“The pontiff also mentioned that today marks the 75th anniversary of the so-called ‘Night of Broken Glass’. “The violence of the night between 9 and 10 November 1938 against Jews, synagogues, homes, and shops marked a sad step towards the tragedy of the Holocaust,” he said. “Let us renew our support and solidarity towards the Jewish people, our elder brothers. Let us pray to God that the memory of the past, of past sins, help us be ever vigilant against all forms of hatred and intolerance.” via Asianews.it
Kin of my heart, I come to You, the Altar.
At Your feet
I lay myself down.
Redeemer Brother, cover me
With your mantle.
Claim me as Your own.
Protect me through the night,
Wake me at dawn with a sweet caress.
Let my name be as a kiss upon Your lips.
Closer than breath,
Stronger than death,
Our hearts, now and forever, One.
© 2014 Joann Nelander
Exile or no, there was another thought to be far from influence, His name was Roncalli, and his anonymity and sentence to Bulgaria didn’t last. Time will tell what Heaven has in store for Cardinal Burke:
Pope removes Cardinal Burke from Vatican post
Posted on November 8, 2014 by Francis X. Rocca
Cardinal Burke leaves concluding session of extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family at Vatican
Cardinal Burke leaves concluding session of extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family at Vatican. (CNS/Paul Haring)
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has removed U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, 66, as head of the Vatican’s highest court and named him to a largely ceremonial post with a chivalric religious order.
Cardinal Burke, formerly prefect of the Apostolic Signature, will now serve as cardinal patron of the Knights and Dames of Malta, the Vatican announced Nov. 8.
The move had been widely expected since an Italian journalist reported it in September, and Cardinal Burke himself confirmed it to reporters last month.
It is highly unusual for a pope to remove an official of the cardinal’s stature and age without assigning him comparable responsibilities elsewhere. By church law, cardinals in the Vatican must offer to resign at 75, but often continue in office for several more years. As usual when announcing personnel changes other than retirements for reasons of age, the Vatican did not give a reason for Cardinal Burke’s reassignment.
A prominent devotee of the traditional liturgy and outspoken defender of traditional doctrine on controversial moral issues, the cardinal has appeared increasingly out of step with the current pontificate.
In December 2013, Pope Francis did not reappoint him to his position on the Congregation for Bishops, which advises the pope on episcopal appointments.
Cardinal Burke expressed frustration, in a February 2014 article in the Vatican newspaper, that many Americans thought Pope Francis intended to change Catholic teaching on certain “critical moral issues of our time,” including abortion and same-sex marriage, because of the pope’s stated belief that “it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.”
Insisting that the pope had “clearly affirmed the church’s moral teaching, in accord with her unbroken tradition,” Cardinal Burke blamed perceptions to the contrary on “false praise” of Pope Francis by “persons whose hearts are hardened against the truth.”
After Pope Francis invited German Cardinal Walter Kasper to address a meeting of the world’s cardinals in February, Cardinal Burke emerged as a leading opponent of Cardinal Kasper’s proposal to make it easier for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
Cardinal Burke also warned that any efforts to streamline the marriage annulment process — the mandate of a commission the pope established in August — should not undermine the process’ rigor.
During the Oct. 5-19 Synod of Bishops on the family, Cardinal Burke was one of the strongest critics of a midterm report that used remarkably conciliatory language toward people with ways of life contrary to Catholic teaching, including those in same-sex unions and other non-marital relationships. The day the report was released, the cardinal told an American reporter that a statement from Pope Francis reaffirming traditional doctrine on those matters was “long overdue.”
Cardinal Burke made the news again late last month when he told a Spanish journalist that many Catholics “feel a bit of seasickness, because it seems to them that the ship of the church has lost its compass. The cause of this disorientation must be put aside. We have the constant tradition of the church, the teachings, the liturgy, morals. The catechism does not change.”
A former archbishop of St. Louis, Cardinal Burke has led the Apostolic Signature since June 2008. At the time of his dismissal he was the highest-ranking U.S. bishop at the Vatican. That distinction now belongs to Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, adjunct secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The new head of the Apostolic Signature is French Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, till now the secretary for relations with states, the Vatican’s equivalent of a foreign minister.
via Pope removes Cardinal Burke from Vatican post | CNS Blog.
I’m starting in the middle and steering you here: via “Mrs. Bishop” and the Theology of “but of course!”.
“Let’s leave aside all of the giddy “yes I was ordained and then made a bishop by the super-coolest of the cool bishops” anti-establishment boring-ese bits — and also the question as to whether she is being used as a handy stooge by bishops too cowardly to proclaim themselves (because sneaking about is so very Holy) and be forced from their powerful positions. Here’s what jumped out at me:
“I had felt called by God to priesthood since I was a small child,” she says simply, “and I wanted to be a priest before I died.”
That’s four I’s in two sentences, and not a “Jesus” in sight, in the whole long piece, except as necessary to provide the vaguest of explanations for our teaching on ordination.
Once again, as with the lady from Long Island, there is a great deal of pride and self-reference in all of this. Beyond that, the idea that “I felt called and wanted this before I died, because I am a prophet” makes her theology terribly suspect.
She calls herself “a prophet” but prophets generally don’t want any part of whatever it is they’re being called to. If they eventually find joy in their obedience, their first response is usually, “oh, hell no.”
Theologically, she is missing the whole idea — the Christ-promulgated idea — that you can’t always get what you want, but (if you try sometimes, though obedience is hard) you get what you need.
I am thinking of Moses, reluctantly leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and through the desert, only to be denied the Promised Land.
I am thinking of Saint Gemma Galgani, who certainly felt “called” to become a Passionist nun yet never made it into the convent. Rather, when it became clear that what she was being offered a calling of unquenchable thirst, she discovered her consolation in the self-abnegation into which she had been invited; the calling-within-a-calling, so to speak: desire without consummation, except as Christ consumes. “Not my will, but Thine.”
Her calling, in other words, was not to the cloister, as she fervently believed and desired, but to the very Cross, with Christ, and with suffering, too. Because reluctant prophets and those who answer the call to “pick up your Cross and follow me” always do suffer with him, in the end.”
Cardinal Raymond Burke has said he is at the service of Pope Francis, has no personal animosity towards him, and those who claim the American cardinal is an opponent of the Pontiff are trying to discredit him.
The head of the Vatican’s highest court also told Breitbart Tuesday the Catholic Church risks schism if bishops are seen to “go contrary” to the Church’s established and unchangeable dogmas in the months ahead.
The Vatican prelate was speaking in Vienna Tuesday, at the launch of the German translation of Remaining in the Truth of Christ, a book to which he contributed. The work is a response to Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal to allow some remarried divorcees to have access to holy Communion. The Catholic Church has always barred such a possibility, based on Christ’s teaching that remarrying after divorce constitutes adultery.
“Certain media simply want to keep portraying me as living my life as an opponent to Pope Francis,” he said. “I am not at all. I’ve been serving him in the Apostolic Signatura and in other ways I continue to serve him.”
The Wisconsin-born prelate was responding to comments he made in an interview he gave the Spanish weekly Vida Nueva last week. The article misconstrued him as criticizing the Pope–despite his stressing in the interview that he was not at odds with Francis.
He told the Spanish publication there is a “strong sense” the Church is like a “ship without a helm, whatever the reason for this may be.” But he made it clear in the interview he was not “speaking out” against the Pontiff. He said the Pope is right to call on Catholics to “go out to the peripheries” but added “we cannot go to the peripheries empty-handed.”
“I wasn’t saying that the Holy Father’s idea is this,” he explained, “but I’ve seen other people using his words to justify a kind of ‘accommodation’ of the faith to the culture which can never be so.”
Burke told Breitbart his wish is “to present the Church’s teaching around which there’s been a great deal of confusion.” He pointed to last month’s synod on the family in Rome as partly to blame, and said those who identify with a “so-called reformist agenda” of Pope Francis are now trying “to discredit what I say by attributing it to some personal animosity toward the Holy Father, and that’s not right.”
Asked about the singer Elton John’s recent praise of Pope Francis as a hero of gay rights, Burke said the Church needs to be “diligent” in explaining “very carefully” her teaching, making proper distinctions between the sinner and the sin. He also reasserted the Pope’s concern for people with same-sex attraction, one which “understands that even though they have this attraction, it is an attraction to disordered acts” and that they need to seek God’s “healing and grace” to deal with their “very profound suffering.”
Burke has been one of the most outspoken opponents of Kasper’s proposal, saying it is not Catholic, threatens the indissolubility of marriage, and is therefore unacceptable. “The Church must do everything she can when, once again, the integrity of marriage is under attack,” he told the Viennese audience.
via Exclusive – Cardinal Burke: Church Risks Serious Tensions in Months Ahead.
via Exclusive – Cardinal Burke: Church Risks Serious Tensions in Months Ahead.
May I live with Mary in my heart this day.
May her thoughts,
And precious memories of You, dear Jesus,
Resound in my mind and fill my soul,
That even Angels in flight,
And the Triumphant in Heaven,
Stop to listen and love with me.
Amen
“If you have loved and been loved in return, you have some idea of what the promise of eternal life is. You can think a little of the love of God. If you feel that you have been unloved or have not really loved, then you have a great hunger inside of you for the mysterious love of God. In either case, you know something about the imperative need, the restlessness, the hunger that we all have to find love, unfailing love, in the brief reality we call our lives.”
Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel
Fr. Benedict J. Groeschel died recently after a long life of love and service. I’ve asked him to be my spiritual director now that he has eternity to answer my questions. I’ll start small with his book.
A priest writes: “Why I refuse to bless children at communion” — UPDATED.
Here’s Father Cory Sticha on the topic:
I’ve been thinking more and more about my concerns around giving special blessings to children at Mass. There are a number of people here who are continuing to express concern because of my stance on not blessing children in the communion line. To be clear, this is a position taken not out of spite, but out of a respect for the liturgy and for the documents of the Second Vatican Council. In paragraph 22, Sacrosanctum Concilium states, “Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.” A priest does not have the authority to add a blessing to the liturgy for anyone, because a priest does not have the authority to add anything to the liturgy. It doesn’t matter if other priests go beyond their authority and do it in disobedience. In my mind, it is inappropriate, and I will not. Period.”Read More:
Joann Nelander Studio 
