Vatican City, Jan 4, 2017 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The ideological efforts to change Catholic doctrine after the Second Vatican Council were deeply misguided, said Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and a leading interpreter of Benedict XVI.
“Ideology,” he said, “is always a proud attempt to subject the Word of God and the doctrine of the Church to the prejudice of one’s own thoughts, with the aim to obtain a manipulative power over the faithful and their lives.”
Theology is different, the cardinal explained, because “theology is the humble reflection on faith that rises up from listening to the Word of God.”
For this reason, “any fear that the Council might provoke a breach with the tradition of the Church is not only heretical: it would dismantle the meaning of supernatural mediation.”
Cardinal Mueller spoke at the Pontifical Gregorian University for the Dec. 14 presentation of the Italian edition of the seventh book in a series of Joseph Ratzinger’s complete works. The seventh volume contains all the writings the man who served as Benedict XVI wrote about the Second Vatican Council, including writings when he was an expert advisor to Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne.
The complete works are curated by Cardinal Mueller himself.
In his remarks, the cardinal said the Second Vatican Council’s wake included a conflict between theology and ideology: “the expected Pentecostal renewal was replaced by the perspective of a ‘Babylonic’ confession of faith and by the attempt to contradict the thought of the theological school.”
All of this was “not a work of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit always listens to the Church in love and truth.”
“Defecting from faith and counterfeiting faith, and the division from the Church that follows, are fruits of another spirit that is not the Spirit of God,” he explained.
Cardinal Mueller cited a famous expression of Benedict XVI: his Dec. 22, 2005 Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia, in which he spoke of a “hermeneutic of continuity” to interpret the Catholic faith.
Cardinal Mueller emphasized: “without a hermeneutic of continuity and of reform, the Church would secularize itself, and would turn into something more similar to a humanitarian organization.”
If this would happen, he said, “there would be no reason to be part of the Church.”
Cardinal Mueller underscored that “the hermeneutic of reform and continuity is nothing more than the hermeneutic of faith as it is testified by the Holy Scripture, that lives in the apostolic tradition interpreted in the authentic way of the magisterium. Certainly, the Church is founded on revelation, and not on the magisterium.”
Cardinal Mueller further reflected on the nature of ideology. In light of 20th century developments, “we noted that ideology is nothing more that the claim of some human being to dominate the moral conscience of other people.”
He added that “renewal” and “mainstream” are secular terms. He suggested their use are “the signs of ideological strongholds raised against the consciousness of God.”
These ideas, he added, “can be glimpsed in the philosophical roots of the Enlightenment, idealism and materialism, that is, in the ideological turn Europe lived through in the last centuries.”
Cardinal Mueller said these ideologies may fall short.
“The question is whether man can really find his foundation and his self-fulfillment without recognizing his constitutive bond with the sovereign Creator and Reconciler,” he said.
Article Archive
For Cardinal Mueller, a humble faith is good for theology
Related Articles • More Articles
Father Leo Riley, age 68, continued to serve as a priest for years after a 2020 sexual abuse lawsuit was filed against him and the Diocese of Venice in Florida. / Credit: Charlotte County Sheriff's OfficeCNA Staff, Apr 27, 2024 / 19:18 pm (CNA).A Florida priest who was recently arrested on sex abuse charges was permitted to continue in active ministry for nearly three years after a civil sex abuse lawsuit was filed against him and the diocese in which he serves.Father Leo Riley, age 68, continued to serve as a priest for years after a 2020 sexual abuse lawsuit was filed against him and the Diocese of Venice in Florida. The matter came to the forefront this week after Riley was arrested on several sex abuse charges dating back to his time serving as a priest in Iowa decades ago. The Charlotte County, Florida Sheriff's Office said in a press release that deputies arrested Riley in Port Charlotte on April 24 "on multiple counts of capital sexual battery stemmin...
Facade of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly of Bolivia. / Credit: Wikimedia Commons / EEJCCACI Prensa Staff, Apr 27, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).One year after the Spanish newspaper El País published the report "Diary of a Pedophile Priest," which recounted the sexual abuse of minors committed in Bolivia by the deceased Jesuit priest Alfonso Pedrajas, journalists from ACI Prensa, CNA's Spanish-language news partner, went to the South American country to look into the political implications of the case, how the scandal has affected the Church's image in Bolivia, and the response of the civil justice system.Pedrajas, better known as "Padre Pica," arrived in South America in the early 1960s as part of his formation process with the Jesuits. For 10 years he lived in Peru and Ecuador, where he allegedly committed his first abuses while still a seminarian, and in 1971 he settled permanently in Bolivia.There the Society of Jesus appointed him assistant principal of the John XXIII Insti...
The members of the general board of directors of the Regnum Christi Federation, before its first general convention from April 29 to May 4, 2024, in Rome. / Credit: Regnum ChristiACI Prensa Staff, Apr 27, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).The Regnum Christi Federation will hold its first general convention in Rome from April 29 to May 4, the first such assembly since its statutes were approved in 2019 after a long process of listening, purification, and a hopeful look toward its future.The ecclesial movement was shaken to the core by the revelation of numerous cases of sexual abuse and abuses of power primarily involving Father Marcial Maciel, the deceased founder of the Legionaries of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement.The Regnum Christi Federation is comprised of four vocations: the Legionaries of Christ (priests), Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi, Lay Consecrated Men of Regnum Christi, and lay members.Regnum Christi is now defined as an apostolic body and spiritual family led by ...