VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller has said that Cardinal Victor Fernández’s distinction in justifying blessings for same-sex couples “remains problematic,” following Fernández’s recent statement defending Fiducia Supplicans.
“The worldwide negative reaction from large parts of the world’s episcopate and from leading lay people to the ‘Recommendation for Action’ issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on the private blessing of people in sinful partner relationships should give those responsible in Rome food for thought,” wrote Cardinal Müller, in a statement provided to LifeSiteNews and other media outlets. (See full statement below)
Following the press statement issued January 4 by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández regarding his December text on same-sex blessings – Fiducia Supplicans – Müller warned that Fernández’s attempts to justify such blessings remain “problematic.”
READ: Cardinal Fernández: Bishops banned from ‘total or definitive denial’ of Fiducia Supplicans
Müller – who previously held Fernández’s role as prefect of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) for five years – outlined two issues with Fernández’s latest statement.
“The distinction between liturgical-official blessings and the private-pastoral blessings of non-marital sexual partnerships remains problematic for me,” began Müller, who issued a lengthy statement in December about the original Declaration.
READ: Cardinal Müller tells Pope Francis: Blessing homosexual couples is ‘impossible’ and ‘blasphemy’
Fernández’s argument to defend Fiducia Supplicans from numerous allegations of heterodoxy was that the Declaration called clergy “to distinguish between two different forms of blessings: ‘liturgical or ritualized’ and ‘spontaneous or pastoral.’”
Stating that “‘pastoral blessings’ must above all be very short,” to distinguish them from “liturgical or ritualized blessings,” Fernández suggested they be under 15-seconds in length. He additionally provided a sample formula for the blessing.
But Müller said of the prayer that “any layperson can say this prayer over others,” warning however that priests must be careful in pronouncing such a prayer:
The priest, however, must be careful that his blessing in the name of the Church is not instrumentalized by secular-ideological and ecclesiastical-heretical pressure groups who are only interested in undermining the truth of the revealed faith (in the teaching and practice of the Church, which must not be played off against each other).
Müller’s concern about Fernández’s distinction was echoed by liturgical scholar Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who argued that the new prefect’s “idea of non-liturgical blessings…frankly makes no sense.”
“A priest is a minister of God who, when he makes the sign of the cross over someone or something, is doing a religious, ministerial, efficacious, and, yes, ritual act,” wrote Kwasniewski.
“It doesn’t really matter how long it takes or how simple it is.” Fiducia Supplicans, he added, “marks a departure from both ecumenism and sound liturgical theology.”
Indeed, both in his January 4 statement and in Fiducia Supplicans, Fernández attested that the document’s teaching on blessings “implies a real development from what has been said about blessings in the Magisterium and the official texts of the Church.” This, wrote Müller, was “the most problematic point.”
He stated that “the magisterium of the pope and bishops can in no way be granted authority by a Roman dicastery – even with reference to the personal will (voluntaristic) of the current reigning pope – to supplement, reduce or correct the revelation that was given once and for all in Christ and normatively presented for all time in the ‘teaching of the apostles’ (Acts 2:42), or to make it compatible with everyday understanding or current ideologies.”
To do such would “contradict” the Catholic faith “outright,” he said.
Müller quoted from the documents of Vatican II and re-iterated that “there is only the one treasure of the Word of God, contained in Sacred Scripture and fully preserved and faithfully interpreted in the context of the Apostolic Tradition by the whole Church under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium.”
Full statement of Cardinal Gerhard Müller, following Cdl. Fernández’s Jan. 4 press statement
Cardinal Müller: I have nothing to add to the content of my commentary on Fiducia supplicans. The worldwide negative reaction from large parts of the world’s episcopate and from leading lay people to the ‘Recommendation for Action’ issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on the private blessing of people in sinful partner relationships should give those responsible in Rome food for thought
But just two points for further clarification:
1. The distinction between liturgical-official blessings and the private-pastoral blessings of non-marital sexual partnerships remains problematic for me.
The proposed 15-second blessing with the sign of the cross and the invocation of the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is described there as a private prayer for the assistance of God, who always wants our turning away from sin, and our eternal salvation. Any layperson can say this prayer over others.
The priest, however, must be careful that his blessing in the name of the Church is not instrumentalized by secular-ideological and ecclesiastical-heretical pressure groups who are only interested in undermining the truth of the revealed faith (in the teaching and practice of the Church, which must not be played off against each other).
2. The most problematic point does not seem to me to be the (self-evident) pastoral concern for the salvation and openness to God of persons in irregular sexual partnerships or those who – corrupted by LGBT ideology – defame Christian marriage theology as outdated and hostile to the body, but in the assertion of “a real development beyond what has been said by the Magisterium and in the official texts of the Church on the blessings” (Declaration No.4).
The magisterium of the pope and bishops can in no way be granted authority by a Roman dicastery – even with reference to the personal will (voluntaristic) of the current reigning pope – to supplement, reduce or correct the revelation that was given once and for all in Christ and normatively presented for all time in the “teaching of the apostles” (Acts 2:42), or to make it compatible with everyday understanding or current ideologies.
The two papal dogmas of Vatican I (infallibility, primacy of jurisdiction) do not allow for such an interpretation, which would go beyond the hermeneutics of the Catholic faith; indeed, they contradict it outright.
There is nothing to be said about the definitive declaration of Vatican II: “The Magisterium is not above the Word of God, but serves it by teaching nothing but what has been handed down, because it hears the Word of God by divine mandate and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, reverently, sacredly preserves and faithfully interprets it, and because everything that it proposes to believe as revealed by God is drawn from this one treasure of faith.” (Dei verbum 10).
The Gnostic opinion that a small ruling elite has special access to the Holy Spirit or that mythologically the Holy Spirit speaks through the “healthy people of the intellectually uncorrupted common people” (the “popular spirit” of the Romantics) has nothing to do with the Catholic faith.
There is only the one treasure of the Word of God, contained in Sacred Scripture and fully preserved and faithfully interpreted in the context of the Apostolic Tradition by the whole Church under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium (cf. Dei verbum 1-10; Lumen gentium 25).
Card. Müller, Rome