Cardinal Müller returns to the attack without delay saying that the latest statements of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith "open the door to misunderstanding"

Cardinal Müller, former prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith, has sent a forceful letter to some media following the latest document published by the Dicastery now directed by Víctor Manuel Fernández.

Tucho Fernández has issued a document - with the signature of Pope Francis - to questions posed by a Brazilian bishop. In that declaration, the Vatican opens the door for transsexuals and homosexuals to be godparents at baptisms and witnesses at weddings. On other controversial issues that contradict the Magisterium and the catechism itself, the Vatican leaves it to free "pastoral" interpretation to make the appropriate decision.

Faced with this new document, interpreted by many as another one that, far from clarifying doubts, sows more confusion and concern, Cardinal Müller has sent InfoVaticana a letter to clarify some points and which we offer in full:

Clarification on the DDF's responses to Bishop Negri's questions. By Cardinal Gerhard Müller

The task of the Roman Magisterium, whether from the Pope directly or through the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is to faithfully preserve the truth of divine revelation. It is instituted by Christ and works in the Holy Spirit to protect the Catholic faithful from all heresies that endanger salvation and from all confusion in matters of doctrine and moral life (cf. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 18,23) .

The responses of the Dicastery to several questions from a Brazilian bishop (November 3, 2023) recall, on the one hand, well-known truths of faith, but, on the other, they also open the door to the misunderstanding that there is room for the coexistence of the sin and grace in the Church of God.

Baptism is the door to new life in Christ.

The Son of God, our Savior and Head of the Church, which is his body, instituted the sacrament of baptism so that all people may achieve eternal life through faith in Christ and a life of following Him. God's unconditional love It frees man from the mortal kingdom of sin, which plunges him into misfortune and separates him from God, the source of life.

God's universal will for salvation (1 Tim 2:4ff) does not say that it is enough to profess Jesus as our Lord with our lips to enter the Kingdom of God, while we rely on human weakness to avoid the fulfillment of our promise. This must be dispensed by the holy and sanctifying will of God (cf. Mt 7:21-23)

The simple metaphor “the Church is not a customs house,” which is supposed to mean that the character of Christ cannot be measured bureaucratically by the letter of the law, has its limits when it comes to the grace that leads us to a newer life. beyond sin and that leads to death. The apostle Paul says that before we came to faith in Christ, we were all “slaves to sin.” But now, through baptism in the name of Christ, the Son of God and the anointed of the Holy Spirit, we have “become obedient from the heart to the teaching to which we were delivered.” So we should not sin because we are not those who no longer follow the law since we are subject to grace, but we are no longer allowed to sin because we are subject to grace. “Therefore do not let sin have dominion over your mortal body, nor obey its desires any more than men who have passed from death to life” (Romans 6:12f).

In the oldest ecclesiastical order, written in Rome (around 200 AD), the criteria for admission or rejection (or even simply deferral) to the catechumenate and the reception of baptism are established and require that all dubious professions, illegal associations and immoral behavior that contradict the life of grace of baptism must be renounced (Traditio Apostolica 15-16).

Saint Thomas Aquinas, cited commendably in the responses of the Dicastery, gives a double nuanced answer to the question of whether sinners can be baptized:

1. Certainly those sinners who have personally sinned in the past and were under the power of the “Sin of Adam” (i.e., original sin) can be baptized. Because baptism is instituted for the forgiveness of sins that Christ acquired for us through his death on the cross.

2. However, those “who are sinners because they come to baptism with the intention of continuing to sin” and thus resisting the holy will of God cannot be baptized. This is true not only because of the internal contradiction of God's grace towards us and our sin against God, but also because of the external false testimony that undermines the credibility of the Church's announcement, because the sacraments are signs of the grace they transmit ( cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III q.III Quaestio 68, article 4).

In the trap of transhumanist terminology

It is confusing and harmful that the Magisterium engages in the terminology of a nihilistic and atheistic anthropology and thus seems to give its false content the status of legitimate theological opinion in the Church. “Have you not read,” Jesus says to the Pharisees, “that they wanted to set a trap for him, that in the beginning the Creator created man and woman?” (Matthew 19:4).

In truth, there are no transsexual or homophilous (homoaffective or homosexual) people either in the order of creature nature or in the grace of the New Covenant in Christ. In the logic of the creator of man and the world, two sexes are sufficient to ensure the continued existence of humanity and to allow children to flourish in the family community with their father and mother.

“Person,” as every philosopher and theologian knows, is man in his spiritual and moral individuality, which relates him directly to God, his Creator and Redeemer. However, every human person exists in spiritual-physical nature and specifically as man or woman through the act of creation in which God made them (and in the reciprocal relationship in marriage) in the parable of the eternal goodness of him and triune love of him. And just as created, God will resurrect every human being in his or her female or male body without being irritated by those who have genitally mutilated other people (for a lot of money) or who, confused by false propaganda, have been willfully deceived of their identity. male or female.

Transhumanism in all its variants is a diabolical fiction and a sin against the personal dignity of human beings, even if it is glossed over in the form of transsexualism in terms of terminology such as “self-determined gender reassignment.” For doctrine and practice, the Roman Church clearly stipulates: “The prostitute, the fornicator, the mutilator, and anyone who does anything that is not said [1 Cor 6:6-20] will be rejected [from the catechumenate and baptism]” (Traditio Apostolica 16).

“Sound doctrine” (1 Tim 4:3) is healthy pastoral care

The pastoral motive, which wants sinners who violate the sixth and ninth commandments of the Decalogue to be treated with the greatest possible "gentleness and understanding", is only worthy of praise as long as the pastor does not deceive his patient about the seriousness of his illness as if he were a Bad Doctor, but only if the good Shepherd “jokes with heaven more for one sinner who repents, than for ninety-nine righteous people who need not repent [due to false self-judgment]” (Luke 15:6) . Here we must also make a fundamental distinction between the (unique) sacrament of baptism, which erases all previous sins and gives us the permanent character of being incorporated into the body of Christ, and the (repeatable) sacrament of penance, through which sins are forgiven that we committed after baptism.

In accordance with the Church's care for salvation, it is always right that a child can and should be baptized whose Catholic education can be guaranteed by those responsible for it, especially through an exemplary life.

However, the Church can leave no doubt about the child's natural right to grow up with her own biological parents or, in case of emergency, with her adoptive parents, who morally and legitimately take her place. Any form of surrogacy or production of a child in a laboratory (as a thing) to satisfy selfish desires is, from a Catholic perspective, a grave violation of the personal dignity of a human being whom God ordains into physical and spiritually through his own mother and father to call him to be a child of God in eternal life.

Why God only builds the church through right faith

In connection with the synod on synodality, the biblical formulation was often used: “He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the congregations” (Rev 2:11). What is understood in the last book of Holy Scripture is “faithfulness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:2). The author of the Traditio Apostolica of Rome of the apostles Peter and Paul is convinced that “the edification of the Church is achieved with the acceptance of the right faith.”

He concludes his work with words worth considering: “For if everyone listens to the apostolic tradition, follows it, and observes it,

Source