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Cardinal Raymond BurkeLisa Bourne / LifeSiteNews

February 10, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Emma-Kate Symons published a hysterical piece in The Washington Post detailing how she thinks Pope Francis should “cleanse the far-right rot from the Catholic Church” starting with the orthodox Cardinal Raymond Burke.

Apparently believing and upholding the Catholic faith makes Cardinal Burke a “renegade cleric” who presides “over a far-right, neo-fascist-normalizing cheer squad out of the Holy See.”

And apparently The Washington Post is a credible source to address the various nuances of Catholicism, Catholic teaching, and Catholic Church politics. 

Symons suggested Cardinal Burke is a white nationalist. She ripped him for calling for moral clarity on Amoris Laetitia with three other cardinals – and thousands of other priests. She said Pope Francis should condemn populism and nationalism in his next encyclical. 

“Francis, who has full authority over his cardinals, could fully remove Burke from his remaining sinecure with Knights of Malta, call him in for a pastoral correction on the issue of his unacceptable political interventions, investigate Dignitatis Humanae with a view to shutting it down for its subversive politicking, and send the rebel cardinal back home to the United States,” she wrote. “As Burke tries to run an insurgency and rebukes the pope for his doctrinal 'ambiguities,' with the backing of thousands of priests, Francis could seize the agenda. In time-honored papal tradition, he could write an encyclical on the burning questions of populism and nationalism, with specific reference to migrants, Muslims and Jews, so priests including Burke know they are in breach of church teaching when they try to act as power brokers for the international extreme right.”

She acknowledged “options open to the pope in dealing with Burke are limited” and “excommunication isn’t in the cards; Burke is not a heretic denying the Catholic faith.”

Symons is mad at him for not supporting liberal immigration policies and “challenging” the pope about whether Amoris Laetitia is in line with the faith he's supposed to be the head of.

So let's get this straight. Symons thinks the dying vocations, modern mushiness, and liturgical wasteland of the Church's often-dissenting faction that focuses almost exclusively on temporal, not spiritual, issues isn't the real problem? Give me a break. Anyone who has stepped into a rank-and- file Catholic parish can see the wreckage it has brought to the Church and the world for the last 50+ years.

Jesus Christ established his church on Earth so that people might come to the Father – and heaven – through Him.

Cardinal Burke and cardinals who preach the truth day in and day out, often facing scorn from the Catholic and secular “left,” are the modern-day saints our world so desperately needs. They are the ones helping people get to heaven, not feminist ideologues or faithless prelates who think the Catholic Church should be a liberal immigration and welfare agency that ignores millenia-old truths in favor of modernism and prudential rather than moral issues.