November 2023 was a dispiriting month for the reactionary wing of the US Catholic Church.
In the span of a few weeks, following closely on the heels of October’s historic Synodal Assembly, three prominent American figures — Bishop Joseph Strickland, Michael Voris, and Cardinal Raymond Burke — were ousted from platforms they used to sow discord and disunity in the Church.
Although the three decisions were not directly related and each arose from a unique situation, all three of these men shared common cause and were prominent critics and adversaries of Pope Francis.
Likewise, during this pontificate, they all utilized US Catholic media to fuel a movement of opposition against the pope and his image.
Furthermore, it can be said that the words and behavior of each of them sealed their fate.
Two of these figures were on the receiving end of administrative decisions by Pope Francis. Bishop Strickland was removed as bishop of Tyler, his home diocese in East Texas, on November 11.
On November 28, news broke that Pope Francis had decided to stop paying Cardinal Burke’s salary and the rent for his opulent Roman apartment.
In the case of Michael Voris, it appears that his November 21 resignation from Church Militant was forced after the board of directors was informed that he had violated the Michigan-based organization’s morality clause.
For years, each of these men — in his own style — used his position to promote a version of Catholicism that was unambiguously opposed to Pope Francis’s leadership, decisions, and vision for the Church.
All three have openly attacked projects central to Francis’s papacy.
The close timing of these events is largely coincidental, but over the past decade, there are few public figures who have done more to undermine the pope’s reputation, teachings, and initiatives than Strickland, Voris, and Burke.
Burke and Strickland on the Synod
Some might wonder why, after more than a decade of public opposition and dissent, Pope Francis decided to act against Cardinal Burke now.
Let’s be clear — Cardinal Burke has not been “cancelled” by the pope. What happened is that the pope decided to discontinue the financial privileges Burke receives as a cardinal residing in Rome.
Until now, the Vatican paid Cardinal Burke a salary (estimated to be in the neighborhood of €5,000 a month), as well as the rent on his 4,488 square foot apartment, which is a short walk from St. Peter’s square.
Although several news sources have reported the cardinal’s “eviction,” according to my sources in Rome, it is unclear at this time whether Burke is being forced to leave or whether he will simply be required to pay his own rent (in which case one of his many wealthy donors would gladly foot the bill) in order to remain.
Austen Ivereigh reported that Pope Francis told him this decision was made because Burke “had been using those privileges against the Church.”
That’s it. Burke does not face any tribunals, heresy trials, suspensions, or excommunications.
As Michael Sean Winters described it, “Francis has not stripped Burke of his right to vote in conclave. He can process around in his red cappa magna as often as he wishes.”
But why now?
It should be noted that Cardinal Burke turned 75 — the retirement age for a Catholic bishop — on June 30.
Earlier that month, Pope Francis named the 81-year-old Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda to succeed Burke as Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
Although Cardinal Burke was stripped by the pope of his responsibilities with the Order in February 2017, Burke retained the title while other prelates filled the role.
With Cardinal Ghirlanda serving in the position, Burke is now “officially” retired and no longer has any official titles or responsibilities with the Vatican.
Another factor in the timing of Burke’s removal may have been a recent uptick in the ferocity and frequency of his public attacks on Pope Francis, and specifically against Pope Francis’s vision for a synodal Church, in the days and weeks before the October session of the Synod of Bishops.
The 2021-2024 Synod on Synodality, officially titled, “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission,” is widely seen as the capstone of this pontificate.
Pope Francis hopes that this initiative will help pave the way for a Church that welcomes everyone and listens actively to the voices of those on the margins of the Church and society.
Pope Francis has repeatedly emphasized that synodality is essential to our understanding of the Catholic Church, such as in October 2015 when he told the synodal assembly that “Synodality, as a constitutive element of the Church, offers us the most appropriate interpretive framework for understanding the hierarchical ministry itself.”
Rejecting the idea that the hierarchy be “raised up” over others, he told the gathered bishops that “in the Church, it is necessary that each person ‘lower’ himself or herself, so as to serve our brothers and sisters along the way.”
Reminding the bishops of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, he said, “Those who exercise authority are called ‘ministers’, because, in the original meaning of the word, they are the least of all.”
Although his defenders may argue that Cardinal Burke’s preference for royal treatment, garish vestments and liturgical practices signify “true humility” or even “a simple matter of dressing in accord with one’s metaphysical dignity and as a manifestation of the spiritual beauty of one’s office,” the tendency of the Church since the Second Vatican Council has been instead to promote a “noble simplicity.”
Images of Burke being vested and having his shoes tied by assistants prior to Mass, or of him processing down the aisle flanked by servers holding his cappa magna — an expensive 20-foot red cape made from watered silk — above the ground are posted on the internet by his supporters but are circulated among his critics as symbols of everything wrong with the Church.
For many, the cardinal has become the embodiment of paragraph 43 of Francis’s exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, in which the pope writes, “the Church can also come to see that certain customs not directly connected to the heart of the Gospel, even some which have deep historical roots, are no longer properly understood and appreciated.”
Cardinal Burke’s open rejection of Pope Francis’s vision has reached its zenith in his opposition to the synod, about which he told EWTN, “My own personal prayer every day to our Lord is that somehow he makes it so that the Synod doesn’t take place because I can’t frankly see any good coming from it.”
Burke provided the foreword for a book entitled, The Synodal Process Is a Pandora’s Box, which was sent in a mass mailing to priests, deacons, and religious around the world.
In his foreword, he wrote, “Synodality and its adjective, synodal, have become slogans behind which a revolution is at work to change radically the Church’s self-understanding, in accord with a contemporary ideology which denies much of what the Church has always taught and practiced.”
Speaking at a conference in Rome that took place in early October — at the same time the synod participants were on a spiritual retreat on the eve of the assembly — Burke said, “Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our only savior, is not at the root and center of synodality. … This is why it overlooks and, truthfully, forgets the divine nature of the church.”
As for Bishop Strickland, in addition to his posts on X claiming that Pope Francis has a “program of undermining the deposit of faith” and endorsing a video attacking the current pontiff as a “diabolically disoriented clown,” putting his signature on a public letter accusing the pope of heresy, and his rejection of papal teaching while endorsing anti-vaccination propaganda during the Covid pandemic, he has targeted the synod with accusations as well.
Strickland’s opposition to synodality is perhaps less comprehensive than Burke’s but is arguably more bombastic, such as a July 8 post on X where he wrote about the faith that the martyrs died for, and asserted that “the agenda this Synod is pushing seeks to render their sacrifice meaningless.”
Following the synod, at an event in Rome on October 31, Strickland read aloud a letter from a “dear friend” that condemned the Synod participants as “cowards” and once again contrasted them to the martyrs of the Church, saying, “The Synod has gathered cowards in Rome, those who not only refuse to die for our Lord and His Church, but indeed demand that His eternal truths be changed. And if you play nicely with these, then you mock the martyrs.” The letter also espoused sedevacantism, saying of Pope Francis, “this usurper of Peter’s chair has counted life as nought, for he has endangered souls by proclaiming that they are justified before God as they are, with no need of repentance. And he has welcomed those who glorify abortion and has offered to correct no correction, thereby counting the lives of all those babies who have perished in this manner as nothing.”
These are just a few of the more extreme examples of these prelates’ total opposition to Pope Francis and their rejection of the substance of his papacy in its entirety.
Why now?
There is little question that Strickland’s and Burke’s rhetoric was growing increasingly dissident and schismatic.
It seems ironic that since both stridently rejected the concept of synodality, they shut the door to engaging in the means by which the Church might listen and respond to the serious concerns of the faithful.
By saying “no” to synodality, Burke and Strickland forfeit any opportunity to express their gripes within the ecclesial structure of the Church.
Perhaps Pope Francis waited before acting in both cases until the synodal assembly was over, hoping and praying that either would show some sign of synodal conversion while the gathering took place.
Some might question the prudence of Pope Francis’s actions. By cutting both bishops “loose,” doesn’t this allow them to garner sympathy from the public and to seek wider platforms for themselves than before?
This is a real risk.
Strickland recently said to Taylor Marshall that his fans “can still listen. They can still receive letters that I’ll put on my website, which I’m intending to do very soon.”
I have little doubt that if Strickland and his handlers can lead a semi-schismatic movement in the Church if they commit to it.
Meanwhile, there’s little question that Burke’s well-heeled supporters will continue to grant him all the platforms he’s already been utilizing.
They might have to chip in a few extra thousand every month, but perhaps some new donors will help support the cardinal in response to the pope’s actions.
I think Pope Francis’s decisions about Strickland and Burke were ecclesiastical more than practical.
The administrative decisions Pope Francis took will cause little damage to Burke and Strickland themselves, but they are meaningful in light of how the Church is constituted.
Even if his influence was “contained,” it was simply untenable to allow Bishop Strickland to govern a diocese as he continued to slouch towards schism. As small as Tyler is, it is made up of real people, real priests, and real parishes.
They have a right to receive spiritual care and leadership from a shepherd who is in communion with the universal Church and the Successor of Peter.
Meanwhile, Burke was openly and publicly undermining the most important initiative of the global Church in 60 years. It is a scandal that he did it with money given to him by the Pope. It had to stop.
The downfall of Voris
Although we might describe the recent news about Strickland and Burke as “self-inflicted” due to their escalating public behavior, it appears that Michael Voris’s downfall was self-inflicted as a result of his private behavior.
It also seems that there were serious problems with the management of Church Militant that are beginning to come to light.
Former Church Militant Staff member Christine Harrington said on a YouTube video that based on information given to her by two sources, Voris resigned after members of the staff provided the board of directors with “the evidence of Michael Voris’s private life.”
She explained that these staff members sent “an email to the board stating why Voris needs to leave or they were going to walk out.”
Refuting the conspiracy theories suggested by some of Voris’s fans, she explained “It wasn’t the Vatican, wasn’t the Democrats, it was Michael Voris’s own demise. He did it to himself and there were things that were found out that Michael was doing.”
Harrington added, “I’m trying to give Michael all the benefit of the doubt but he didn’t give the Bishops and the priests a benefit of the doubt.”
Looking forward
Perhaps it is no coincidence that Strickland and Burke were among the few bishops that Voris did give the benefit of the doubt.
These three events in November 2023 — the removal of Bishop Joseph Strickland, the financial censure of Cardinal Raymond Burke, and the resignation of Michael Voris from Church Militant — are individually distinct yet significant in the US Catholic Church’s ongoing struggle with internal dissent and opposition to Pope Francis.
These three figures, in their own way, helped to build a growing faction within the US Church that strongly resists the current pontificate.
Their “downfalls,” such as they are, are significant because they will require this faction to change course and make important decisions about how to move forward in their work of undermining the broader Church’s movement towards a future that aligns more closely with the legacy that is being set by Pope Francis.
The immediate practical impacts of the actions taken against the “November Three” — Strickland, Voris, and Burke — are difficult to predict.
But we should recognize that we now have an opportunity for Catholics to reaffirm our commitment to a path of Church renewal and reform and our unity with the pope.
These developments also serve as a reminder that leadership within the Church is not a platform for personal or political agendas but the Body of Christ.
As the People of God, our call is not to attack the Body, but to bring good news to the poor and the light of Christ to the world.