Nella ricorrenza della Madonna del Rosario e delle Vittorie, nell'anniversario della gloriosa Battaglia di Lepanto, pubblico ben volentieri questa bella intervista di S. Em.za il card. R. L. Burke.
Paolo Veronese, La Battaglia di
Lepanto con i SS. Pietro, Rocco, Giustina e Marco che implorano la Vergine perchè conceda la
vittoria alla flotta cristiana, 1581-82, Palazzo Ducale, Sala del Collegio,
Venezia
Giacomo Serpotta, Apoteosi della Battaglia di Lepanto, 1686-1718, Oratorio del Rosario di Santa Cita, Palermo
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(Vatican Radio) “Remaining in the
truth of Christ” is at the heart of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family, said
Cardinal Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic
Signatura. With the Synod beginning this week, Cardinal Burke sat down with
Vatican Radio to talk about his perspectives on the Synod, on issues ranging
from outreach to those marginalized in difficult marriage situations, as well
as the necessity to proclaim the beautiful truth of marriage instituted by God
the Father at creation, taught by Christ, and upheld by the Church.
Cardinal Burke was also one of
several contributors to a book, entitled Remaining in the Truth of
Christ, intended to help the Synod and the Pope as they work to renew the
Church’s commitment to the pastoral care of families.
Q: Your Eminence, you recently
authored a chapter in a book about the indissolubility of marriage, entitled Remaining
in the Truth of Christ. What motivated the book and what is its
underlying premise?
At the extraordinary consistory
of Cardinals, which was held on Feb 20 and 21 of this year, Cardinal Walter
Kasper gave a lengthy discourse on marriage and the family in which he invited
a dialogue about what he had stated in his discourse. A group of us decided to
ponder more deeply a number of questions which he raised in his presentation
and to respond to them in a systematic way. And thank God, with the help of the
general editor, Father Robert Dodaro of the Augustinianum, we were able to put
this together as a service to the Synod and above all to the Holy Father in his
desire to present once again the beauty of the Church’s teaching on marriage
and the family.
Q: Going into the Extraordinary
Synod on the Family, what would you identify as three of the biggest challenges
to the Catholic family today?
One of the biggest challenges is
the defective catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church—I can speak from my
experience in the United States—for the past 40 to 50 years. Children and young
people are not well catechized with regard to marriage. Coupled with that is
the recent entrance of a so-called “gender theory” that alienates human
sexuality from its essentially conjugal meaning. This is now being brought into
schools along with the advancement of the homosexual agenda. This is a big
challenge for families. It is only in the family that the true sense of who we
are as man and woman is taught effectively both by the example of the father
and mother, but also in catechesis to amplify that and assist the parents in
the fuller teaching of the faith. So this is one major difficulty.
Obviously too, we are dealing
with a culture, at least in the West, which is totally secularized and
therefore denatured. When God is no longer taken into account, and His plan for
creation is no longer considered… Instead, we have the pretense to decide for
ourselves the meaning of our own lives and the meaning and destiny of our
world, the family suffers first and foremost. The family today has to be
especially alert to the subtle influences of the secularized culture, what St.
John Paul II once called the Godless culture, especially its insinuation into
the lives of the members of the family and the family itself, through the mass
media and above all through the Internet and the horrible reality of
pornography on the Internet, which is causing so much damage to families. The
second big challenge to families is secular society itself and the challenge to
Christian families today to be countercultural.
A third challenge is the whole
question of marriage itself and the effective presentation of the Church’s
teaching about marriage, which in fact is also known by reason. Marriage is
part of our human nature and therefore it is taught by natural law. Faith
illumines reason and helps to see the truth in all its richness. So, we need to
help especially young people when they are at the age where one is preparing
for marriage to see marriage itself as a beautiful call, a way to eternal
salvation—not only to their happiness now on earth—and to assist them in every
way we can. I think if we have a good catechesis for children and for young
people it will be easier to reach them with the message of the Church, the
message of reason and faith with regard to marriage as they come into their
young adult years.
Q: How can we renew our pastoral
care for people who are divorced and those who are divorced and remarried?
What we must do for those who are
in irregular unions is to show the care to each and every one of them the same
care we are called to share with every member of the Church, especially those
who are in the most need. There is no question that those who are living in
irregular unions have a very particular need of the Church’s care. I think the
important thing for us is to show them how, even in their particular situation,
they can convert themselves more and more to Christ and conform themselves more
to Him. It is not easy; it is one of the more particularly challenging
situations in which a Christian can find him or herself, but nevertheless there
is grace to respond in a way that is true to the teaching of Christ and
therefore liberating.
It would be a big mistake to
approach the situation simply from the point of view of trying to figure out
how to admit persons in irregular unions to the sacraments. This is a
contradiction in itself and would truly miss the point of the authentic
pastoral care that these couples need. The Church has a long history of trying
to help couples who, for one reason or another, are not able to leave an
irregular union to live chastely and to live justly as they can in that
situation.
Q: The Synod has attracted a
great deal of media attention. How do you think the media reporting has
impacted the Synod and people’s perception of it?
Certainly one good thing is that
people are very much aware that there will be a Synod on the family! That
message has gotten out. The sad part is that the message has been colored by
the media with expectations which are unrealistic and actually not true to the
nature of the Synod and, even in a more serious way, not true to the doctrine
of the faith.
I have experienced myself in
talking with the faithful and with bishops and priests that there has been
built up this expectation that the Church is now going to change Her teaching
with regard to the indissolubility of marriage and permit now second and third
marriages and that for those in irregular unions there will be access to the
sacraments. These kinds of expectations are unreal. They are not true to the
work of the Synod in the first place and, in a more profound sense, not true to
what Christ himself has taught us, the truth that human nature itself teaches
us. Therefore, that part is very sad. It has been going on now for several
months, which is not a good situation. The Church’s teaching needs to be made
clear now and her fidelity to Christ needs to be very clear in the Synod. Just
like the title of the book to which I contributed, Remaining in the
Truth of Christ, which is taken from St. John Paul II’s post-Synodal
Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio. That is what the Synod
is all about: remaining in the truth of Christ.
Q: What would you like to see
come out of the Extraordinary Synod?
I’m hoping that it will take up
again the great papal Magisterium, which is a gift to us, beginning with Casti
connubi of Pope Pius XI, the teaching of Pope Pius XII, then in more
recent times, the prophetic and heroic teaching of Humanae vitae of
Pope Paul VI, soon to be beatified at the end of this Synod, as well as the
teaching of Familiaris consortio of St John Paul II.
Fundamentally, what I hope will emerge from the Synod is this beautiful truth
about the human person, who has written into his nature the call to union and
communion between man and one woman, which is faithful, which is indissoluble,
and which by its very nature is procreative; it participates in the creation of
new human life in the image and likeness of God, what the Pastoral Constitution
on the Church in the Modern World referred to as the “crown” of marital
love, the gift of offspring.
Whatever the Synod’s particular
emphases are—marriage preparation, teaching on natural family planning, all the
particular questions—(I hope what) would emerge over all is the splendor of the
truth about marriage as God created us from the beginning.
Report and Interview by Andrew
Summerson
Fonte: Vatican Radio, Oct. 6th,2014
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