UNITED KINGDOM
LifeSite News
At almost the same moment that Cardinal Raymond Burke said in an interview that those defending Catholic moral teaching – and the practice of barring people in irregular sexual unions from receiving Communion – are being marginalized within the Church, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have issued a document for clergy that all but accuses such Catholics of the ancient Donatist heresy.
In a “Reflection Document for Clergy,” the English bishops appear to follow the line of Cardinal Walter Kasper and his followers, saying, “It is not for us to make rash or premature conclusions” about people living in sexual sin.
“We meet people at many different stages of family life which are often not clearly defined in this way nor do they occur in the ‘traditional’ order in which we used to think,” they said.
The bishops go so far as to issue a thinly veiled accusation of heresy against those, like Cardinal Burke, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, Cardinal George Pell and others, who have refused to follow the Kasper line. The document quotes St. Augustine of Hippo, the 4th century Doctor of the Church, who the bishops say “offers us a way of looking at the Church from his age which is still relevant today.”
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