3 Reasons Why the New CDF Head, Bishop Gerhard Müller, May Be a Modernist

Just yesterday the Catholic world heard the news - Cardinal Levada was out as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (i.e. he reached the mandatory retirement age).  His replacement - Bishop Gerhard Müller of Regensburg - was named yesterday.  Let's start with the good news:

In 2006, Müller acted to halt over 2 million Euros in Church funding to pro-abortion ‘Catholic’ groups after their dissident activities were exposed by faithful Catholic bloggers and a group called Union for the Associations Faithful to the Pope...Archbishop Müller also suppressed the Diocesan council of Lay People and thirty-three other dissident organizations.

Source: LifeSite News

But, as you could imagine, not all is good news in relation to this appointment.  Several sources are reporting Bishop Müller has long taught heterodox and even likely heretical teachings including comments on liberation theology (which I won't be covering in this post).  Here follow three serious areas of concern, not including liberation theology.

Also, His Excellency Bishop de Galaretta Warns has issued a warning against the New Head of CDF.

1. Comments on the Virgin Birth (which is a defined dogma)

As a theology professor Msgr. Muller in his wordy and long winded work "Catholic Dogmatic," made questionable (downright heretical comments) on the Virgin birth.  Specifically he said, "Upon this it happened not to deviate from physiological particularities in the natural process of birth (such as something like the non opening of the birth canal, the non-injury of the hymen and not experiencing the pains of birth), rather it's in the healing and saving influence of the Grace of the Savior on human nature."

As Catholics know, the Virgin Mary was, by the grace of God a virgin before, during, and after the Birth of the God-Man, our Divine Savior.  To say that our Lord forced the opening of the birth canal of the Mother of God and that she experienced pain is heretical.  On this note, to deny that the Virgin Mary was not preserved from childbirthing pains is an attack on the Immaculate Conception of the same Virgin Mary.

Concerning the birthing pangs, the dogmatic teaching of the Catechism of the Council of Trent is clear:

"... as the rays of the sun penetrate, without breaking or injuring, in the least, the substance of glass; after a like, but more incomprehensible manner, did Jesus Christ come forth from his mother's womb without injury to her maternal virginity, which, immaculate and perpetual, forms the just theme of our eulogy."

2. Comments on the Sacrifice of the Mass

In 2002 Msgr Muller's work " Die Messe – Quelle christlichen Lebens" (The Mass: Source of Christian Life), he says says that the body and blood of Christ are not "in reality" the material parts of the person of Jesus during his lifetime, nor would it be represented by his transfigured body. 

Msgr Muller compared Holy Communion with a small gift: "Already in the interpersonal area it may represent an approximate message of friendship between people and the receiver is to embody and demonstrate, so to speak, the emotional connection to the addressee."  He later says, "The natural purpose of bread and wine must be attached anthropologically."

To deny that we receive the flesh and blood of the same (and one Body of Christ) is heretical.  He similarly made highly scandalous comments on the dogma of Transubstantiation -- the essential change in the Eucharistic substance:

The natural essence of bread and wine will be transformed by God in this sense that the being of bread and wine only are understood to consist, realized and present in the holy community with God.

This phrase would be readily accepted in Lutheran circles as consubstantiation.  The Council of Trent is again clear: "CANON lI.-If any one saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood-the species Only of the bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema."

3. Comments on Protestant Sects

As far as the relationship between the Church and the Protestants he said: "We define our relationship to one another no longer actually with existing differences in teaching, life and constitution of the Church, but over the commonalities, which are fundamental, are where we stand."  He continued, "There is therefore -- strictly speaking -- not several churches together, but there are divisions and splits within the one people of God and his house." 

He continued, "On the contrary: The Doctrine [On 'Dominus Jesus' -- the Declaration of the Congregation for the uniqueness of Christ and the Church he built in 2000] is "far away from that", the Protestants adhere to the being of the church"

Truly such a statement denies the fact that the Church is the one, undivided Body of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The very idea that the protestant sects are part of the "Church" is fundamentally heretical.  The document Dominus Jesus stated, “Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one church,” the document said. The other communities “cannot be called ‘churches’ in the proper sense” because they do not have apostolic succession — the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles."  As a result, for Bishop Muller to say that Protestants "adhere to the being of the Church" directly contradicts the document.

 God help us!!  Kyrie eleison!