Laying down the law somewhere else
Some weeks after Gang of Nine Cardinal Reinhard Marx made his statement of German independence from Rome, the Vatican head of Doctrine has responded.
The idea that bishops’ conferences can take doctrinal decisions on marriage and the family is “absolutely anti-Catholic”, the Vatican’s doctrinal chief has said.
In an exclusive interview with the French Catholic magazine Famille Chrétienne, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said: “This is an absolutely anti-Catholic idea that does not respect the catholicity of the Church. Episcopal conferences have authority over certain issues, but not a magisterium alongside the Magisterium, without the Pope and without communion with the bishops.”
The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith also responded to recent remarks by Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the president of the German bishops’ conference.
Cardinal Marx argued that the German bishops were “not just a subsidiary of Rome” and needed to set their own policies on marriage and the family.
He said: “Each episcopal conference is responsible for the pastoral care in their culture and has to proclaim the Gospel in its own unique way. We cannot wait until a synod states something, as we have to carry out marriage and family ministry here.”
Marx is right that bishops’ conferences do wield a lot of power, but they shouldn’t. They are another of many bad modern ideas and they have undermined the Church entirely.
According to a translation by Rorate Caeli, Cardinal Müller told Famille Chrétienne: “An episcopal conference is not a particular council, even less so an ecumenical council. The president of an episcopal conference is nothing more than a technical moderator, and he does not have any particular magisterial authority due to this title.
It’s hard to imagine what Marx hoped to accomplish with his arrogance since it seemed to hurt the Pope’s apparent initiative to enforce Mass sacrilege, throwing in the towel so to speak; except for the fact that it does telegraph what Germany will do, and many other countries following them, if the Synod fails to produce results.