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Cardinal Burke speaks in Virginia on March 24.Claire Chretien / LifeSiteNews

SPRINGFIELD, Virginia, March 27, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Raymond Burke said Friday the four dubia cardinals will “simply have to correct the situation” in “a respectful way” if Pope Francis doesn't respond to questions seeking moral clarity on Amoris Laetitia.

Burke answered questions submitted by the audience after speaking at St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church as part of its distinguished speaker series. 

He was asked, “There are a lot of rumors circulating about the dubia that you and three other esteemed cardinals sent to the Holy Father about divorce, remarriage, and Communion…do you know if there will be a response to the dubia from the Holy Father or the CDF?”

“I certainly hope that there will be because these are fundamental questions that are obviously raised by the text of the…post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia,” Burke responded. “Until these questions are answered, there continues to spread a very harmful confusion in the Church.”

Part of this confusion “regards the truth that there are some acts that are always and everywhere wrong,” he said. “The cardinals will continue to insist that there be a response to these honest questions.”

Burke said that characterizations of the proposition of the dubia as “disrespectful” or “arrogant” are inaccurate. 

“I’d like to make clear something,” he said. “This is a traditional way in the Church of seeking clarification in times of confusion of providing the Roman pontiff with the occasion and the opportunity” to respond. “We proposed them very sincerely, and when there was no response…and we were told by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [that] there would be no response, we judged it necessary” to make them public. “So many faithful were approaching us saying – having these questions, and saying, well…We have these questions, and it seems like none of the cardinals who have a great responsibility to assist the Holy Father has these questions, and so we published them.”

“That also was done with great respect,” said Burke. 

If there is no response, “then we simply will have to correct the situation, again, in a respectful way, that simply can say, to draw the response to the questions from the constant teaching of the Church and to make that known for the good of souls,” he said.

“Many people are becoming very upset and understandably so – I become upset myself at times,” the cardinal said of the current confusion in the Church. He encouraged the faithful to remember Christ's promise that “the forces of evil will not prevail over the Church.”

If faced with clergy who are preaching positions that seem contrary to Catholic morality, laity “have a wonderful instrument which sets forth the constant teaching of the Church: the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”

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