would be, but how can it be where it plainly intends – via Francis’ own implementation/interpretation – to contradict the Sacred Deposit of Faith!), the Synods WERE NOT. Tiny subsets of bishops do not equate to an ecumenical council, whether they meet one time or forty times. Not even 5% of the world’s bishops were invited to attend, and the deck was stacked with as many friendly to revolution as possible, particularly in the second synod. This is specious, circular reasoning at its lowest]
The four Cardinals, Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner, asked Pope Francis for clarification on September 19, and then went public with their concerns earlier this month when Francis failed to answer.
“Which Church do these Cardinals defend?” Pinto reproaches. “The Pope is faithful to the doctrine of Christ.” [The boundless effrontery of it all is simply amazing. So now that they have a progressive pope, the Left in the Church decrees that the Faith = whatever the pope says it is today. They weren’t quite so ultramontanist when Benedict was in the Chair of Peter!]
“What they have done is a very serious scandal that could lead the Holy Father to remove them from the Cardinalate, as it has sometimes happened in Church history,” Pinto expounds. [I think if Francis did that, he would both be making a very big mistake, and also telling us a very great deal about his conception of mercy. These men, after all, only asked questions, questions which permitted no wiggle room, no diabolical “shades of grey,” which Francis, apparently, has either preferred – or is unable – to answer. Who is introducing the novel doctrines here? It is not the four cardinals, and their numerous allies. It is Jesuit Francis.]
The Cardinalate – unlike the deaconate, priestly, or bishop’s ordination – does not entail an ontological change in the individual, but is an office conferred by the Pope. Therefore the Church speaks of “creating” Cardinals who join the College of Cardinals. They serve principally as helpers – in Latin, “hinges” (cardines) – to the Pope in ruling the Church. Therefore, they could theoretically be removed from their positions and return to being “simple” bishops or archbishops.
Mons. Vito Pinto affirms that the Pope has not directly answered their dubia but “indirectly he has told them that they only see in white or black, when in the Church there are shades of colors.” Pinto referred to multiple instances in which Pope Francis stated that life is not black and white but grey.
In the same conference, Mons. Pinto recalls, referring to Catholic “remarried” divorcees, how the center of Francis’ message is that the Church needs to accept the injured and fallen: “A nun told me that there are people divorced or living together who are communicating. And what should the Church do, say ‘yes, you may’ and ‘no, you may not’? Pope Francis wants a Church that is very close to the people.” [Which, if you note, does not address the supposed nun’s supposed concern at all. It’s meaningless blather. In reality, the message is being conveyed, but in the typical passive-aggressive, cowardly leftist way. They won’t straight up publicly proclaim heresy, but they hint at it, give it a wink and a nod, and basically encourage people to go that way, while in private communiques, the clear message is sent: give Communion to adulterers. I guess Christ, then, was not up to Francis’ exceedingly high standards of closeness to the people, when he said that manifest sinners who refuse the intervention of the Church should be anathematized?]
For Mons. Pinto the only solution – and the key to Francis’ pontificate – is acceptance, what he calls “mercy.” “In our time the Bride of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy and not wield the weapons of severity. The Catholic Church wishes to show herself to be a kind mother to all, patient and full of mercy to the children separated from her.”
Even while they fall into hell? So did Our Blessed Lord tell the Truth, or not? Is remarrying after a civil divorce adultery? Is adultery not a grievous sin? Did not St. Paul inform us that those who receive unworthily eat and drink condemnation on themselves? And what did St. Peter tell us about false prophets and blind guides who try to soothe the itching ears of the world by telling them happy lies, lies that smell of sulfur and brimstone? St. Paul told us that anyone who tries to bring a Gospel other than the one Christ preached must be anathematized. Does Vio Pinto represent Christ, or Francis?
I am willing to bet Cardinal Burke will be willing to lose much more than a red hat than to fold on this matter of permitting this radical change – this insidious attack – on the Church’s moral Doctrine.