I have to say I hope Cardinal Mueller and his diagnosis and prescription are being taken seriously by Pope Francis and his cohorts. But trust is lacking today and it is a self-inflicted wound that may be deepened in the coming days if the Holy Spirit is thwarted with ideologies rather than common sense.
What do you think of Cardinal Mueller's latest salvo and attempt to influence the direction of the Church and this papacy:
The root cause of this evil is disregard for the Sixth Commandment.
Without chastity, piety and strict discipline, priestly life cannot
succeed. Only he who lives according to the commandments of God can be a
good shepherd and a model for the flock. When it comes to a path toward
healing with respect to episcopal accountability, some bishops and
their propagandists, particularly in Germany and the United States, do
not want to admit at any price that the sin of unchastity is the root of
the problem. They don’t want to know anything more about Christ who
died because of our sins, only to arrive at the zeitgeist.
They feel as if they are the Church’s new founders.
The “old Church” came from a man 2,000 years ago, but the “new Church” comes from them, in their image and likeness. They defend the group that they call “homosexuals,” and especially homosexual practice, because they believe it is legitimized through human relationships among these individuals. But their task should be to defend the many good priests, the sacramental priesthood and celibacy. They pretend that affections for a person of the same sex, and the opposite sex, include the right to sexual contact.
It has been said that if priests and bishops were allowed to practice homosexuality with persons over 18 years of age, boys and young men would be protected. Therefore, the prohibition, rooted in divine law, to keep practicing homosexual candidates away from the priesthood must be dropped. Those “enlightened” individuals place themselves above Revelation by wanting to free the word of God from prejudice against homosexual practice. They discriminate against those who are not homophile and mercilessly persecute them.
The facts and statistics are clear for all to see: 80% male victims, 20% female victims. No doubt there is forgiveness before God for criminals who repent of their sins. But these perpetrators must also take responsibility for their actions, apologize to the victims, repair the damage as far as possible and not apologize cheaply as victims of clericalism or Church structures. Those who use the vague term “clericalism” to absolve the perpetrators of personal guilt and give them the opportunity to pretend to be victims of the sacramental structure not only sin against the victims of these crimes, but make God the author of evil because God’s Son has given spiritual authority to the apostles and their successors.
My expectations for the meeting are that, finally, the secularization of the Church’s thinking and acting is recognized as the cause of the unprecedented decline of Christianity in the West.
Rather than adaptation to the mainstream of a world without God, the salvation of the world through the return to God in faith and obedience is the way to the New Evangelization and renewal of priests, and especially of bishops. It is not sophisticated managers who are needed, but shepherds who give their lives — and who also have theological formation and deep piety.
What do you think of Cardinal Mueller's latest salvo and attempt to influence the direction of the Church and this papacy:
(From the National Catholic Register):
The Rotten Fruit of Secularization
Cardinal Gerhard Müller
| CARDINAL GERHARD MÜLLER The Rotten Fruit of Secularization |
They feel as if they are the Church’s new founders.
The “old Church” came from a man 2,000 years ago, but the “new Church” comes from them, in their image and likeness. They defend the group that they call “homosexuals,” and especially homosexual practice, because they believe it is legitimized through human relationships among these individuals. But their task should be to defend the many good priests, the sacramental priesthood and celibacy. They pretend that affections for a person of the same sex, and the opposite sex, include the right to sexual contact.
It has been said that if priests and bishops were allowed to practice homosexuality with persons over 18 years of age, boys and young men would be protected. Therefore, the prohibition, rooted in divine law, to keep practicing homosexual candidates away from the priesthood must be dropped. Those “enlightened” individuals place themselves above Revelation by wanting to free the word of God from prejudice against homosexual practice. They discriminate against those who are not homophile and mercilessly persecute them.
The facts and statistics are clear for all to see: 80% male victims, 20% female victims. No doubt there is forgiveness before God for criminals who repent of their sins. But these perpetrators must also take responsibility for their actions, apologize to the victims, repair the damage as far as possible and not apologize cheaply as victims of clericalism or Church structures. Those who use the vague term “clericalism” to absolve the perpetrators of personal guilt and give them the opportunity to pretend to be victims of the sacramental structure not only sin against the victims of these crimes, but make God the author of evil because God’s Son has given spiritual authority to the apostles and their successors.
My expectations for the meeting are that, finally, the secularization of the Church’s thinking and acting is recognized as the cause of the unprecedented decline of Christianity in the West.
Rather than adaptation to the mainstream of a world without God, the salvation of the world through the return to God in faith and obedience is the way to the New Evangelization and renewal of priests, and especially of bishops. It is not sophisticated managers who are needed, but shepherds who give their lives — and who also have theological formation and deep piety.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller is prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Translated from the original German by the Register’s Edward Pentin.
4 comments:
"Nothing to see here. Move along. Clericalism is the problem," said the homosexuals trying to divert attention.....
Father McDonald, you and your orthodox readers will appreciate this:
Behind Ted McCarrick’s fall: the wrong kind of ‘openness’
The Roman Catholic Church is sometimes viewed as an impenetrable fortress. To many liberals, that’s exactly the problem.
The church, they think, needs to come of age, modernize its teachings and accommodate itself to the sexual revolution that has been roiling the West since the 1960s.
Yet those who want a church “open to the world” must face an inconvenient truth: Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick championed just this kind for openness. And this emblem of openness, this man who caused so much pain to underage boys and young seminarians under his authority, will be laicized, likely Saturday.
Before last summer’s sexual-abuse revelations put an end to his brilliant ecclesial career, McCarrick, as cardinal archbishop of Washington, promoted Catholic chumminess with cultural liberalism. [NB] He was a regular visitor to President Barack Obama’s White House. He ran interference for Notre Dame University when it conferred American Catholicism’s highest honor on the pro-abortion-rights Obama. He opposed calls to deny Communion to pro-abortion-rights politicians. He was beloved at Davos.
An entire generation of boomer-age bishops, priests and theologians claimed that the Second Vatican Council demanded a concordat with liberal values. But no one chanted the mantra of openness louder, or raised more money around its central aims, than did McCarrick.
He personified the spirit that swept the church in the immediate years after the council — one that mistook the council’s teachings for an invitation to endless experimentation and the demolition of ancient moral barriers. McCarrick’s laicization is a judgment not only against the man but also against that rebellious spirit.
Bee here:
"Without chastity, piety and strict discipline, priestly life cannot succeed. Only he who lives according to the commandments of God can be a good shepherd and a model for the flock."
To me, this is the core of the problem on every level. If we needed leaders and shepherds who play fast and loose with the commandments of God, we might as well spend all our time in a local bar and take the examples we see there as models of life.
But we are inspired by Jesus Christ and His example and model of life, and we need leaders and shepherds who not only are also inspired by that, but who live that at a more intense level, so that we can see and know how to correct ourselves by comparing ourselves to their good example and accurate teaching. We laity presume clerics and religious have had a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit than we have, and have followed that call and learned all they could, and having been assigned a ministry, are there to help the rest of us attain the same thing. We don't need religious leaders that are worse than ourselves!
The Cardinal Mullers of our Church recognize that. But we have a great number of clerics who would rather follow the dictates of the world, and are out there trying to appropriate the wealth and power of the world for themselves by changing our Church into what amounts to a secular organization, an organization that mutilates the ministry of Jesus into something worldly.
We still have some good leaders, but our Church is looking a lot right now like Europe looked while Hitler was on the rise...too many people cheering the evil, and wanting it to succeed, and calling it good...clerical leaders coming out in favor of such evil, and detracting and militating against the leaders like Muller who are crying out against it.
When all this is over we might have a Church that looks a lot like bombed out Europe looked after WWII. Let us hope and pray there is somewhere (Africa?) that can play the role the U.S. played in WWII, that can send in forces to defeat and destroy this enemy. God, help us.
God bless.
Bee
Bee,
Well said. When we have bishops and priests who vote for the Abortion Party, we know we have a grave problem.
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