http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/mueller-mueller-mueller-40052/03/27/2015
Mueller: «It is anti-Catholic to delegate the doctrine to the episcopates»The custodian of orthodoxy responds to the statements of Cardinal Marx in an interview with a French magazine and a German newspaper. «We are not Brussels. And there is no opposition to the Pope in the Vatican»
iacopo scaramuzzi
Rome
Leaving doctrinal or disciplinary decisions concerning family or marriage to national episcopal conferences “is an absolutely anti-Catholic idea that does not respect the catholicity of the Church”, according the Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, prefect of the congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.
In an interview with the French magazine, Famille Chretienne, the German cardinal states that “the episcopal conferences have authority in some areas, but they are not a parallel magisterium apart from the pope and without communion with the bishops”. In response to remarks made by the cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German episcopal conference, who had said that his episcopate is not “a subsidiary of Rome”, Mueller states that “this type of behaviour risks awakening a polarisation between local Churches and the global Church, which was overcome with the First and Second Vatican Councils.”
According to Mueller, it risks “applying political categories to the Church, rather than using the true Catholic ecclesiology.” The Roman Curia “is not the administration of Brussels”, “we are not a quasi-administration or a super-administration above the local churches, whose bishops would be the delegates”.
In a separate interview that has appeared in recent days on the German newspaper website Rp-online.de, Mueller reiterates that “there is no opposition to the Pope within the Vatican. The loyalty of the other cardinals is a prerequisite for whoever takes up the role. We do our best to support the Pope with decisions regarding the doctrine of the faith.”
“Francis would like that people in difficult situations were not abandoned, but accompanied and accepted in the community, without however eliminating parts of the Church’s doctrine”, says Mueller, talking on the synodal theme of communion with remarried divorcees.
And on the subject of mandatory celibacy for priests, he said “it is based on a long tradition. There is a particular affinity between the Presbyterian and this kind of life. Jesus too lived a celibate life. I do not know of any substantiated reason why the Church should abandon this tradition.”
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