False Prophet, ‘Little Beast’, who lies like the Dragon: Vatican’s former doctrine head criticizes Francis’ Amazon synod working doc for ‘false teaching’ and its ‘magisterium’ (mystery, ambiguity). Part of the ‘Mystery Religion.’

July 16, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The cardinal who was tasked by Pope Benedict with defending the doctrine of the Catholic Church has criticized the Pan-Amazon Synod’s working document (Instrumentum Laboris) for its “radical u-turn in the hermeneutics of Catholic theology” and for its “false teaching.”

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), said the “main problem” with the working document is that “key terms are not being clarified.”His statement was released on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (read full statement below). 

“What is a synodal path, what is integral development, what does a Samaritan, missionary, synodal, and open Church mean, or a Church reaching out, the Church of the Poor, the Church of the Amazon, and more? Is this Church something different from the People of God or is she to be understood merely as the hierarchy of Pope and Bishops, or is she a part of it, or does she stand on the opposite side of the people?” Müller states. 

The Cardinal, who held his post at the CDF from 2012-2017, especially takes issue with the working document’s claim that there are new sources of “Revelation” related to geographical locations such as the Amazon region. 

“If here a certain territory is being declared to be a ‘particular source of God’s Revelation,’ then one has to state that this is a false teaching, inasmuch as for 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has infallibly taught that Holy Scripture and Apostolic Tradition are the only sources of Revelation and that no further Revelation can be added in the course of history,” he stated. 

“As Dei Verbum states, ‘we now await no further new public revelation’ (4). Holy Scripture and Tradition are the only sources of Revelation, as Dei Verbum (7) explains: ‘This sacred tradition, therefore, and Sacred Scripture of both the Old and New Testaments are like a mirror in which the pilgrim Church on earth looks at God, from whom she has received everything, until she is brought finally to see Him as He is, face to face.’ ‘Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church’ (Dei Verbum 10),” the Cardinal added. 

Most importantly, in Cardinal Müller’s view, the relationship of Holy Scripture and Tradition on the one side and the Magisterium on the other has been put “upside down” in the Vatican document. He asks: “Has the Church of Christ been placed by her Founder as a sort of raw material into the hands of bishops and popes, which they now – illuminated by the Holy Spirit – can rebuild into an updated instrument also with secular goals?”

The approach of the working document, he says, is that “the whole line of thought turns in self-referential and circular ways around the newest documents of Pope Francis’ Magisterium,” and that there are a few “references to John Paul II and Benedict XVI,” with Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers being quoted rarely. In this way, the Magisterium – which is meant to “interpret” and “regulate” the Revelation that is “fully” contained in Holy Scripture and Apostolic Tradition – becomes the tail that wags the dog, thus turning the hermeneutics of Catholic theology “upside down.”

Cardinal Müller goes on to show how the authors of the working document show a “special loyalty to the Pope” by quoting him intensely, even referring to Pope Francis’ “mantra,” a word which the cardinal himself calls “sloppy.” Müller even shows that some quotations and references in the text are simply incorrect, thus indicating a lack of academic carefulness.

The German prelate also rejects the idea of a “cosmovision” that is to be found in the Vatican working document.

“A cosmovision with its myths and the ritual magic of Mother ‘Nature,’ or its sacrifices to ‘gods’ and spirits,” he states, “which scare the wits out of us, or lure us on with false promises, cannot be an adequate approach for the coming of the Triune God in His Word and His Holy Spirit.”

Müller states that “the cosmos, however, is not to be adored like God, but only the Creator Himself.”

Müller shows where the synodal text goes wrong in its understanding of “inculturation,” since inculturation has only a limited place within the Church’s missionary activity. The Incarnation is the starting point of the Church’s missionary activity; “this self-communication of God as a Grace and life of each man is being spread in the world by way of the Church’s proclamation of her life and her cult – that is to say, by way of the world mission according to the universal mandate of Christ.”

What is missing in the working document, the Cardinal and former dogmatics professor explains, is a “clear witness to the self-communication of God in the verbum incarnatum, to the sacramentality of the Church, to the Sacraments as objective means of Grace.”

The Sacraments, he adds, cannot be inculturated, but merely some “secondary external” elements. The Church witnesses to the Incarnation and to the Sacraments “so that eternal life is the reward for the conversion to God, the reconciliation with Him, and not only with the environment and our shared world.”

He concludes: “Instead of presenting an ambiguous approach with a vague religiosity and the futile attempt to turn Christianity into a science of salvation by sacralizing the cosmos and the biodiverse nature and ecology, it is important to look to the center and origin of our Faith: ‘In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature’ (Dei Verbum 2).”

Cardinal Müller is not the first high-ranking prelate to criticize the document. Last month, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, one of the two remaining dubia cardinals, issued a critique of the document, calling it “heretical” and an “apostasy” from Divine Revelation. He called upon Church leaders to “reject” it with “all decisiveness.” 

Cardinal Raymond Burke has also commented on remarks made by Amazon Synod organizers, saying that relaxing priestly celibacy for the Amazon region would affect the universal Church. “It is not honest” to suggest that the October meeting is “treating the question of clerical celibacy for that region alone,” he said last month. 

Bishop Marian Eleganti, the auxiliary bishop of Chur, Switzerland has also stated that if ideas in the working document are adopted, they “will contaminate the whole Mystical Body of the Church – and gravely damage it.”