Posted on 09/14/2023 10:03:40 AM PDT by ebb tide
On Tuesday Cardinal Müller gave a frank interview to Spanish Catholic news website InfoVaticana, in which he has expressed his grave concern about multiple aspects of the upcoming Synod Assembly on synodality and the current state of the Church.
The interview was done in writing as the Cardinal is in Poland, and followed the announcement by the Vatican that at the upcoming Synod Assembly, journalists will only have access to the information that they themselves provide.
According to a report by Loup Besmond of La Croix, Pope Francis apparently is considering imposing pontifical secrecy on the upcoming Synod of Bishops on synodality, not simply on opinions and votes, as was past practice, but on all issues addressed during synod discussions.
Cardinal Müller, former prefect of the Congregations for the Doctrine of Faith, will be among 400 participants (lay people, religious, cardinals and bishops) in the upcoming Synod on synodality.
Asked in the interview how he would be approaching the final phase of the Synod on Synodality, Müller replied:
“I pray that all this will be a blessing and not a harm to the Church. I am also committed to theological clarity so that a Church gathered around Christ doesn’t become a political dance around the golden calf of the agnostic spirit of the age.”
Asked how he received the news of his appointment as a Synod participant, he replied:
“I want to do the best I can for the good of the Church, for which I have dedicated all my life, thought and work until now.”
Asked what message he himself would like to deliver during the Assembly, he wrote:
“Above all I would like to say, in view of the many disappointments of the young people of Lisbon: ‘a Church that does not believe in Jesus Christ, the son of the living God, is no longer the Church of Jesus Christ.’”
“Each participant should first study the first chapter of Lumen Gentium, which deals with the mystery of the Church in God’s plan for salvation. The Church is not the playground of ideologies of ‘godless humanism’, nor of the strategists of the blocked party.
“God’s universal will to save, which we encounter in Christ, the only Mediator between God and man, and which is realised historically and eschatoligically, is the future program of his Church and not the Great Reset of the atheist-globalist “elite” of the billionaire bankers who hide their ruthless personal enrichment behind the mask of philanthropy”
Asked what he thinks of the Vatican decision to make it unacceptable to journalists to follow what is happening in the Synod live, he wrote:
“I don’t know what the intention is behind this measure, but 450 participants will certainly not keep things under wraps. Many will exploit journalists for their own benefit and vice versa. This is the great hour of manipulation, of propaganda of an agenda that does more harm than good for the Church”
Asked what he thinks about the presence of laity at the Synod, he wrote:
“The bishops participate in their office by exercising collegial responsibility for the whole Church together with the Pope. If the laity participate in it with the right to vote, then it is not longer a synod of bishops or an ecclesiastical conference [and] does not have the apostolic teaching authority of the episcopal college. To speak of a Vatican Council III can only occur to an ignorant person, because from the outset a Roman Synod of Bishops is not an ecumenical council – which the Pope could not subsequently declare without ignoring the divine right of the bishops to a Vatican Council III – that could found a new Church surpassing or completing the one supposedly stagnated at Vatican II.
“Whenever populist effects tip the balance towards such spontaneous decisions, the sacramental nature of the Church and its mission is obscured, even if subsequent attempts are made to justify it through the common priesthood of all believers, and to eliminate the substantial difference between it and the priesthood of sacramental ordination (Lumen Gentium 10).”
Asked whether there are other bishops and faithful expressing concern about what might happen at the Synod, he replied:
“Yes, the false prophets (nebulous ideologues) who present themselves as progressives have announced that they will turn the Church into an aid organisation for the 2030 Agenda. In their opinion, only a Church without Christ fits into a world without God. Many young people returned from Lisbon disappointed that the focus was not longer on salvation in Christ, but on a worldly doctrine of salvation. Apparently there are even bishops who no longer believe in God as the origin and end of man and the Saviour of the world, but who, in a pan-naturalistic or pan-theistic way, consider the so-called Mother Earth as the beginning of existence, and climate neutrality as the goal of planet earth.
Asked whether he thinks changes in matters of faith and doctrine can be approved, as some groups within the Church claim, he replied:
“No one on earth can change, add to or take away from the Word of God. As the successors of the apostles, the Pope and the bishops much teach the people what the early and risen Christ, the only teacher, has commanded them to do.”
“… People confuse – which is not surprising given the lack of basic theological education even among bishops – the content of faith and its unsurpassable fullness in Christ, with the progressive theological reflection and growth of the Church’s understanding of faith throughout the ecclesiastical tradition (Dei Verbum 8-10). The infallibility of the Magisterium extends only to the preservation and faithful interpretation of the mystery of faith entrusted once and for all to the Church. The Pope and the bishops do not receive a New revelation (Lumen Gentium 25, Dei Verbum 10.).
Asked what he would do if the Synodal Assembly approved the blessing of homosexual couples, a change in sexual morality, or allowing the female diaconate, he said:
“To bless the immoral behaviour of persons of the same or opposite sex is a direct contradiction of God’s Word and will; it is a gravely sinful blasphemy.
“The sacrament of Holy Orders at the levels of the episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate can provide divine power. Only a baptised man whose vocation has been verified by the Church as to its authenticity can receive this tight. Such demands that receive a majority vote would be obsolete a priori. Nor could they be implemented in canon law by the whole college of bishops with the Pope or by the Pope alone because they contradict Revelation and the clear confession of the Church.
“…In such an extreme situation, from which God can save us, every ecclesiastical official would lose his authority and no Catholic would be obliged any longer to religiously obey a heretical or schismatic bishop (Lumen Gentium 25).
When asked whether enough is being done by the Church and his colleagues to preserve the Church’s truths, Cardinal Müller responded:
“Unfortunately not. One’s sacred task is to proclaim the truth of the Gospel boldly inside and outside the Church. Even Paul once openly opposed Peter’s ambiguous behaviour (Gal. 2) without, of course, questioning his Christ-established primacy.
He pointed out that “a strict distinction must also be made between the Pope’s relationship with his nuncios and Vatican employees and the Pope’s collegial relationship with the bishops, who are not his subordinates but his brothers in the same apostolic office”.
When asked what role the Pope should play at this time, the cardinal responded:
“Throughout the Church’s history, whenever popes have felt or behaved like politicians, things have gone wrong. In politics it is about the power of the people over the people, in the Church of Christ it is about serving the eternal salvation of men, to which the Lord has called me to be his apostles.
“The Pope is seated on the Chair of Peter. And the way Simon Peter is presented in the New Testament, with all his ups and downs, should be a strengthening and a warning to every Pope. In the Upper Room, before his Passion, Jesus says to Peter: When you are converted, strengthen your brethren (Lk 22.32), that is, in the faith of Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt 16:16). Only in this way is he the rock on which Jesus builds his Church, over which the gates of hell will not prevail.
(Interview translated from the Spanish by Diane Montagna)
So much for Bergoglio's call for "transparency" in his Frankenchurch.
Ping
Manipulation=coercion=tyranny. Simple math
Cardinal Müller: please do not have hip replacement or any other surgery in Rome.
So much for Bergoglio’s call for “transparency” in his Frankenchurch.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Synod of Bishops reminds me of the famous Appalachia Meeting of the Mafia in November 1957: a syndicate of assorted fraudsters, scammers, and deviants gathered to confirm their organizational leadership and how best to run their worldwide operations.
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.