(Settimo Cielo) — In an open letter to his friend Cardinal Dominik Duka, published October 13 exclusively by Settimo Cielo, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller criticizes in depth the response given last September 25 by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, to a series of questions from Duka himself regarding Eucharistic communion for the divorced and “remarried.”
Duka, archbishop emeritus of Prague, forwarded these questions last July, on behalf of the Czech episcopal conference, to the dicastery headed by Cardinal Fernández, who had in none other than Cardinal Müller his penultimate predecessor, abruptly dismissed in 2017 by Pope Francis, with whom Fernández is, instead, bosom buddies.
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But before reading Müller’s letter, it is helpful to go back over what led up to the dramatic conflict.
Last October 4, in the opening speech of the Synod on Synodality, Francis went at it with “the pressure of public opinion” that, “when there was the Synod on the Family,” wanted to have it believed “that Communion was going to be given to the divorced.”
But he failed to mention that none other than he, the Pope, in February of 2014, a few months before the opening of that synod, had convened a two-day consistory behind closed doors among all the cardinals, obliging them to discuss an introductory talk by Cardinal Walter Kasper fully in support of Communion for the divorced and “remarried.”
And such was Francis’s irritation at the refusal of many cardinals, including prominent ones, to endorse that thesis, that on the eve of the Synod on the Family, he gave this instruction to the special secretary of the assembly, Chieti archbishop Bruno Forte, according to what Forte himself publicly reported on May 2 2016:
If we talk explicitly about Communion for the divorced and ‘remarried,’ you have no idea what a mess these guys [the cardinals and bishops against it] will make for us. So let’s not talk about it directly; you get the premises in place and then I will draw the conclusions.
No need to add that for having given this look behind the scenes, Forte, until then among the Pope’s favorites, fell into disgrace and dropped out of public record.
But what happened was precisely what he had said. After the two sessions of the synod on the family ended with no agreement reached on the question, Francis drew his conclusions by inserting in a couple of tiny footnotes to his post-synodal exhortation Amoris laetitia, a tacit go-ahead on Communion for the divorced and “remarried.” And when questioned by journalists on the plane coming back from Lesbos on April 16, 2016, he was not afraid to say: “I do not recall that footnote.”
And it was time for the dubia. In September of 2016, four leading cardinals asked the Pope to finally give clear answers to their questions on that and other questions. But Francis refused to respond and also imposed silence on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which at the time had Müller as its prefect. In November the four cardinals therefore decided to make the dubia public. Again without getting a response, much less an audience with the Pope who, in the meantime had, however, seen to arranging everything his own way.
In the babel of the interpretations of Amoris laetitia, in fact, the bishops of the Buenos Aires region had also said their piece, in favor of Communion for divorced and “remarried” people, in a letter to their priests dated September 5, 2016, to which Francis had responded enthusiastically the same day with his letter of approval:
El escrito es muy bueno y explícita cabalmente el sentido del capítulo VIII de ‘Amoris laetitia.’ No hay otras interpretaciones. Y estoy seguro de que hará mucho bien.
[The text is very good and thoroughly explains the sense of chapter VIII of ‘Amoris laetitia.’ There are no other interpretations. And I am sure it will do much good.]
There remained to be determined what authority for the worldwide Church might be borne by a private letter from Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the secretary of the bishops of the Buenos Aires region.
And this was seen to with the reprinting of both letters, on October 7, in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official organ of the Holy See, accompanied by a “rescriptum” that promoted them to “magisterium authenticum.”
It was on this “rescriptum” that Cardinal Fernández, in responding to Duka’s doubts last September 25, relied to validate the magisterial authority of the approval given by Pope Francis to communion for the divorced and remarried. With a whole slew of further guidelines regarding its implementation.
But now he comes up against the complete disagreement of Cardinal Müller, his predecessor as head of the same dicastery, who in this letter to his friend Cardinal Duka dismantles point by point the arguments of Fernández, the Pope’s approval for which is also expressed poorly – Müller points out – affixed as it is “with a simple dated signature at the bottom of the page,” instead of with the customary canonical formulas.
From Müller:
Your Eminence, dear brother Dominik Cardinal Duka,
I have read with great interest the response of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) to your “dubia” on the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (“Risposta a una serie di domande,” hereafter “Risposta”) and I would like to share my assessment with you.
One of the doubts you presented to the DDF concerns the interpretation of “Amoris Laetitia” found in a letter of the Bishops of the Buenos Aires Region dated September 5, 2016, which allows access to the sacraments of Confession and of the Eucharist to divorced persons who have entered into a second civil union, even when they continue to behave as husband and wife with no intention of changing their lives. The “Risposta” affirms that this text of Buenos Aires belongs to the ordinary papal magisterium, having been approved by the Pope himself. In fact, Francis has affirmed that the interpretation offered by the bishops of Buenos Aires is the only possible interpretation of “Amoris Laetitia.” Consequently, the “Risposta” indicates that the text of Buenos Aires, like other texts of the ordinary Magisterium of the Pope, must be given a religious submission of mind and will (cf. “Lumen Gentium” 25:1).
The full text of Cardinal Müller’s letter can be found here.
Reprinted with permission from Settimo Cielo.