De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

I have been looking forward to getting together with Gavin and Katherine to discuss some of the extraordinary developments in the Catholic world over the last couple of weeks and we managed to find some time on Saturday. We talked about Fr. Altman's claims that Pope Francis is not the Pope , the Vatican launching a very public attack on Bishop Joseph Strickland  and Cardinal Müller, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Benedict XVI, who gave an interview to Spanish news website InfoVaticana last week - I posted an English translation here - in which he states (among other things): 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 vol...

Cardinal Müller, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Benedict XVI, has given a characteristically frank interview to Spanish Catholic news website InfoVaticana, in which he expressed his grave concern about multiple aspects of the upcoming Synod Assembly on synodality and the current state of the Church. This is the text: 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 address...

On Thursday, October 6, Gerhard Cardinal Müller discussed the ongoing Synod on Synodality and other topics in a roughly 30-minute interview on EWTN’s The World Over with Raymond Arroyo.  The World Over and especially the Papal Posse have provided a truly invaluable source of reporting throughout the Franciscan Pontificate. The reporting there has proven to be a real reality check for papal tailgaters & sycophants that their cynical narrative is failing to touch anyone but those who hate the Church and want to destroy her. I have always found it comforting to know that I was not the only one who felt dismayed at the direction Pope Francis was taking on any number of issues. Just take the Pontifical Academy for Life, for example. Set up in 1994 to defend and promote the Church's teaching on life, on 18th November 2016, Pope Francis dismissed virtually everyone involved and appointed a new staff. Since then we have seen the Academy hijacked and transformed from a faithful evagel...

One important point Cardinal Müller made in his interview which I failed to report on yesterday was this: Question: And yet many people would like to see the CDF being more of a defender of the faith, especially today. It’s almost as if there’s an absence of authority of defending the faith coming from the Vatican. What do you say to that? Answer: I always tried to avoid this impression. I gave many talks around the world. What I offered was this promotion of the faith and all the teaching, defending the faith, new questions of dogma and moral [questions], and especially the challenges of bioethics and all these big efforts, such as gender ideology, which will absolutely destroy the fundament of human existence, family and future. This speaks to one of my major concerns in all this. Instead of addressing really important problems like this, the hierarchy of the Church is embroiled in a bitter internal battle, which seems to largely be about power, which must seem largely uni...

Cardinal Müller speaks to Edward Pentin in this morning's National Catholic Register in what I think is the most important and revealing interview I have read regarding the situation in the Church at the moment. I have felt frustrated with Cardinal Müller who obviously understands the depth of crisis we are in, but has remained quiet and publicly supportive of the Pope when he could have spoken out against Amoris Laetitia and Pope Francis' lack of response to the dubia . Now he has been removed as prefect of the Congrgation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there is a real risk that any comments he makes will be see as sour grapes. HOWEVER, it strikes me that in this interview, the Cardinal is very balanced and very gracious, making his respect for the person of the Pope clear, while also making his opinion on certain controversial issues equally clear. I found his lament:  "I am sure that anybody will denounce me also for this interview, but I hope that the Holy ...

A couple of days ago 1 Peter 5 posted  this story , which reported that a source inside the Vatican had said that, before dismissing Cardinal Müller, Pope Francis asked five pointed and very controversial questions of the head of the CDF. It received a good deal of attention straight away on the internet as the exchange is quite extraordinary. The questions reported were as follows: Are you in favor of, or against, a female diaconate? “I am against it,” responded Cardinal Müller. Are you in favor of, or against, the repeal of celibacy? “Of course I am against it,” the cardinal responded. Are you in favor of, or against, female priests? “I am very decisively against it,” replied Cardinal Müller. Are you willing to defend Amoris Laetitia? “As far as it is possible for me,” the Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith replied: “there still exist ambiguities.” Are you willing to retract your complaint concerning the dismissal of three of your own employees? Cardinal Mül...

As Catholics reel after Pope Francis fails to renew Cardinal  Müller's position as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ,  traditionally known as La Suprema , or the "supreme" congregation, it is interesting to look back to a source I seldom quote, the National Catholic Reporter , to see what was said about  Müller's   replacement, Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer SJ, formerly Secretary of the CDF, when he was appointed secretary: As rumors of the appointment began to circulate early this week, I reached out to Ladaria's colleagues at the Gregorian and on the ITC for a "read" on who he is, and what one might expect from him at the CDF. It's telling that the two most common terms Italians used to characterize him were gentile , meaning "kind," and affidabile , meaning "reliable" -- both in the generic sense that he's a responsible, hard-working person, and in the more narrow ecclesiastical sense that h...

A while back , I tried to look at the problem with Amoris laetitia as it relates to the moral norms always taught by the Church, and defined in the Papal Encyclical Veritatis Splendor . In a strange interview with a Belgian Magazine reported today , Cardinal Müller re-affirms that "There are no circumstances in which adultery would not be a deadly sin, the pope's Amoris laetitia on marriage and family does not contradict this." The Cardinal goes on to condemn the letter of the four Cardinals and their dubia . His continued insistence that there is no problem here appears, at best, extremely naive. Whilst I agree that the problems with Amoris Laetitia are non-existent when it is interpreted in the light of the Magisterium, the problem is that that is not how it is being interpreted! Whilst Müller continues to assert the constant and settled teaching of the Church on this through the bizarre and unorthodox method of magazine interviews, bishops are teaching the...