(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller has called the controversial Vatican declaration Fiducia Supplicans a “failed document” that needs to be “rewritten.”
During his recent appearance on Raymond Arroyo’s show The World Over, the former head of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith, commended the African bishops for correcting the errors of Fiducia Supplicans (FS).
He said that “now the African churches, Catholic churches, are the leaders in this way of the correction of a failed document.”
READ: Pope Francis backs down, permits African bishops to ban blessings of homosexual ‘couples’
“And I think we cannot really devise [that] the Africans are only saying that [because] of their culture … this aspect is better than our decadence culture in the West.”
He stressed that it is “a very important moment in [the] Church history that now the Africans are entering the place and taking over the leadership in the Catholic Church, and it is a very good thing they are doing,” Müller stated.
The German cardinal furthermore said that FS “must be rewritten in the clear, Catholic theological understanding.”
“I think this whole document is a failed project,” he proclaimed.
According to Müller, the intention of the document to include “marginalized people” was good, but “the methods are not the best ones.”
“Jesus gave us the [instruction] how to introduce these people: by saying the Gospel to them to lead them [in] the way of Jesus Christ and to repentance of sins and to listen to the Gospel and to come to the Holy Sacraments.”
“Jesus gave for us His life and the cross of Jesus Christ and His resurrection, these are the ways for our salvation and not only a good will to everybody like the Freemasons are speaking of the fraternity of everybody without obligation, without a conversion, without changing your life and [without] the imitation of Jesus Christ,” he continued.
“In [the] marriage, it is God Himself who blessed the husband and the wife, and we as priests, as representatives of Christ, the head of the Church, we have to follow Him and not to grow confusion to everybody in the world.”
Müller lamented that because of FS, the Church “is more divided than [in] any time before.”
When asked by Arroyo what he thinks about Cardinal Joseph Zen’s call for the resignation of Cardinal Victor Fernández, the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) who wrote and issued FS, Müller said: “That must be decided by the Pope himself.”
READ: Cardinal Zen warns of ‘error’ in Fiducia Supplicans, calls for Cdl. Fernández to resign
The former head of the CDF added a comment that was likely an allusion to Cardinal Fernández’s scandalous book that contained graphic descriptions of sexual acts.
“We [the bishops] have studied theology, not gynecology; we don’t know all the details, like others, this is not necessary. But to know about what is written in the Holy Scripture and in the Tradition and in the doctrine of the Church, that is important for a theologian and not in atomic details the specialties of other professions.”
The suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass
Arroyo asked Müller about the continuous suppression of the Traditional Latin Mass by Pope Francis and other bishops and contrasted it with the celebration of an Anglican Liturgy in a Catholic basilica in Rome.
READ: Archbishop of Canterbury leads ‘Anglican Eucharist’ in Catholic basilica with Pope’s approval
“It’s a ridiculous contradiction,” Müller responded. “Because for us, the Latin Mass in the Latin Rite in the Western Church… has different forms, also the Ambrosian Rite, and therefore we have a certain variety of forms of the same liturgy.”
“What is belonging to the liturgy, to the Holy Mass of the Anglicans, we as Catholics don’t accept, with all respect, but dogmatically, the magisterium doesn’t accept the validity of the priesthood of them, and therefore that is not a valid Holy Mass.”
The German cardinal criticized the virtue signaling by some in the Catholic hierarchy who try to appear “open” and “liberal” and the simultaneous lack of sound Catholic doctrine in the decision-making process of these clergymen.
“All the time is the same; there are made decisions without the logical and dogmatic fundament, only for looking good and looking ‘open,’ and ‘I am so liberal,’ and ‘you can make what you want,’ but if you are not obedient in secondary questions [like the Traditional Latin Mass] they are coming with the authority and with penalties and with all these things.”
“It is very needed that we have a [more] clear theological basis [for] the concrete decision,” Müller concluded.