VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Speaking to veteran Vatican journalist Edward Pentin, the new head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Cardinal-designate Victor Manuel Fernández, warned about opposition to Pope Francis becoming “heresy and schism.”
The Argentinian prelate made his comments in an email interview conducted with Pentin just prior to Fernández assuming his new role as prefect of the CDF on September 11.
Fernández – who also expressed continued openness to offering same-sex “blessings” – warned about opposition to the Pope becoming “heresy and schism.” The comment came in reference to another July interview, with Crux, in which he spoke of a need to “accept the recent Magisterium.”
He differentiated between the “‘deposit of faith’ which we must guard and preserve unscathed” and “a particular charism for this safeguarding, a unique charism, which the Lord has given only to Peter and his successors.” Both aspects, said Fernández, are “inseparable and equally important.”
READ: Archbishop Fernández previously argued in favor of condom use, contradicting Catholic doctrine
The answer was in response to Pentin’s question about what Fernández had meant about the “recent Magisterium” and how he would treat clerics “who won’t subscribe to the Holy Father’s magisterium as they might see it as contradicting established Church teaching.”
Expanding in his reply, Fernández stated that the “recent Magisterium” is not a “deposit” like the “deposit of Faith,” but rather “a living and active gift, which is at work in the person of the Holy Father.”
“I do not have this charism, nor do you, nor does Cardinal Burke,” he said, in what was perhaps a veiled dig at the American cardinal who made waves recently with a book foreword in which he strongly criticized the Synod on Synodality.
“Today only Pope Francis has it,” said Fernández. “Now, if you tell me that some bishops have a special gift of the Holy Spirit to judge the doctrine of the Holy Father, we will enter into a vicious circle (where anyone can claim to have the true doctrine) and that would be heresy and schism.”
He added that “heretics always think they know the true doctrine of the Church,” accusing both “progressives” and “some traditionalist groups” of falling into “this error.”
However, Fernández’s words appear to fall foul of a warning made by former CDF prefect Cardinal Gerhard Müller, in comments that he gave to LifeSite upon the announcement of Fernández as the incoming CDF prefect.
READ: EXCLUSIVE Cardinal Müller reacts to Pope Francis’ new appointment to Vatican’s Doctrine chief
Speaking to LifeSite in July, Müller reiterated his condemnation of Fernández’s 2015 suggestion that “any diocese could become the seat of Peter’s successor.” However, some of the German cardinal’s warnings dealt with Fernández’s arguments surrounding the Pope’s level of authority.
“The religious obedience owed by all Catholics to the universal episcopate, and especially to the Pope, refers only to the supernatural truths of the doctrine of faith and morals (including the natural truths in ontology, epistemology, and ethics, which are the presuppositions of the knowability of the Word of God in our human minds),” said Müller.
With his peculiar phrasing, and introduction of the term “charism” alongside the “deposit of faith,” Fernández appeared to introduce the Pope’s personal actions and words as part of the Magisterium to be followed. But Müller outlined Catholic teaching regarding such a stance, stating:
The Pope and bishops cannot demand obedience for their private opinions, and certainly not for teachings and actions that would contradict revelation and the natural moral law. This was declared already in 1875 by the German bishops against the misinterpretation of the teachings of Vatican I by the German Chancellor Bismarck. Pope Pius IX expressly agreed with this (Denzinger-Hünermann 3115; 3117).
Müller further warned that even the Pope and the bishops are not a new source of truth, but are themselves to conform to the teachings of Scripture and Tradition:
The Pope and bishops are bound to Holy Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition and are by no means sources of additional revelation or of revelation which supposedly needs to be adjusted to be in accord with the present state of science.
Indeed, as the First Vatican Council taught about the teaching authority of the Pope: “the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles.”
Commenting on this, philosopher Dr. Edward Feser wrote that:
Papal teaching, then, including exercises of the extraordinary Magisterium, cannot contradict Scripture, Tradition, or previous binding papal teaching. Nor can it introduce utter novelties.
Popes have authority only to preserve and interpret what they have received. They can draw out the implications of previous teaching or clarify it where it is ambiguous. They can make formally binding what was already informally taught.
“But,” he added, “they cannot reverse past teaching and they cannot make up new doctrines out of whole cloth.”