A combative retiree, freed from his duty of reserve: this is the image that the Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has been giving for several years.
In an interview with the National Catholic Register – a conservative Catholic media – and published on December 2, 2021, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller attacks certain members of the political and media class who, according to him, have exploited the Covid-19 in totalitarian ends.
At the risk of being accused of “conspiracy theorist” by his detractors, the high prelate thus declares: “in quite a few cases, regulations have been compromised and contaminated by the financial and political interests of ideological lobbies and pharmaceutical giants.”
And to make the following reproach: “instead of uniting society in the fight against the pandemic, the powers that be in politics, the mainstream media and the Big Tech have ruthlessly exploited the situation to promote the agenda of the ‘Great Reset,’ i.e., totalitarian thinking.”
The former boss of the CDF also does not spare his criticisms of several German bishops who, in some dioceses – including that of Berlin – did not hesitate to restrict access to Sunday Mass only to the vaccinated or those recently recovered from COVID.”
“That even bishops have closed their churches or denied sacraments to persons seeking help is a grave sin against their God-given authority,” warns the cardinal, who goes on to say, “this is shocking proof of how far secularization and dechristianization of the thought has already reached the shepherds of Christ’s flock.”
Contrary to the reactions of several prelates of the Church in Germany, Cardinal Müller cites the example of St. Charles Borromeo, the illustrious archbishop of Milan who did not hesitate to treat himself the victims of the plague which ravaged the city in 1576.
Because, for the high prelate, it is indeed the relation of the current Church to the world, which was revealed by the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic: “Servants of Christ in the apostolic ministry must not offer themselves as courtiers to the rulers of this world and make themselves their propagandists…The bishops, however, as successors of the apostles, are not rulers according to the ways of the world, but ministers of the Word and ministers of the grace of Christ,” he warns.
And to remember that “no medicine or technical invention can save us from temporal and eternal death. Only the Bread that Jesus gives is the remedy for eternal death – without an expiration date – the food for eternal life. ‘Whoever eats this bread will live forever’ (Jn. 6:51). And that is why, at the beginning of the second century, the martyr-bishop Ignatius of Antioch, in his
‘Letter to the Church of Ephesus’ (20:2), was able to call the Eucharist the ‘medicine of immortality.’”
Finally, and in order to recall the good memory the host of St. Martha’s House, the former bishop of Regensburg underlines: “According to our Catholic faith, the pope, besides being the first witness of the supernatural revelation of God in Jesus Christ, is also the supreme guardian of the natural moral law. The Church’s magisterium is therefore entitled and obliged to point out the limits of temporal power, which ends at the freedom of faith and conscience.”
A discreet nudge in the direction of an Argentinian pontiff who is very zealous with regard to the strict application of sanitary constraints, and which will surely be fully appreciated in Rome.
Exploitation of the Covid-19 epidemic for political ends, warning against certain men of the Church showing an excessive zeal in the application of health constraints: Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller delivers his thoughts straightforwardly, at the risk of irritating some people.
