German media source, Die Zeit, reports an unnamed Vatican diplomat saying Cardinal Gerhard Müller overstepped the mark on Amoris Laetitia.
“His task should have been to explain the reforms and translate them for the world at large; not to break with tradition, but to write a new chapter of tradition. Instead he acted as the pope’s inquisitor”, the diplomat is reported to have said.
Die Zeit is high-quality German weekly.
The publication devoted a whole page to the decision by Pope Francis not to renew Müller’s appointment as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF).
The theologian Wolfgang Beinert says that the relationship between Pope Francis and Müller had never been very intimate from the outset.
He said their chemistry was different and by nature they do not fit together.
Müller insisted, “I was always loyal to the pope and always will be as a Catholic, a bishop and a cardinal.”
But he also emphasized that it was the task of the pope and the bishops to adhere to the truth of the Gospels and to preserve church unity.
And he has sharply criticised Pope Francis for the “unacceptable” way in which he has been treated.
“He did not give a reason – just as he gave no reason for dismissing three highly competent members of the CDF a few months earlier,” Mueller told the Bavarian daily Passauer Neue Presse.
Müller is regarded by many Vatican watchers as the leading critic of the what the Pope wrote about family and love in Amoris Laetitia.
In the encyclical, Francis suggested that under certain circumstances divorced and remarried people should be allowed to participate in communion.
Four cardinals subsequently wrote a letter to the Pope expressing their concerns (dubia) about what he said.
Müller said that, rather than publishing the dubia in a letter and making the discussion public, it would have been better to treat the issue in a confidential meeting.
He made sure to point out that he had never taken sides in the dubia debate.
“And this is where I must stress with all due clarity that the attempts up to now by Cardinals Schoenborn, Kasper and others to explain how we can achieve a balancing act between dogma, that is church teaching, and pastoral practice (concerning communion for remarried divorcees), are simply not convincing,”
“Source
- LaCroix
- Die Zeit
- Image: Catholic Herald/CNS
