TIGG
You can order Cardinal Burke’s book from Amazon right now.
These are the 9 chapters of the book:
■The Argument in Brief- Robert Dodaro, O.S.A.
■Dominical Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage: The Biblical Data - Paul Mankowski, S.J.
■Divorce and Remarriage in the Early Church: Some Historical and Cultural Reflections - John M. Rist
■Separation, Divorce, Dissolution of the Bond, and Remarriage: Theological and Practical Approaches of the Orthodox Churches - Archbishop Cyril Vasil’, S.J.
■Unity and Indissolubility of Marriage: From the Middle Ages to the Council of Trent - Walter Cardinal Brandmüller
■Testimony to the Power of Grace: On the Indissolubility of Marriage and the Debate concerning the Civilly Remarried and the Sacraments - Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller
■Sacramental Ontology and the Indissolubility of Marriage - Carlo Cardinal Caffarra
■The Divorced and Civilly Remarried and the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance - Velasio Cardinal De Paolis, C.S.
■The Canonical Nullity of the Marriage Process as the Search for the Truth - Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
"The Augustinian Robert Dodaro, the editor of the book, is head of the patristic institute “Augustinianum” in Roma. The Jesuit Paul Mankowski is a professor at the Lumen Christi Institute in Chicago. Professor John M. Rist teaches ancient history and philosophy at the University of Toronto and at the Catholic University of America in Washington.
Here is the blurb:
In this volume five Cardinals of the Church, and four other scholars, respond to the call issued by Cardinal Walter Kasper for the Church to harmonize “fidelity and mercy in its pastoral practice with civilly remarried, divorced people”.
Beginning with a concise introduction, the first part of the book is dedicated to the primary biblical texts pertaining to divorce and remarriage, and the second part is an examination of the teaching and practice prevalent in the early Church. In neither of these cases, biblical or patristic, do these scholars find support for the kind of “toleration” of civil marriages following divorce advocated by Cardinal Kasper.
The various studies in this book lead to the conclusion that the Church’s longstanding fidelity to the truth of marriage constitutes the irrevocable foundation of its merciful and loving response to the individual who is civilly divorced and remarried.
“Because it is the task of the apostolic ministry to ensure that the Church remains in the truth of Christ and to lead her ever more deeply into that truth, pastors must promote the sense of faith in all the faithful, examine and authoritatively judge the genuineness of its expressions and educate the faithful in an ever more mature evangelical discernment.”
- St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio
“I suspect the book will follow the reasoning of our Pope Emeritus.
20 years ago the document below was a response to liberal German bishops who publicly stated that divorced and remarried Catholics could follow their consciences in deciding whether to take Communion.”
————-
14 September 1994
Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith
Letter To The Bishops Of The Catholic Churc Concerning The Reception Of Holy Communion By The Divorced And Remarried Members Of The Faithful.
Joseph Card. Ratzinger
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_14091994_rec-holy-comm-by-divorced_en.html
—————-
1 January 1998
Congregation For The Doctrine Of The Faith
Concerning Some Objections To The Church’s Teaching On The Reception Of Holy Communion By Divorced And Remarried Members Of The Faithful.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19980101_ratzinger-comm-divorced_en.html
"I’m a monk of the Orthodox Church converting to Catholicism. I have decided to do this on many grounds, pretty much all of them dogmatic. But though my realization of the Truth of Catholic dogmatic theology was a gradually increasing thing, there were two things from the get-go, that made me realize Catholicism’s doctrinal witness had to be taken seriously.
Having read the Fathers on how to discern a vocation either to married or religious life, it was clear that the Fathers had a very definite understanding of marriage and sexuality; this specific understanding led them to recommend the celibate life to all who could embrace it, and to insist that if a Christian did want to keep one foot in the world, his or her sexuality was to be exclusively reserved for marriage, marriage itself being directed to a particular end: the raising of godly offspring in a committed unit that formed the basis of society and mirrored the indissoluble bond between Christ and the Church. In the whole context of their views on marriage and sex, two things were inescapable: first, contraception is incomprehensible for the Christian marriage, since they tended to view marriage itself as a good, albeit as still a sub-optimal concession to worldly desires that was only justifiable on the grounds of producing children and raising them in the Faith; second, marriage is necessarily permanent so long as both spouses live, both because of its duties and obligations under natural law, and also because of its sacramental character. This is a matter of doctrine, not mere practice, and this should give many Orthodox pause, as it gave me: I reckoned to myself,
“If Catholicism is false and Orthodoxy is true, why is it that Catholicism still teaches the truth about marriage and contraception, while we have abandoned it?”
More from the Ex Orthodox Monk converting to the Catholic Church in the link below:
wdtprs.com/blog/2014/10/action-item-book-from-5-cardinals-in-defense-of-marriage-and-tradition/ You can order the book from here as well.