(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Erwin Kräutler, a key architect of the Amazon Synod and a proponent of “women priests,” has said that the Church “cannot return” to the time before the “change” that Pope Francis has initiated.
In an interview with the Swiss outlet kath.ch, Kräutler, 84, addressed the possibility of the Catholic Church officially allowing female ordinations and consecrating “proven” married men as priests (viri probabti).
When asked how this “change” can happen in the Church, the Austrian bishop replied, “As a young man, I experienced the Second Vatican Council. That was a springtime for the Church. This spring is needed again.”
“The next pope may be able to do it,” he added.
“Couldn’t the next pope turn the clock back again?” the interviewer asked Kräutler.
“No, he can’t,” he replied. “What Pope Francis has initiated, the Church cannot return to before that.”
While Kräutler showed a generally positive attitude towards the “change” Pope Francis has initiated, he also expressed his disappointment with the Roman pontiff for not implementing his proposals of viri probati and female ordinations.
“I was frustrated and disappointed,” the prelate said. “At the Amazon Synod, 80 percent of the bishops voted in favor of viri probati and the diaconate for women.”
“It is inconceivable that Pope Francis did not mention this at all in his Apostolic Exhortation. A brother bishop, who is otherwise rather traditional, told me: ‘I have four married men that I can ordain immediately.’ That’s why I don’t understand why none of our demands have been implemented.”
Kräutler noted that Francis “provokes an immense hope” but then disappoints by not following through with the changes in Church doctrine that “progressive” prelates are hoping for.
When asked about his expectations for the synodal process of the Universal Church, Kräutler said, “Not much will come of it.”
“The problem is that all the reform issues are not being discussed,” he added.
“When will there be married priests and deaconesses [in the Church]?” the interviewer asked.
“Married priests will come first, then the diaconate for women,” Kräutler asserted. “Women priests will be the next stage.”
READ: Cardinal Sarah’s beautiful defense of priestly celibacy must be read
When the interviewer noted that Pope John Paul II taught that women cannot be priests, Kräutler said, “Unfortunately, the Polish Pope did not realize that women have a completely different position today.”
“In the past, there weren’t even women studying theology,” he continued. “Today, the world looks different. We need women – also in [ordained] ministries. It is unacceptable for very old men to create a theology of women.”
Pope John Paul II confirmed the authoritative teaching of the Church that only men can be ordained priests in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, in which he stated that “in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
In a response to a dubium question, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was the head of the Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) at the time, confirmed that this teaching by John Paul II “requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium[.]” Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who formerly led the CDF, has also stressed that no pope, synod, or council “could make possible the ordination of women as bishop, priest, or deacon.”
Kräutler said that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) and John Paul II opposed the heterodox liberation theology espoused by Kräutler and some of his closest allies because they “never understood” it.
The prelate reiterated his view that indigenous people in the Amazon region, where he was a bishop for over 30 years, do not understand the concept of celibacy. He said that when he told the indigenous villagers that he was not married as a young bishop, he got strange looks “because the concept of celibacy doesn’t fit into the reality of their lives.”
When he got older, he “resorted to a ‘white lie’ and said that my wife was far, far away.”
“The villagers thought it was a shame that I had come alone. But at least there were no more strange reactions.”
He said that to combat the lack of priests in the Amazon region and enable the people to have Holy Mass every Sunday, “proven people from the parishes” should be ordained as “priests or priestesses.”
READ: 81-year-old liberation theologian is an architect of the Amazon Synod
Erwin Kräutler: The heterodox ‘Amazon’ bishop
Bishop Erwin Kräutler was born in Koblach, Austria, and was bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Xingu-Altamira, located in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, from 1981 until 2015. He was one of the key architects of the heterodox 2019 Amazon Synod.
He has repeatedly advocated for female ordinations and ordaining “proven” married men (viri probati), claiming that indigenous people “don’t understand celibacy.”
READ: Bishop who wrote Amazon working doc wants overhauled priesthood, ordained women
However, Rexcrisanto Delson, the grandson of an indigenous ex-shaman, told LifeSiteNews in 2019 that Kräutler’s remarks about indigenous people not understanding celibacy are “very offensive” and “very racist” to him.
However, Rexcrisanto Delson, the grandson of an indigenous ex-shaman, told LifeSiteNews in 2019 that Kräutler’s remarks about indigenous people not understanding celibacy are “very offensive” and “very racist” to him.
“These people who believe such things seem to have forgotten the role of missionaries as understood in the past when the primary purpose and goal was to convert and baptize people – to save their souls,” Delson said.
“This Bishop [Kräutler] fails to understand that the indigenous do not understand celibacy because their intellect has not been fed the Truth of our Catholic faith,” he continued.
“Of course, they may struggle with the idea of a man not having a wife because this is foreign to them. They aren’t the first who thought this. I’m sure when the [Belgian] priests and missionaries began evangelizing to my pagan Igorot ancestors, they too were wondering why these men did not have a wife. To them, it isn’t natural.”
“That is precisely why they needed to be taught the ‘supernatural’ of our Catholic faith.”
“This is why the Church needs to focus on elevating the intellect of the indigenous instead of lowering Herself to their pagan beliefs and practices.”
“After learning about the priesthood and the significance of a priest as persona Christi, they [Delson’s pagan ancestors] grasped the Truth about celibacy,” he concluded.
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