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Cardinal Müller on Synod on Synodality: ‘This is the great hour of manipulation’

The Daily Knight
Sep 24, 2023
7 min read

The Daily Knight

On Tuesday Cardinal Müller gave a frank interview to Spanish Catholic news website I nfoVaticana, in which he has expressed his grave concern about multiple aspects of the upcoming Synod Assembly on synodality and the current state of the Church.

The interview was done in writing as the Cardinal is in Poland, and followed the announcement by the Vatican that at the upcoming Synod Assembly, journalists will only have access to the information that they themselves provide.

According to a report by Loup Besmond of La Croix, Pope Francis apparently is considering imposing pontifical secrecy on the upcoming Synod of Bishops on synodality, not simply on opinions and votes, as was past practice, but on all issues addressed during synod discussions.

Cardinal Müller, former prefect of the Congregations for the Doctrine of Faith, will be among 400 participants (lay people, religious, cardinals and bishops) in the upcoming Synod on synodality.

Asked in the interview how he would be approaching the final phase of the Synod on Synodality, Müller replied:

“I pray that all this will be a blessing and not a harm to the Church. I am also committed to theological clarity so that a Church gathered around Christ doesn’t become a political dance around the golden calf of the agnostic spirit of the age.”

Asked how he received the news of his appointment as a Synod participant, he replied:

“I want to do the best I can for the good of the Church, for which I have dedicated all my life, thought, and work up to now.”

Asked what message he himself would like to deliver during the Assembly, he wrote:

“Above all I would like to say, in view of the many disappointments of the young people in Lisbon: a Church that does not believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, is no longer the Church of Jesus Christ.”

“Each participant should first study the first chapter of Lumen Gentium, which deals with the mystery of the Church in the Triune God’s plan of salvation. The Church is not the playground of the ideologues of “godless humanism”, nor of lobbyists for a blocked agenda.

“God’s universal will to save, which we encounter in Christ, the only Mediator between God and man, and which is realized historically and eschatologically, is the future program of His Church and not the Great Reset of the atheist-globalist “elite” of billionaire bankers who hide their ruthless personal enrichment behind the mask of philanthropy.”

Asked what he thinks of the Vatican decision to make it unacceptable to journalists to follow what is happening in the Synod live, he wrote:

“I don’t know the intention behind this measure, but 450 participants will certainly not keep things under wraps. Many will exploit journalists for their own benefit or vice versa. This is the great hour of manipulation, of propaganda of an agenda that does more harm than good to the Church.”

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Asked what he thinks about the presence of laity at the Synod, he wrote:

“The bishops participate in their office by exercising collegial responsibility for the whole Church together with the Pope. If the laity participate in it with the right to vote, then it is no longer a synod of bishops or an ecclesiastical conference [and] does not have the apostolic teaching authority of the episcopal college. To speak of a Vatican Council III can only occur to an ignorant person, because from the outset a Roman Synod of Bishops is not an ecumenical council—which the Pope could not subsequently declare without ignoring the divine right of the bishops to a Vatican Council III—that could found a new Church surpassing or completing the one supposedly stagnated at Vatican Council II.

“Whenever populist effects tip the balance towards such spontaneous decisions, the sacramental nature of the Church and its mission is obscured, even if subsequent attempts are made to justify it through the common priesthood of all believers, and to eliminate the essential difference between it and the priesthood of sacramental ordination (Lumen Gentium 10).”

Asked whether there are other bishops and faithful expressing concern about what might happen at the Synod, he replied:

“Yes, the false prophets (nebulous ideologues) who present themselves as progressives have announced that they will turn the Catholic Church into an aid organization for the 2030 Agenda. In their opinion, only a Church without Christ fits into a world without God. Many young people returned from Lisbon disappointed that the focus was no longer on salvation in Christ, but on a doctrine of worldly salvation. Apparently, there are even bishops who no longer believe in God as the origin and end of man and the Savior of the world, but who, in a pan-naturalistic or pantheistic way, consider the so-called Mother Earth the beginning of existence, and climate neutrality the goal of planet earth.”

Asked whether he thinks changes in matters of faith and doctrine can be approved, as some groups within the Church claim, he replied:

“No one on earth can change, add to, or take away from the Word of God. As successors of the apostles, the Pope and the bishops must teach the people what the earthly and Risen Christ, the only Teacher, has commanded them to do…

“[P]eople confuse—which is not surprising given the lack of basic theological education even among bishops—the content of the Faith and its unsurpassable fullness in Christ, with the progressive theological reflection and growth of the Church’s understanding of faith throughout the ecclesiastical tradition (Dei Verbum 8-10). The infallibility of the Magisterium extends only to the preservation and faithful interpretation of the mystery of faith entrusted once and for all to the Church (depositum fidei [deposit of faith] or sound doctrine, the teaching of the Apostles). The Pope and the bishops do not receive a new revelation (Lumen Gentium 25, Dei Verbum 10.)”

Asked what he would do if the Synodal Assembly approved lifting the obligation of priestly celibacy, the blessing of homosexual couples, a change in sexual morality, or allowing the female diaconate, he said:

“Priestly celibacy must be removed from this list, since the connection of the sacrament of Holy Orders with the charism of voluntary renunciation of marriage is not dogmatically necessary, although this ancient tradition of the Latin Church cannot be arbitrarily abolished with the stroke of a pen, as the Council Fathers expressly underlined at the Vatican Council (Presbyterorum Ordines 16)… And the noisy agitators are rarely concerned with the salvation of communities without priests, but rather with attacking this evangelical counsel, which they consider anachronistic or even inhumane in a sexually enlightened age.

“To bless the immoral behavior of persons of the same or opposite sex is a direct contradiction of God’s Word and will; it is a gravely sinful blasphemy. The sacrament of Holy Orders at the levels of episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate can provide divine power. Only a baptized man whose vocation has been verified by the Church as to its authenticity can receive this by right. Such demands that receive a majority vote would be irrelevant a priori. Nor could they be implemented in canon law by the whole college of bishops with the Pope or by the Pope alone because they contradict [divine] Revelation and the clear confession of the Church.

“The formal authority of the Pope cannot be separated from the substantive connection with Holy Scripture, Apostolic Tradition and the dogmatic decisions of the Magisterium that preceded him. Otherwise, as Luther misunderstood the papacy, he would put himself in the place of God, who is the sole author of His revealed truth, instead of simply witnessing faithfully, in the authority of Christ, to the revealed faith in an unabridged and unadulterated manner and presenting it authentically to the Church.

“In such an extreme situation, from which God can save us, every ecclesiastical official would have lost his authority and no Catholic would be obliged any longer to religiously obey a heretical or schismatic bishop (Lumen Gentium 25; cf. the bishops’ reply to Bismarck’s misinterpretation of Vatican I, 1875).”

When asked whether enough is being done by the Church and his colleagues to preserve the Church’s truths, Cardinal Müller responded:

“Unfortunately not. One’s sacred task is to proclaim the truth of the Gospel boldly inside and outside the Church. Even Paul once openly opposed Peter’s ambiguous behavior (Gal 2), without, of course, questioning his primacy established by Christ.

“We must not allow ourselves to be intimidated within the Church or seduced by the prospect of a race for good behavior desired from above. Bishops and priests are appointed directly by Christ, which the respective superiors in the hierarchy must consider. However, they are in community with each other, which includes religious obedience in matters of faith and canonical obedience in the governance of the Church. But this does not exempt anyone from his responsibility in conscience directly to Christ, the Shepherd and Teacher, whose authority sanctifies, teaches, and guides believers.

“A strict distinction must also be made between the Pope’s relationship with his nuncios and Vatican employees and the Pope’s collegial relationship with the bishops, who are not his subordinates but his brothers in the same apostolic office.”

When asked what role the Pope should play at this time, the cardinal responded:

Throughout the Church’s history, whenever popes have felt or behaved like politicians, things have gone wrong. In politics it is about the power of the people over the people, in the Church of Christ it is about serving the eternal salvation of men, to which the Lord has called men to be his apostles. The Pope is seated on the Chair of Peter.

And the way Simon Peter is presented in the New Testament, with all his ups and downs, should be a strengthening and a warning to every Pope.

“In the Upper Room, before his Passion, Jesus says to Peter: When you are converted, strengthen your brethren (Lk 22:32), that is, in the faith of Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt 16:16). Only in this way is he the rock on which Jesus builds his Church, over which the gates of hell will not prevail.”

(Interview translated from the Spanish by Diane Montagna)

(Photograph of Cardinal Müller | CNS)