Four Cardinals have publicly released their letter to the Pope from April 25, 2017 unsuccessfully asking him for a private audience to discuss “confusion and disorientation” within the Church after the publication of the Pope’s April 2016 Exhortation Amoris Laetitia.
In the letter Cardinals lament the great division in the Church on basic morality as a result of the pope's exhortation.
“And so it is happening — how painful it is to see this! — that what is sin in Poland is good in Germany, that what is prohibited in the archdiocese of Philadelphia is permitted in Malta," they wrote.
The Cardinals asked the Holy Father if during the audience he might answer their five original questions from last year regarding whether or not Amoris Laetitia conforms to perennial Catholic teaching. They also asked the Pope if they could discuss with him the “situation of confusion and disorientation” in the Church caused by “objectively ambiguous passages” in the Exhortation.
The letter was written by Cardinal Carlo Caffarra on behalf of Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Burke, and Joachim Meisner.
“Not having received any response from Your Holiness, we have reached the decision to ask You, respectfully and humbly, for an Audience, together if Your Holiness would like,” the Cardinals wrote in their April 25 letter, which the Holy Father has yet to even acknowledge.
Still, an indirect response to these Cardinals might be seen in the recent visitations which the Pope made to honor two 20th-century parish priests whose commitment to the poor and powerless brought them censure from the Vatican.
Francis flew by helicopter to Bozzolo, near Cremona, to pray at the tomb of Don Primo Mazzolari. Mazzolari, who died in 1959, was an anti-fascist partisan during World War II who, like Francis, preached about a "church for the poor."
Afterward, Francis flew to Barbiana, near Florence, to pray at the tomb of Don Lorenzo Milani, a wealthy convert to Catholicism who founded a parish school to educate the poor and workers. He died in 1967.
Both priests were considered rebels in their lifetimes and were censured by Vatican authorities for their writings. By honoring them with his brief visit, Francis sent the church a message of the type of priest he wants today: simple, guided by Gospel values, devoted to the poor and uninterested in careerism.
At his first stop, Francis stood in silent prayer before the simple tomb of Mazzolari, and delivered a lengthy tribute to the priest, quoting Mazzolari's writings about the need for the church to accompany its flock that Francis himself could have penned.
Church authorities announced Tuesday that the process to beatify Mazzolari would begin in September.
Father Milani, for his part, also emphasized social justice issues, especially about the rights of workers to go on strike. The Vatican in 1958 ordered the retraction of a book of his on his pastoral experiences. Francis said Milani taught the importance of giving the poor the capacity to speak up for themselves, "because without the word, there's no dignity and therefore no justice or freedom."
By these simple and gracious acknowledgments of pastoral service by two simple parish Priests, Francis has delivered a powerful response to those Cardinals who find the Gospel mandate fulfilled by observance of strict moral doctrines and theological formulations. That response is that the most fundamental Gospel mandate is charity toward all through the sacramental administration of Christ’s redeeming grace.
Sadly, the only ones who do not seem to have understood that response are the Cardinals themselves.
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