Exclusive: Archbishop Burke Speaks

(Text and images courtesy of Michael Wick of the Institute on Religious Life)

2010 National Meeting
Institute on Religious Life
Mundelein, Illinois
April 10, 2010


BANQUET ADDRESS:
RECEPTION OF THE PRO FIDELITATE ET VIRTUTE AWARD


Introduction

I am deeply honored to receive the 2010 Pro Fidelitate et Virtute Award from the Institute on Religious Life. Because of the great esteem which I have for the apostolate of the Institute on Religious Life, I am especially honored. I express my gratitude to the Officers of the Institute and, in particular, to His Excellency, the Most Reverend Thomas G. Doran, President, and to Father Thomas Nelson, O. Praem.; Mr. Michael Wick, and all of the staff of the Institute.

In receiving the Award which is given to individuals “who manifest a strong love for the Church and a zealous commitment to the consecrated life,” I am deeply conscious of the words of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Apostles, recorded in the Gospel according to Saint Luke:

“Will any one of you, who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep, say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and gird yourself and serve me, till I eat and drink; and afterward you shall eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” (Lk 17:7-10).

Tonight’s honor makes me deeply conscious of the great gift which God has given me to serve His Church as a priest and Bishop, of how much more I could have done in the past, and of how much more I must yet do, in fidelity to my vocation and to the grace of ordination to the Priesthood and Episcopacy. Whatever good I have done has been my duty; I only wish I had served Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church with greater fidelity and strength.

In thanking you for the great honor which you have bestowed upon me in presenting me with the Pro Fidelitate et Virtute Award, I ask God to give me the grace to live up to the honor received, to grow in fidelity and in strength in my service of Him and of His flock entrusted into my care.

Gratitude for the Consecrated Life

In offering a few reflections inspired by the reception of the Pro Fidelitate et Virtute Award, I want, first of all, to express my deepest esteem and gratitude to the faithful and strong members of institutes of the consecrated life, with whom I have been privileged to work and whom I have been called to serve as a priest and Bishop. Most, if not all, of them are members of the Institute on Religious Life.

I think, for instance, of the privilege which was mine to serve as Episcopal Moderator of the United States Association of Consecrated Virgins from 1996 to 2008. Coming to a deeper knowledge of this most ancient form of consecrated life, as it remains vital and new in the life of the Church today, has been a great gift to me. In particular, I was inspired by the spousal love of these brides of Christ for their Bridegroom, especially their love of Him in His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. Together with the love of our Eucharistic Lord, the consecrated virgins witness to a total love of the Church and, in particular, of her shepherds, especially their own Bishops, through their consecrated life lived in the world.

I think also of the great gift of working with Father John A. Hardon,S.J., during the last years of his life. My close collaboration with Father Hardon opened up more clearly to me the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit given to Saint Ignatius of Loyola for the founding of the Society of Jesus. Father Hardon, in his profound concern for the state of the Church in our time, was particularly concerned with what had happened to consecrated religious life in the time immediately following upon the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. He rightly perceived that a number of individual religious and of religious congregations were alienating themselves from the font of their vocation, the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church. He rightly understood the consecrated life as work of the Holy Spirit for the growth of the whole Church in holiness of life. In his book, Religious Life Today, Father Hardon referred to “the laws of grace relative to religious life,” analogous to the laws of nature. He wisely observed:

The lesson that the current turmoil in religious life should teach us is that you cannot tamper with the laws of grace, any more than with the laws of nature, and not pay the consequences.

He identified the three principal “laws of grace relative to religious life”:

1. The foundation of authentic religious life is the following of Christ in the sacrifice of self, as revealed in the Gospels.
   
2. The fulfillment of authentic religious life is the practice of constant prayer, in order to obtain the light and strength our fallen human nature constantly needs if we are to approximate the holiness of Jesus.
   
3. The future of authentic religious life, even as the past, depends upon humble obedience to the Church’s teaching about form and visible structure.

These laws of grace are what guarantee the continuity of the vocation to the consecrated life for the salvation of the souls called to the vocation and for the good of the entire Church, which is served, in a most important way, by the consecrated life, by the closer following of Christ the Poor, the Chaste and the Obedient, on the part of consecrated persons.

Father Hardon did not just develop beautiful theories about religious life and the causes of the turmoil in religious life of our time. He established the Institute on Religious Life in 1974, “to encourage, support and assist authentic consecrated life as set forth by Vatican II and its implementation by the Holy See.” I take the occasion to express my deepest esteem and gratitude to the Institute for its fidelity to its mission so critical to the Church in our time.

I also cannot fail to mention with gratitude the great gift of coming to know the late Mother Mary Francis Aschmann, Poor Clare Colettine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery in Roswell, New Mexico, and the community of nuns for whom she was the Abbess for over 41 years. My visits with Mother Mary Francis and her community, and my correspondence with her led me to a much deeper understanding of the contemplative religious life and of its embrace of the entire Church and world through a life totally dedicated to prayer, solitude and penance.

Mother Mary Francis was an extraordinary religious and abbess. Thanks be to God, she has left us a great treasure in her writings which are not only full of spiritual wisdom but also enjoyable to read. In one of her writings, first published under the title, Marginals, and republished after her death under the title, Chastity, Poverty and Obedience, Mother presented the essential way of the renewal which the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council had mandated for religious life, writing:

Vatican Council II has urged us all to go forward. But in the Decree Perfectae Caritatis, it reminds us that we cannot properly go forward unless we look backward, nor soar upward if we do not plunge downward. Neither will it be sufficient to do this once. “The adaptation and renewal of the religious life includes both the constant return to the sources of all Christian life and to the original spirit of the institutes and their adaptation to the changed conditions of our time” (Perfectae Caritatis no. 2; hereafter abbreviated as PC). A constant return. How much of the Church’s ageless wisdom inflames that word; how much of her awareness of the stuff of which her children are made! “He knows what we are made of; he remembers that we are but dust” (Ps 103 [102]:14). So does the Church. She exhorts us to remember that if our efforts to proclaim a new message of religious life do not gather their strength from and discover their character in the original purpose of our religious life and the spirit of our founder, we shall only be carrying dust against the wind.

Mother Mary Francis knew the struggle of authentic renewal of religious life, in accord with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. She was faithful and strong in renewing religious life in her monastery, in accord with the gift of contemplative religious life, first given to Saint Clare of Assisi and reformed by Saint Colette of Corbie. Her joyful but firm adherence to the charism of the Poor Clare Colettine nuns cost her dearly but has borne lasting fruit for their life in our nation and far beyond. I am humbled to think that we share the honor of receiving the Pro Fidelitate et Virtute Award, which she received in 2002.

In speaking of contemplative religious, I am pleased to recall with greatest gratitude the number of contemplative women religious in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, which I was privileged to serve from January 26, 2004 until June 27, 2008. I think especially of the Carmelites, the Pink Sisters (Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters) and the Poor Clares.

I am thinking, too, of the apostolic religious whom I have been privileged to know during my years as a priest and Bishop, and who have been an inspiration to me and have been outstanding co-workers in the apostolate. As Bishop of La Crosse, I was convinced of the need of a convent and house of formation for young women, in which the authentic renewal of religious life would be manifest. Mother M. Ingeborg Rohner, F.S.G.M., of the Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Province of the Franciscan Sisters of the Martyr Saint George put faith in what I was proposing to do and generously missioned four of her Sisters to the Diocese of La Crosse to undertake what was a new apostolate for her congregation. The Franciscan Sisters of the Martyr Saint George have continued to assist me, over the years, in a host of ways. I am deeply grateful for the witness of their consecrated life and the zeal with which they undertake the apostolate, all in fidelity to their spiritual father, Saint Francis of Assisi, and their foundress, Mother M. Anselma Bopp.

I also owe a deep depth of gratitude to the Nashville Dominicans who, after my eight years of begging, first for the Diocese of La Crosse and then for the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, missioned three Sisters to the Archdiocese of Saint Louis for the significant strengthening of the apostolate of the Catholic schools in the Archdiocese.

There are so many other communities who have remained faithful and strong in living the religious life, and who have been a great source of inspiration and strength for me. I am grateful for the faithful friendship of the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Mary and Saint Louis, the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart, the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, and the Sisters Devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to name just some of the religious communities whose consecration and apostolates have been a great blessing to me. To all members of institutes of the consecrated life whom I have been privileged to know and with whom I have been privileged to work I express my heartfelt esteem and gratitude.

Turmoil in Religious Life

Sadly, the great joy of our gathering in these days to celebrate the life and death of Father John A. Hardon, S.J., an outstanding religious priest, and to honor and encourage so many institutes of the consecrated life which are striving to be faithful are overshadowed by the public and obstinate betrayal of religious life by certain religious. Who would ever imagine that religious congregations of Pontifical Right would openly organize to resist and to frustrate an apostolic visitation, that is, a visit to their congregations carried out under the authority of the Vicar of Christ on earth, to whom all religious are bound by the strongest bonds of loyalty and obedience? Who would ever imagine that consecrated religious would, in defiance of the Bishops as successors of the Apostles, publicly endorse legislation containing provisions which violate the natural moral law in its most fundamental tenet, the safeguarding and promoting of innocent and defenseless human life, and lacking provisions which safeguard the free exercise of the rightly formed consciences of health care workers?

We witness a growing tendency of certain consecrated religious to view themselves outside and above the Body of Christ, as a kind of parallel body which looks upon the Church with an autonomy which contradicts the very nature of their consecration. We have come a long way from the total loyalty to the Roman Pontiff, which was at the heart of the foundation of the Society of Jesus and of every religious congregation. Religious life lived in the heart of the Church and, for that reason, religious congregations are, by their very nature, united in total loyalty to the Roman Pontiff. It is, of course, an absurdity of the most tragic kind to have consecrated religious knowingly and obstinately acting against the moral law.

The spiritual harm done to the individual religious who are disobedient and also the grave scandal caused to the faithful and to people, in general, are of incalculable dimensions. What immense harm is being done to the witness of the Church at a time when that witness needs to be especially clear and courageous! What, for instance, are non-Catholics and non-Christians to think about the teaching of the Church, when they observe the open rebellion against her teaching by her members totally consecrated to uphold that same teaching?

The Church must be clear and strong about her teaching and discipline for the good of her members and, indeed, of all souls. Such a situation of rebellion against her teaching and discipline cannot be permitted to continue. The proper sanctions must be applied, in order to call back the religious in question to live the truth of their religious vocation and to repair the grave scandal which they have caused.

In this regard, I wish to conclude by appealing to members of institutes of the consecrated life to devote themselves anew, by prayer, sacrifice and apostolic engagement, to the fundamental and, in fact, irreplaceable, apostolates of Catholic education and Catholic health care. Over the past decades and, in a particularly shocking manner, over the past year or so, we have witnessed in our nation the betrayal of these apostolates to the degree they have forfeited their Catholic identity and are no longer, as they are meant to be, instruments of the new evangelization. For the “thirty pieces of silver” of secular acceptability and material stability, they are cooperating with the forces of the culture of death, the forces which are destroying countless human lives and will destroy us as a nation.

We celebrate, in these days, the victory of our Risen Lord over sin and everlasting death, the victory in which, by God’s grace, we all share. Christ did not achieve our eternal salvation by accommodating Himself to the culture in which He lived, to the agenda of the Roman Empire or the leaders of the Jewish people, but by remaining faithful and strong in the witness to the truth, the truth of His Father, the truth by which our world and we were created and are sustained in being. The dialogue of Our Lord with Pontius Pilate, as it is recorded in the Passion according to Saint John, provides a most fitting meditation for us, as we contemplate the question: What are we to do in the present crisis? I appeal to consecrated persons, in particular, to be a beacon of fidelity to truth in Christ, especially in the apostolates of Catholic education and Catholic health care.

Yes, the opposition to and even persecution of those who witness to the truth are fearsome. We, however, are called to share in the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Even as Christ alone is the salvation of the world, even so we can only serve the world by our total communion with Him, in doing the truth with love “to the end.” In fact, the world which seems so much opposed to the Church and her witness to the truth is hungering, to the point of starvation, for the unfailing witness of Catholics who are, in Father Hardon’s words, “real,” who are ready to be martyrs, if necessary, for what is true and good.

Finally, the United States of America bears a particularly heavy responsibility to the world in giving witness to the truth. As an Italian prelate observed to me, some months ago, our nation is still Christian, the battle against secularism has not yet been completely lost in the United States as it seemingly has been lost in Europe. Europe is looking to the United States to see that indeed the battle against secularism can be won.

I urge you, in particular, to assist the lay faithful, above all politicians and elected representatives, government officials, and ministers of justice who are Catholic, to give a coherent witness to the truth of the moral law, written by God into His creation and upon every human heart. Catholics are in positions of leadership in our nation to an extent that I would never have dreamed as I was growing up in the 1950s. The Vice President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, five justices of the Supreme Court, and some 140 or so Senators and Congressmen say that they are Catholics. It cannot be that Our Lord has given Catholics such positions of leadership, in order that they may betray the truth of the natural moral law, cooperate in the wholesale killing of the innocent and defenseless unborn, in the artificial generation and destruction of embryonic human life, in the violation of the integrity of the marital union, and in the denial of fundamental rights of conscience. On the other hand, what a force for the transformation of our nation they could be, if they would be faithful and strong in the safeguarding of the truth about the inviolable dignity of all human life, the integrity of the union of one man and one woman in marriage for the procreation of new human life, and the sanctity of the rightly formed conscience.

Do not doubt influence which you can have. Was not the Speaker of the House glowing in her report that so many religious Sisters were in support of her proposed health care plan? Was not a religious Sister one of the few recipients of a pen which the President of the United States used to sign the same health care plan into law? Now is the time for us all and, in particular, for consecrated persons to stand up for the truth and to call upon our fellow Catholics in leadership to do the same or to cease identifying themselves as Catholics.

In closing, I thank you, once again, for the honor of the Pro Fidelitate et Virtute Award, and for the fidelity and strength of the Institute on Religious Life and its members. I ask your prayers for me. Be assured that I pray for you daily.

May God bless you always!


The Most Reverend Raymond L. Burke
Archbishop Emeritus of Saint Louis
Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura