Cardinal Raymond Burke has warned against bishops who wish the Church “to change her doctrine, her Sacred Worship, and her discipline, in order to accommodate the culture,” admonishing instead that the answer to the current crisis in the Church is for Catholics to take seriously the life of holiness.
The cardinal’s comments came in a sermon on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, given at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, founded by Burke when he was Bishop of La Crosse.
Recounting the challenging times the Church in Mexico faced when first evangelizing the native pagans, which included the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, Burke said:
At the time of the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the missionary Church in what is today Mexico was suffering seemingly impossible challenges: the violent conflict between the Native Americans and the Spanish explorers and settlers, and the diabolical practice of massive human sacrifice on the part of the pagans.
Our Lord sent Our Lady to show the way to order and peace in our personal lives and in society, namely, Christ. Through her apparitions and her abiding presence on the miraculous tilma of Saint Juan Diego, Our Lady of Guadalupe showed the Bishop and the whole Church that the way to overcome evil and to spread goodness is teaching the truth, praying at all times and offering all our love to God in Sacred Worship, and practicing the truth in love.
