CV NEWS FEED // In a moving homily delivered on December 12 during the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke insisted that the answer to the challenges presented to the Catholic Church by a growing secular culture is not to betray doctrine, but to follow the person and teachings of Jesus.
The American cardinal stated during the Solemn Mass celebrated at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, WI:
The cause of our joy today, the cause of our abiding joy, the cause of our eternal joy, is Christ, God-the-Son Incarnate, Whom His Virgin Mother brought into the world and to Whom she is ever drawing us, showing us that He, seated at the right hand of God-the-Father in glory, is also with us in His holy Church which, together with the Virgin Mary, we rightly call Mother.
Our Lady of Guadalupe “uses the ancient pagan language to show that Christ alone fulfills man’s deepest longing,” Burke continued. “She does not reduce her Divine Maternity to the understanding of the pagans but manifests the truth that the Redemptive Incarnation corrects, elevates, and perfects that understanding.”
“Through her apparitions and her abiding presence on the miraculous tilma of Saint Juan Diego, Our Lady of Guadalupe showed the bishop (of Mexico City) and the whole Church that the way to overcome evil and to spread goodness is teaching the truth,” he said, “praying at all times and offering all our love to God in Sacred Worship, and practicing the truth in love.”
Burke explained that “the Church in our time faces similar seemingly impossible challenges… What are we to do? What is the Church to do?”
“Some,” he said,
even among Bishops, would tell us that the Church has to change her doctrine, her Sacred Worship, and her discipline, in order to accommodate the culture. They talk about a necessary paradigm shift or an ill-defined synodal way which declares that all are welcome in the Church without making clear the conversion to Christ which is necessary to be a member of His Mystical Body.
“Before the great challenge of our time, Pope Saint John Paul II cautioned us that we will not save ourselves and our world by discovering ‘some magic formula’ or by ‘inventing a new programme,’” Burke pointed out. “In unmistakable terms, he declared: ‘No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us: I am with you.’”Cardinal Burke: Answer to Cultural Challenges is Not Changing Doctrine but Following Christ
Pope St. John Paul II “reminded us that the program by which we are to address effectively the great spiritual challenges of our time is, in the end, Jesus Christ alive for us in the Church.”
“It is to holiness of life in Christ that Our Lady of Guadalupe draws us,” Burke emphasized at the end of his homily. “Leaving the ordinariness of our daily living to come on pilgrimage to her holy place, she manifests to us the extraordinariness of our daily living in Christ.”
Pope Francis recently revoked Burke’s right to a subsidized Vatican apartment and salary.
