CV NEWS FEED // Hours after five cardinals published a list of questions (Dubia) they had put to Pope Francis about key doctrinal issues slated to be addressed at this month’s Synod on Synodality in Rome, a top Vatican official lambasted the authors and suggested they were mistreating the pope and misleading the faithful.
“The Pope has already answered the ‘dubia’ of these cardinals,” Prefect of the Dicastery of the Faith Victor Manuel Fernandez told ABC News, per The Daily Wire’s Bree Dail:
They have not published the answer of the Holy Father, who despite his many occupations took the trouble to answer them. Instead of publishing those answers, they are now making public new questions, as if the Pope were their slave for errands.
The authors of the Dubia are Walter Cardinal Brandmüller, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Juan Cardinal Sandoval Íñiguez, Robert Cardinal Sarah, and Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun.
As CatholicVote previously reported, the cardinals stated Monday that they had originally authored the Dubia in “view of the Synod” and “due to the statements on serious matters contrary to the doctrine of the Church multiplying.”
They acknowledged that Francis had replied to their July 10 Dubia letter the following day, but stated in an August 21 follow-up letter that his responses “have not resolved the doubts we had raised, but have, if anything, deepened them.”
“We therefore feel obliged to re-propose, reformulating them, these questions to Your Holiness, who as the successor of Peter is charged by the Lord to confirm Your brethren in the faith,” the cardinals wrote in their August Dubia letter:
This is all the more urgent in view of the upcoming Synod, which many want to use to deny Catholic doctrine on the very issues which our dubia concern. We therefore re-propose our questions to You, so that they can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”
Since the pope did not respond with a “yes” or “no” as they requested, “we have now decided to make our letter public so that the faithful do not fall into error,” the cardinals announced Monday.
Bree Dail summarized the cardinal’s revised “yes” or “no” questions in a column at The Daily Wire:
- Can the Catholic Church, today, teach something contrary to the doctrines it has previously taught on Faith and Morals?
- Can the Church bless homosexual unions? Is the Church teaching that any sexual act outside the bonds of the Sacrament of Marriage constitutes a grave sin, still true?
- Will decisions made by a small minority of representatives at the “Synod on Synodality” — currently being held in Rome — exercise the Supreme Authority equal to that given solely to the Pope in union with the College of Bishops?
- Could the Catholic Church ever ordain women priests?
- Can a priest validly absolve someone who goes to Confession with intention to continue the sin they’re admitting to?
The Vatican also published Francis’ July 11 answer to the cardinals’ original Dubia on Monday. Dail described Francis’ reply as “anything but ‘yes or no.’”
Readers can find the original July 10 Dubia and the August 21 reformulated Dubia here.
CatholicVote’s English translation of Pope Francis’ July 11 answer to the original Dubia can be found here.