Still no answer from Pope Bergoglio - the clock is ticking

Some of those close to Pope Bergoglio have defended him against the dubia of the four Cardinals. They have turned the tables, so to speak, to appear that the Cardinals  are in the wrong and have no basis to ask the questions and expect an answer.

Pope Bergoglio, by his silence, is creating for himself, and the Church, a grave crisis, perhaps Her gravest ever. The Cardinals have asked straight-forward questions that actually put Bergoglio in a corner. If he answers "no" then his program will be exposed as heretical and he will be compelled to withdraw it. If he answers "yes," then he will convict himself of making heretical statements.

These are facts, they cannot be argued with.


The Cardinals, specifically, I should say, Cardinal Burke also opined that they would follow a course. You can be assured that before they even submitted the dubia to Bergoglio, they knew what they would be required to do and the risk that they were taking in making it public - an act totally justified in Scripture, I should add. 

Dr. John R. T. Lamont is a Canadian Catholic philosopher and theologian. He studied philosophy and theology at the Dominican College in Ottawa and at Oxford University, and has taught philosophy and theology in Catholic universities and seminaries. He is the author of Divine Faith (Ashgate, 2004), and of a number of academic papers; his academic website is at https://acu-au.academia.edu/JohnLamont.

He writes at Rorate Caeli blog and article: "Consideration on the dubia of the four Cardinals." It is long and requires some thoughtful reading. I give you below, the summation.

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2016/12/article-considerations-on-dubia-of-four.html#more 

Various explanations have been proposed of how a Pope can be removed from office if he commits the canonical crime of heresy. The explanations seek to explain how the Pope can lose office without being judged by any of his inferiors in the Church on earth. The simplest and possibly the best explanation that has been offered is that the Pope by pertinaciously maintaining heresy effectively removes himself from office. However, all these explanations agree that a Pope who is juridically guilty of heresy can and must be removed from office. There is no dispute among Catholic theologians on this point – even among theologians like Bellarmine who do not think that a Pope is in fact capable of being a heretic.
            It is to be hoped that the correction of Pope Francis does not have to proceed this far, and that he will either reject the heresies he has announced or resign his office. Removing him from office against his will would require the election of a new Pope, and would probably leave the Church with Francis as an anti-Pope contesting the authority of the new Pope. If Francis refuses to renounce either his heresy or his office, however, this situation will just have to be faced.