Take Synod ‘hot-button’ issues off table urges Cardinal Burke

The cardinal patron of the Knights of Malta, Cardinal Raymond Burke, is urging Pope Francis to take the “hot-button” issues off the table at the 2015 Synod on the family.

The former Cardinal Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura made the comments while addressing more than 300 delegates at a family and marriage conference organised by Catholic Voice, Limerick, Ireland.

Cardinal Burke told the gathering the issues of Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, cohabitation and same-sex marriage had distracted from the 2014 October Synod.

Warning that Satan was sowing confusion and error about matrimony, Cardinal Burke said, “Even within the church there are those who would obscure the truth of the indissolubility of marriage in the name of mercy.”

Cardinal Burke said that he could not reconcile the Church’s clear teaching on marriage with the proposal to allow Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics.

He went on to argue that a clear affirmation of marriage is needed in a culture afflicted by pornography, a contraceptive mentality, and an “incredibly aggressive homosexual agenda.”

The Cardinal is recommending that rather than focussing on hot-button issues, next year’s synod devote itself to promoting the church’s teaching on marriage.

He recommends the faithful write to Pope Francis and local Church officials to make their views known.

Once the Vatican’s top canon lawyer, Cardinal Burke is critical of Pope Francis, telling Buzzfeed News that the 2014 Synod on the Family “seemed to have been designed to ‘weaken the church’s teaching and practice’ with the apparent blessing of Pope Francis.”

Confirming he had been removed as head of the Vatican’s highest court he told Buzzfeed News he had enjoyed being of service, he’d enjoyed his work and was disappointed to leave.

Asked who had told him he would be removed, Burke replied: “Who do you think?”

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