“‘Synodal themes’ revolve exclusively and incessantly around sexuality as an egomaniacal source of pleasure,” he warned. 

Newsroom (27/11/2022 7:17 PM, Gaudium Press) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller has yet again spoken out forcefully against the direction of the ‘Synodal Path’ in Germany.

His comments came during an interview with the Austrian Catholic online publication kath.net.

The interview (click here for translation), published on Nov. 15, discussed the Cardinal’s book, The Pope. Mandate and Mission (Der Papst. Auftrag und Sendung), and the limits of Papal power, both legitimate and granted by the doctrine and tradition of the Church.

The German Cardinal, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has been a consistent and outspoken critic of the German ‘Synodal Path’, which seeks to change Catholic doctrine to allow the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of female priests.

Asked in the interview about the changes suggested by the ‘Synodal Path’ in Germany, Card. Müller, said: 

The idol of pagan LGBT ideology has replaced the baptismal creed. Instead of looking up to the cross of Christ and carrying the flag of victory of the Risen Christ before humanity, the protagonists of the German Synod raise the rainbow flag, which represents a public rejection of the Christian image of man. They have replaced the creed with the confession to the idols of a neo-pagan religion.”

Since “synodal themes” revolve exclusively and incessantly around sexuality as an egomaniacal source of pleasure, one gets the impression that sexology has been declared the leading science and has therefore replaced theology resting on revealed faith.

Referring to a statement from the Vatican on Jul. 21 2022, issued in response to the German Synodal Path, which said that the ‘Synodal Way’ in Germany “has no authority to oblige bishops and faithful to adopt new forms of governance and new orientations of doctrine and morals”, Müller said:

If the Synodal Way propaganda machine knew even a little about the hermeneutics of Catholic theology and the statements about the nature and mission of the Catholic Church in the Dogmatic Constitutions of Vatican II (Dei verbum; Lumen gentium), it would have thanked the ecumenical prefect Cardinal Koch for the free tutoring instead of letting off its usual fireworks of hollow phrases and brazen ignorance. To what intellectual and moral level church and theology in Germany have been run down! One can only hope that Pope Francis will exercise his authority and not fall for the staged consternation ritual of hard-core ideologues or think that he can appease them with diplomacy and pious unity talk.

Asked about the significance of the rainbow flag, the Cardinal replied:

In the Old Testament, the rainbow is considered a sign of God’s covenant and peace with mankind (Gen 9:11-17). However, the original religious meaning was transformed into a symbol for the peace movement. Since the 1970s the rainbow flag, in a reversal of the natural colour sequence, has been considered the banner of the international LGBT ideology, which pretends to stand up against discrimination against homoerotically-inclined people but is, in reality, the antithesis of natural and revealed anthropology. The human body in its natural way of male and female sexuality is considered merely as material, which the autonomous will transforms into an arbitrary means of orgiastic pleasure, in order to escape the basic feeling of nihilism, i.e. to escape the terrible experience of the death of God. As always, the fellow travellers of atheistic ideologies are not aware of the actual intentions of their protagonists. Or they do not want to know these intentions and have themselves readily deceived by the propaganda that anti-discrimination is the sole agenda.

Asked about the Pope’s infallibility in this context, Müller replied: 

As I said, the personal opinions and life experiences of the reigning pope are no more or less to be accepted than those of any other educated or even decent, ordinary person. Vatican II explains in Lumen gentium, once again in detail, what is meant by the infallibility of the Church in matters of faith and what is not. Dogmatic declarations can have the quality of infallibility if their content derives from Sacred Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition of the Word of God, and if they are formally presented to be believed by the competent authority of the Magisterium of the Pope and the Bishops, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, as a truth revealed by God. However, “They do not receive a new public revelation as part of the divine deposit of faith (depositum fidei).” (Lumen Gentium, 25)

It is therefore completely absurd to think that a council or a pope could abrogate an earlier dogma or to establish, for example, that the nature of the sacrament of Holy Orders does not include the requirement of the male sex of its recipient, or that two persons of the same sex may have a natural marriage, that is, a marriage of the unbaptised, or a sacramental marriage, that is, one of two baptised persons, or – to give another example – that the gesture of blessing over a same-sex couple has a positive effect with God, who in his creative will blessed man and woman as a married couple (Gen 1:28). In an extreme case, a pope could become a heretic as a private person and thus automatically lose his office if the contradiction to the revelation and the dogmatic teaching of the Church is evident.

Müller’s comments came last week as German bishops were at the Vatican on an “ad limina visit”. 

Following meetings with the Pope and other prelates, Bishop Georg Bätzing, the head of the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK), told reporters in Rome that they wished to be “Catholic in a different way” by implementing the reforms discussed by the ‘Synodal Path’.

• Raju Hasmukh with files from Catholicherald.co.uk