Cardinal Müller – explaining ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ adds to confusion

Fiducia Supplicans

German Cardinal Gerhard Müller (pictured) says attempts to clarify the recent Vatican declaration Fiducia Supplicans (Supplicating Trust) are confusing Catholics.

The declaration allows Catholic priests to bless couples – including same-sex couples – who according to church teaching may not marry.

The Church needs to return “to the clarity of the word of God” rather than “bowing down to this absolutely wrong LGBT and woke ideology” Müller says.

Müller, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, says in his view there was “no need” for the declaration.

People in same-sex relationships are “not brought to the Church by relativising the truth and cheapening grace, but by the unadulterated Gospel of Christ” he says.

He believes as a consequence of Fiducia “nobody is speaking about the blessing of marriage, of children, of the family” which is “our duty” and “not to divide the Church”.

Pope Francis explains

Pope Francis spoke of Fiducia Supplicans in an interview on Wednesday.

“Nobody is scandalised if I give a blessing to a businessman who may be exploiting people, and that is a very serious sin” he said.

“Whereas they are scandalised if I give it to a homosexual. This is hypocrisy!”

He also blesses everyone in the confessional. “I don’t bless a ‘homosexual marriage’, I bless two people who love each other.”

Francis says blessing irregular relationships should be spontaneous, non-liturgical, and should not require moral perfection. The aim is to bless individuals, not their unions.

Confusion reigns

Given the Church already permits individual blessings, Müller says there was no need for Fiducia.

There is no clear explanation of the difference between a liturgical and the private benediction. Müller says there’s a nebulous connotation instead of saying what is absolutely clear in the Gospel.

Even if the declaration were needed to stop the Church in Germany, in particular from offering liturgical same-sex blessings, Müller doesn’t agree with them.

“We must say the truth: If I preach the Gospel, I am under the judgment of the Gospel. The preacher himself must be a model of all.”

Nor is the declaration necessary to reach people wounded by the tragic consequences of the sex revolution to bring them back to the Church, he says.

They’re not brought to the Church by relativising the truth and cheapening grace, but by the unadulterated Gospel of Christ, he says.

He also considers the declaration does not mention the sin of sexual relations outside marriage, same-sex acts, the importance of repentance and firm purpose of amendment, or exhorting the person to come to Christ.

What is needed is a real turning away from sin and a full conversion to the Lord, he says.

“Go back to the clarity of the word of God and what is said in the Catechism, and not this bowing down to this absolutely wrong LGBT and woke ideology.

“That is not modern, that is a falling back to the old paganism.”

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