Cardinal Burke sees ‘perfect continuity’ between Popes Benedict, Francis in liturgical teaching
July 26, 2013
In an interview with the ZENIT news agency, Cardinal Raymond Burke praised liturgical law, linked liturgical abuse to “moral corruption,” and said that he sees “perfect continuity” in liturgical teaching between Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.
“Liturgical law disciplines us so that we have the freedom to worship God, otherwise we’re captured – we’re the victims or slaves either of our own individual ideas, relative ideas of this or that, or of the community or whatever else,” said the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura. “There’s no question in my mind that the abuses in the sacred liturgy, reduction of the sacred liturgy to some kind of human activity, is strictly correlated with a lot of moral corruption and with a levity in catechesis that has been shocking and has left generations of Catholics ill prepared to deal with the challenges of our time.”
Ask whether there are “substantial differences between [Popes Benedict and Francis] on the importance of the sacred liturgy,” Cardinal Burke replied:
I don’t see it at all. The Holy Father clearly hasn’t had the opportunity to teach in a kind of authoritative way about the sacred liturgy, but in the things he has said about the sacred liturgy I see a perfect continuity with Pope Benedict XVI. I see in the Holy Father, too, a great concern for respecting the magisterium of Pope Benedict XVI and his discipline, and that is what Pope Francis is doing.
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