Five conservative cardinals from all over the world have published five questions Catholic observers call "dubia" in an open letter to Catholic congregations Monday (October 2).
The letter - signed by German Cardinal Walter Brandmueller, former Vatican chief justice Cardinal Raymond Burke, Mexican Cardinal Juan Sandoval, former Vatican liturgy czar Cardinal Robert Sarah (Guinea), and embattled Hong Kong prelate Cardinal Joseph Zen - challenged Pope Francis to affirm Catholic teaching on homosexuality and female ordination ahead of this month's major synod at the Vatican as they expressed concern such topics would be tackled for debate.
The cardinals stated they were duty-bound to inform the faithful in order for them not to be "subject to confusion, error, and discouragement."
The signatories were some of Francis's most vocal critics in the College of Cardinals, all of them retired and of the more doctrinaire generation of cardinals appointed by either Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI.
Of the five signatories, Cardinals Brandmueller and Burke were among the four signatories of a previous dubia surrounding the pope's 2016 post-synodal apostolic exhortation "Amoris Laetitia," which allowed divorced and civilly married or remarried couples to receive Holy Communion. The 2016 dubia also centered on the four cardinals' concern that Francis's position violated church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.
Francis never responded to the 2016 dubia, while two of the cardinals who signed it - Cardinals Carlo Caffarra and Joachim Meisner - have since died.
Problems with the Synod Topics
According to the Associated Press, the letter and dubia were first published by veteran Vatican reporter Sandro Magister and the blog site Messa in Latino, two days before the start of the three-week synod.
Over 450 bishops, clergymen, and laypeople would take part in the gathering behind closed doors to discuss the future of the Catholic Church following a two-year canvassing of rank-and-file Catholics across the globe.
The synod's agenda items call for concrete steps to promote women to decision-making roles in the church, including as deacons, and allegedly for a more democratic church governance. The meeting would also aim to address the call for a "radical inclusion" of LGBT+ Catholics and other marginalized individuals, and for new accountability measures to keep bishops and priests in check and to prevent further abuses.
The synod and its proposals for greater lay involvement have thrilled progressives and disturbed conservatives, including the five cardinals, who warned any changes could lead to schism.
Last month, Burke provided a message of support to the Q&A book "The Synodal Process is a Pandora's Box" by Latin American Catholic thinkers Jose Antonio Ureta and Julio Loredo de Izcue, which highlighted the synodal process rehabilitating old heresies once condemned by the church and imposing a harmful radical progressive agenda as a result.
The book particularly made a scathing criticism against the German Synodal Way for what the book described as a radical interpretation of synodality, which the authors further alleged found its way into the Vatican synod's agenda.
A Plea to the Pope
The cardinals raised their questions to Francis and asked him to affirm Catholic doctrine before the synod undermined the church's traditional teaching. They particularly asked Francis to affirm that the church could not bless same-sex couples, and that any sexual act outside sacramental marriage between a man and a woman is a grave sin.
Official church teaching said that homosexuals must be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered."
They also asked him if the synod itself could replace the pope and bishops as the church's supreme authority, which is an issue of concern to some in the hierarchy who felt threatened by the synod's call for empowering the laity.
The cardinals further asked the pope to affirm or deny if the church in the future could one day ordain women, as church doctrine holds that only men can be ordained priests.
The letter and questions mark the latest high-ranking challenge to Francis's pontificate and his reform agenda.
Other critics of Francis's pontificate have also chimed in to the publication of the new dubia against the pope.
US Catholic writer and composer Dr. Peter Kwasniewski made a wager about the matter.
"If Pope Francis answers, clarity ensues," he wrote on Facebook. "If he refuses to answer, more clarity ensues, especially for posterity, for historians who ask 'Did anyone resist the soft schism into progressive non-Catholicism?'"
Francis's Response Inadequate, Dubia Cardinals Say
Magister wrote that while Francis has apparently responded to the new dubia in its initial form last July, the cardinals have not published it as they allegedly found it unsatisfactory. They reformulated their questions into yes-or-no ones and resubmitted them to Rome by August, asking him to reply with a yes or no answer.
The pope did not respond as of this writing, prompting the cardinals to make the texts public and issue a "notification" warning to the congregations.
"We, members of the Sacred College of Cardinals, in accord with the duty of all the faithful 'to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church'...have manifested our deepest concern to the Roman Pontiff," they wrote. "Given the gravity of the matter of the dubia, especially in view of the imminent session of the Synod of Bishops, we judge it our duty to inform you, the faithful, so that you may not be subject to confusion, error, and discouragement but rather may pray for the universal Church and, in particular, the Roman Pontiff, that the Gospel may be taught ever more clearly and followed ever more faithfully."
