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Cardinal authority1/7/2023 ![]() ![]() Throughout the interview, Müller and Arroyo presented the synod as a political and ideologically driven undertaking, in which unchangeable moral doctrines were under assault by modernists and secularists. They were especially critical of remarks by Cardinal Grech to the attendees of a recent gathering organized by the Leadership Roundtable where he said, “What has the Church to fear if” LGBT and divorced and civilly remarried Catholics “are given the opportunity to express their intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience? Might this be an opportunity for the Church, to listen to the Holy Spirit, speaking through them also.” Müller understood this as “a hermeneutic of the old cultural Protestantism and modernism, that is, individual experience on the same level as the objective revelation of God.” They seem unable to comprehend the possibility that the Church might benefit in any way from hearing from people whose lives and experiences aren’t always aligned with Church doctrine, but who yet say they “need help, support, and clarity” from the Church. He has no importance in the academic theology.” That said, Cardinal Grech has also publicly rejected the idea that the synod is a political body, such as in 2021, when he told the US bishops at their fall meeting, “The People of God can never be understood as a mass of people that finds the possibility to express itself within the dynamics of representation typical of democratic systems.” A counterfactual to the “hostile takeover” narrative is papal primacy itself: Pope Francis has shown himself willing to intervene in synodal processes gone astray ( as he did in Germany’s Synodal Way), and not to take up each and every recommendation made during past synods (as in Francis’s answer to the question of ordaining the “viri probati” raised at the Pan-Amazonian Synod in Querida Amazonia).īoth Arroyo and Müller also came down hard on the Maltese Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, Cardinal Mario Grech, with Müller at one point saying that Grech is “not a recognized theologian. That some may have still done so is not evidence of a program coming from the top. Müller later said of the synod participants, “They think the doctrine is only like program of a political party who can change it according to their votes.” Of course, Pope Francis has repeatedly made clear that synodality is not at all a democratic or parliamentary process, and that bishops ought not to treat it like one. For example, Arroyo introduced the Synod as essentially “polling” Catholics and non-Catholics about the Church, and Müller referred to it as a “plebiscite.” Somewhat ironically, Arroyo suggests that a “national survey” that only involved “an average of one to 10% of baptized Catholics” globally could not possibly be representative of the whole-a rather democratic assertion.īoth seemed to think of the Synod as a process designed to change the Church’s teachings on every controversial topic brought up during the local and national phases of the synod. Instead, their discussion centered around familiar talking points of papal critics who have been persistent in their attempts to undermine and discredit the aims of the global synod. His answers were so cynical that some might be led to wonder how strongly he believes in Christ’s promises to protect the Church from destruction.įrom the beginning of the interview, both Pope Francis’s vision and the Church’s understanding of the synodal process were ignored. Granted, Arroyo’s questions seemed intentionally designed to elicit dire warnings and objections about the synod from the cardinal, but Müller repeatedly took the bait without hesitation. Throughout the in-person interview, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded to Arroyo’s leading questions with statements that ventured far beyond ordinary expressions of reservation or criticism. “If they will succeed, that will be the end of the Catholic Church,” Müller said. At one point in the discussion, Cardinal Müller warned that the current synodal process could indicate a “hostile takeover of the Catholic Church,” and even seemed to suggest that it could destroy it. ![]() On Thursday, October 6, Cardinal Gerhard Müller discussed the ongoing Synod on Synodality and other topics in a roughly 30-minute interview on EWTN’s The World Over with Raymond Arroyo.
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