The former head of the powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, which is responsible for the teachings of the Catholic Church, has spoken out about the dangers of the spread of progressive ideologies within the Church. Cardinal Gerhard Müller’s article detailing the ruthless purge within the Church was published only a day after a so-called Synodal meeting, in which German bishops together with the laity and secular employees of the Church, make joint decisions about the future of liturgical life.
During the Feb. 4 meeting, the delegates released a statement in support of highly controversial issues that threaten to divide the faithful. Among these were the ordination of women, the permission of sexual relationships for priests, blessing of same-sex marriages, and the pro-LGBTQ redefinition of homosexuality in teaching materials.
Now is a “time of tribulation and psychological terror,” remarked Cardinal Müller, writing that believers are being “persecuted and in some countries this is culminating in martyrdom.” The difference is, noted Müller, that “usually this has come from the outside, but now it’s from the inside, in our countries that have old Christian traditions. It’s a new situation.”
The critical remarks are without a doubt chiefly directed against Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. Marx is exceptionally popular with the German mainstream press for his unwavering support for the government’s radical leftists reforms, from the green transition to promotion of mass migration and multiculturalism. He was even present at the unveiling of a statue of his namesake, philosopher Karl Marx in Trier. Reinhard Marx remarked on Feb. 3 that priests should be allowed to marry “not just for sexual reasons,” but so they “wouldn’t be so lonely.” Another church leader, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, also argued that the Church’s teaching on homosexuality is “false” and needs to be abolished.
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Cardinal Müller, on the other hand, believes that many of those promoting such dissenting views are “secularized people” who “want to keep the name ‘Catholic,’ to stay in the institution and take the money, but they won’t accept the teaching of the word of God. They relativize the Catholic faith, but remain with their titles: cardinals, bishops, theology professors — but in reality they don’t believe what the Church is saying,” he claimed. Furthermore, regarding LGBTQ ideology, he remarked that it “is totally idiotic because its Neo-Gnostic mythology is absolutely against human nature, not only in a biological sense, but also in a philosophical one.”
Cardinal Müller also said he believes that a priest blessing a same-sex couple is a blasphemy because it is a “negation of the constitution of human beings as man and woman, and there can be no blessing there.” Müller also protested against the permission of sexual relationships between priests and women. Furthermore, in the article, he raised his voice against those who would “destroy the sacramental priesthood, firstly by being against celibacy and then denying the supernatural institution of this sacrament.” All that would be left of priesthood if their plans came to fruition is “social workers.”
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“To them, God has to justify himself,” remarked Cardinal Müller. He also noted that there is an atmosphere of fear in the church and notions that were common and widely accepted just decades ago, such as “abortion is child-murder,” are not repeated any longer because these voices are brutally attacked in the church. Instead, the cardinal states what many have suspected, which is that the left is exploiting the tragic historic cases of sexual abuse in the Church for their own political goals without actually understanding the real causes of this or real care for the victims.
Müller called on Pope Francis and the Vatican’s ecclesiastical leadership to crack down on these secularizing attempts stemming from within the Church before it is too late. He suggested that the pope should surround himself with more German experts who are able to explain to him what is happening in German society and how this is distorting the Church.
