(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Reinhard Marx has said a “global, synodal Church” without a “purely clerical rule” is “in the making.”
In an essay for the German magazine Herder Korrespondenz entitled “Church on the horizon of modernity,” the German cardinal, who rejects Catholic teaching on various subjects, claimed that “a church of the future can only be imagined with greater participation of all, with greater clarification of responsibilities, with better, more transparent communication from top to bottom and from bottom to top, a global, synodal church that is in the making.”
Marx wrote, “A purely clerical rule, as can. 129 CIC suggests, will probably not be possible […]” suggesting that laypeople could take on the role of priests and bishops.
READ: Cardinal Marx: Lay people can run parishes
Canon 129 §1 of the Code of Canon Law states that “Those who have received sacred orders are qualified, according to the norm of the prescripts of the law, for the power of governance, which exists in the Church by divine institution and is also called the power of jurisdiction,” echoing Catholic teaching.
“‘The bishops, as vicars and legates of Christ, govern the particular Churches assigned to them by their counsels, exhortations, and example, but over and above that also by the authority and sacred power’ which indeed they ought to exercise so as to edify, in the spirit of service which is that of their Master,” states the Catechism of the Catholic Church (894).
Quoting Swiss sociologist Franz-Xaver Kaufmann, Marx asserted that “there are many more possibilities for changing the social shape of the Church, including the theology of Holy Orders, than some people assume.”
Marx, who has served as the archbishop of Munich and Freising since 2008, is an ardent proponent of “women deacons.”
Contrary to the cardinal’s claim, the Catholic Church has pronounced the impossibility of so-called “female deacons” since the diaconate is part of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, which consists of three orders: deacons, priests, and bishops.
In his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II taught, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”
In 2002, the Vatican’s International Theological Commission wrote after much study that:
- The deaconesses mentioned in the tradition of the ancient Church — as evidenced by the rite of institution and the functions they exercised — were not purely and simply equivalent to the deacons;
- The unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders, in the clear distinction between the ministries of the bishop and the priests on the one hand and the diaconal ministry on the other, is strongly underlined by ecclesial tradition, especially in the teaching of the Magisterium
READ: Cardinals Cupich, McElroy promote Synod’s ‘urgent’ call for female governance
Marx: Church should adapt to ‘social sciences’
In his essay, Marx repeatedly claimed that the Church must learn from the so-called “social sciences.”
He wrote that “an important perspective for the future of the Church, its institutions and its functioning is to subject it to a social-scientific examination, to compare it with other organizations, both theoretically and empirically, and thus always in the context of society.”
“We must continue to advance this line of thinking through research and interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and the social sciences,” Marx opined.
Sociological theories or opinions cannot invalidate or supersede Catholic doctrine or divine revelation but are subject to them.
Since the German cardinal, who is the former head of the German Bishops’ Conference, has been a key leader of the heretical Synodal Way, his promotion of the “social sciences” is likely related to his pro-LGBT activism.
During the Synodal Way, Marx voted in favor of heretical documents that called for women’s ordination, claimed that homosexual acts are not sinful, and advocated for ordaining “transgender” priests. The documents on homosexuality and transgenderism both cite “the human sciences.”
Marx recently praised the current German abortion law that allows abortion up to 12 weeks for having “contributed to peace” in society and claimed the present law keeps both “the plight of the woman” and “the child’s right to life” in mind, despite it resulting in around 100,000 unborn children killed each year.
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