Cardinals Burke, Brandmüller challenge bishops to speak out, defend faith

February 20, 2019

Cardinals Raymond Burke and Walter Brandmüller have issued a public challenge to bishops to speak out about the current crisis in the Church.

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In an open message directed primarily to the presidents of the world’s episcopal conferences, who are meeting at the Vatican this week for a special conference on sexual abuse, the two cardinals exhorted them “to raise your voice to safeguard and proclaim the integrity of the doctrine of the Church.”

Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller insist that Church leaders must address not only the protection of young people from abuse, but a “much greater crisis” in the Church. They point to homosexual influence that “has been spread within the Church, promoted by organized networks and protected by a climate of complicity and a conspiracy of silence.”

“In the face of this situation, cardinals and bishops are silent,” the two cardinals lament. Addressing the bishops gathered in Rome, they ask: “Will you also be silent…?”

Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller also point out that Pope Francis has been silent in response to the serious questions that were raised in the dubia submitted to the Pontiff after the publication of Amoris Laetitia. The dubia, they observe, were intended to resolve questions “which were dividing the Church.” The failure to address those questions, they say, is now “part of a more general crisis of the faith” that responsible bishops must address.

Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller are two of the four cardinals who signed the dubia when they were made public in November 2016. The other two prelates who signed the dubia, Cardinals Carlo Caffara and Joachim Meissner, have died without receiving any reply.

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