Cardeal Muller: Documento da Amazônia NÃO é Católico

Cardeal Gerhard Muller, ex-prefeito da Congregação da Doutrina da Fé (órgão máximo de defesa da fé católica), disse em entrevista ao National Catholic Register que o documento para o Sínodo da Amazônia contém ideias teológicas alemãs de 30 anos atrás, que adota um tipo de "transcendência natural", que não representam a fé católica. Por isso, ele disse que o documento precisa ser corrigido para representar a fé católica fielmente.

Muller disse também que a fé católica não começa no "sofrimento dos povos" como se baseia  o documento, a fé católica tem fundamento no Pai, Filho e Espirito Santo.

Muller também crítica o documento por ser uma remodelagem ecológica da teologia da libertação. Ele diz que a fé católica não é imanente, mundana, a verdadeira  teologia da libertação da Igreja é centrada em Cristo.

Como eu falei na entrevista para o professor Ricardo Felício, Muller também disse que o documento tem uma abordagem de Deus imanente que não representa a fé católica.

Muller também diz que a Igreja não pode mudar o celibato dos padres, pois é baseado na espiritualidade da fé. A crise da fé não põe causa do celibato.

Ele diz que estão tentando inventar uma nova Igreja.

É uma longa entrevista, aqui vai parte dela.

Cardinal Gerhard Muller: ‘True Reform of the Church Is About Her Renewal in Christ’

Posted by Edward Pentin on Friday Jul 5th, 2019 at 3:52 PM

In a wide-ranging interview that discusses the Pan-Amazon synod and the Church in his home country of Germany, the cardinal says Western Christianity is experiencing a crisis of faith and spiritual leadership.

Your Eminence, what are your views on the instrumentum laboris for the Pan-Amazon synod?

It’s only a working document, it’s not a document of the magisterium of the Church, and everybody is free to give his opinions about the quality of the preparation of this document. I think there isn’t a big theological horizon behind it. It has been written mostly by a group of German descendants and not by people who are living there. It has a very European perspective, and I think it is more of a projection of European theological thinking upon the people of the Amazonian region because we heard all these ideas 30 years ago.

Not all of the ideas accord with basic elements of Catholic theology, especially the conception of religion. We have the conception of a revealed faith, historically realized in the Incarnation of the Word of the Father in Jesus Christ, infused by the Holy Spirit. But the Catholic Church is not a religion as a natural relation to transcendence. We cannot understand the Catholic Church only within the frame of a concept of religion. Religions are made by man, they are impressions, means, rites of anthropological desires and thinking about the world, but our faith is based on the revelation of God in the Old and New Testament, in Jesus Christ. We, therefore, have to correct this thinking in this document in a more Catholic way.

Critics have said this document takes its starting point from the trials and sufferings of the people of the Amazon and not Revelation and Christ himself.

It can start with suffering of the people, but this is not the starting point of the Catholic faith. We begin with baptism, and we confess our faith to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christ himself came into the world, and his cross takes on all the suffering of the world. But it’s another thing to begin with people and then to relativize revelation only as an expression of European culture. That is absolutely wrong.

There is also a focus on theology that some critics believe is basically a “cultural recycling of liberation theology.” Do you agree this document possibly represents a push to pass liberation theology through the back door?

Liberation theology is a wide concept, but liberty is the basic element of our faith because we are saved, we’ve been freed by Jesus Christ from sin, liberated from distance from God. This [liberty] also contains the healing of worldly elements and dimensions, but we cannot convert the approach of Christ and his cross and his taking all the suffering and sins of the world on himself to an immanent approach, as then, in the end, we relativize Revelation as only one expression of the Greek-Roman culture. It’s the wrong approach.

Liberation theology is a Catholic theology that begins with Revelation, that begins in Holy Scripture, in the Tradition, the magisterial life of the Church, and we cannot put the stress on a new hermeneutic that is alien to the Catholic faith.

So you would argue that liberation theology per se is okay, but it can be used in different, unorthodox ways?

It can be understood as Christians taking over responsibility for society, integral development. We are not only interested in the world, but in the center of Revelation, which is communion with God, beginning in this life, and also the radiance of the good works that God made for us.

But we cannot convert Christianity, the Church, to being an NGO only for a worldly development, so that immanent development is the center of our faith. Our faith is in relation to the Triune and personal God.

Do you think this document leads to a more immanent perspective (that the divine is manifested in the material world), rather than a Catholic one?

Yes, this is the danger because behind this document are not great theologians, and there is this more practical, rather ideological approach to the questions.

The other aspect some are concerned about is priestly celibacy, and that the document raises the possibility of ordaining married men, or mature men with families, to the Catholic priesthood in the Amazon. Are you concerned this could lead to an undermining of clerical celibacy universally, as some critics have said?

Well, on the one hand, they are pushing for this [an end to mandatory priestly celibacy] and saying it openly, and, on the other hand, saying when asked that they won’t undermine priestly celibacy. The discipline is rooted in the spirituality of the priesthood in the Western and Latin Church. We cannot change it as if it were only an external discipline, as it is deeply connected with the spirituality of the priesthood, as the Second Vatican Council said (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16).

We accept married priests in the Eastern Churches where there’s this tradition, but the Latin Church will continue with celibacy in the priesthood in this way. I think this isn’t the great solution they expect which will resolve all the problems, because the crisis in Christianity in the Western world is nothing to do with the celibacy of the priesthood and religious vows. It is a crisis of faith and also of the spiritual leadership.