Posted on 10/03/2023 9:33:34 AM PDT by ebb tide
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, upon request by LifeSiteNews, has issued a short statement endorsing the courageous dubia challenging Pope Francis and several aspects of the upcoming “Synod on Synodality” that go against Church teaching, saying that he is “glad” that “others in their own way do what is necessary” to remind the pope “of his God-given responsibility for the preservation of the Church.”
Today, five cardinals – Walter Brandmüller, Raymond Leo Burke, Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Robert Sarah, and Joseph Zen – published dubia they had previously privately sent to Pope Francis but that went unanswered, in the hopes that by going public they would receive answers to a number of concerns they have regarding Church doctrine and the upcoming synod. In particular, the cardinals asked Francis whether the Church today can “teach doctrines contrary to those she has previously taught in matters of faith and morals,” and whether the Church may “bless” homosexual unions and ordain women to the diaconate.
In his own statement, Müller rejects what he calls a form of “neo-papalism” that parrots whatever Francis says as necessitating obedience, dismissing the idea that one must submit to everything coming from Francis as if it were given to him as “direct information” by the “Holy Spirit.” Müller reminds the faithful that the Church’s hierarchy – with Pope at the top – is bound to serve Christ’s truth, and no other.
But those secular forces that are working against God’s order, Müller says, can use the Pope and other leaders within the Church as “an authority to win the, in their eyes, backward and unenlightened Catholic masses for the New World Order 2030.”
In addition to Müller, other Catholic voices have endorsed the new dubia, including Father Jesusmary, who applauded it with the words: “Praised be the Lord for the courage of Cardinals Brandmüller, Burke, Íñiguez, Sarah and Zen! May Jesus and Mary bless them abundantly for their firm defense of the Church’s traditional teaching!”
Deacon Nick Donnelly called the dubia on X (formerly Twitter) an “excellent intervention on [the] eve of [the] Synod,” with the Catholic blog OnePeterFive stating that the new dubia could “anathematize Pope Francis!”
Catholic commentator Damian Thompson expounded on X: “It is the presence of Cardinal Zen on the list that will cause huge anxiety in the Vatican. He is rightly regarded as one of the heroes of the modern Church, a man of conspicuous bravery who is admired by millions.”
Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s also chimed in with his own comment, writing: “Cardinals doing what cardinals should do. New dubia submitted by Brandmüller, Burke, Sandoval Íñiguez, Sarah, Zen on doctrinal development, blessing of same-sex unions, authority of the Synod on Synodality, women’s ordination, & sacramental absolution.”
In light of so many enthusiastic responses to the dubia, the Vatican and its new doctrine head, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, went to the public, publishing various statements in defense of the Vatican’s position. In one such defense, Fernández uses a quote of Francis about Church teaching in which Francis contends that “while it is true that divine Revelation is immutable and always binding, the Church must be humble and recognize that she never exhausts its unfathomable richness and needs to grow in her understanding.” Fernández also repeats comments he previously made hinting at his openness to same-sex “blessings.”
Fernández argues that as long as there isn’t a “mistaken conception of marriage,” “when a blessing is requested, it is expressing a request for help from God, a plea to be able to live better, a trust in a Father who can help us to live better.”
I have defended Catholic doctrine against pseudo-modernism especially in the last 10 years, thus fulfilling before God in my conscience my responsibility as bishop and cardinal for the sake of orthodox doctrine. But I am glad when others in their own way do what is necessary and remind the Pope of his God-given responsibility for the preservation of the Church in the “teaching of the Apostles” (Acts 2:42).
At present, there is a career-enhancing but heretical position that God reveals Himself only to Pope Francis through direct information in the Holy Spirit, and that bishops have only to blindly repeat these heavenly illuminations and mechanically pass them on like speaking puppets. A bishop, however, by virtue of his consecration, is the successor of the Apostles and authentic teacher of the Gospel of Christ, but in the college of all bishops with the pope as the ever-present visible principle of the unity of the Church in revealed truth and in its sacramental communion. This is the true doctrine of the primacy of the Pope and not the neo-papalism of those who want to surrender the Church of Christ to the ideology of atheistic and anti-human Davos capitalism.
Their fraudulent pretext is the adaptation of the allegedly obsolete Word of God, as if in Christ all truth was not given to us, to the standards of a pseudo-scientific anti-marriage anthropology and a civilization of death (abortion, embryo trafficking, euthanasia, body mutilation by so-called sex change). Every Catholic believes in the divine and Catholic truth that in Peter the bishops of Rome are installed as his legitimate successors. But as a theologically enlightened disciple of Christ, he opposes the caricature of the papacy in both the anti-Roman polemic of the Reformers at the time and the parrot-like understanding of un-Catholic neo-papalism or papagayismo. Thus, they expose the Catholic faith to ridicule in a secular public that does not believe in the fact of the historical Revelation of God in Christ and uses the Pope – whether they realize it or naively go along with it does not matter to them – as an authority to win the, in their eyes, backward and unenlightened Catholic masses for the New World Order 2030.
Ping
It's funny how that "career-enhancing but heretical position" was never operative under Paul VI, John Paul II, or Benedict XVI. God apparently reveals Himself to the Pope "through direct information in the Holy Spirit" only when "God" wants to say something that modernists want to hear.
It seems that early on Pope Francis hid his intellectual light under a large basket.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.