"The formal authority of the Pope cannot be separated from the fundamental connection with Holy Scripture, Apostolic Tradition and the dogmatic decisions of the Magisterium that preceded him."
The final phase of the Synod of Synodality is approaching, which will begin this coming October. Among the 400 attendees (including cardinals, bishops, lay people and religious) will participate the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Cardinal Müller.
Since the Vatican has announced that journalists will only have access to the information they themselves provide, we wanted to talk to the German cardinal about this upcoming ecclesial event that has a good part of the Church in suspense.
As you will see throughout the interview (done in writing since the cardinal is in Poland this week) Müller addresses the issues raised without shying away from them and going to the heart of the issue.
Interview with Cardinal Müller:
Q-This coming October the final phase of the Synod of Synodality will begin. How do you face it?
R-I pray that all this is a blessing and not a harm to the Church. I am also committed to theological clarity so that a Church gathered around Christ does not become a political dance around the golden calf of the agnostic spirit of the age.
Q-Pope Francis included you on the list of participants who will have a voice and vote in the Synod. How did you receive the news?
A-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.
Q-Have you planned the message you are going to transmit during the Assembly?
A-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 must first study the first chapter of Lumen Gentium, which deals with the mystery of the Church in the plan of salvation of the Triune God. The Church is not the playground of the ideologues of “humanism without God” nor of the strategists of impeded party conferences.
God's universal will to save, found in Christ, the only Mediator between God and men, realized historically and eschatologically, is the future program of His Church and not the Great Reset of the atheist-globalist "elite" of billionaire bankers who hide their ruthless personal enrichment behind the mask of philanthropy.
Q-What do you think of the measure that journalists are not allowed to follow what is happening live?
A-I don't know the intention behind this measure, but 450 participants certainly won't keep things closed. Many will exploit journalists for their own benefit or vice versa. This is the great hour of manipulation, of the propaganda of an agenda that does more harm than good to the Church.
If the laity participate in it with the right to vote, then it is no longer a synod of bishops
Q-There are some voices that have criticized the presence of lay people in this synodal Assembly. What do you think?
A-The bishops participate in their office by exercising collegial responsibility over the entire Church together with the Pope. If the laity participate in it with the right to vote, then it is no longer a synod of bishops or an ecclesiastical conference that does not have the apostolic teaching authority of the episcopal college. Talking about a Third Vatican Council can only occur to an ignorant person, because a Roman synod of bishops is not from the beginning an ecumenical council, which the Pope could not subsequently declare without ignoring the divine right of the bishops to a Vatican Council. III, which could found a new Church surpassing or completing the one supposedly stagnant in the Second Vatican Council.
Every time populist effects tip the balance towards such spontaneous decisions, the sacramental nature of the Church and its mission are obscured, even if later an attempt is made to justify it with the common priesthood of all believers and an attempt is made to level out the difference in essence with respect to to the priesthood of sacramental ordination (Lumen Gentium 10).
Q-There are more and more bishops and faithful who express their concern about what may happen during this Synod. Is there something to fear?
A-Yes, the false prophets (ideologists of the clouds) who present themselves as progressive have announced that they will turn the Catholic Church into an aid organization for the 2030 Agenda. In their opinion, only a Church without Christ fits in a world without God. Many young people returned from Lisbon disappointed because the focus was no longer on salvation in Christ, but on a doctrine of worldly salvation. Apparently there are even bishops who no longer believe in God as the origin and end of man and savior of the world, but who, in a pannaturalist or pantheist manner, consider that the supposed mother earth is the beginning of existence and climate neutrality the goal of planet Earth.
Q-Do you think that changes in matters of faith and doctrine can be approved as some groups and movements within the Church intend?
A-No person on earth can change, add or take away the Word of God. As successors of the apostles, the Pope and the bishops must teach the people what the earthly and risen Christ, the only teacher, has ordered them to do. And only in this sense does the promise apply that the army and the head of his body always remain with his disciples (Mt 28, 19f). People confuse, not surprisingly given the lack of basic theological education even among bishops, the content of the faith and its unsurpassed fullness in Christ with the progressive theological reflection and growth of the consciousness of the faith of the Church through throughout the ecclesiastical tradition (DEI verbum 8-10). The infallibility of the Magisterium only extends to the preservation and faithful interpretation of the mystery of faith entrusted once and for all to the Church (depositum fidei or sound doctrine, the teaching of the Apostles). The Pope and the bishops do not receive a new revelation (Lumen gentium 25, DEI verbum 10).
Q-What would happen if, for example, the Synod Assembly approved the blessing of homosexual couples, the change in sexual morality, the elimination of the obligation of priestly celibacy or allowing the female diaconate? Would you accept it?
A-Priestly celibacy must be eliminated from this list, since the connection of the sacrament of Holy Orders with the charisma of voluntary renunciation of marriage is not dogmatically necessary, although this ancient tradition of the Latin Church cannot be arbitrarily abolished on a whim. stroke of a pen, as the Council Fathers expressly emphasized at the Vatican Council (Presbyterorum Ordines 16). And the loud agitators are rarely concerned with the salvation concerns of priestless communities, but rather with attacking this evangelical advice, which they consider anachronistic or even inhumane in a sexually enlightened age. Blessing the immoral behavior of people of the same or opposite sex is a direct contradiction to the word and will of God, a gravely sinful blasphemy.
Only a baptized person whose vocation has been verified by the Church as to its authenticity can receive the right. Such demands with a majority vote would be obsolete a priori. Nor could they be implemented in canon law by the entire college of bishops with the Pope or by the Pope alone because they contradict the revelation and clear confession of the Church.
The formal authority of the Pope cannot be separated from the substantive connection with Sacred Scripture, Apostolic Tradition and the dogmatic decisions of the Magisterium that preceded him. Otherwise, as Luther misunderstood the papacy, he would put himself in the place of God, who is the sole author of his revealed truth, instead of simply testifying faithfully, on the authority of Christ, to the revealed faith in an unabridged manner. and unadulterated. and presenting it authentically to the church.
In such an extreme situation, from which God can save us, every ecclesiastical official would have lost his authority and no Catholic is anymore obliged to religiously obey a heretical or schismatic bishop (Lumen Gentium 25; cf. response of the bishops to the misinterpretation of Bismarck). of the First Vatican, 1875).
Q-Do you think that enough is being done by the Church to clearly defend the truths that are under discussion today?
R-Unfortunately no. His sacred task is to boldly proclaim the truth of the Gospel inside and outside the church. Even Paul once openly opposed Peter's ambiguous behavior (GAL 2), without, of course, questioning his primacy established by Christ.
We must not allow ourselves to be intimidated within the Church or be seduced by the prospect of a race for good behavior desired from above. Bishops and priests are appointed directly by Christ, which must be taken into account by their respective superiors in the hierarchy. However, they are in community with each other, which includes religious obedience in matters of faith and canonical obedience in the government of the Church. But this does not exempt anyone from his conscientious responsibility directly before Christ, shepherd and teacher, whose authority sanctifies, teaches and guides believers.
A strict distinction must also be made between the relationship of the Pope with his nuncios and Vatican employees and the collegial relationship of the Pope with the bishops, who are not his subordinates but his brothers in the same apostolic office.
Whenever Popes have felt or behaved like politicians, things have gone wrong.
Q-What role should the Pope play at this time?
Throughout the history of the Church, 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 the service of the eternal salvation of men, to which the Lord has called men to be his apostles. The Pope is sitting in the Chair of Peter. And the way Simon Peter is presented in the New Testament, with all the ups and downs of him, should be a strengthening and a warning to every Pope. In the Upper Room, before his Passion, Jesus tells Peter: Once you are converted, strengthen your brothers (Lk 22:32), that is, in the faith of Christ, Son of the living God (Mt 16:16 ). Only then is he the rock on which Jesus builds his church, the gates of hell cannot be overcome.
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