ROME, April 24, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an interview today with the prominent German newspaper, Die Welt, Cardinal Raymond Burke criticized Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who suggested German Catholic dioceses are not a “subsidiary of Rome” on the question of Communion for ‘remarried’ couples.
“I have not read Marx' declaration verbatim, but of course formulations like 'subsidiary of Rome' are ridiculous,” said Burke. “We are all oriented toward Peter, that is the unity of the Catholic Church. 'Subsidiaries’ – that is the language of business, that does not belong to the Church. That is where obedience counts.”
When asked about his resistance at the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family in Rome against effectively allowing a secular divorce for the Catholic Church, Burke responded: “Because we are not allowed to. We are bound to the teaching of the Church and her disciples. But, some synod fathers – and prominently among them Cardinal Walter Kasper – wanted to change exactly that.”
The interviewer claimed that Pope Francis himself supported the change, saying Burke “had resisted several times the path of opening toward the remarried and the homosexuals that has been supported by Pope Francis.” He asked Cardinal Burke what he would do if the pope “decides now against the indissolubility of marriage.”
Cardinal Burke replied: “I would have to go to the pope and tell him my conscientious reasons that I wish to follow the truth and in the same time wish to be an obedient servant of the Church. Obedience is such a high virtue.”
“I would have to speak in this case with the Holy Father, how I can stay loyal to the truth and in the same time not call off my obedience. But that is the reason why I speak so clearly because the Holy Father shall know that not all think like Cardinal Kasper.”
Cardinal Burke invited and called his audience to stand firm in the Faith, and to defend “the natural law, upon which the Church leans, because there is also now much confusion.” Burke referred here to the gender debate, and he said: “We are either man or woman, masculine or feminine, and true happiness stems from accepting and developing our sexual nature.” He continued: “The homosexual tendency is a form of suffering that afflicts certain people. […] But I do not believe that homosexuality is genetically caused. It depends much upon the environment. In my parish, I had homosexual couples who were very unhappy about their sexual life.”
Cardinal Burke stressed that one wants to strengthen virtues like loyalty and self sacrifice, “but this may not lead to a support of such sexual acts” as in homosexual relationships. He said: “A marital bond is only possible between people of different sexes. From the point of view of the Church, there can not exist a marriage between homosexuals.”
The cardinal also reminds the secular world at the end of his interview with Die Welt of the important role of the Catholic Church for the whole world: “Because she [the Church] keeps alive the consciousness of the dignity of man, because she respects life, the creation, because she holds sacred marriage and the family, because she knows repentance and forgiveness. A Lutheran recently said to me: 'We on our part have abolished the indissolubility of marriage, but I have always hoped that you Catholics will uphold it.”
