■ LifeSiteNews ■ The cardinal in charge of safeguarding Catholic doctrine under Pope Benedict issued today a second detailed critique of the Amazon Synod’s working document (Instrumentum Laboris), saying that no synod, Pope, or council “could make possible the ordination of women as bishop, priest, or deacon.”
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who was removed from his post by Pope Francis in 2017, concentrated especially on the question of the priesthood and of the impossibility of female participation in it (read full critique below).
“The Magisterium of the Pope and of the bishops has no authority over the substance of the Sacraments," the Cardinal states.
"Therefore, no synod – with or without the Pope – and also no ecumenical council, or the Pope alone, if he spoke ex cathedra, could make possible the ordination of women as bishop, priest, or deacon. They would stand in contradiction to the defined doctrine of the Church," he continues.
"It would be invalid,” he adds.
Cardinal Müller called the upcoming Synod, set to take place in Rome October 8-27, a “wrecking ball” that aims at a “restructuring of the Universal Church.”
The Cardinal's text is published simultaneously in four languages. In English (LifeSiteNews), Italian (Corrispondenza Romana), Spanish (Infovaticana), as well as in German (Die Tagespost). Last week, Cardinal Müller issued his first evaluation of the Amazon Synod's working document, criticizing it for its "radical u-turn in the hermeneutics of Catholic theology" and for its "false teaching."
In his statement today, Cardinal Müller links the Amazon Synod and its own reform proposals directly with the “synodal process” which is now being prepared by the German bishops and which, similarly to the Amazon Synod, aims at discussing the role of women in the Church as well as raising questions about priestly celibacy.
Both the German “synodal path” and the Amazon Synod aim at questioning the priesthood, both with regard to priestly celibacy, as well as with regard to the incongruous idea of separating the governing duties from the teaching and sanctifying duties of the ordained office. The Amazon Synod even proposes to create a new form of priesthood, with married men who have families and thus less time for a longer period of theological preparation for the priesthood. Both reform movements also propose new roles for women in the Church, with the Amazon Synod's working document even proposing an “official ministry” for women, to include possibly a “female diaconate.”
Cardinal Müller gives his entire theological weight and expertise in order to defend the Catholic priesthood. He reminds us that “the three-fold office – as it historically grew out of the apostolate in the Early Church as instituted by Christ – exists by virtue of a “divine institution” (Lumen Gentium 20).” This office is exercised by bishops, presbyters/priests, and deacons.
The Cardinal reminds his German fellow bishops that “in better times, the German bishops unanimously opposed the culture-warrior Bismarck and stated: 'The Church's constitution is based, in all essential points, on divine order and is exempt from any human arbitrariness' (DH 3114).”
Quoting the Council of Trent, Cardinal Müller states that “ bishop, priest, and deacon are only degrees of the one Sacrament of Holy Orders. 'No one may doubt that the holy ordination is truly and essentially one of the seven Sacraments of the Holy Church – unum ex septem sacramentis.' (Trent, Decree on the Sacrament of Holy Orders: DH 1766; 1773).”
It is here that the German prelate says that a “theological analysis of the doctrinal and ecclesiastical-historical facts, in context with the binding statements concerning the Sacrament of Holy Orders” makes it clear “that sacramental ordination, in the degree and with the official title 'deacon,' has not and has never been administered in the Catholic Church to women.”
“It stems from the 'divine constitution of the Church,' as Pope John Paul II has reliably decided, that the Church has no authority to administer to women priestly ordination. This is not the conclusion from history, but, rather, stems from the divine constitution of the Church. This of course applies to all three sacramental degrees,” Cardinal Müller adds.
Additionally, he also rejects the idea of speaking “of female non-sacramental deacons, thereby establishing the illusion that this is about reviving a past – but only temporarily and regionally limited – institution of the deaconesses of the Early Church.” Thus, the German prelates insists that no Pope or Council may decide to admit female deacons.
The idea of a non-ordained female office has been recently proposed by different German clergymen, among them being Cardinal Walter Kasper. Cardinal Reinhard Marx just proposed to allow laypeople to preach at Mass. This, however, is not acceptable, according to Cardinal Müller. “It also contradicts the essence of the episcopal and of the priestly office,” he explains, “when it is being reduced to the sanctification alone in order that one may then let laypeople – that is to say, men and women in a non-sacramental service – deliver the homily during the Mass celebrated by a priest or bishop.”
Müller goes on to say that here is the danger that priests “become “altarists” [“Altaristen”: a demeaning word for priests who celebrate Mass without a homily and pastoral care; this was an abuse which Luther detected and used for his polemics; G.M.], something which at the time caused the protest of the Reformation.”
“The Mass is – as a Liturgy of the Word and of the Body and Body of Our Lord – 'one single act of worship' (Sacrosanctum concilium 56),” the Cardinal states. “That is why it is up to the bishops and priests to preach and, at the most, at times to let the ordained deacon deliver a homily. The service in the Word and in the Sacrament has one inner unity.” Herewith, the German Cardinal refutes the idea to separate the priest's duties of celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from his preaching of the Word of God.
Once more, Cardinal Müller insists that the different parts of the priestly ministry all belong properly together and may not be handed over to laypeople. “At ordination, there are not being transferred individual particular competences without any inner order and interconnection. It is the one service in the Word, through which the Church is being assembled as a community of the Faith, in which the Sacraments of the Faith are being celebrated and through which God's flock is being governed by its appointed shepherds, in Christ's Name and Authority. That is why the priestly offices in doctrine, worship, and governance are united at the root and are merely different in their theological aspects, under which we look at them (Presbyterorum Ordinis 4-6).”
Cardinal Müller highlights the importance of the priesthood which has been instituted by Christ as a means to dispense the Sacraments which give Grace: “The Sacraments are signs and instruments of Divine Grace, with the help of which God builds up the individual Christian and the Church as a whole.”
In light of this doctrine, it is clear that those who propose new priestly offices have a “secularized” view of the Faith and the Church. “Only those who have difficulties with this insight consider the Church to be at best a secular institution and subsequently fail to recognize the ordained office as a divine institution. Such people, rather, reduce the Christian office holder to a mere functionary of a religious-social organization.”
“As a supposed way out of the crisis of the Church,” Cardinal Müller adds, “the Instrumentum Laboris and the synodal process in Germany both rely on a further secularization of the Church. When, in the entire hermeneutics of Christianity, one fails to start with God's historical self-revelation in Christ; when one starts with incorporating the Church and her liturgy into a mythological view of the entire world; or turns the Church into part of an ecological program for the rescue of our planet, then the sacramentality – and especially the ordained office of bishops and priests in the Apostolic Succession – are up in the air. Who would actually want to build a whole life requiring total dedication upon such a shaky foundation?”
The Cardinal said that a "new model of the priesthood" is not possible.
“The substance of the Sacraments is not subject to the authority of the Church,” he writes. “And one cannot piece together each a new model of the priesthood, aided by isolated elements from Scripture and Tradition and while omitting to distinguish dogmatically binding decisions from developments in minor aspects. Nor are the priestly images as developed by pastoral strategists important, but only the one Image of Christ, the High Priest of the New Covenant, which is eternally imprinted upon the souls of the consecrated and in whose name and strength they sanctify, teach, and govern the faithful (Presbyterorum Ordinis 2;12).”
Cardinal Müller points to the German bishops and their “synodal path” which aims at questioning the priesthood, and he states: “If during the proposed synodal process in Germany, the essential topic of the transmission of the Faith fails to be addressed, the decline will be more and more accelerated.”
In light of the recently published statistics in Germany showing that in 2018, 216,000 German Catholics left the Church, Cardinal Müller reminds his fellow German bishops that the answer to this crisis of Faith is not “a further secularization and self-secularization of the Church,” but, rather, “a renewal in the spirit of the Gospel.”
“The Church,” he explains, “can only serve men in their search for God and for a life in the Faith if she proclaims to all men the Gospel in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and if she makes them disciples of Jesus through Baptism.”
Furthermore, the German Cardinal states: “As it was already the case with the Family Synods, the 'German Church' claims hegemony over the Universal Church and proudly and arrogantly praises herself as the trendsetter for a Christianity at peace with modernity.”
In strategical terms, Cardinal Müller also explains the collaboration between the German bishops and the Amazon Synod, when he says that “the synodal process in the realm of the German Bishops' Conference is now being linked with the Synod for the Amazon, and this is done for ecclesial-political reasons and as a leverage for the restructuring of the Universal Church. Additionally, at both events the protagonists are nearly identical, and they are even financially and organizationally connected by way of the relief agencies of the German Bishops' Conference. It will not be easy to control this wrecking ball.”
However, the German prelate wonders “why, in the face of the desolate state of the Church in one's own country [Germany], they now feel called to be a model for others.”
Other high-ranking prelates who have raised concern about the direction the Amazon Synod is taking include the following:
- Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, a world renowned-scholar of church history and one of the two remaining dubia cardinals, called the working document “heretical” and an “apostasy” from Divine Revelation. He called upon Church leaders to “reject” it with “all decisiveness.”
- Bishop Marian Eleganti, auxiliary bishop of Chur, Switzerland, stated that if ideas in the working document are adopted, they "will contaminate the whole Mystical Body of the Church – and gravely damage it."
- Monsignor Nicola Bux, a theologian and former consulter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during Benedict XVI’s pontificate, called the Amazon Synod an attempt to “create another church” by “demolishing” the true Church from within.
- Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the Auxiliary Bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, stated that Pope Francis has a "strict duty, as given to him by God" to uphold the "apostolic inheritance of priestly celibacy" at the upcoming Amazon Synod. "He may not support in the slightest way – by silence or by an ambiguous conduct – the obviously Gnostic and naturalistic contents of parts of the Instrumentum laboris (working document), as well as the abolishment of the apostolic duty of priestly celibacy (which first would be regional, and then naturally, and step by step, then becomes universal)," he said.