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Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Cardinal Burke has developed a Covid 19 infection and is hospitalized in Wisconsin.

 This Roman Church individual. As with that site, not mainstream. Not that Crabgrass is mainstream, but it and the Reflections site are polar extremes. With some overlap, things never being either/or but more-or-less.

DWT has no kind words for the sick Cardinal. Final paragraph of that analysis - 

Burke has said that Catholics cannot vote for Democrats and he once said that Catholics who voted for Obama had "collaborated with evil." He has brought pain and suffering to countless Catholics and he will not be missed outside of a small circle of hateful extremists. Wisconsin has had 704,854 cases of COVID-- 121,058 cases per million and over 8,300 have died. In the last 2 weeks cases have risen 88% and hospitalizations are up 139%. Hospitalizations in Burke's home county, La Crosse, are up 841%. Maybe people there still take him seriously.

 Burke wrote over a year ago about the pandemic

Many with whom I am in communication, reflecting upon the present worldwide health crisis with all of its attendant effects, have expressed to me the hope that it will lead us – as individuals and families, and as a society – to reform our lives, to turn to God Who is surely near to us and Who is immeasurable and unceasing in His mercy and love towards us. There is no question that great evils like pestilence are an effect of original sin and of our actual sins. God, in His justice, must repair the disorder which sin introduces into our lives and into our world. In fact, He fulfills the demands of justice by His superabundant mercy.

God has not left us in the chaos and death, which sin introduces into the world, but has sent His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer, die, rise from the dead and ascend in glory to His right hand, in order to remain with us always, purifying us of sin and inflaming us with His love. In His justice, God recognizes our sins and the need of their reparation, while, in His mercy He showers upon us the grace to repent and make reparation. The Prophet Jeremiah prayed: “We recognize, O LORD, our wickedness, the guilt of our fathers; that we have sinned against you,” but he immediately continued his prayer: “For your name’s sake spurn us not, disgrace not the throne of your glory; remember your covenant with us, and break it not” (Jer 14, 20-21).

God never turns His back on us; He will never break His covenant of faithful and enduring love with us, even though we are so frequently indifferent, cold and unfaithful. As the present suffering uncovers for us so much indifference, coldness and infidelity on our part, we are called to turn to God and to beg for His mercy. We are confident that He will hear us and bless us with His gifts of mercy, forgiveness and peace. We join our sufferings to the Passion and Death of Christ and thus, as Saint Paul says, “complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col 1, 24). Living in Christ, we know the truth of our Biblical prayer: “The salvation of the righteous is from the LORD; he is their refuge in the time of trouble” (Ps 37 [36], 39). In Christ, God has fully revealed to us the truth expressed in the prayer of the Psalmist: “Mercy and truth have met together; justice and peace have kissed” (Ps 85 [84], 10).

That message has to have stayed with him making him ready for whatever fate deals. Hopefully he recovers, and may then have more to say about the illness and how vaccine is not in any way unholy or ungodly. 

May his suffering be lighter from today onward.