Debate among German cardinals heats up; Cardinal Müller raps statement by Cardinal Marx

March 26, 2015

Taking aim at public statements by the president of the German bishops’ conference, Cardinal Gerhard Müller has said that it is an “anti-Catholic idea” to suggest that local bishops’ conferences should settle questions about the Church’s approach to Catholics who are divorced and remarried.

In an interview with the French journal Famille Chretienne, Cardinal Müller—who is the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—reacted strongly against a public remark by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who had said that the German bishops may not wait for the Synod of Bishops to resolve questions about allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist. Cardinal Marx had told reporters that the German bishops believe the Church’s discipline should change, and “We are not a branch office of Rome.”

“That is an absolutely anti-Catholic statement,” responded Cardinal Müller. He observed that episcopal conferences have authority to decide some issues, “but not as an alternative magisterium, without the Pope and without communion among all the bishops.”

Cardinal Müller continued: “Hearing that an episcopal conference is not a ‘branch office of Rome,’ I take the opportunity to remark that dioceses are not branch offices of the episcopal conference.” He went on to say that the attitude suggested by Cardinal Marx’s statement risks a polarization of the Church, putting local churches in conflict with the universal Church.

Cardinal Müller said that the Church must bear a courageous and prophetic witness to the integrity of marriage, even at the risk of incurring public rejection. “It is not very difficult to present the Gospel as a simple therapeutic message,” he said. “But it does not answer Jesus’ command.”

The public criticism by Cardinal Müller came just days after another German prelate, Cardinal Paul Joseph Cordes, had issued his own sharp criticism of the country’s episcopal conference. Cardinal Cordes, too, had expressed dismay at the public remarks of Cardinal Marx. Speaking more generally about the country’s hierarchy, Cardinal Cordes said: “The existing German ecclesial apparatus is completely unfit to work against growing secularism.”

 

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Further information:

• Cardinal Müller : « L’évêque doit être un martyr par la parole » (Famille Chretienne)
• Former Vatican official raps Cardinal Marx, says German hierarchy unfit to guide universal Church (CWN, 3/24)