UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Spiritual Politics
Mark Silk | Nov 8, 2014
Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, sometime archbishop of St. Louis, once bestrode the Vatican like a bedecked colossus. Trailing his cappa magna behind him, he presided over the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Holy See’s highest court, and, as a member of the Congregation for Bishops, had a major hand in deciding who would rise to the top of the American church and who would not.
But that was then, under Pope Benedict XVI. Under Pope Francis, Burke was first kicked off the bishops congregation and has now been removed from the Signatura. His new position is Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, with the task of promoting the Maltese knights’ spiritual interests.
The appointment has a certain appropriateness, if you have a taste for Jesuitical irony. Although originally established to care for sick pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Knights Hospitallers (as they were called) soon became a major crusader militia, and through the centuries served the Church as one of its fiercer fighting forces.
In recent years, Roman Catholicism has had no fiercer culture warrior than Raymond Burke. He led the way in arguing that Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights should be denied Communion, going so far as to allow himself to be videotaped criticizing fellow bishops who failed to do so as “weakening the faith of everyone.” Recently, he’s called the Church under Pope Francis “a ship without a rudder” and attacked the pope’s Extraordinary Synod on the Family for sowing confusion.
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