Reaping the Wuerl Wind
Donald Wuerl, the cardinal of Washington, D.C., prides himself on his “pastoral” practice of distributing the Holy Eucharist to Democratic pols no matter how many unborn children they vote to kill. Cardinal Raymond Burke, the head of the Vatican’s top court, which made him the foremost authority on canon law, has said that Wuerl’s practice blatantly violates it.
In light of this conflict, the decision of Pope Francis this week to boot Burke from the Congregation for Bishops and replace him with Wuerl deserves a special place in the annals of in-your-face papal politics. The liberal media is naturally ecstatic, seeing Wuerl’s plum as yet another proof that Francis is the pope they have been waiting for.
It was clear from day one that Francis never took canon law all that seriously, seeing it as one of those awful relics of “rule-bound” pre-Vatican II Catholicism. In fact, he had been violating it down in Buenos Aires long before he washed the feet of a Muslim woman on Holy Thursday days after his pontificate began. (The sycophantic Catholic press said that he had the “right” to do that as the supreme legislator of canon law while conveniently ignoring that he had done the same as archbishop of Buenos Aires when he enjoyed no such right.) So it makes perfect sense that he would make the antinomian Wuerl one of his chief bishop-makers.
Anyone familiar with the dismal statistics of the post-Vatican II period knows that nothing has been more destructive of souls than self-consciously “pastoral” Catholicism. Year after year it has yielded bad shepherds who do not guard the flock’s gate but throw it open and let the wolves eat them. With Wuerl replacing Burke at the Congregation for Bishops, expect many more.
Continued here
