'You're a big supporter of Burke?' Well, yes

"You're a big supporter of Burke?" So runs the query that I saw on social media a few days ago accompanied by a link to the National Catholic Reporter's summary of an interview with recently reinstated Knights of Malta grand chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager, who basically implies that Cardinal Burke lied about the wishes of the Holy Father. Well, yes, I suppose that I am a "big supporter of Burke," even if that's not exactly the way I would put it--think 1 Cor 3:4: "Whenever one of you says, 'I belong to Paul,' and another, 'I belong to Apollos,' are you not merely human?" Nonetheless, I will stand up and say that Cardinal Burke is a good and saintly priest, and a humble prelate with an abiding love for Christ and His Church. Fact needs to be separated from fiction as regards the controversy that currently swirls around him in his official position as cardinal-patron of the Knights of Malta, the millennium-old religious order that has the status of a sovereign state, and that today operates mainly as a charitable organization.

A family photo with Cardinal Burke when he came 

to celebrate Mass at St. Catherine of Siena Parish 

in Wake Forest back in December 2015.

What follows is, therefore, a narrative of the facts, not just in regard to the Knights of Malta, but in regard to all the controversies that have surrounded Cardinal Burke since the election of Pope Francis. I have separated these as best I could from the fiction, hyperbole, and sensationalism. This labor comes in response to a multitude of articles like the one above, which nearly universally paint Cardinal Burke as a Vatican "hard-liner," an insider "at odds" with Pope Francis, someone bent on "stoking papal tensions." It is intended for anybody who is utterly bewildered by the barrage of events and the caricature that the media have created of this humble, diminutive prelate who hails from the dairy state. So, read on if such an account may be helpful for you.

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By way of background:

Cardinal Burke grew up on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin. As a priest he served in the Diocese of La Crosse and later in the Roman Rota as defender of the bond--more or less ensuring that proper procedure was followed in annulment cases. He returned stateside in 1994 as bishop of La Crosse, and he was later archbishop of St. Louis before his 2008 appointment as prefect of the Apostolic Signatura--basically the Vatican's chief justice. Pope Benedict created him a cardinal in 2010.

Cardinal Burke participated in the conclave that elevated Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to the See of St. Peter in 2013. Pope Francis immediately signaled that he wanted to move quickly on matters to which both Pope Benedict and Pope St. John Paul II before him had called attention--especially the dramatic decline in sacramental marriage, and, at least in the first world, the alienation felt by Catholics who have divorced and then remarried civilly without the benefit of their first marriage being annulled. Pope Francis called for a Synod on the Family, which subsequently met in 2014 and again in 2015. Specifically in Cardinal Burke's area of competence, the Holy Father also took action to simplify the annulment process, calling, among other things, for it to be cost free, quicker, and easier.

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All good things in principle, and, again, all things that Benedict and John Paul II had also called for. What was different, however, was that Pope Francis's twin documents Mitis Iudex and Mitis et Misericors Iesus, published in 2015, established norms that many expert canonists agree weaken the Church's understanding of the indissolubility of sacramental marriage.

It was in regard to these changes in canon law, when they were first proposed, it seems, that Cardinal Burke and Pope Francis may have found themselves "at odds." Knowing something of Cardinal Burke's principled nature, I have a hunch that he understood his duty to be slowing things down. It's not that he disagreed with the Holy Father's wish to streamline the Church's annulment process, but that any such streamlining needed to be balanced against the need to protect the integrity of the Church's teaching on marriage. If the Church began to rubber-stamp annulments, or began even to create that impression, then Christ's own words on marriage would mean start to mean very little. The principled stand of St. Thomas More against King Henry VIII, to give just one example, would become but a perplexing footnote in history.

Whether and in what way Pope Francis and Cardinal Burke were actually at odds is a matter of ongoing speculation for professional vaticanisti. What is fact is that Pope Francis did not renew Cardinal Burke's original five-year mandate as prefect of the Apostolic Signatura in 2013, and that a year later he was replaced by Cardinal Dominique Mamberti. A year after that, with Cardinal Burke no longer being the prefect, the pope's aforementioned documents were issued. Although Cardinal Burke was technically not removed as prefect, one must admit that it was highly unusual that his mandate was not renewed for another five years given that he was only 66 years old at the time.

Despite Cardinal Burke's relatively young age, Pope Francis made him cardinal-patron of the Knights of Malta, an honorary ambassadorial position mainly reserved for retirement-age cardinals. Despite Pope Francis' claim in an interview to have need of a "smart American" as patronus of the Knights of Malta, the media are probably not being inaccurate in interpreting this appointment as a "demotion," especially since around the same time the Holy Father also replaced Cardinal Burke on the influential Vatican congregations for divine worship, the interpretation of legislative texts, and the appointment of new bishops, among others. At present, Cardinal Burke's only appointment besides Malta is as a voting member of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Yet things have to be more complicated than a simple "demotion": As Pope Francis himself noted in that same interview, he had delayed appointing Cardinal Burke's replacement at the Signatura specifically so that the cardinal could participate in the first session of the Synod on the Family. For all Pope Francis' desire to move things forward when his mind is made up--and, as one vaticanista has put it, to let the finer doctrinal points work themselves out, which, relevantly, is the very antithesis of Cardinal Burke's own method--the Holy Father still evidently believes in the collegial dialogue and debate that he has repeatedly championed.

For his part, Cardinal Burke provided precisely the debate for which the Holy Father asked in his vigorous synod rebuttal of Cardinal Walter Kasper's proposition that the divorced and remarried be granted access to Holy Communion. I put very little stock in the breathless media accounts of the "anger" of the Holy Father in the wake of Cardinal Burke's spirited comments. Yet it is telling that the Holy Father did not take the initiative to invite Cardinal Burke to the 2015 meeting of the Synod on the Family, despite the pivotal role that he had played in that first meeting. Evidently Pope Francis wanted collegial dialogue. But at the same time, many believe that there are grounds, among them his own championing of Cardinal Kasper's ideas, for holding that the Holy Father wanted to change the Church's pastoral practice in regard to Holy Communion for the divorced-and-remarried.

Cardinal Burke probably didn't endear himself to Holy Father either, with his observation in a 2014 interview that for many the Church seemed to be as a "ship without a rudder." A close reading of that interview shows that Cardinal Burke wasn't even talking about the Holy Father specifically, but about a general perception that many of the faithful have as their bishops debate changes to pastoral practice that may be hard to square with the unchanging truths of the faith. In my mind, that's a fair statement. It's too bad that one can't make a point without the media finding a way to sensationalize it.

Whatever the case, the dubia of Cardinal Burke and three other cardinals, publicly released in November, could be understood as a plea to the Holy Father to take the helm of that ship and to provide a sense of clarity and direction to the faithful in confusing times.

The dubia are a series of questions posed by these cardinals in order to clarify a confusing footnote in the Holy Father's 2016 post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia that seems to adopt the Kasperite proposition and open the door for the divorced-and-remarried to receive Holy Communion. To date, the dubia of Cardinal Burke and the other cardinals have not been answered, and the Vatican has implied that there will be no answer because Amoris Laetitia is perfectly clear on the matter. Various Vatican officials continue to insist on the clarity of the exhortation even as some dioceses say that the divorced-and-remarried can receive the Eucharist and others say that they can't; even as bishops in Germany and Malta say that it's up to the individual faithful, and Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, says that it's not.

It's perplexing, to say the least. Everybody knows that the footnote is confusing. And Cardinal Burke's name is very much in the mix of it all in pointing this out. And so the matter stands, irresolved as the bishops in one place steer the Church in one direction, and as bishops in another place steer it in another.

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To all this strangeness of the status quo, of course, is added that of the recent goings-on of the Knights of Malta, to which, recall, Cardinal Burke is patronus. The Knights' grand chancellor, Albrecht von Boeselager, it seems, had concealed from the rest of the leadership that the charitable branch he oversaw had unwittingly participated in the distribution of condoms. In a December meeting at which Cardinal Burke was present, Fra' Matthew Festing, the Knights' grand master, had asked for von Boeselager's resignation. When the grand chancellor refused to resign despite his vow of obedience, Fra' Festing removed him from his position and from the order, a decision subsequently confirmed by the rest of the order's leadership.

According to various accounts, Fra' Festing had said at that meeting, in Cardinal Burke's presence, that it was the Holy Father's wish that von Boeselager resign. What led Fra' Festing to this conclusion, however, is yet another matter of speculation. It seems that there was a letter from the Holy Father to Cardinal Burke expressing significant concern about the condom situation, and even the possibility of Masonic influence in the order. Whatever the cardinal shared with Fra' Festing from that letter, it gave the grand master the impression that he should go so far as to compel von Boeselager to resign from his position. Did that letter imply that Fra' Festing should ask for the grand chancellor's resignation? If not, should Cardinal Burke have intervened in that meeting, at which he was merely an observer in an ambassadorial role? There are simply too many variables and possibilities for anything other than wild conjectures--of which, sadly, there have been many.

Yet from there, things got even stranger, as von Boeselager protested to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, who established a commission to look into the matter. After the fact, Cardinal Parolin insisted, whatever the contents of the letter to Cardinal Burke, that the Holy Father had wanted dialogue, not an actual resignation. Fra' Festing, for his part, responded indignantly, refusing to cooperate because from his perspective the Vatican had no standing in the matter. The position of grand chancellor was part of the Knights' sovereign governing structure, not part of its religious character, and the Vatican, another sovereign entity, had no role in matters of internal governance.

Various vaticanisti accounts have Cardinal Burke counseling Fra' Festing through the whole matter, even "masterminding" the grand master's resistance to Cardinal Parolin all through December and into January. One journalist describes how the cardinal drove to Fra' Festing's residence the morning of the Jan. 24 to urge the grand master to continue his resistance at the papal audience that afternoon, at which the Holy Father would ask for, and receive, his resignation. How these journalists got all that from the plain fact that Cardinal Burke met with Fra' Festing is beyond me. It seems more likely that Pope Francis had asked Cardinal Burke, in his role as patronus, to inform the Knights' leader that he would be asking for his resignation, and to prepare him to offer said resignation later that afternoon.

Conspiracy theories aside, Fra' Festing has stepped down, replaced by an interim grand master, and von Boeselager has been reinstated as grand chancellor. The Holy Father has appointed Archbishop Giovanni Becciu, an official in the Secretariat of State, as a "special delegate" to the Knights, with stated duties that mirror closely Cardinal Burke's, even as the latter continues to hold the title of patronus.

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Is the appointment of Archbishop Becciu as "special delegate," with duties practically equivalent to Cardinal Burke's, the Wisconsin cardinal's final demotion? Is this prelate from the dairy state now to be wholly pushed aside as an "opponent" of the Holy Father, a "hard-line" insider too "at odds" with the Successor of St. Peter to be of service to him?

If so, it's only because the sensationalized, media-driven version of Cardinal Burke has wholly supplanted the unfailingly kind, diminutive prelate that anybody who has ever actually encountered him knows that he is. And that would be a tremendous shame. Cardinal Burke has been a staunch defender of the faith and a loyal fellow worker in the vineyard to three successive popes, up to and including Pope Francis. You may think that Pope Francis moves too quickly or not quickly enough, but it's indisputable that the Vatican needs fewer 'yes' men and more prelates of the likes of Cardinal Burke. Pray God that Pope Francis keeps Cardinal Burke close. He is only 69, and he still has a lot to offer to the Church he loves. 

Every year, my wife and I send Cardinal Burke a Christmas card, with a family letter and a promise of prayers. And every year, he dutifully responds, writing out our names and the names of each of our children and signing the card himself. He always encloses a pamphlet with the Holy Father's monthly prayer intentions. Long live Cardinal Burke, and long live Pope Francis. I'm a big supporter of them both.