C8 cardinal castigates CDF prefect

On a visit to Germany, the leading member of the Council of Cardinals (C8) that advises the Pope has sharply criticised the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Cardinal-designate Gerhard Müller.

In several recent statements, Archbishop Müller has ruled out any revision of church rules barring divorced and civilly remarried Catholics from the sacraments. Asked about this in an interview with the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga said: “He’s a German, one has to say, and above all he’s a German theology professor, so in his mentality there’s only truth and falsehood. But I say, my brother, the world isn’t like this, and you should be a little flexible when you hear other voices. That means not just listening and then saying no.”

Rodríguez Maradiaga said he was sure Archbishop Müller “will arrive at understanding other positions too”, even if at the moment “he listens only to his group of advisers”.

On the question of divorced and remarried believers, Rodríguez Maradiaga seemed to signal support for some sort of change. “The Church is obliged [to uphold] the commandments of God,” he said, including what Jesus said about marriage: “What God has united, let no man separate.” That said, Rodríguez Maradiaga added, “There are different approaches to making this clear. After the failure of a marriage, for example, we can ask if the spouses were truly united in God. There’s much room for further reflection there.”

In a separate interview with KNA news agency, Rodríguez Maradiaga said a “change of mentality” was foremost on the agenda for reforming the Roman Curia. “In future, serving the Church must be the most important criterion for Curia employees and not careerism or power. Only then could one proceed to structural reforms,” he said. “The Pope is against ‘careerism’. Many who begin in the Curia automatically become bishops and even cardinals. This is no longer in keeping with the mentality of the world Church,” the Honduran cardinal pointed out.

Bishops’ conferences should be given more decision-making powers as “many questions do not necessarily have to be decided by the Curia”, the cardinal said. It was all a case of making the Curia “more agile and easier to work with”. The C8 would be discussing the pontifical councils at its next (third) session and “possibly” a new constitution for the Curia at the fourth session, he said.

Meanwhile Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, also a C8 member, again defended the Pope’s criticism of capitalism in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. “The Pope didn’t want to write a theoretical treatise but to denounce shortcomings and scandalous injustices,” Marx said in an address to the Walter Eucken Institute in Freiburg. The Pope was well aware of the advantages of a market economy in reducing poverty, he said. “It’s a good thing if, thanks to a market economy, millions of people in China have become better off. But the fate of the many uprooted itinerant labourers as a consequence cannot leave us cold,” Marx insisted. The Pope was speaking “in the name of the victims and criticising the structures that made them victims”.