In a new article on Saturday, the former prefect of the Vatican’s doctrinal office particularly slammed an upcoming “penitential vigil” at the Vatican before the synod next month that will include the “confession” of alleged sins against “synodality,” “creation,” and “migrants,” as well as the so-called “sin of using doctrine as stones to be hurled.”
“At the beginning of the Synod on Synodality, which is no longer just a synod of bishops, but a mixed assembly that by no means represents the entire Catholic Church, there is to be a celebration with an act of penance that culminates in repentance for sins newly invented (by humans!),” Cardinal Müller said.
The list of alleged sins to be confessed at the vigil “reads like a checklist of woke and gender ideology, somewhat laboriously disguised as Christianity,” he wrote.
“To deceive the gullible, there are also misdeeds that every Christian should take for granted,” the prelate noted. The Vatican listed the “sin of abuse” alongside the so-called “sin against synodality” and other newly imagined offenses.
“Those who are naive may be blinded by the arbitrary compilation of real sins against one’s neighbor and the justified criticism of theologically absurd inventions of those involved in the synod,” Cardinal Müller warned.
The German cardinal, who has denounced the Synod on Synodality as a “hostile takeover” of the Catholic Church, said that there is “no sin against a form of synodality that is used as a brainwashing tool to discredit so-called conservatives as yesterday’s men and disguised Pharisees, and to make us believe that the progressive ideologies that led to the decline of the Churches in the West in the 1970s are the completion of the reforms of Vatican II that were supposedly stopped by John Paul II and Benedict XVI.”
He also stressed that “there is no sin against the teaching of the Church” as envisioned by the Vatican “because the teaching of the Apostles states that salvation is to be found in no one other than the name of Christ (Acts 4:12).”
And that is why Luke (Lk 1:1-4), for example, wrote his Gospel so that we can be convinced of the “trustworthiness of the teaching” in which we have been instructed in the saving faith in Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. And Paul describes the task of the bishops as guarantors of the traditional teaching of the Apostles (1 Tim 6). The teaching of the Church is not, as some anti-intellectuals in the episcopate, who like to invoke their pastoral gifts because of their lack of theological education, believe, an academic theory about faith, but the rational presentation of the revealed word of God (1 Peter 3:15), who wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth through the one mediator between God and men: the man Christ Jesus, the Word of God His Father made flesh (1 Timothy 2:4f).
Pointing to actual sins against one’s neighbor, Cardinal Müller condemned “billionaire oligarchs or ‘philanthropists’ who first shamelessly exploit the broad masses of the people and then get celebrated as their benefactors with a few alms.”
“The Pope and bishops should not be photographed with these people (for a Judas fee). Any impression of being in collusion with them should be avoided, as should the Robin Hood self-deception, as if one were taking something from the rich to give it to the poor,” he continued.
The cardinal also suggested that the Synod on Synodality has aligned itself with Martin Luther by including lay people in the synodal assembly and “implicitly pushing aside the sacramentality of the ordained ministry” and “relativizing the hierarchical-sacramental constitution of the Church of divine right (Lumen gentium 18-29), which Luther had denied in principle.”
“Overall, the great agitators of the synodal paths and the rampant synodalism are more concerned with acquiring influential positions and implementing their un-Catholic ideologues than with renewing faith in Christ in people’s hearts,” he charged.
“The fact that church institutions in formerly entirely Christian countries are crumbling (empty seminaries, dying religious orders, breaking up marriages and families, mass resignations from the church – several million Catholics in Germany) does not shake them to the core,” Cardinal Müller added.
“They stubbornly continue to pursue their agenda, which amounts to the destruction of Christian anthropology, until the last person turns off the lights and the church coffers are empty.”
“A renewal of the Church in the Holy Spirit can only happen if the Pope, in the name of all Christians, courageously and loudly confesses his faith in Jesus and says to Him: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Mt 16:16),” he declared.