(LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Gerhard Müller has compared the German bishops who promote the heterodox Synodal Way to the German Christians who aligned themselves with Nazi ideology, for both groups adulterated the Gospel by conforming it to the current ideological and political zeitgeist.
Müller made these remarks in an interview published on the German Catholic news site kath.net. He also talked about the possibility of a pope losing his office if he becomes a heretic.
In discussing the new “pagan LGBT ideology” espoused by the Synodal Way, Müller cited 1934’s “Theological Declaration of Barmen,” in which Christians in Nazi-era Germany condemned the so-called “German Christians” who aligned themselves with the National Socialist ideology.
“The Theological Declaration Barmen against the German Christians from 1934 should be held up as a mirror to anyone who wants to remain faithful to Christ,” Müller said. He cited the following parts of the declaration:
We reject the false teaching that the Church could and must accept as the source of its preaching, apart from the word of God, other events and powers, figures, and truths as God’s revelation. […] We reject the false teaching that the Church could leave the form of her message and her order to her own liking or to the change of the current ideological and political convictions.
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The 74-year-old cardinal said that the German Synodal Way is an attempt to “take over Catholic institutions, church taxes, and building stock by an organization that has abandoned the essential elements of the Catholic faith.”
“The baptismal creed has been replaced by the idol of pagan LGBT ideology,” Müller stated. Instead of “carrying the flag of victory of the Risen Christ as a guide to humanity, the protagonists of the German Synod raise the rainbow flag, which is a public rejection of the Christian image of man.”
“They have replaced the Apostles’ Creed with the creed to the idols of a neo-pagan religion,” Müller declared.
“Once again, the words of the eminent philosopher Max Scheler are confirmed: ‘Man either believes in God, or he believes in an idol’ (Vom Ewigen im Menschen, Bern-München 51968, 399).”
Müller had particularly sharp words for Cardinal Reinhard Marx, calling him “a protagonist of the German Synodal Way” who “calls for ‘not talking too much about God’–sic!” and “lays down his pectoral cross in the holy city of Jerusalem with ‘consideration’ for the feelings of those of other faiths, thus denying the cross as a universal sign of salvation […].”
The former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that he takes the apostle Paul as an example, for he was “not ashamed of the Gospel (Romans 1,16) and who wrote to the Christians in Corinth: ‘But we preach Christ crucified: unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ (1 Cor 1,23-24)”
Today’s stumbling block appears to be the Church’s doctrine about human sexuality, an aspect of life with which the Synodal Way seems overly interested, in the cardinal’s opinion.
“Since ‘synodal issues’ revolve exclusively and incessantly around sexuality as an egomaniacal source of pleasure, one has the impression that sexology has been declared the leading science and has therefore replaced theology that is founded on the revealed faith,” Müller stated.
The faithful German Cardinal also cited the Holy See’s July 21, 2022 statement about the Synodal Way: “The ‘Synodal Way’ in Germany does not have the power to compel bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of governance and new orientations of doctrine and morals.”
“If the Synodal Way propaganda machine knew even a little about the hermeneutics of Catholic theology and the statements about the nature and mission of the Catholic Church in the Dogmatic Constitutions of Vatican II (Dei verbum; Lumen gentium), it would have thanked the ecumenical prefect Cardinal Koch for the free tutoring instead of letting off its usual fireworks of hollow phrases and brazen ignorance,” Müller said.
Müller lamented the terrible intellectual and moral state of the Church in Germany and said that “we can only hope that Pope Francis will exercise his authority and not fall for the staged ritual of consternation of hard-core ideologues or think that he can appease them with diplomacy and pious talks of unity.”
Müller, who was the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith from 2012 to 2017, has been a vociferous critic of recent heterodox developments in the Church, especially as espoused by the German Synodal Way. The cardinal recently called Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality a “hostile takeover of the Church.”