Cardinal Müller Accuses the Synod of Wanting to Destroy the Church

Cardinal Gerhard Müller warns that “the Catholic Church is facing ‘a hostile takeover’ by people who ‘think that doctrine is like the program of a political party’ that can be changed by votes.”

To a first question about the diocesan phase, the relationships it generated and the themes that emerged – the LGBT community, the divorced and remarried – the cardinal replied that “the aim of this ideology…was to instrumentalize the Catholic Church on the face, for promoting their own ideas.” He adds that “but, in reality, everybody is welcome in the Church; but he must first repent of his sins and change his life according to the commandments of God.”

The second question relates to empowerment demands for women in the Church and particularly their ordination. The cardinal replies that “In the Church, we have nothing to do with political power” which “has nothing to do with the Gospel and the doctrine of the Catholic Church.” Not to mention that the question of the ordination of women has been definitively settled.

To the third question on the system that is being put in place behind this synod, the answer is quite scathing: “This occupation of the Catholic Church is a hostile takeover of the Church of Jesus Christ…. In this system, they think that doctrine is only like the program of a political party, who can change it according to their votes.”

A third question is aimed at Cardinal Mario Grech, who believes that the attention given to same-sex couples and divorced-remarried people should be an opportunity to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through them. Cardinal Müller sees it as “individual experience put at the same level as objective revelation of God.” He concludes frontally: “How is it possible that Cardinal Grech is more intelligent than Jesus Christ, where he takes his authority to relativize, to subvert God?”

He goes on to accuse the synodal process of turning into a takeover of the Church, and asserts that “if they succeed, it will be the end of the Catholic Church.” And, he adds, “we must resist it like the old heretics of Arianism.”

Speaking of the instrumentum laboris, being drafted by experts – laity, religious sisters, priests and an archbishop – he comments: “They are dreaming of another Church that has nothing to do with the Catholic faith. … and they want to abuse this process for shifting the Catholic Church and not only in another direction, but in the destruction of the Catholic Church.”

To a direct question about the Pope, the Cardinal limits himself to recalling his role in the Church. But he bounces back commenting on Cardinal Grech’s version of ecclesiology, which deserves to be quoted: “A correct reception of the council’s ecclesiology is activating such fruitful processes as to open up scenarios that not even the council had imagined, and in which is the actions of the Spirit that guides the Church is made manifest.”

The former prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith is then even more virulent: “That is coming from the authority of Cardinal Grech, his own revelation for him.… Everybody knows who studied the first semester of theology: the Church and the authorities in the Church cannot change Revelation… to found a new Church according to things and then use all the offices speaking  about the Holy Spirit.”

“The Holy Spirit is not a way of Presbyterianism, or all these pneumatic movements outside of the Catholic Church…substituting Jesus Christ. It is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit that will introduce us into full truths, but once said forever, revealed in Jesus Christ, and therefore not an impulse only for one process which leads us in the end against Revelation; and therefore, we have a clear Apostolic Creed.”

“I am wondering that, as Cardinal Grech presents himself as a super authority, he is not a recognized theologian, he has no importance in academic theology, and now he is presenting a new hermeneutic of the Catholic faith only because he is the secretary of the synod, which has no authority over the doctrine of the Church; and all these synods of bishops and the process have no authority, in no way a magisterial authority.”

Finally, to a question asking if the synod is a preparation for a Vatican III, to create a “pop-culture” council, the answer is unambiguous: “Yes, it certainly is…it gives the impression that it is really possible that the Church can change… and that the Holy Spirit is only a function for them [the organizers of the synod]. This is a way to undermine the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church.”