(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent LifeSiteNews his comments on the Synod on Synodality that concluded yesterday after a three-week session in Rome.
In his introductory remarks to his two short statements on topics of the synod (see full texts below), the cardinal made it clear that he had “very little influence” over the discussions at the synod and was only once able to “speak in public,” but added that “for heretics and globalists, there was no pontifical secret.” Müller strongly insisted that seminarians should not be indoctrinated “by repeating the neo-Marxist and pseudo-psychological phraseology of the cultural revolution of the last century.”
Rather, “we must orient them in the personal love of Christ with respect to Christian anthropology and moral and social theory,” thus rejecting an injection of leftist ideas into the Catholic priesthood, he said.
While the conversations at his table during the synod were “good,” the German prelate explained, the “influence on the whole course and the agenda was visible in everything (blessing of extramarital sexuality, before and outside marriage, diaconate and priestly ordination for women, leveling of the differences between priests, bishops and laity)… and it was already visible in the selection of the synod participants for the press conference, where they monotonously repeated their theses.”
Continued the cardinal: “For [the] heretics and globalists, there was no pontifical secret. The call to harmony is to say that no one may oppose this agenda if he does not want to be pilloried as a rigorist, traditionalist, clericalist.”
Next to the danger of being stigmatized, Müller also observed the problematic use of the word “Holy Spirit” during the synod sessions: “It has been quite un-Catholic/unorthodox to always speak of the Spirit without considering that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person and not a fluid being, and therefore can only ever be mentioned together with the Son and the Father. Cf. 1 John 4:1sq.”
Here, Müller requested that we present the entire passage of Holy Scripture which speaks of the important discernment of spirits and the dangers of false prophets:
1 Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 2 By this is the spirit of God known. Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God: 3 And every spirit that dissolveth Jesus, is not of God: and this is Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he cometh, and he is now already in the world 4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome him. Because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. 5 They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak, and the world heareth them.
“Only he who believes in the incarnated Son of God has the Spirit of Christ in contrast to the spirit of the world or the spirit of the Antichrist,” Müller insisted.
At the beginning of the Synod on Synodality on October 4, LifeSiteNews’ Rome Correspondent Michael Haynes reported that the Vatican fell short of demanding a full pontifical secret from the participants of the synod, whose violation would bring down excommunication upon anyone who violates it. Strict “confidentiality,” however, was requested by the Vatican, thus avoiding that any controversial debate would be leaked to the public.
Cardinal Müller, in his comments to the synod participants, sternly reminded his audience that “a Church that no longer confesses like Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the living Son of God, is no longer the Church of Jesus Christ.”
Please see here both statements:
Statement of October 6, 2023:
Card. Gerhard Ludwig Müller [Form A Table 06-07].
06.10. 2023
A church that no longer confesses like Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the living Son of God, is no longer the Church of Jesus Christ. The Son of the Father and the anointed of the Holy Spirit is in His person the Way to God. In Greek terms: He is He Hodos and the pilgrim church takes the path to the eternal home syn Christo. So the Church of Christ is in its essence and mission syn-hodos with Christ. The name of the church is converntus et congregatio giò is systema kai synodos, as John Chrysostomos says in the commentary on Psalmo 149:1 (PG 55, 493). From this follows the Christological and Trinitarian interpretation of the predicates of a synodal church: participation, community and mission.
- Being a Christian means participation in the divine nature and participation in the high priesthood of Christ and especially of pastors in the ministerial priesthood.
- As the sacrament of the world’s salvation in Christ, it is a sign and instrument of the most intimate communion with God and the unity of all humanity.
- The sacramental Church is the present Christ and thus the continuation of the mission of the Son by the Father for the salvation of the world. The risen Lord himself says to the apostles and their successors, Go and make disciples of all nations, by no means excluding the Chinese (!) from the Chinese faith and baptism…And as he did with the disciples of Emmaus, today he promises to stay with us and to accompany his pilgrim Church, he means synodically, to the end of the world.
Statement of October 11, 2023:
Card. Gerhard Ludwig Müller [Modulo B 1 Tavolo 02-06].
11.10.2023
Vatican II is the best guide for orienting the Church in the twenty-first century. Because its doctrine is the authentic expression of the Catholic faith.
I would like to say just something about the ministerial priesthood.
“Presbterorum Ordinis” points out the important tasks that ordained priests are to perform in the renewal of Christ’s Church. The sacramental priesthood is not a higher degree within the common priesthood of the whole church, as the Protestants said. Rather: “The priesthood of priests presupposes, certainly, the sacraments of Christian initiation, but it is conferred by a peculiar sacrament by which priests, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are marked with a special character which configures them to Christ the Priest, in such a way, that they can act in the name of Christ the Head.” (OP 2)
It is Christ himself who calls, teaches, forms his apostles and their successors and makes them sharers in his consecration and mission from the Father (PO 2).
The vocation crisis, therefore, does not stem from divine grace and the charismatic celibate lifestyle, but, in the case of sexual or spiritual abuse, results from psycho-social and moral defects of individual men, especially when one disregards the sixth and ninth commandments of the Decalogue. But we also know that some innocent people have been accused simply because they are priests and to undermine the credibility of the Church. The grave sin of the indecent abuse of adolescents or impudence between persons of the same or opposite sex excludes from the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9; Rom 1:26f). A mortal sin is the opposite of an expression of God’s love. For God never blesses sin that separates man from the source of eternal life and leads him to ruin.
In forming seminarians to be good shepherds who give their own lives for the flock of Christ, we must not indoctrinate them by repeating the neo-Marxist and pseudo-psychological phraseology of the cultural revolution of the last century, but we must orient them in the personal love of Christ with respect to Christian anthropology and moral and social theory as the Council did magnificently in “Gaudium et spes.”
Any division of the Church in the left-right scheme of political parties or in ideological directions fails. The unity of the Church is not established by a compromise formula, but has its origin and constant source in Christ, her Head, who holds together all the members of his body, which is the Church. No one can lay any other foundation than that which is already laid: Jesus Christ. This synod of bishops bears fruit only when we follow the new and straight path of Syn-hodos, the companionship with Christ, that is, when we follow the One who has revealed himself in his person as He Hodos, the way, the truth and the life.
