Below Our Sunday Visitor reports on Pope Francis’s reply to the ‘Dubia’ about Church teaching five cardinals sent to him. The report shows (whether the reporter meant it or not) the Pope’s usual tactic of stating Church teaching but then adding qualifications that undermine it or at least provide a platform for agitation to undermine it.

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Pope responds to cardinals on blessings for homosexuals, female priests

by Justin McLellan, Our Sunday Visitor, October 2, 2023

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Catholic Church, in pursuit of “pastoral prudence,” should discern if there are ways of giving blessings to homosexual persons that do not alter the Church’s teaching on marriage, Pope Francis said.

Writing in response to a “dubia” letter delivered to him by five cardinals seeking clarification on doctrinal questions, the pope addressed issues surrounding the authority of the synod, women’s ordination and blessing homosexual unions in a letter made public Oct. 2.

Marriage is an “exclusive, stable and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to conceiving children,” wrote the pope. “For this reason, the Church avoids all kinds of rites or sacramentals that could contradict this conviction and imply that it is recognizing as a marriage something that is not.”

But pastoral charity also is necessary, and “defense of the objective truth is not the only expression of that charity, which is also made up of kindness, patience, understanding, tenderness, encouragement,” he added. “For that reason, pastoral prudence must adequately discern if there are forms of blessing, solicited by one or various persons, that don’t transmit a mistaken concept of marriage.”

Pope Francis added that decisions made in specific circumstances should not necessarily become a norm regulated by a diocese or bishops’ conference, noting that “the life of the Church runs through many channels in addition to regulatory frameworks.”

The pope’s comments came in response to a “dubia” letter dated July 10 seeking clarification on doctrinal questions written by five retired cardinals: U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, Mexican Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah and Chinese Cardinal Joseph Zen.

Read the rest here …

Five cardinals write Dubia to Pope Francis on concerns about Synod, Catholic doctrine

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Cardinals Burke, Brandmüller, Sarah, Zen, and Íñiguezto have published a new Dubia to express grave concerns to Pope Francis about the Synod on Synodality and possible attacks on Catholic doctrine.

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Five prominent cardinals have submitted dubia to Pope Francis about the Synod on Synodality, asking five urgent questions about possible attacks on the Church’s doctrines, including the possibility of homosexual blessings, the weight of teaching afforded to the synod, female ordination, and the necessity of repentance in sacramental Confession.

Broken to the Catholic public on October 2, news of previously private correspondence between five cardinals and Pope Francis, expressing grave concerns about the upcoming Synod on Synodality, was revealed. They highlighted the urgency of the synod as a catalyst for the intervention, noting the synod as an event “which many want to use to deny Catholic doctrine on the very issues which our Dubia concern.”

The Dubia have been written and submitted by Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, former prefect of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences; Raymond Leo Burke, former prefect of the Apostolic Signatura; Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, former Archbishop of Guadalajara; Robert Sarah, the former prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments; and Joseph Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong. Both Brandmüller and Burke were signatories of the previous Dubia submitted to the Pope in 2016 about Amoris Laetitia.

Veteran Vatican journalist Sandro Magister wrote that the five cardinals recognized the late Cardinal George Pell “shared these ‘dubia’ and would have been the first to endorse them.”

READ: Vatican and Cardinal Fernández fire back at cardinals’ new dubia about the Synod on Synodality

Background

Magister provided a copy of the letters and a history of the events which led to the correspondence emerging now. (The correspondence is also found on Messa in Latino, on the site of America TFP, and is produced below.)

The five cardinals first wrote to the Pope on July 10, presenting him with five Dubia. This, according to Magister, Pope Francis responded to in writing on July 11, which was received by the cardinals on July 13. 

According to Magister, the seven-page letter in Spanish bore Francis’ signature but “the letter displayed the writing style of his trusted theologian, the Argentine Victor Manuel Fernández,” who was made cardinal on September 30 and assumed control of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on September 11.

Read the rest here …