Let me post this story just to sample how the MSM has been reporting Cardinal Mueller's dismissal. CNN is emblematic of the ueber-liberal, highly
secular MSM today (even as it has also led in the 'fake news' phenomenon promoted by the Trump-haters), but this report by its Vatican correspondent
is fairly objective....
Former top Vatican official
strikes back at Pope
By Delia Gallagher
Vatican Correspondent
CNN
July 12, 2017
ROME (CNN) - A top Vatican cardinal recently dismissed by Pope Francis struck back this week, calling the Pope's treatment of him and other Vatican employees "unacceptable."
"I cannot accept this way of doing things," Cardinal Gerhard Muller said in an interview with German newspaper Passauer Neue Presse.
"As a bishop, [the Pope] cannot treat people in this way."
Francis informed Muller, the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Vatican's doctrinal office, that he would not be renewing his contract in a brief meeting on June 30, just two days before the contract expired.
"He did not give a reason," the 69-year-old cardinal said in the interview. "Just as he gave no reason for dismissing three highly competent members of the CDF a few months earlier."
Greg Burke, director of the Vatican Press Office, told CNN: "It was a private meeting with the Pope. We have no comment." [So, 'No comment' here, but to Tosatti and 1P5, which reported a more detailed account, he said, "The reconstruction is totally false".]
Muller's ouster came during a tumultuous week for the Vatican. On June 29, Australian police announced four sexual assault charges against Cardinal George Pell, the head of the Vatican's secretariat for the economy and a top adviser to Pope Francis. Pell has returned to Australia to face the charges.
Muller is not just another disgruntled employee. Although he has been removed as a Vatican official, he remains a cardinal of the Catholic Church, which makes his public criticism of the Pope even more striking.
"I have said this before -- the church's social teaching must also be applied to the way employees are treated here in the Vatican," Muller said, implying that there has been a disconnect between the Pope's teaching and how they are applied within his own curia.
Vatican employees have long complained that the church's lofty rhetoric about social justice and workers' rights aren't always respected inside the Vatican itself, said CNN's Vatican analyst, John Allen of Crux.
"What's unusual here is that the criticism isn't coming from a low-level employee in the Vatican Museums," Allen said, "but a Cardinal who has become a public symbol of tensions around Pope Francis."
Some of those tensions have to do with
Francis's attempt to loosen up church doctrine [That's a good honest way to describe it, for a change, instead of "changing Church doctrine and practice to be more merciful" , which is the MSM boilerplate description for any Bergoglian change], for example in the area of giving Holy Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics, an issue which has divided liberals and conservatives in the Catholic Church.
Muller, a conservative, was often seen to be in a difficult position as head of the Vatican's doctrinal office, between supporting the Pope's changes and reconciling them with the doctrinal rules.
"Although he is conservative, Muller never openly criticized the Pope for doctrinal matters," commented Vatican expert Andrea Gagliarducci of Catholic News Agency. "The issue is the way in which he was dismissed," he said.
"People forget," Gagliarducci added, "that there were many cardinals criticizing Benedict XVI and John Paul II at the beginning of their pontificates. No Pope pleases everyone."
[Yes, but no Pope before this one has mistreated their critics, nor been rude to their cardinals!]
Muller was replaced by Monsignor Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, a Jesuit who was second in command to Mueller at the CDF.
.
Muller, 69, a German, was appointed by Francis's predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who himself once headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
A conservative, Muller was
widely seen to be resistant to Francis's attempt to open up the Church's teaching, [One doubts, in view of his documented hemming and hawing, if he was 'widely seen' as that!] particularly on the issue of allowing communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.
Unusually, ['Unusually' is right, given his ambivalent record, but the adverb ought to have been 'expectedly', because this was expected of him as the official guardian of orthodoxy after the pope], Muller gave a recent interview in which he said there should not be different interpretations of church teaching on the subject, putting him at odds with Francis's thinking. The issue is one that divides liberals and conservatives in the church.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is also in charge of handling sex abuse cases involving the church.
Francis promised to tackle the crisis, but has faced questions about a perceived lack of action. [First, the crisis was for the most part tackled since 2001 under the two previous Pontificates, and the Church's stand to combat this 'filth' was solidly institutionalized under Benedict XVI. Second, this pope has tried to make it appear that he is even more forcefully carrying on the fight, but he has done little beyond making announcements to that effect, without anything concrete to show for it, as even his media adulators now unanimously concede.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/07/2017 20:51]