Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke has called on Catholics to defend the
sacrament of marriage and the Christian family even at the cost of
suffering. Preaching on July 25 at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
in Wisconsin, the cardinal encouraged married couples to embrace their
vocation as a path to holiness.
"The grace of Holy Matrimony is
not an ideal to which only a few can aspire," he said, "but an objective
reality, a supernatural gift, which leads husband and wife to seek each
other's eternal salvation along the path of divine love."
The
cardinal concluded: "Let us be ready for martyrdom, if not the red
martyrdom of blood, certainly the white martyrdom of faithful witness to
Our Lord in the face of indifference, ridicule, and persecution."
Cardinal
Burke's appeal comes just two months before the Vatican's October
meeting convened by Pope Leo XIV to celebrate the tenth anniversary of
Amoris laetitia. In this exhortation, Pope Francis repeatedly uses the
language of the "ideal" of marriage, criticizing what he calls a "far
too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage," "this
excessive idealization" (§36), and the "stereotype of the ideal family"
(§57).
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