TradCatKnight: Cardinal Stickler & Roberto de Mattei vs. John Salza & Robert Siscoe

 

Salza & Siscoe getting destroyed left and right

De Mattei: The irrevocable duties of Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church

 

In his intervention at the Lepanto Foundation on December 5, 2016, Cardinal Raymond Burke said: “There is a very heavy burden on a cardinal’s shoulders. We are the Pope’s Senate and his primary counsellors and must, above all, serve the Pope, by telling him the truth. Submitting questions, as we have done to the Pope, is in the Church’s tradition, specifically to  avoid divisions and confusion. We did this with the highest respect for the Petrine Office, without lacking reverence to the person of the Pope. There are many questions, but the five main questions we have posed must, of necessity, have a response for the salvation of souls. We pray every day for a response, faithful to Tradition, in the uninterrupted apostolic line that takes us back to Our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

 

 

With these words Cardinal Burke brought to mind the importance of the mission of cardinals, the highest in the Catholic Church, after that of the Supreme Pontiff. They are in fact the Pope’s foremost counsellors and collaborators in the governing of the Universal Church.  Their institution is very ancient, seeing that already under the pontificate of Sylvester I (314-335) we find the terms diaconi cardinales.  It seems that we owe the definition of the Sacred College as “ Senate of the Church” to St. Peter Damian, acknowledged by the 1917 Code of Canon Law (can. 230).  The Sacred College of Cardinals has a juridical character which attributes to it the triple nature of coadjutor body, substitute body and electoral body of the Supreme Pontiff.

 

We must not commit the error of elevating the role of cardinals from being counsellors to the Pope to that of “co-decision-makers”  Even if he leans on counsel and assistance from his cardinals, the Pope never loses his plenitudo potestatis. The cardinals  participate in his power only in the exercise thereof, within the limits defined by the Pontiff himself. The Cardinals never have deliberative powers regarding the Pope, but only advisory ones. If the pontiff should avail himself of assistance from the College of Cardinals, even if not obliged to do so,  for their part, the cardinals have the moral duty to counsel the Pontiff, submit questions to him and admonish him, independent of the Pope’s reception to their words.  The presentation by the four Cardinals (Brandmueller, Burke, Caffarra and Meisner) of some dubia to the Pope and Cardinal Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asking them to clarify “the grave disorientation and great confusion” relating to the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris laetitia, enters perfectly within the duties of cardinals and cannot be the object of any censure.

 

As the canonist Edward Peters, referendary to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, affirmed,  that the four cardinals “[made] text-book use of their rights under Canon 212 § 3 to pose doctrinal and disciplinary questions that urgently need addressing in our day,” Then, if the Holy Father should omit doing so, the cardinals collectively will address him with a form of fraternal correction, in the spirit of admonition made by St. Paul to  the Apostle Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2,11).

 

The canonist then concludes by saying:  Read more »