THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

Cardinal Mueller, however, outdoes Maximum Beans in headline-baiting. He continues to straddle the fence one fears for the discomfort if not damage to his 'posterior' (to be euphemistic about a five-letter word that starts with 'b') by doing it so much and so long. Here's his latest stunt - which is like acrobatic fence-straddling (sounds like a rodeo trick, doesn't it?).

Cardinal Mueller writes foreword for
AL defender's book on the exhortation from hell

Oct. 30, 2017

Cardinal Gerhard Müller has criticized both those who question the faith of Pope Francis due to the controversies over Amoris Laetitia, and those who say that, through the document, the Pope is presenting a “radical paradigm shift” in moral theology.

Such polarization, “schismatic temptations” and “dogmatic confusion” are “very dangerous for the unity of the Church,” he added, and insisted that chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia — its most controversial chapter dealing with the pastoral care of those in irregular unions including divorced and civilly remarried Catholics — “can and must be understood in the orthodox sense.”

[Of course, this has been Mueller's sanctimonious and consistent rationale for his fence-straddling on AL, but while it is true that like all ambiguous magisterial documents, an orthodox interpretation is advised as the default position, 1) in the case of AL, the heterodoxies are so patent, if casuistic and supposedly surreptitious (via footnotes), that an orthodox reading of them is bending over backwards and mental acrobatics - but Mueller has proven to be quite a master of all that - in order to see them in any charitable light; and 2) he does not at all address Buttiglione's defense of AL's questionable propositions (an insubstantial defense that Ed Peters and other canonists had a grand time tearing down).]

The former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made the comments in the preface of a new book Risposte amichevoli ai critici di Amoris laetitia (Friendly Responses to Critics of Amoris Laetitia) by Rocco Buttiglione.

An Italian philosopher, politician and former friend of Pope St. John Paul II, Buttiglione has sought to defend Amoris Laetitia from its critics, insisting it is in continuity with previous magisterial teaching.

In the preface, Cardinal Müller agrees with Buttiglione that Amoris Laetitia can be read in an orthodox way and “does not imply any magisterial shift towards situation ethics,” and therefore the cardinal asserts it does not contradict Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor, although the encyclical is not cited in Amoris Laetitia.

He further argues that Amoris Laetitia does not teach or propose “in a binding way” that a person in mortal sin can receive the sacraments if they have not repented with a firm purpose of amendment.

Cardinal Müller also says AL does not support the thesis that “an objectively bad act can become subjectively good” but adds there may be “mitigating circumstances” in an irregular union.

“An accurate analysis” of Amoris Laetitia, he says, “has not proposed any doctrine to be believed in a binding way that is in open or implicit contradiction to the clear doctrine of the Sacred Scripture and to the dogmas defined by the Church on the sacraments of marriage, penance and Eucharist.” [You know what, Your Eminence? The faithful out there do not have time - nor is it their task - for any 'accurate analysis' of a deliberately ambiguous document whose main propositions are couched in classic doublespeak. Forget the analyses! Just look at how AL's multiple permissiveness comes across to the average Catholic!("The pope says it's OK!")]

He adds that “nowhere” in the document does it say that a baptized Catholic, in a condition of mortal sin, is allowed to receive Holy Communion. [DUH! As if Bergoglio and his gang of cunning casuists would ever expose themselves so directly and unequivocally to an accusation of material heresy!]

Furthermore, he says that the document’s statement “that no one can be condemned forever” must be understood “from the point of view of care, that never surrenders, for the eternal salvation of sinner rather than as a categorical denial of the possibility of an eternal condemnation which, however, presupposes voluntary obstinacy in sin.”

Later in the preface, the cardinal reinforces the Church’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage [Of course, he would, pro forma, though I do not doubt he abides by it] while recognizing that “existential situations” can be “very different and complex.” [There we are, with an excuse for situational ethics which he denies is the case with AL!].


But he also criticizes parts of Amoris Laetitia, saying the controversial footnote 351 which opens the door for some remarried divorcees to receive Holy Communion, “suffers from a lack of clarity” [Yeah, right! As CDF Prefect at the time, he ought to have been leading the line demanding clarity on this and AL's other questionable propositions. Oh wait, would that not have constituted the principal comments/objections he submitted to the pope when given the draft AL for the CDF to review (obviously pro forma only) - but which comments, said to number about 200, were simply ignored, with no further protest from him? Why were the objections valid when presented in good faith, but suddenly, do not mean a thing at all to their proponent once they were ignored by the pope?] - majority of which, he says, could have been resolved by referring to the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council on the “appropriate way of receiving the Eucharist.” ['Majority' of what objections - considering that the antecedent in the sentence only cited one (the footnote)???]

Nevertheless, he insists that the footnote “contains nothing that contradicts” the need to confess one’s own grave sins through the sacrament of penance.

Cardinal Müller writes that an important point in Amoris Laetitia, one that is “often not correctly understood in all its pastoral meaning,” is the “law of gradualness,” which, he stresses, is a “process of clarification, discernment and maturation” based on the recognition of one’s own personal relationship with God.

For someone who wishes to change, to turn the Lord saying “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner,” pastoral accompaniment “has a special importance,” the cardinal comments, adding it is, as the Pope says, “a way of love.”

He goes on to again emphasise that Holy Communion can only be received by those who have repented of their sins with the intent of no longer committing them again.

And he adds that a priest “cannot publicly humiliate the sinner by publicly rejection Holy Communion and damaging his good name in front of the community.” Instead, he must “warn everyone in general” of not approaching the table of the Lord before repenting.

The cardinal said the “bitter controversy” over chapter 8 is “regrettable” and that he accepted Buttiglione’s invitation to write the preface in the hope it would contribute to “restoring peace in the Church.” [Yeah, right! As if this foreword - and all of Mueller's very public fence-straddling since he was fired - could appease Bergoglio at all, much less deter him one iota from pushing Bergoglianism aggressively while nominally leading the one true Church of Christ!]

He praises Rocco Buttiglione as “an authentic Catholic of proven competence in the field of moral theology.” He also says Buttiglione's analyses “open doors and build bridges” to the critics of Amoris Laetitia, and calls on those who “superficially” read the document in order to relativize the indissolubility of marriage and “shake the foundations of morals” to seriously rethink their position. [So Mueller implicitly and explicitly rejects a priori and a posteriori all the arguments of the serious critics of AL, many of whom are perhaps fr better thinkers and far better Catholics than he is. QED, that is, Mueller's mental acrobatics and fundamentally dishonesty in his entire flipflopping, hemming-hawing fence-straddling positions on AL.]