I am unable to access the Corrispondenza Romana site directly because I now get a message that "the site cannot provide a secure connection". But here is Father Z's 'quick translation' of Roberto Di Mattei's reaction to the sacking of Cardinal Mueller...
On the dismissal of Cardinal Mueller
by Roberto Di Mattei
Translated by Father Z from
CORRISPONDENZA ROMANA
July 2, 2017
The removal of Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller represents a crucial moment in the history of Pope Francis’s pontificate. In fact, Müller, who was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on 2 July 2012 by Benedict XVI, is only 69 years old. It has never happened that a cardinal far beyond five years from the canonical retirement age (75 years) has not been renewed for a second quinquennium (five year term).
Suffice it to think that there are prelates who, even though being ten years older than Cardinal Müller, still occupy important positions, such as Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, the same cardinal whose secretary was recently caught
in flagrante by the Pontifical Gendarmes (Vatican Police) during a homosexual orgy with drugs within a building belonging to the Vatican.
Coccopalmerio, however, showed his appreciation for Amoris laetitia
[in a booklet defending its infamous Chapter 8] explaining that “the Church has always been the refuge of sinners,” while Müller did not always hide his perplexities about some untoward leniencies opened up by the papal Exhortation, even if his statements were of a vacillating nature.
[Actually, his statements were just as unpardonably equivocal (speaking out of both sides of the mouth) as the AL statements he purported to be 'perplexed' about.]
From this angle, the sacking of Cardinal Müller is an authoritarian act which constitutes Pope Bergoglio’s open challenge to that group of of conservative cardinals with whom the Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith was
notoriously close.
Francis moved with force, but also with skill. He started a scorched earth campaign around Müller,
requiring himto fire three of his most trusted collaborators.
[It seemed Mueller did not have to do anything to fire them - he was simply presented with a fait accompli, and told by the pope that he did not need to explain to him, Mueller, why he fired them!]
He then, up to the last moment, dangled the possibility of renewing Mueller's term without ever giving him explicit assurances. In the end, he replaced him, but not with an exponent of radical progressivism, as would have been the rector of the Catholic University of Buenos Aires, Víctor Manuel Fernández, or the Special Secretary of the Synod, Bruno Forte.
The chosen one is Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, a Jesuit, until today Secretary of the Congregation. His choice reassures and puzzles conservatives. What some of them do not understand is that
what matters to Pope Francis is not the ideology of his collaborators, but their fidelity to his plan of “irreversible reform” of the Church. [Is Di Mattei saying then that Ladaria's fidelity is really to the pope and not to the faith? That was the one reservation I expressed upon reading his appointment, which was magnified when I read Edward Pentin's observation that this is the first time ever that the two most important positions in the Church hierarchy are held by Jesuits!]
One really ought to speak more about the 'eradication of conservatives' than of a victory for Pope Francis.
[Are they not synonymous???] Cardinal Müller did not share Pope Francis’s line, and he was tempted publicly to assume a contrary position, but
the current thesis in the conservative group was that it would have been better if he had kept his post by being silent rather than losing it by speaking. [Oh please, that is as unprincipled as it is unrealistic! Mueller was going to be cast out, regardless, especially since dumping an appointee of Benedict XVI who also happens to be the editor of his OPERA OMNIA series, offered a perfect opportunity for Bergoglio to drive home a nail in the coffin prepared by him and his followers for 'burying Benedict'!]
The Prefect had chosen a
“low profile” approach.
['Low profile', my eye! Is that a synonym now for 'downright cowardly and craven'? I hold no brief against Mueller as a person, especially since he obviously has the full trust of Benedict XVI. But I did find his actions as CDF Prefect with regard to AL deceptive and self-deceiving - speaking out of both sides of the mouth, as I have found it best to describe the line he decided to take.]
In an interview with
Il Timone, he said that, “
Amoris laetitia clearly must be interpreted in the light of the whole doctrine of the Church. […]
I’m not pleased, it isn’t right that many bishops are interpreting Amoris laetitia according to their own way of understanding the Pope’s teaching”, but in another statement
he also expressed his oppposition to “publicizing” the dubia of the four cardinals. [There, speaking out of both sides of his mouth, right?] This did not prevent his being fired.
The “low profile”, in the strategy favored by some conservatives, is thought to be
the lesser evil compared to the loss of a Curial post to their opponents.
[Excuse me??? Some people need a primer on Realpolitik! When it comes to dealing with a totalitarian tyrant, you are either 100 percent for him if you must be heard from at all, or just shut up! Otherwise, you can only lose. But obviously, the CDF Prefect, whoever he is, ought not to shut up when the doctrine of the faith is in jeopardy! Bergoglio must think he has in Ladaria a most docile, pliant and totally supportive collaborator - perhaps more than he thought Schoenborn or O'Malley must be! That really ought to strike terror in the heart of any anti-Bergoglian.
And I was just as wrong in my initial thought that Ladaria's appointment was 'good news', as Father Z was to announce "We have dodged the bullet - it could have been worse"! I am hitting my head against the wall for ever thinking for a moment that Bergoglio would be capable of making a good disinterested decision for the faith!]
This “containment” strategy does not work with Pope Francis. What was the final outcome of this affair?
Cardinal Müller lost a precious opportunity to criticize Amoris laetitia publicly and, in the end, he was eventually dismissed,
without even having been forewarned.
[I can't believe Prof. Di Mattei thinks this! What precious oppportunity did he lose? Instead of standing with the Four Cardinals - with whom he collaborated before the 2014 Family Synod on a book that addressed the iniquity of the Bergoglio-Kasper position on RCDs - he tells them they were wrong to have published the DUBIA!
At the start of his pontificate, Bergoglio had no qualms in telling a group of religious order leaders from Latin America that they should proceed with whatever they think best "and not worry that Cardinal Mueller will come after you!', an insult followed up by his protege Tucho Fernandez, saying the pope can really do well without a CDF Prefect (maybe that is why Fernandez was not named to succeed Mueller).
And surely, Mueller did not need to be forewarned. I can imagine the audience he had with Bergoglio last week. It must have been short: "Well, Your Eminence, as you must have suspected all along, and as everyone has been speculating, I am not renewing your appointment to the CDF. I am the pope and I don't have to explain why to you, just as I did not have to explain why I fired those three priests from your staff. But think positive! - Now you can have all the time to publish the remaining volumes of Ratzinger's Opera Omnia.
A non rivederci mai!"]
It is true, as Marco Tosatti observes, that he is now more free to express himself. But even if he did, it would be the voice of a retired cardinal and not that of the Prefect of the Church’s most important Dicastery.
[Does Prof. Di Mattei really think that if Mueller as CDF Prefect had chosen to support the Four Cardinals against the express instruction of Bergoglio not to answer them, he would not have been asked by the pope to resign on the spot as he did with the ill-starred Fra Festing of the Knights of Malta? C'mon, get real!]
The support of the Congregation of Faith to the Four Cardinals would have been be ruinous for those who today lead the Revolution in the Church [Prof Di Mattei is going around in circles here! In this totalitarian regime at the Vatican, how could the CDF ever have survived open defiance of the Caudillo Maximo??? Defiance by Mueller would have been a possibility but never a probability], and Pope Francis managed to avoid it. The lesson of the story is that
those who do not fight in order not to lose, know defeat after they surrender. [And that's Di Mattei's way of expressing my criticism of Mueller for his moral cowardice!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/07/2017 23:36]