I lift this from a longer Lifesite article:
Müller was also asked why he thinks Germany is the center of this “Sonderweg” (special path) rather than Spain, France, or Italy.
“Unfortunately, there is still the Furor teutonicus, the indomitable tendency to always want to instruct and dominate the whole world,” he answered. “German Catholics still suffer from being second-class citizens (and scholars in theology and science) ever since the Kulturkampf [culture war] in the Bismarck Empire and the claims of superiority of the Prussian Protestant Leitkultur [dominant culture]. It is an irony of Church history that in the face of the challenge of an aggressive de-Christianization of the West, Catholics want to overcome their inferiority complex by referring to their common mediocrity.”
“What is your advice to the faithful Catholics in Germany who dislike the Synodal Way but no longer find the usual stability in Rome?” the interviewer asked Müller.
“A look at church history helps us to cope more easily with the ups and downs,” the German cardinal said. “After all, we Christians are not promised a success story like in a human enterprise, but the assistance of the Holy Spirit even in times of decline or even persecution. In the stock market, prices rise and fall. We live from the promise of Jesus that he will always be with us until the end of the world.”
“The rock on which Jesus builds his Church, even the gates of hell cannot overcome. But he who sits in the chair of Peter, like the namesake of this office, can personally fail. This is why Christ prays for Peter that his faith may not be extinguished (cf. Lk 22:32).”
11 comments:
“The rock on which Jesus builds his Church, even the gates of hell cannot overcome. But he who sits in the chair of Peter, like the namesake of this office, can personally fail. This is why Christ prays for Peter that his faith may not be extinguished (cf. Lk 22:32).”
This is exactly the point that those of us that some label as "Francis-haters" hold fast to. Nobody here "hates" Francis. We hate lies. We hate what enables lies. John Paul II himself repeatedly said that the Church is indefectible. Yes, we are told that the successors of Peter would be preserved from error. But what if the APPARENT successor is not validly or canonically elected? What are we to say of a papacy that will always have a question mark over its legitimacy?
We need look no further than the fruits of such a papacy: Confusion and error plague a synod that prattles on forever and, like a drill bit, cuts new holes into the fiber of our longstanding faith. This is a papacy that has been quoted with outrageously heretical remarks by a "journalist" who takes no notes, giving the pope plausible deniability, which he never needs to use anyway because the leftist Catholic press isn't going to question him about such alleged quotes--not when they think such ideas are so wonderful.
The truth will survive this papacy. The Church will survive this papacy. Our concern should be about how many innocent souls will be able top survive this papacy.
“It is an irony of Church history that in the face of the challenge of an aggressive de-Christianization of the West, Catholics want to overcome their inferiority complex by referring to their common mediocrity.”
Wonderfully said.
Fr K,
Have you read anything of Herbert Marcuse or the leftist thinkers and activists he has inspired over the last 50 years.
Leftists like Marcuse had to at some level admit that Marx was wrong that working class people in capitalist nations would continue to get poorer and be more oppressed - the opposite happened. So many leftists since c. 1970 have had to change their narrative. There is still oppressor and oppressed but it is no longer the bourgeois capitalist class vs the proletariat it is now in western nations the oppressive, straight, white males oppressing women and racial minorities and sexual minorities.
Yet by approximately 2000 the reality was that it was in the functioning, western (largely capitalist) democracies that, by historical and world standards, there had never been less oppression of women and racial and sexual minorities….
When will the lies of leftists ever end ?!
By the beginning of this century, in nations like the USA, the UK and Australia etc any person who spoke or acted in a racist manner would be shunned and even ostracised by the vast majority of mainstream society ; that was the reality… also, the vast majority of people in western countries had at least a fairly tolerant and had a “live and let live” attitude to gay and lesbian people - the reality was that the treatment of women and minorities in western nations had never been better - then along came modern Wokeism and the insane modern “Social Justice Movement” who managed to convince gullible and naive millions (with almost no knowledge of history nor the appalling situation for minorities in many non Western nations) that the situation in the west re minorities had never been worse…
Again, when will the lies ever end?
Sorry, I should have posted the above on a previous post and thread where Fr K and I are discussing racism and the evils of capitalism etc…
I really liked how Cardinal Mueller explained that, unlike many German Catholic bishops, the schismatic orthodox churches kept their focus on Christ.
Also, he points out the obvious , that many German Catholic bishops prefer Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Helmut Kentler and Yuval Harari as their “authorities” as opposed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - and they have abandoned “the very essence of Christianity” for a variant of “materialistic and nihilistic Woke culture.”
Yet Francis refuses to act firmly and decisively!
Amazing to recall how Australian bishop William Morris and French bishop Jacques Gaillot were removed from office for, compared to this, trivialities.
I wonder what the real reason is that the Pope and Rome do not intervene immediately in such a huge problem?!
Sorry this is off topic, but I can really recommend occasionally visiting Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment blog.
He has a great 22 March post titled: Two Questions.
He notes the recent necessity for certain categories of people to "admit" that the Novus Ordo is valid and licit...
He claims that last Sunday Cardinal Roche solemnly pontificated on BBC Radio that "The theology of the Catholic Church has changed."
Fr Hunwicke asks the question:
"Is Roche valid?"
I am aware that some of the English humour and the level of intellectual discussion on this blog goes over my head...but what I can grasp I enjoy...
Also, having spent approximately an hour a day on Catholic blogs for over 10 years it was only today on Fr Hunwicke's blog that I have read the Novus Ordo referred to as "The Maimed Rite".
Paul, my concern with our Pope is that we don’t know the purpose of “making a mess”. Is it to breakdown our assumptions about our Faith, to explore its basis and elements to rebuild with a greater understanding and appreciation? Or is it to reconstruct the mess into something that suits our personal goals and redefine God? Based on what Pope Francis supports, ignores, and suppresses, it seems to be the latter.
While Meuller is doing God's work, the Pope is promoting heretics and pedophiles.
Where does over 50 years of open ended change detached from tradition lead?
To what is happening in Germany now.
As the central figure of the so-called Bologna School of Vatican of Vatican II interpreters, Giuseppe Alberigo has repeatedly stated: it is simply wrong to attempt to implement THE Council "based upon understanding of and commentary upon the official documents" THE Council 's real importance is "the process it initiated" - nothing less, he contends, than a paradigm shift in the Church.
So this paradigm shift leads to this representative view of the ex Jesuit theologian, Paul Lakeland who taught at a Jesuit university from 1981...for many years:
"The Church is 'a school of love....and the role of the institution vis a vis baptized Catholics is to let them loose to love, not to bond them with rules about who or how to love...the future health of the Church depends on recovering that sense of itself".
Really? In taking this route, the Church would "recover" its sense of itself by severing ties with its past. Does the historical consciousness celebrated by progressive dissenters involve repudiating history itself?
After all, the Old and New Testaments and the Christian tradition contain numerous "rules" that command or forbid specific kinds of behaviour...
But the utilitarian love ethic of liberal or modernist Catholicism makes ample provision for people who, for example, claim to act lovingly in aborting Downs Syndrome babies or terminating the lives of elderly sick people or entering into heterosexual or homosexual relationships outside of marriage..
Love unconstrained by rules - by moral principles and norms -can be used to rationalise just about anything...
As we are now seeing in Germany.
“…..to let them loose to love, not to BIND them with rules about who and how to love…”
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