The head of the Church’s doctrine office has praised Poland's Catholic Church for setting an example for the Church internationally, despite recent controversies over its public role in the country.
"Poland is to be a model for the Catholic world,” said Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. "Children are most important in the family and represent our future. So I hope Poland will remain positive towards children, and the country with Europe's highest birth rate.”
The German cardinal was speaking during a weekend visit to Lublin, to celebrate the third centenary of the eastern city's Catholic seminary, as well as to promote a new volume of work by Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI and his own book, Poverty, which contains a foreword by Pope Francis.
He said the recent Synod of Bishops had been "extraordinary" both in its title and in the expectations focused upon it, but should be considered revolutionary only in attempting to combat "sin and egoism" and foster "a culture of life rather than death".
"Various media worldwide have spoken of a coming revolution in the Church. But there's no political democracy in the Church, as Benedict XVI has said – nor can there be any revolution in the popular understanding of the word," Cardinal Müller added. "From the very beginning, a great revolution of Jesus was carried out in the Church, and this has its centre in God and never loses its significance."
Poland's Catholic bishops have been widely criticised for failing to speak out against economic exclusion in their country, which currently has the European Union's highest rates of child poverty and lowest levels of family support, according to EU and United Nations data.
It also has one of the EU’s lowest birth rates, with the population of 38 million forecast by the Main Statistics Office (GUS) to drop by 20 per cent over the next quarter-century. However, in his Lublin address, Cardinal Müller said Poland's strong Catholic traditions had helped offer a "beautiful testimony of life in the family and in marriage’” adding that poverty needed careful defining. "We cannot only speak of material poverty, but also of the spiritual poverty specific to rich Western countries", the Congregation prefect said. "The lack of love is also a form of poverty we should remember.”
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