Cardinal takes aim at Pope Francis in fight for church’s future
A senior cardinal claims the Pope ‘has no phone contact with the Holy Spirit’ in a book that could be a rallying call for Francis’s critics.
A senior cardinal has claimed that the Pope does not talk enough about God, and “has no phone contact with the Holy Spirit” as he prepares to publish a book that could serve as a rallying call for Francis’s critics.
Cardinal Gerhard Muller, a German, will set out his back-to-basics vision for the church in In Good Faith, a potential handbook for hard line Catholics seeking champions after the death last month of the conservative Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
Speaking before publication, Muller, 75, claimed that Francis had messed up everything from his green policy and outreach to Islam to his attempt to take advice from rank-and-file Catholics. But his biggest frustration is what he describes as the Pope’s decade-long shift away from talking about God.
“Francis is closer to questions of climate change and globalisation. He has another approach. He has said theology is not so necessary,” claims Muller, who was made doctrinal chief at the Vatican Benedict, only to be replaced after Francis took office.
A long-time critic of Francis, Muller said he wanted to “help people who have problems with this pontificate”, claiming that popes have no monopoly on interpreting divine will. “The Pope has no phone contact with the Holy Spirit,” he added.
The book is the latest challenge for Francis, 86, who was accused last week by Archbishop Georg Ganswein, Benedict’s former secretary, of “breaking” the late Pope’s heart by limiting use of the Latin Mass loved by conservative Catholics.
Ganswein has also published a book detailing divisions between the “two Popes” as they coexisted in the Holy See.
Things got worse for Francis following the death last week of Cardinal George Pell, 81, who was hired by him to clean up the Vatican’s murky accounts before he spent time in an Australian jail accused of abusing choir boys, only to be cleared on appeal.
Within hours of the death being announced, a blogger revealed that Pell, a noted conservative, was the author of an anonymous note circulating among cardinals last year that condemned Francis’s papacy as a “catastrophe”.
The next big battle will be Francis’s synod in October, which will focus on getting bishops to pay more attention to the views of Catholics in the pews – much to the annoyance of conservatives, like Muller, who believe that their job is preaching, rather than pandering to public opinion.
“The synod is a contradictory paradigm. We bishops have to listen to what the people are saying,” Muller complained. “My mother and father had the same faith as me, we prayed together, but they had no theological competence,” he said, adding: “If you want to be a preacher, you must study.”
The Vatican observer Robert Mickens, editor of La Croix International, the Catholic newspaper, said that whereas Benedict had acted as a calming influence on Francis’s critics after he made history by resigning in 2013, his death could usher more virulent attacks on the Pope’s “mercy before dogma” style.
Muller, a former bishop of Regensburg in Germany, now occupies the Rome apartment that Benedict lived in before he became Pope in 2005 and has published 14 volumes of his writings. Conservatives look to him as an heir to Benedict, given that the latter made him doctrinal chief in 2012, only for him to be dismissed by Francis after he criticised the new Pope’s outreach to divorced and remarried Catholics.
He was reluctant to be become a new standard bearer for Francis’s foes. “As a Catholic theologian and a cardinal, it pains my soul to criticise the pontificate.” But that did not stop him challenging Francis’s call for “radical responses” against climate change, by arguing “we bishops are not experts on this.” He also criticised the Pope’s attempts at outreach to Islamic leaders. “I am Catholic and do not believe the same things as a Muslim.”
While some conservative Catholics believe that Francis will try to abolish the clergy’s requirement of celibacy, Muller baulks at the idea of married priests. “[Francis] must be aware there will be a great reaction,” he said, pointing out that abstinence “has been so deep rooted in the spirituality of the Catholic priesthood for 1,500 years”.
Muller is just the latest German to take a stand in the Catholic church’s culture war, proving it is Germany, more than Italy or the US, which is driving the schism-threatening debate.
Francis is meanwhile appointing a large number of little-known bishops from far flung dioceses as cardinals, officially part of an effort to give a voice to the “peripheries” of the Catholic world.
The Pope’s detractors, Muller among them, allege it is aimed at packing the college with liberal yes men.
The Times
