Ross Douthat: An Interview With Cdl Burke

In mid-October, while the Catholic Church’s internal debates were reaching another crescendo at a synod for the Amazon region held in Rome, I sat down with Cardinal Raymond Burke, best known as Pope Francis’s most vocal critic in the church’s hierarchy.

Our conversations, which continued last week, covered Burke’s role in Francis-era debates about Catholic moral teaching, as well as the sex abuse crisis, the legacy of Vatican II, his relationship with Steve Bannon and the strange position of a conservative Catholic who is also a critic of the pope. The following is an edited, condensed version of our discussions.

This is well worth reading in its entirety.

HT: Fr. Z with whom I agree about what should have happened to ex-Cardinal McCarrick. Burke is one of the good guys. Unfortunately he is an American and is anathema to Rome's Magic Circle, so his chances of being elected as the next Pope are around zero. And of course it doesn't help that Francis has been stacking the College of Cardinals with blatant heretics, some of whom are also shockingly corrupt.