Operation Storm Heaven - July 2018

Bishop Robert C. Morlino's
Letter To The Faithful

August 18, 2018

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ of the Diocese of Madison,

The past weeks have brought a great deal of scandal, justified anger, and a call for answers and action by many faithful Catholics here in the U.S. and overseas, directed at the Church hierarchy regarding sexual sins by bishops, priests, and even cardinals. Still more anger is rightly directed at those who have been complicit in keeping some of these serious sins from coming to light.

For my part — and I know I am not alone — I am tired of this. I am tired of people being hurt, gravely hurt! I am tired of the obfuscation of truth. I am tired of sin. And, as one who has tried — despite my many imperfections — to lay down my life for Christ and His Church, I am tired of the regular violation of sacred duties by those entrusted with immense responsibility from the Lord for the care of His people.

The stories being brought into light and displayed in gruesome detail with regard to some priests, religious, and now even those in places of highest leadership, are sickening. Hearing even one of these stories is, quite literally, enough to make someone sick. But my own sickness at the stories is quickly put into perspective when I recall the fact that many individuals have lived through them for years. For them, these are not stories, they are indeed realities. To them I turn and say, again, I am sorry for what you have suffered and what you continue to suffer in your mind and in your heart.

(cnsnews.com)

Cardinal Raymond Burke, who has served as archbishop of St. Louis and prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura (the highest court of the Catholic Church), said in an interview with CNSNews.com that Americans need to “be absolutely wide awake to defend religious liberty.”

Burke, now the patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta, was discussing the new book from Ignatius Press, “Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ.”

Click here to read full article.

The Wanderer (By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE)

(Editor’s Note: Following is an excerpt from March 7, 2015 address that Cardinal Burke gave at the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children Youth Conference, Southport, England. Some citations in the original quoted the German spoken by Pope Benedict XVI in his September 2011 address to the German Parliament. These have been omitted here for reasons of space.)

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If we are to seek holiness of life, to live more totally and faithfully for Christ, namely, to give our lives to Christ, without any reserve, our hearts must seek their wisdom and strength in the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus; our conscience must be trained to listen to God’s voice alone and to reject what would weaken or compromise, in any way, our witness to the truth in which He alone instructs us through the Church. Through our daily prayer and devotion, and through our study of official Church teaching, our conscience is formed according to the will of God, according to His law which is life for us.

Click here to read full article

ANN ARBOR, Michigan, January 22, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) –

His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke, former prefect of the Vatican's highest court, took to the airwaves to urge faithful Catholics to join with him in "storming heaven" seeking the Blessed Virgin Mary's intercessions for guidance for Catholic leaders. In the same radio interview, he was strongly critical of radical Church leaders who during the recent Synod on the Family attacked him and fellow defenders of traditional Church teachings on marriage. Such "calumnies" were "the work of the devil," he said, comparing them to the attacks on Christian Europe by the Muslim Ottoman Empire in the 16th century.

Click here to read full article

By DON FIER (The Wanderer)

Part 3

(Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, recently traveled from Rome to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wis., a magnificent place of worship which he founded and dedicated.
(His Eminence graciously granted an extensive interview to The Wanderer during which he shared his insights on a variety of topics, including the recently concluded Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family and his recommendations for how we should contend with the uncertainty and confusion that is currently prevalent among the clerical and lay faithful.
(This is the last installment of our three-part interview with Cardinal Burke.)

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Q. Do you have any words for faithful priests who find themselves discouraged by the current ecclesiastical atmosphere of doctrinal confusion and subversion?

Also, what about lay people? If faithful members of the laity find themselves in parishes (or dioceses) where aberrant practices contrary to authentic Church teaching are taking place, what is the proper response?

To whom does the laity turn if those in leadership positions in the magisterial office of the Church espouse pastoral practices that are in opposition to her unchangeable doctrine?

A. I hear this from many good priests; even bishops talk to me about the difficulty of dealing with confusion when they present the Church’s teaching. They are told they are not in step with the current practice of the Church or even that they are against the Pope.

One archbishop said to me, “How is it that those of us who teach what the Church has always taught are now called enemies of the Pope by the media and others?”

My response is this: “We know what the Church teaches. It is memorialized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church; it is in the magisterial statements with regard to marriage and family. Go to Familiaris Consortio, go to Casti Connubii, go to Humanae Vitae! We know what the Church teaches and we hold firm to that.”

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(Associated Press)

A California Catholic hospital is not engaging in sex discrimination by denying a woman's request for the sterilization procedure known as tubal ligation, a San Francisco judge said in a tentative ruling.

Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith said in his decision Wednesday that Rebecca Chamorro could get the procedure at another hospital, and that Mercy Medical Center's policy against sterilization on religious ground also applies to men.

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SAN DIEGO, California, January 11, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Raymond Burke is calling on faithful Catholics to “storm heaven” by joining with him once a month in the Mass and the Rosary to pray for hope and guidance out of the Church’s current “confusion.”

The grassroots lay organization Catholic Action for Faith and Family has put up a page on its website for “Rosary Warriors” to sign on to the joint effort, which Cardinal Burke launched with a Mass on December 8.

“As Catholics we find ourselves in a general crisis of culture,” the organization’s spokesman Thomas McKenna told LifeSiteNews. “We seem to be losing the battle against same-sex marriage, we see Planned Parenthood killing babies and selling their body parts and nothing is done to stop them, and euthanasia is being brought in through the backdoor.” Then there is the state of “confusion” in the Church itself flowing from public statements by high officials.

Click here to read full article

By DON FIER (The Wanderer)

Part 1

(Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, recently traveled from Rome to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wis., a magnificent place of worship which he founded and dedicated. His Eminence graciously granted an extensive interview to The Wanderer during which he shared his insights on a variety of topics, including the recently concluded Ordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family and his recommendations for how we should contend with the uncertainty and confusion that is currently prevalent among the clerical and lay faithful.)

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Q. Several weeks have passed since the Synod on the Family, and I presume you have now had time to study carefully the final report. In your view, what are the main fruits of the Synod, and how best can the Church take advantage of them?

A. The final report is a complex document and is written in a way in which it is not always easy to understand the exact import of what is being affirmed. For example, three paragraphs (nn. 84-86) suggest that the last session of the Synod found a way whereby people who are in irregular matrimonial unions can still receive the sacraments. To address the lack of clarity in the document, I have written a brief commentary on those paragraphs to clarify what the Church actually teaches.

Click here to read the full article

by CARDINAL RAYMOND BURKE (National Catholic Register)

In the Nov. 28 issue of La Civiltà Cattolica, Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro, director of the journal and a synod father, presents a summary of the work of the 14th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, dedicated to the vocation and mission of the family (pp. 372-391).

Although the author makes various affirmations about the nature and work of the Synod of Bishops, which demand critical comment in a longer study, one affirmation which necessitates immediate comment is summarized thus by the author:

The synod has also desired to touch wounded persons and couples to accompany them and heal them in a process of      integration and reconciliation without barriers. Concerning access to the sacraments for those divorced and remarried civilly, the synod has formulated the way of discernment and of the “internal forum,” laying the foundations and opening a door which, on the contrary, had remained closed in the preceding synod.