Dubia cardinals make public plea for audience with Pontiff

June 20, 2017

The four cardinals who last year submitted dubia requesting clarification of Amoris Laetitia have now made public a letter pleading for an audience with Pope Francis.

In a clear sign of frustration with the Pope’s failure to respond to their request for a meeting, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, one of the four cardinals who submitted the original dubia, has released the text of a letter in which he again requests an audience with the Pontiff. Cardinal Caffarra’s letter was hand-delivered on April 25: eight months after the cardinals’ original request for an audience. Neither message has been answered.

The four cardinals—Caffarra, Raymond Burke, Walter Brandmüller, and Joachim Meisner—wrote to Pope Francis in September, pleading for clarification of Amoris Laetitia and pointing to tensions between the papal document and traditional Catholic teachings on marriage. When the Pope did not respond, the cardinals made public their request for clarification and the text of the dubia they had submitted.

In his April 25 letter, Cardinal Caffarra observes that confusion about the papal document has become increasingly evident and widespread, with different bishops and episcopal conferences issuing conflicting guidelines for the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. He expresses keen concern that “some objectively ambiguous passages of the post-synodal Exhortation have publicly been given that are not divergent from, but contrary to, the permanent Magisterium of the Church.”

Writing on behalf of the four cardinals, Cardinal Caffarra emphasizes that their intention is not to question the authority of the Roman Pontiff but to safeguard the doctrine of the faith:

We do not share in the slightest the position of those who consider the See of Peter vacant, nor of those who want to attribute to others the indivisible responsibility of the Petrine munus. We are moved solely by the awareness of the grave responsibility arising from the munus of cardinals: to be advisers of the Successor of Peter in his sovereign ministry. And from the Sacrament of the Episcopate, which “has placed us as bishops to pasture the Church, which He has acquired with his blood” (Acts 20:28).

Noting that many faithful Catholics have called for clarification—and that the confusion reigning over the apostolic exhortation calls into question Church teaching on the sacraments of marriage, confession, and the Eucharist—Cardinal Caffarra says that “conscience impels us” to seek a meeting with the Pope.

The Italian cardinal’s letter to Pope Francis was accompanied by a formal request for an audience, listing as topics for discussion the need for clarification of Amoris Laetitia and the current “confusion and disorientation, especially among pastors of souls, in primis parish priests.”

 

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Further information:

• Dubia Cardinals Seek Papal Audience (National Catholic Register)
• Full Text of Dubia Cardinals’ Letter Asking Pope for an Audience (National Catholic Register)