Wisdom and Catholic Teaching from Cardinal Gerhard Müller

12-17-2023Weekly ReflectionCardinal Gerhard Müller

Cardinal Müller is a theologian and formerly was the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. He recently gave an interview on various topics giving his views, but more importantly, clarifying Catholic teaching! Here are some excerpts. You can read the whole interview here: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/11/20/infallibilityand-the-limits-of-papal-power-an-interview-cardinal-gerhardmuller/ What follows are excerpts from the interview:

- The Catholic Church consists “in and of the particular Churches” (Lumen gentium 23) – of the dioceses led by a bishop. From this, we must distinguish that several dioceses are grouped into a patriarchal federation or, at the national level, into a bishops’ conference with an elected president. This is a matter of history, but not of dogmatic, which aims at the sacramental nature of the Church. The Bishop of Rome with the official title of Pope, as the successor of Peter, is the guarantor of the unity of the episcopate. He stands at the head of the bishops, just as Peter stood at the head of the apostles by virtue of his special calling by Christ himself (Mt 10:2; 16:18)

- The primacy of the Roman Church and the personal infallibility of the Pope in the interpretation of revealed truths (emphasis added) are thus of divine right and by no means arise only from a contingent historical constellation or even owe themselves merely to the politically justified claim to power of the bishop of the imperial capital of Rome at that time. Note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: 891 "The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful - who confirms his brethren in the faith he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals.

. . . The infallibility promised to the Church is also present in the body of bishops when, together with Peter's successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium," above all in an Ecumenical Council. When the Church through its supreme Magisterium proposes a doctrine "for belief as being divinely revealed," and as the teaching of Christ, the definitions "must be adhered to with the obedience of faith." This infallibility extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself. Back to Cardinal Müller:

- Infallibility is not a private quality or the unconditional power of command, such as the megalomaniac autocrats of this world claim for themselves, but a humble service to the Church in the name of her Lord Jesus Christ, who came “not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mk 10:45). In the strictly revelation-theological context, the charism of infallibility in the doctrine of faith and morals, with which God has endowed his Church, conferred on him personally — and on the ecumenical Council together with him — by the Holy Spirit, is entrusted to him, so that “the Church of the living God, as the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15), may present to faith in hearing and teaching the unabridged and undisguised revelation made once for all in Christ.

- The Holy See as a subject of international law serves only externally to protect the political independence of the Pope and the Roman Curia from the encroachments of politicians, of which these have been guilty so many times in history. The Vatican is not a state like any other, to which the criteria of modern statehood could or even should be fully applied. But neither is the Vatican State an absolute monarchy, as the opposing polemicists claim, but an independent administration of material Church property, at the service of the spiritual government of the Church.

- In Germany, …the issue is the attempt to take possession of Catholic institutions, church taxes and building stock for an organization that has abandoned the Catholic faith in its essential elements and has definitely left the ground of revelation. The baptismal creed has been replaced by the idol of pagan LGBT ideology. Instead of looking up to the cross of Christ and carrying the flag of victory of the Risen Christ before humanity, the protagonists of the German Synod raise the rainbow flag, which represents a public rejection of the Christian image of man. They have replaced the creed with the confession to the idols of a neo-pagan religion.

- Once again, the words of the eminent philosopher Max Scheler are confirmed: “Man either believes in God, or he believes in an idol (Vom Ewigen im Menschen, Bern-München 51968, 399).

- The Barmen Theological Declaration against the German Christians from 1934 should be held up as a mirror to anyone who wants to remain faithful to Christ: “We reject the false doctrine, as though the church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures, and truths, as God’s revelation. […] We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.”The Holy See’s July 21, 2022 statement puts it this way, “The ‘Synodal Way’ in Germany has no authority to oblige bishops and faithful to adopt new forms of governance and new orientations of doctrine and morals.”

- In the Old Testament, the rainbow is considered a sign of God’s covenant and peace with mankind (Gen 9:11-17). However, the original religious meaning was transformed into a symbol for the peace movement. Since the 1970s the rainbow flag, in a reversal of the natural color sequence, has been considered the banner of the international LGBT ideology, which pretends to stand up against discrimination against homoerotically-inclined people, but is, in reality, the antithesis of natural and revealed anthropology. The human body in its natural way of male and female sexuality is considered merely as material, which the autonomous will transforms into an arbitrary means of orgiastic pleasure, in order to escape the basic feeling of nihilism, i.e. to escape the terrible experience of the death of God. As always, the fellow travelers of atheistic ideologies are not aware of the actual intentions of their protagonists. Or they do not want to know these intentions and have themselves readily deceived by the propaganda that anti-discrimination is the sole agenda. (emphasis added)

-… the personal opinions and life experiences of the reigning pope are no more or less to be accepted than those of any other educated or even decent, ordinary person…. It is therefore completely absurd to think that a council or a pope could abrogate an earlier dogma, or to establish, for example, that the nature of the sacrament of Holy Orders does not include the requirement of the male sex of its recipient, or that two persons of the same sex may have a natural marriage, that is, a marriage of the unbaptized, or a sacramental marriage, that is, one of two baptized persons, or – to give another example – that the gesture of blessing over a same-sex couple has a positive effect with God, who in his creative will blessed man and woman as a married couple (Gen 1:28). In an extreme case, a pope could become a heretic as a private person and thus automatically lose his office if the contradiction to the revelation and the dogmatic teaching of the church is evident.

- The bishop … represents in his person the diachronic and synchronic unity of the Church in the succession of the apostles and the inner continuity of the Church with its origin in Christ and the apostles. Since only the Bishop of Rome is the personal successor of Peter, while the other bishops are successors of the Apostles according to their entire college, the prerogatives of Simon in his capacity as Peter, as the rock on which Christ, the Son of the living God, will build his Church, apply also to the Bishop of Rome.
- …for the general government of the Church, the Pope is to rely first on the College of Cardinals, which, after all, represents the Roman Church and – like the presbyterate advises a bishop
– advises the Pope collegially/synodally. As in all cases, an advisory body composed by the supreme decision-maker along the lines of compliancy and cronyism is of little use and does more harm than good to the incumbent. The latter does not need the praises that flatter human vanity, but the critical expertise of collaborators who are not interested in the benevolent gestures of the superior, but in the success of his office, i.e. the pontificate, for the Church.

- The truth of God is completely revealed in Christ, but it remains the ever greater mystery, which makes itself known to us in our language, but cannot be encompassed by our concepts and therefore cannot be rationalistically broken down to a calculation. The act of faith is not directed towards the confessional formula – as it were, towards the precious setting of the infinitely more valuable diamond – but towards the content, namely towards God, who himself is the truth (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II q. 1 a. 2 ad 2).
- ...every pope must distinguish precisely between his task and himself as a private person. He must not impose his preferences on other Christians, like the Chinese, for instance, must study the Mao Bible or the wisdom of their “Great Chairman.” Nor must a pope or bishop or other church superior abuse the trust, which is readily placed in him in a fraternal atmosphere, in order to provide his incompetent or corrupt friends with church sinecures.

If there was a traitor among the apostles chosen by Jesus and even Peter denied Jesus in the course of the Passion, then we know that church officials throughout history and in the present can also fail and abuse their office selfishly or narrow-mindedly.

- …the best means by which we can assist the Pope and the bishops is through our prayer. We trust in Jesus, the Lord of the Church, who before the Passion said to Simon, the rock on which he would build his Church (Mt 16:18), “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” (Lk 22:31-32).