Catholics must “stay firm in the truth,” as those who have embraced an LGBTQ agenda are in the midst of a “hostile takeover” of the Catholic Church, warned German Cardinal Gerhard Müller in interviews conducted over the past week with both EWTN’s The World Over and LifeSiteNews.
Müller, the former head of the Vatican’s highest doctrinal office, is voicing his significant concerns about the dangers to the Church brought on during Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality, a process that involves collecting the views of lay Catholics in every diocese around the world prior to the Synod of Bishops in Rome in October 2023.
Catholic journalist Phil Lawler provides a thorough description of which Catholics may have participated in these diocesan conversations leading up to the Synod of Bishops here.
Müller told LifeSiteNews’ Jim Hale he condemns the LGBTQ activist agenda, including the promotion of the “criminal idea” of the “castration of boys” that continues to push itself into the Catholic Church.
He referred to these transgender procedures as an “abuse of the young children,” of “minors.”
Müller said that while he does “appreciate” Pope Francis’ calls for “social justice and for peace,” nevertheless “the first task of the pope is to be the guarantor of unity and of faith,” he noted.
The cardinal commented on Francis’ emphasis of pastoral care over defense of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
“I cannot separate Christ the Good Shepherd from Christ the teacher,” Müller explained, observing that “the pastoral is not against doctrine.”
“We must stay strong, firm in the truth,” Müller urged, asserting that those in the Church who are pushing an agenda that attacks God’s teachings are “delegitimizing themselves.”
In his interview with EWTN host Raymond Arroyo, Müller said the dissident ideas expressed by Synod leadership and in reports of the discussions demonstrated the initiative’s focus was “self-revelation,” rather than the Catholic faith.
“This is a system of self-revelation and is the occupation of the Catholic Church” and “the hostile takeover of the Church of Jesus Christ,” the cardinal said. “This has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, with the Triune God, and they think doctrine is only like a program of a political party who can change it according to their voters.”
In the explosive interview with EWTN, Arroyo asked whether the Synod on Synodality is appearing to be “an attempt to destroy the Church.”
“Yeah, if they will succeed, but that will be the end of the Catholic Church,” Müller responded.
The cardinal likened the current synodal initiative to the heresy of Arianism and the “Marxistic form of creating the truth,” and urged Catholics to “resist” it.
Synod leaders, he said, are “dreaming of another church [that] has nothing to do with the Catholic faith,” Müller asserted. “They want to abuse this process for shifting the Catholic Church and not only in another direction, but in the destruction of the Catholic Church.”
Some Catholic Twitter users are in agreement with Müller.
As I mentioned in my earlier tweets, this whole Satanic Synod of Synodality is the beginning of the endgame. We must oppose it and resist it knowing that we will face persecution. When a pope is in error and spreads various heresies he hast to be and must be resisted.
— 🇻🇦 John Gabriel Minjares (@minjares_john) October 18, 2022
Vatican's synod facebook account has posted artwork that incorporates a faux woman 'priest' wearing a chasuble and stole
The schismatic Ape of the Church is becoming more brazen https://t.co/zuhL6T7pbX pic.twitter.com/6S779fZ7MS
— Nick Donnelly (@ProtecttheFaith) September 27, 2022
As LifeSiteNews explained, heading up the Synod is Archbishop of Luxembourg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, who “sparked outrage and accusations of heresy earlier this year for claiming that Catholic teaching on the sinfulness of homosexual acts is ‘no longer correct’ and needs ‘revision.’”
A number of Western countries have reportedly also called for doctrinal change in the Church on issues involving homosexuality and the ordination of women, the report noted.
“[T]he official Vatican website for the Synod has repeatedly infuriated Catholics by promoting homosexual relationships and dissident activist groups,” LifeSiteNews observed.
As Crux reported in late September, left-wing Cardinal Mario Grech, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, said the blessing of same-sex couples and the reception of Holy Communion by divorced and remarried people “are not to be understood simply in terms of doctrine, but in terms of God’s ongoing encounter with human beings.”
“What has the church to fear if these two groups within the faithful are given the opportunity to express their intimate sense of spiritual realities, which they experience?” Grech asked, adding, “Might this be an opportunity for the church to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through them also?”
Müller ripped Grech’s remarks as “absolutely against Catholic doctrine,” comparing them to Protestantism and the Modernism heresy, whereby “the individual experience has the same level as objective Revelation of God.”
“And God is only a wall to you, [onto] which you can project your proper ideas, and to make a certain populism in the Church; and surely everybody outside of the Church who wants to destroy the Catholic Church … they are very glad about these declarations,” he said, adding, nevertheless that such a view “is absolutely against the Catholic doctrine.”
“We have Revelation of God in Jesus Christ,” Müller asserted. “And it is definitely closed and finished in Jesus Christ … This is absolutely clear: that Jesus has spoken about the indissolubility of matrimony.”
“How is it possible that Cardinal Grech is more intelligent than Jesus Christ?” he asked.
In 2017, Pope Francis chose not to ask Müller to serve a second five-year term as prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The pope appointed, instead, Jesuit theologian Spanish Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, who had been serving as secretary of the congregation since 2008.
“Pope Francis has described the goal of the Synod as creating ‘a different Church,’ and top synodal officials have indicated that it could lead to changes in Church doctrine and leadership,” LifeSiteNews reported.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a watchdog agency and defender of the civil rights of all Catholics, wrote last week about the “dissident” voices who are threatening the Church, now 60 years after the Second Vatican Council convened.
“The German Synodal Way is home to the most visible dissident voices in the world,” Donohue explained. “Centered heavily on sexuality, especially the LGBT agenda, the process undertaken there is fast moving toward a split in the ranks of the Catholic Church.”
“Those who support this agenda should heed the lesson of the mainline Protestant denominations,” he added, noting the subsequent losses of members once the “fracturing” of Episcopal, Lutheran, and Presbyterian denominations occurred over debates focused on sexuality.
In a recent online survey of 800 Catholics commissioned by the Catholic League and conducted by McLaughlin & Associates, 66 percent of Catholic respondents said the Church should not change its principles to conform to what is popular.
Additionally, 70 percent said that if the Church did not change its positions to “modernize” or become more relevant, they would either be more committed, or as committed, to the Church.
“In other words, the more ‘relevant’ a church is—meaning the more it changes its teachings to mirror the norms and values of the dominant culture—the more irrelevant it becomes to its congregants,” Donohue summarized. “Who wants to belong to a church whose teachings are indistinguishable from the editorial positions of the New York Times?”
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Cardinal Gerhard Müller” by The Vatican.
