In a recent interview with Ed Pentin published at the National
Catholic Register, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke went into greater detail than
before, regarding the mysterious disappearance of the promised “formal
correction” upon which so many had pinned their hopes.
Why has no group of Cardinals challenged the openly heretical, openly abusive, and questionably legitimate Bergoglio? Pentin and a growing number of faithful demand to know. The stance adopted by His Eminence, if reported accurately by the utterly reliable Pentin is to be believed, is positively mind-boggling for an attitude which can only be characterized as elective futility.
Anyone who has read through the transcripts of the Nuremberg Trials is very familiar with the particular excuse which Cardinal Burke has so staggeringly, so stereotypically proffered. War criminal after war criminal advert to it repeatedly throughout the transcripts—how they were only “doing their duty,” how nothing else was to be attempted against a system so omnipotent and perverse. The same mentality crops up in our own culture when someone proclaims, always hollowly, “It’s above my pay grade!” Another form of the stance of assumed powerlessness is the “Catholic” politician who rather conveniently claims to be “personally opposed to abortion, but . . . “
1.
In
Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors:
Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic, 1986), p.
238.
Note: This article is by a Catholic Monitor contributor.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as for the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Why has no group of Cardinals challenged the openly heretical, openly abusive, and questionably legitimate Bergoglio? Pentin and a growing number of faithful demand to know. The stance adopted by His Eminence, if reported accurately by the utterly reliable Pentin is to be believed, is positively mind-boggling for an attitude which can only be characterized as elective futility.
“Is there such a group?” Cardinal Burke is said to have
responded, as though this rhetorical question of his might substitute for
vindication of Christ’s truth against the assaults of Amoris and the Amazonian
Synod. A shrug at the crack of a gun; a
sigh at the sight of a rape. It is being
reported elsewhere that--to his credit, as far as it goes--His Eminence did
attempt to assemble such a group, to no avail.
In which case, why not act alone?
Two reasons, apparently: one, that throughout the history of
the Church, only groups and not individuals like himself have approached
an errant Pope in this way, and secondly, that he himself, Raymond Leo Cardinal
Burke, is not “the savior of the Church.”
Here His Eminence echoes a mentality if not peculiar to
modern man, then certainly showcased by him.
Showcased, in particular, by a man noted in history as “Henry Q.,” who
offered as justification of his conduct and that of his confreres, to
researcher Robert Jay Lifton, that:
we suffered and
acted within the limits of the possible.1
They did what they could, in other words, and what they
could not do they did not attempt. They
had not the position nor the numbers to make any real difference--or so they
judged, regarding as meaningless or (far worse) as misguided any gesture
through which the less prudent might be tempted to catch sight of a glimmer of
the one real fault a person can commit in their sight; namely, heroism
itself. Theirs is a colorless cosmos in
the last analysis, these calculating moderns.
It isn’t as though Henry Q. wasn’t a good man, in his heart. It’s just that the term “good German” has
come to mean something very evil indeed.
The ones who “suffered and acted within the limits of the possible”
were, of course, those who collaborated in the National Socialist program of
the destruction of life devoid of value—in the euthanasia program which led up
to the Holocaust, in other words, and generally speaking in the Holocaust
itself.Anyone who has read through the transcripts of the Nuremberg Trials is very familiar with the particular excuse which Cardinal Burke has so staggeringly, so stereotypically proffered. War criminal after war criminal advert to it repeatedly throughout the transcripts—how they were only “doing their duty,” how nothing else was to be attempted against a system so omnipotent and perverse. The same mentality crops up in our own culture when someone proclaims, always hollowly, “It’s above my pay grade!” Another form of the stance of assumed powerlessness is the “Catholic” politician who rather conveniently claims to be “personally opposed to abortion, but . . . “
Neither Cardinal Burke nor any one of us has any right to be
“personally opposed to Bergoglio, but . . .”
It is profoundly anti-Christian to “suffer and act within the limits of
the possible,” when the Sacred Scriptures assure us that through Our Blessed Mother,
“nothing shall be impossible with God” (Lk. 1:37). Do you think it is humble of Cardinal
Burke, to assert that he himself is “not the savior of the Church”? What if God Almighty both wants and intends
him to be (in an instrumental but providential sense), as was Saint Athanasius
during the Arian Crisis, as were Saints John Fisher and Thomas More in the days
of Henry VIII? It is as though the child
from whom Our Lord once asked for some loaves and fishes (Jn. 6:9) should have
refused Him instead, declaring, “I’ll keep what I have, which is little enough,
thank-you-very-much. Can’t you
count? Who do you think I am, anyway--the
savior of this hungry crowd?”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as for the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Comments
The entire Jewish nation is under siege, collapsed and ready to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar’s General Holofernes and his assembled hordes.
The fighting men and elders: “Doomed. Give them the city. Accept terms of slavery”.
Judith, newly widowed, hears this talk of bargain and surrender, emerges from mourning and scolds the lack of faith and valor in the Jewish men.
“God is not a human being to be bargained with, or put to the test, nor can we ever hope to understand God’s mind.
We do not know what the person beside us is thinking, even if it is someone we love – just as they do not really know what we are thinking. How then can we expect to know what is in the mind of God?” (Judith 8: 12-17)
She goes forth, an army of one woman (God with her) into the General’s tent and chops off his head; the army flees. Israel liberated by an army of one faithful woman.
It is always, always this in God’s economy. It is always the small, the outnumbered, the lost causes that win God’s battles.
God would prefer one faithful Cardinal in this battle, I am quite sure of it. That is all the material God needs to sweep this evil away.
Cardinal Burke’s recent words are stunning. He really is a pantywaist. Sarah? Mueller? Won’t somebody step up?