Pope Francis, Two Churches, Potential for Schism, and Bridges Too Far

I have done several postings over the past two years on the Franciscans of the Immaculate, one of the new communities that has sprung up in the Church in the post-conciliar years.  When living in Rome, I would often see the friars and sometimes the sisters of this community in their bluish grey habits, especially near the little church of the Annunziatina at the foot of the Borgo Santo Spirito just as you cross the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II on the way to Saint Peter’s.  The Friars of the Immaculate were established by Father Stefano Manelli and Father Gabriele Pelletteri, Conventual Franciscans, and in 1998 were separated from the Conventuals into their own independent congregation.  In July 2013, just four months after his election, Pope Francis stepped in and replaced Father Manelli, the superior general, with an Apostolic Commissioner, Father Fidenzio Volpi.  Father Volpi is not a member of the Franciscans of the Immaculate—the whole idea of an Apostolic Commissioner is to appoint an outsider to the group to correct the problems that are beyond the ability of an internal administrator.

This is not the first time that the Holy See has removed a religious superior of general rank.  When the Jesuit General, Father Pedro Arrupe—whom John Paul II deeply distrusted for the direction in which Father Arrupe was leading the Jesuits—suffered a debilitating stroke in 1981, the Pope appointed Father Paolo Dezza to head the Order in place of the Vicar General, the American Father Vincent O’Keefe, who would have followed Father Arrupe’s line of action.  Father Dezza governed the Society for two years until a General Congregation was called and elected Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach to succeed Father Arrupe as General.   A key difference, of course, is that Father Dezza, while appointed over the Society by the Pope, was himself a member of the Society of Jesus.  Father Volpi, while not a Franciscan of the Immaculate, is, as a Capuchin, a member of the Franciscan family and from a branch of that family that has a long and established Franciscan heritage. 

When Father Manelli realized he was about to be removed from office he apparently moved some portion of the community’s financial assets—both property and liquid assets—from the community’s control to the control of members of his own family to prevent Father Volpi having access to them.  Father Volpi reported this in a confidential memo to the members of the community as was both his right and his obligation.  Someone leaked the memo, however, and the Manelli family sued Father Volpi for defamation of character.  The moving of community assets to outside sources is, after all, embezzlement and so the memo could be read to accuse Father Manelli and his family of embezzlement. 

In Italian law, before a lawsuit can go to court, there must be recourse to an arbiter who will try to settle the matter without a formal judicial process.  Father Volpi explained to the arbiter that he had merely reported the transfer of assets, made no accusations against the family (though anyone can see that  1 +1 does = 2), and agreed to clarify the matter on the Congregation’s website by publishing a joint statement with the Manelli family explaining the facts.  All well and good.

No, not all was well and good.  The Manelli family, through a family friend who remained anonymous, published a press release that Father Volpi “had admitted his slander and lies” against them in court, was found guilty, and had been sentenced to pay a fine of €20,000.  Father Volpi has since come out and denied the rumor that he admitted guilt and was convicted and fined, and has, in turn, sued the Manelli family for defamation. 

OK, OK, so we have a tempest in a Roman teapot.  Why should this be seen as revealing a fault line for possible schism?  The barque of Peter is navigating far more tempestuous seas than the struggle for control of the assets of a small community of friars and nuns.  We have phase II of the Synod on the family and the Francis faction is fighting for some drastic changes in the discipline of who can who cannot receive the Eucharist.  Indeed there is a conflict brewing over the indissolubility of marriage and the integrity—or lack thereof—of same-sex unions.  Meanwhile, there is a shift in the sort of men Rome is naming as bishops and not all are confident in the “orthodoxy” of the Francis men.  The Dogs of War have been called off the American Nuns who are busy again riding around on buses agitating for the forgotten and overlooked in our society.  Francis himself says that it time for us to get over our “obsession” with the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage and that we need to look at a broader spectrum of todays’ issues: like climate change and immigration.  Who cares about the Franciscans of the Immaculate.  They are supposed to be poor anyway.   Why do they need any assets?

The plight of Father Manelli and his Congregation have galvanized the right-wing not because of the particulars of this case, but because of what Father Manelli stands for.  What brought on the removal of Father Manelli and the appointment of an Apostolic Commissioner is that even before Francis was elected, Friars from the Congregation had appealed to Pope Benedict against Father Manelli’s leadership. Father Manelli had imposed the usus antiquior (the “old Mass”) on the Congregation as its normal liturgy and while the Friars of the Immaculate tend to the conservative, this was too much for some of them who wished to continue using the Novus Ordo (the Vatican II Rite). But it was not only the liturgy.  Father Manelli was turning the clock back to a pre-conciliar era across the board.  The initial formation of the friars and their theological education were also being reorganized to bypass the Second Vatican Council.  The Congregation’s customs and constitutions too were being pushed in a direction more and more divergent from the rest of the Church.  This proved too much for many of the Friars who feared that they were drifting into the Lefebvre schism.   They saw Father Manelli’s program  was not a matter of being conservative or traditionalist, it was becoming a repudiation of the Council in everything but word.  The visitation of the community ordered initially by Pope Benedict led to his successor appointing an outside commissioner to put the congregation back on track with the Church.  So what you have here in Father Manelli and his faction is a clear symbol of “Here I stand (in opposition to Vatican II); I can do no other. God help me.”  And in Father Volpi you have a surrogate for Pope Francis—by whose authority Father Volpi has taken on Father Manelli and his faction—and everything Francis stands for in his Vatican II march to the sea.  The Vatican II Church and the Resist Vatican II Church which has grown within the belly of the Vatican II Church have, in the saga of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, a clear field of battle. 

One of the groups which have led the charge of the Resist Vatican II Church is the Lepanto Institute and its founder, Michael Hichborn, formerly of Judy Brown’s American Life League.   Michael Lofton, a convert to Catholicism affiliated with the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter (The Anglican Usage Ordinariate in the United States), has written a scathing attack on the Francis pontificate published on the Lepanto Institute Webpage.  Lofton considers the Church under Francis to be in its “Babylonian Captivity” and he begins his attack with Father Volpi’s governance of the Franciscans of the Immaculate and then moved on to attack Archbishop Bruno Forte’s work as Special Secretary of the Synod on the Family, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldiserri as Secretary General of the Synod and Father Thomas Rosica as press-liaison for the Synod.  Lofton accused Father Rosica and  his betters of having advanced the “Kasperian” agenda that would permit a change in the Church’s discipline regarding admitting divorced and remarried persons to the Sacraments.  Lofton’s outspoken attack on Francis’ leadership puts the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in an awkward position for though he has no official standing in the Ordinariate such opinions make this group of ex-Anglicans appear less than fully committed to their new Catholic family,

Lofton is only one of several writers for the Lepanto Institute that is pulling at the leash that holds the Resist Vatican II Church to the keys of Peter.  Recently Italian Catholic writer and historian Roberto de Mattei, an outspoken critic of Pope Francis, published an article on the website of his Lepanto foundation asserting that developments since the election of Francis, including his famous “Who am I to judge?” remarks about gays, risk “a road that leads to schism and heresy.”  De Mattei should know better.  Pope’s don’t lead to schism.  A Pope can go into heresy, but he can’t go into schism.  The schism is with those who reject his authority. De Mattei’s anti-Francis rhetoric has grown so strong that even very conservative Catholic sources such as Radio Maria have begun to distance themselves.  But not the bloggers—the Katholic Krazies on the blogosphere like Rorate Caeli love de Mattei and quote him frequently ever widening the divide that is growing in the Church in the controversies over Vatican II.  The Krazies have picked up the Volpi incident and had a field day with it.  Some—and here is credit to Rorate Caeli—have published Volpi’s defense and let the readers decide but many others have only published the Manelli family’s version.  All in all it leaves a very sour taste and certainly undermines the credibility of those who are trying to advance the Resist Vatican II Church agenda.  

The Obamazation of Pope Francis V

Saw this on facebook 

A week before Christmas, Pope Francis announced his reorganization of several Vatican dicasteries and did not re-appoint Cardinal Raymond Burke to either the Congregation for Bishops or the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.  This leaves His Eminence with membership on only one Vatican Congregation, that of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.  He remains, of course, head of the Apostolic Signatura which is a post which is mostly honorary and has little real power.  While on the Congregation for Bishops, however, Burke had immense influence over the appointment of new bishops and thus the leadership of the Church in the United States.  The replacement of Cardinal Burke by Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington DC caused an outcry by wing-nuts of the Catholic right because Cardinals Burke and Wuerl have taken very different stances on the issue of administering Holy Communion to public figures whose political stances do not reinforce the Church’s teaching on abortion, contraception, and same-sex relationships.  While Cardinal Wuerl supports the Church’s traditional teaching he has been very outspoken in maintaining that the Eucharist should not be “used as a weapon” politically.  Cardinal Burke, on the other hand, has advocated a policy of withholding Holy Communion to politicians who do not support Church doctrine.  The wrath of the right came down on Pope Francis in the weeks after dropping Burke from the post where he could advance the cause of prelates who think as he does.  Here are some of the comments that appeared on various Catholic websites and blogs.

What in God's Holy Name are Catholics supposed to think about this pope????? 

This could be the worst news we have heard since the election of Pope Francis. Cardinal Burke is the one giant in the American group of Cardinals, head and shoulders above the others in truly living the Word. His recent interview with Raymond Arroyo could not help but leave one in awe with regard to his grasp of Christ's teaching and the Church's mission today. I shall be on my knees in prayer shortly to ask the Holy Spirit's protection and graces for him. .

Well, as a faithful Catholic who has fought the culture of death and modernity WITHIN the Church I can tell you that this papacy has demoralized and confused me for months. I am glad that you are blessed by it, I truly am. But seeing more and more questionable appointments and confusing documents has worn me down. That is just where I am right now

Francis cannot change Church teaching but he can make them look meaningless.

Well, I'm not up on Catholic politics but it seems that a courageous conservative just got squashed and ignored. And here I was saying that the Church should clean house of the Marxists and whatnot. What happens? The just the opposite! This is not a good sign. The Church needs a fighter against the culture of Death. I heard Rush Limbaugh describe the Pope Francis as a Marxist. I'm scared to research it -- there might be something to it.

Why are we so dead-certain that Francis is pro-life?

When the pope is being embraced by a secular humanist mainstream media, that pope may want to reconsider what he's doing and what he's saying.

the “smoke of satan" has invaded the Church........especially in the Vatican

He's  (Thomas Peters)  authored a piece that conveys a few things to me.

1. Urban legends about what inspires faithful Catholics to speak the truth - even when our Holy Father is the recipient of the message - live on.

2. There is still a death grip on clericalism.

The Holy Father informed us of his trajectory through his apostolic exhortation, followed by the actions of replacing Cardinal Burke with Cardinal Wuerl to advise him on what priests in the United States have the spiritual substance and attributes to be a bishop.

Now, numerous faithful Catholics who in charity had been giving Pope Francis' imprudent statements the benefit of the doubt, have publicly calibrated what Cdl. Wuerl's appointment will mean on the ground relative to the catechesis of tools for salvation.

Because it doesn't paint a pretty picture, evangelists who take their role seriously need and want to be most cautious about how to proceed in the public square.

Some of the comments and reactions to my post earlier this week on Pope Francis’s decision not to renew Cardinal Burke’s membership on the Congregation for Bishops revealed a disturbing trend to me, namely, the extent to which many Catholics have adopted an apprehensive attitude about the current pontiff.

First of all, I think we're beyond the apprehension stage. We were apprehensive during the eight months of commentary undermining and insulting the 2000 years of the Deposit of Faith and those who love and evangelize It.

Though Pope Francis has issued numerous clarifications, he then went ahead and contradicted said clarifications with an apostolic exhortation which ratified the trajectory of his original statements.

Pope Francis selected a spineless bishop who operates a chancery that persecutes faithful priests and teaches Church laws can or should be ignored and disobeyed at our own will.

Whether he intended to or he didn't, Pope Francis has repeatedly conveyed that the laws and teachings of the Church are small-minded rules of sourpusses and under his watch the the road to salvation will be the abandonment of teaching right judgment and distinctions between sin and virtue for the new church of social service and being giddy.

 Each one of us who have suffered the ill effects of this counterfeit church knows what this means for the abilities of priests to teach the substance in the Catechism, and teach obedience to the Catechism and Church law in our schools, parishes and in our own homes. And, we know what it means for the salvation of the masses of uncatechized.

 We are acutely aware that many of Christ's elect who have suffered through this undisciplined and counterfeit church have lost touch with that immutable oath.

We have painfully watched the Pope undermine our teachings and sacred traditions which offer the highest unblemished gifts, surrender and respect to Christ and have prayerfully and thoughtfully navigated these waters so as not to scandalize those suffering from despair.

 The more I read about Pope Francis, the more I am convinced that the soul of this papacy is up for grabs.

I am also firmly convicted that it is a duty of our Baptism to inform our loving and beloved Holy Father that we will not subject ourselves or our children to the false church within for a nanosecond longer. Most of us have fled and already found refuge and he is making those refuges fodder for the apostates who have control of power within our Chanceries because of weak bishops like Cardinal Wuerl.

Then again, in a document of this length one would also expect to find a good deal of what has made this Pope so beloved by the worldwide mass media: radical-sounding bombshells about how wrong the Church is and how much Francis must do to make it right, in all humility. That too is there—in spades...

Francis’s “dream Church” involves nothing less than a deconstruction of the papacy in favor of a synodal model governed—God help us!—by the national bishops’ conferences:

These are interesting comments because they show that for the right wing, as for the left, the Pope is no longer the ultimate arbiter of the Catholic Faith.  No Catholic would have dared uttered this level of criticism—or dissent—in the days of Pius XII.  But the world has changed and no authority is above questioning.  That is a positive thing.  Just because the Pope is infallible doesn’t mean that he can’t be wrong.  What is dangerous about it is that it shows for the right wing, as for the left, the individual holds the “right” to determine what is authentic to our Catholic faith.  The true faith is what I believe and this attitude undermines the very nature of the Church, or at least the Catholic Church, where orthodoxy is determined by the harmonious alignment of magisterial teaching, theological scholarship, and the consensus fidelium.  Pope Francis eats in the cafeteria at the Casa Santa Marta—a good protection for his safety.  Hard to tamper with the food when you don’t know what pork chop he will pick.  But it seems that these days all Catholics dine in the cafeteria and the day of a menu fixe is on the ash heap of maniples and mantellones.  To bad, I always wanted to be a prelate di mantellone.  

The Obamazation of Pope Francis IV

Francis’ next shot came when he wrote Eugenio Scalfari the editor of La Republica, an Italian newspaper:
  “You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.
Francis substantially said, that yes, the Mercy of God extends even to those who do not believe in him.  Now un-nuanced, this is theologically problematic as faith has been seen as the sine qua non requirement for salvation every since Paul wrote the letter to the Romans.  Or Galatians.  I can never remember which Epistle comes first. Yet over the course of history this principle has been interpreted in a variety of ways from insisting that one had to be a member of the Catholic Church (Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, stating that one must be “subject to the Roman Pontiff” in order to be saved) to some vague acknowledgement of a Supreme Being—a sort of Benjamin Franklin Freemasonry Deism.  Francis seems to take it one step further, however, and say even this minimalistic faith is more than is required. 
I will be the first to admit that Francis is not one to nuance his words—something his predecessors have long been very careful to do (though Benedict XVI, while theologically precise, had a gift for putting his Prada-clad foot in his mouth in geo-politics and John Paul II could soften the harshest language by his Reaganesque acting-school charm.)   But I don’t think it is any accident that Francis is given to a plain-speak that is shattering the glass box in which Catholic thought has long been put on embalmed display.   Francis’ remarks open up dialogue: something of which most Popes—saving John XXIII and Paul VI—of the last century have been terrified.   There is a payoff to this.  In talking with priest friends over the holidays, I am hearing of the numbers of people who came to confess before Christmas and gave credit to Pope Francis for “bringing” them back to the Church.  Perhaps the most touching was the story that one Boston priest told me of a seventy-eight year old Irish woman who had been away from the Church for three years because pastor told her she was in mortal sin for having attended the marriage of her son to  his partner of thirty years.  “He is my son—they are both my sons.  How could I turn my back on them?” she wondered.  “But Pope Francis has let me know that I still have a home in the Church.  I don’t have to choose between my home and boys.”  Of course, for the Pope’s critics he is endangering the salvation of souls by such loose talk, but this is more due to the Jansenism that pervades so many corners of the American Church and which stands ever vigilant against the Mercy of God.  A heart contrite and humbled apparently is not sufficient for these rigorists, but then only those whose hearts are contrite and have been humbled can understand what hope the encounter with Grace brings.  Perhaps this is part of the problem.  We may have a mystic in the chair of Peter. It has been awhile now, at least since Paul VI,  that we have had a Pope who sees the world through those compassionate eyes that view from the Cross.  Philosophers and theologians make their contributions but are generally not the stuff of which mystics are made.    
Francis’ openness to those who understand Truth differently from himself evoked a huge outcry from those who see themselves as the guardians of the patrimony of the faith.  Carol, the woman who blogs The Tenth Crusade (formerly known as Throw the Bums Out In 2013, (thus their url: http://throwthebumsoutin2010.blogspot.com/) wrote”
Pope Francis' letter and outreach to a poor misguided atheist as instructions to obey the diabolical influence of sin upon your intellect.   What a hoot.
This website was founded as an anti-Obama website,(as testified to by a button that reads Gone: 1-20-2013 and which ironically the owner has been unable to remove)  but has morphed into one of the more virulent critics of Pope Francis.  Her sentiments were echoed in The Eponymous Flower (http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/) which complained that the Pope is too loose in what he says.
The statement may not be so wrong, and really left uncontested, fits. But what does not fit, is the unspoken, but the logical conclusion: There is no need to turn to Christ, it is sufficient that one follows his private conscience. And now you can even invoke a pope. Yes, the Pope says it himself.
The question of the usefulness of this word game of the Pope remains. The danger of a misunderstanding from the outset was on hand. Why, then, was this risk taken, which occurred promptly, as it was used, to the euphoria of La Repubblica, and in whose wake numerous other media? So who has availed themselves of etymological "correctitude"? Whose salvation should this benefit? How much additional confusion has been lent to it without necessity?
Just as criticism was deflected from Francis’ “who am I to judge” statement by the co-incidence of his reining in the Franciscans of the Immaculate and the firestorm that resulted from that, his comments on atheists and salvation was almost immediately overshadowed by his interview with the Jesuit La Civilta Cattolica and reprinted in America.  I have been dealing with the fallout from that interview in my blog postings marked “Why do They Hate Pope Francis,” but it is still noteworthy to remark on the angry response to Francis’ saying:
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.
The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.
This unleashed a firestorm from the Catholic Right.  Judie Brown of the American Life League and Michael Voris of Church Militant TV (formerly Real Catholic TV) were among the first to respond in angry, even rebellious, bewilderment.  Their toxic tocsin was soon take up by the internet locals.  Janet, at Restore DC Catholicism (http://restore-dc-catholicism.blogspot.com/)wrote
While I realize that there might have been some loss of meaning in the translation process, there couldn't have been that much. That said, the proceeds of this interview are most troubling. Many of His Holiness' replies seem to fly in the face of Sacred Tradition and Scripture. Of course Our Lord Himself guarantees that the Pope cannot teach error, presuming that he is speaking solemnly "ex cathedra". By no stretch of the imagination is this "ex cathedra". But there's no way to put a positive spin, a "happy face" if you will, on this.
Janet followed up a few days later with
the "off-the-cuff" interviews he has been giving lately cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called "teaching moments", let alone solemn declarations in which he speaks infallibly. It is quite legitimate for faithful Catholics to question spontaneous remarks and certainly acceptable to discuss the means of delivery of said messages.
Many of us have been questioning the wisdom of the pope's conduct of these interviews for they have often led individuals to believe that he is altering the Church's age-old teachings on faith and morals - particularly the latter in regards to the life issues.
and
Isn't it rather ironic that in his attempt to address the interviewer "where he's at" that the Holy Father loses sight of all the other millions of people and their situations? Does the phrase "can't see the forest for the sake of one tree" have relevance here?
The Batman to Janet’s Robin, Mary Ann Kreitzer at Les Femmes (lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/) wrote
Several days ago I commented that Pope Francis reminds me of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. It expressed my befuddlement over what the pope says. It was common for Cardinal Joseph to articulalate (sic) a teaching of the Church in one breath and imply that personal conscience could overrule the teaching in the next .
To which reader Al Hennenbery replied
 Confusion is a tool of the devil. Pray that the warnings of mystics aren't being fulfulled. The Book of Revelation is fearful enough without any false pope.
Les femmes continued it attack on Pope Francis in a later posting:
What is the pope thinking? Can this mish-mash really lead people to and through the narrow gate? (If you haven't read the interview see it here.) Do we want a church where "Each of us has a vision of good and of evil." where "We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good." What if what they "think is good" is really evil?
Jesus warned us there would come a time when people would call good evil and evil good. We're there and now the pope seems to have created a situation where liberals can quite comfortably bash those "obsessed" prolifers with their skewed vision of life and marriage. But we don't want to "proselytize" them because "Proselytism is solemn nonsense." Oy vey!
Fr Tom responded by writing:
I pray that Benedict may help him (Pope Francis) to realize how far his outreach has gone beyond the sanctifying paramenters (sic) of true orthodoxy.
So Pope Francis is beyond the parameters of orthodoxy.  He is impulsive.  He confuses evil for good and good for evil.  He’s troubling.  He lacks wisdom. He flies in the face of scripture and tradition.  And he is a false pope.  Funny—these same people would never have tolerated someone criticizing Pope John Paul or Pope Benedict in these same tones.  But this is the problem with these once loyal adherents to the papal teaching: they agree with the Church when the Church agrees with them.   In the final analysis they are no different than those “Cafeteria Catholics” they criticized so vociferously these past thirty years.  I am not saying that they are wrong.  I am not saying that they shouldn’t criticize Pope Francis.  I only hope they remove that beam from their eye before they fault me for questioning some of the statements of Francis’ recent predecessors.  The days of unilateral pronouncements are over.  Les Femmes and Eponymous Flower and Rorate Caeli and Michael Voris and Father Tom and Bishop Tobin have just discovered that while some of us have known it for quite some time now.  “Things change, Kundun.”   And speaking of change, while I have more to do on Pope Francis and the Franciscan kerfuffles, let’s go back to ol’ Henry VIII and the Church of England.    Jolly Hal was closing the monasteries when we left him and we need to get back to that for a few entries if we are ever going to finish that series. 

Why They Are Afraid of Pope Francis 16

Cardinal Burke: old school not in tune with Pope

Francis and his Church of the Poor

Well, we haven’t finished the Dissolution of the Monasteries and I am a bit frustrated.  I thought I could do it in two posts and have done three and we still have at least two to go.     But I need to go back to Pope Francis for a while.   I do notice that the hits to the website jump whenever we talk about him, but more to the point he has done a few things lately that are worth comment.  And at least one of them has a lot of the neo-trads running scared again.  He replaced Cardinal Burke on the Congregation of Bishops with Cardinal Wuerl and this is a pretty clear sign that Burke’s sun is setting.  We should not be surprised.  Burke is the old-fashioned prelate who likes the princely style that Francis has been renouncing.  His Eminence is particularly attached to the pre-Conciliar rites and a very close padrone of the Institute of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest a peculiar institute of self-appointed quasi-prelates who work to revive the monarchial style of Catholicism prevalent before the Second Vatican Council.  Cardinal Burke was Archbishop of Saint Louis until his heavy handed abuse of power led Pope Benedict to remove him to various desk jobs in Rome.   Now he has lost what is probably the most influential of those desk jobs, his position on the committee that nominates bishops.  He remains as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura which is the Church’s highest court but is not equivalent to our Supreme Court in as that it cannot rule on the constitutionality of Church Law nor can it hear cases unless those cases are appealed from two lower courts that are each considered supreme within their own areas of competence—the Sacred Roman Rota which is the normal court in which cases ranging from appeals against one’s bishop to marriage annulments and the Apostolic Penitentiary which is the court that deals with internal forum issues and excommunications.  Each of these courts are supreme in their jurisdictions and only if there has been a procedural error do cases get referred to Burke’s bench at the Signatura.  In other words, unlike our supreme court, the review is based not on an interpretation of the law, but only if there has been a procedural error that needs to be rectified.  Moreover, there are 26 judges who sit on the Signatura and cases are not heard by an individual judge but dealt with administratively by panels of judges assigned to hear a case.  Thus Burke’s power is highly checked as he does not have the same position of decision making that prefects of the various congregations would have.  His appointment to the Signatura was a clever way of disposing of a man to whom experience proved power cannot be entrusted. 
Power he may lack, but until this recent fall influence has been Cardinal Burke’s in abundance.  His position on the Congregation for Bishops put him in a position to advance or check the careers of up and coming bishops.  He was a key player in the advancement of Archbishop Lori, for example, from being Bishop of Bridgeport to Archbishop of Baltimore—a see that often carries a red hat with it.  Lori and Burke—along with the infamous but influential Cardinal Bernard Law, formerly of Boston—were responsible for the allegations against the American nuns affiliated to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.  Cardinal Burke still sits on a number of other Vatican Congregations and Commissions as do each of the Cardinals, notably those who live in Rome, but none have the influence that the Congregation for Bishops has.  His removal from that Congregation and replacement by Donald Wuerl is a clear sign of the sort of Bishop Pope Francis wants appointed for the American Church.  The notable conflict between Burke and Wuerl was over Burke’s policy of refusing Holy Communion to Catholic politicians who support legislation in conflict with Catholic moral theology whereas Wuerl has set the policy in his diocese that the Eucharist is not a weapon to be used against people—whether politicians or individuals whose lives do not conform strictly to Catholic moral theology. 
Many of the extremists among Catholic conservatives were delighted with Cardinal Burke’s outspoken defense of traditional Catholic values whereas the vast majority of more moderate Catholics agreed with Cardinal Wuerl that the issues need to be addressed at a place other than in the Mass itself.  Cardinal Burke has always interpreted canon 915 that Holy Communion is not to be distributed to those who are excommunicate, to those who are under interdict, or to those who persist in grave public sin to apply to politicians who support or do not oppose “pro-choice” legislation or who support or do not oppose same-sex marriage.   Cardinal Wuerl reminds his priests that such politicians have neither been excommunicated nor placed under interdict and disputes whether their legislative actions consist of “grave public sin.”  Of course as head of the Apostolic Signatura, the chief judicial arm of the Church, one would think that Burke is the better arbiter of the Canon Law, but Pope Francis obviously does not see things the same way.  Reading through various “pro-life” blogs and articles, one sees a growing disillusionment with Pope Francis, and even a sense of alarm.  The pope’s admonition that the Church needs not to be “obsessed” with the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage have provoked outcries from Michael Voris, Judy Brown of the American Life League, and others who see their Catholic credentials being eroded in the policies of this papacy.   Certainly with Cardinal Wuerl on the Congregation for Bishops we can expect more middle of the road prelates than we have seen in the past decade or two (or three).