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Cardinal Gerhard Müller.

PHILADELPHIA (LifeSiteNews) – In a LifeSiteNews exclusive interview, a former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) said that those who promote abortion apply the same “eugenic and racist” logic used to justify the murderous Nazi regime.  

German theologian Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who led the CDF from 2012 until 2017 when Pope Francis replaced him with Jesuit Cardinal Luis F. Ladaria, affirmed to LifeSiteNews correspondent Jim Hale that “it is not a human right to kill another person.” 

The cardinal noted that since a unique baby is formed at “the first moment of conception,” as is consistent with established science, abortion is the deliberate killing of a human being and therefore “murder.” 

Although it is a “natural right” for man and wife to come together to become parents, Müller stressed that “the mother is not the owner of the life” and that the parents instead have a duty to care for their child. 

Moreover, “every human being is an independent reality [ordained] towards God,” the former CDF head stated, leading him to accuse those who would seek to permit abortion of a “fascistic, totalitarian attitude to demand for himself the right to kill another [person].” 

Continuing, the cardinal highlighted that “those totalitarian societies [and political] parties who reclaimed for themselves the right to kill other persons [justify] themselves [by] saying the embryo is not a full human being.” 

“But with this logic they justified also slavery in the United States [by] saying black people from Africa are not full and real human beings.” This logic “goes absolutely against human reason, absolutely against all form of conscience, but they quiet their consciences by declaring these people … not in the full sense human beings,” Müller said. 

Müller noted that this logic has been employed throughout history, notably among the Nazis. 

“The Nazis said, ‘We are not killing persons, we are not killing humans,’” the cardinal explained, adding that the Nazis instead claimed that “people of inferior races are not full human beings.” For example, “they said the German race is superior to the Slavic and other races,” to justify their heinous tortures and murders. 

However, “racism is not only characteristic of the Nazis because Nazis took over these eugenic and racist ideas which existed before,” Müller added. 

Accordingly, the former doctrinal chief insisted that “it is absolutely against our Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition of the OT and of the NT, and the beginning of Greco-Roman philosophy” to advocate for abortion. Our ancient forebears, he said, “developed this idea of basic natural human rights and everybody is equal and every one of us [belongs] immediately to God.” 

The Catholic Church holds that abortion “is gravely contrary to the moral law” and “constitutes a grave offense.” “The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

“Babies, old people, sick people; it doesn’t depend on circumstances. Everybody is a person in immediate relation to God. That we have to respect,” Müller stated. 

“It is a totalitarian politick to say we have a right to decide who is worthy to live or not to live.” 

In like manner, Müller took aim at the global power grabs taking place during the coronavirus crisis, characterizing them as a “form of a new totalitarianism” and cautioning world leaders against becoming like the dictatorships of Soviet Russia and modern-day China. 

Although he admitted precautions must be taken regarding the novel coronavirus, Müller said that “this does not justify all that the governments and the mass media are doing.” 

That the harsh, restrictive measures imposed by global governments are purely geared toward public health and assisting the weak, “millions of people have doubt,” including himself, Müller said. “There are also political and economic interests without [an] ethical basis,” the cardinal charged. 

Though Müller did not speak to what those interests look like, he noted that “the President of the United States is not an absolute king,” and thus he must not seek to impose a specific way of life or thinking upon American citizens.  

“He’s only the first citizen. That is the idea of a true democracy,” the cardinal said. 

The United States is not based on the “democracy” of the Soviet Union “or of the communistic China,” Müller added. Instead, “for us, in the western world, it is our tradition that the president, the leaders are only the first citizens … they cannot take [on] the behavior of a dictator.” 

World leaders “are not the owners of our consciences,” Müller noted, insisting that they “must be very careful not to take over all the methods of absolute power which we have seen in Hitler’s Germany, Stalinist Russia, and in Xi Jinping’s China.”