Newsroom (22/10/2021 11:17 AM, Gaudium Press) Cardinal Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, has been awarded the “Great International Golden Lion of Venice“ award for peace. We reproduce some of his affirmations as highlighted by Infocatolica news service.
Bishops are not “courtiers who flatter the prince”
The German Cardinal encouraged us to know the names of bishops “who are able to dialogue with people today who have a high intellectual level” not “courtiers who flatter the prince.”
Referencing a text from Scripture, ‘Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son, (Acts 20:28)’ -, Müller remarked that Bishops are “not employees of the Holy See”, but “have a responsibility to Christ as His representatives and not as delegates of the Pope.”
“Pope Benedict XVI asked me to publish his ‘Opera omnia’ in 16 large volumes.”- he confided. The work “has the theological quality of a Father of the Church of the Modern Age.”
The Church is not an NGO: it is the body of Christ
About Pope Francis’ charism, Cardinal Müller said that “it is his commitment to the poor,” broadening horizons to the peripheries.
He also said that the Church “is not and cannot become a NGO, a religious-social organization towards an earthly paradise, which must fail, but rather a living organism, the Body of Christ, of which He is the Head and Universal Savior. Men cannot reform the Church or build a new one according to their pleasure, but it is God Who reforms us, renews us, so that we are good Christians, living members of His body (ecclesial through the sacraments). Christ is the Head and all of the Church’s bishops, including the bishop of Rome are merely His servants.(1 Cor 4,1) (1 Cor 3,11)”, Cardinal Müller noted. “This divine word should be the maxim of the next synod on synodality.”
Compiled by Gustavo Kralj
