A timely restatement of the True Faith

If you ask a practising Catholic -- never mind about the millions who have left the Church -- what they believe and what the Church believes, he or she might be hard-pressed to tell you. That's because their religious education has been sadly neglected, even in the so-called "Catholic schools". Not only that, the leaders of the Church (Hello, Holy Father!) are themselves unclear in their teaching, constantly contradicting themselves and confusing the faithful. Who knows what the Pope believes?

Faced with the great confusion which weakens the Faith and weakens Holy Mother Church, one courageous prelate, Gerhard Cardinal Müller, has apparently grown tired of waiting for a "Vatican III" to correct the manifest errors of Vatican II, and has this week issued a "Manifesto of Faith", in which he restates the core elements of the Faith of our fathers.

Cardinal Müller was the Prefect (= head) of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2012 until the summer of 2017, when he was fired by Pope Francis for having the temerity to suggest that the Holy Father might be leading the Church into error on such things as the necessity of being Catholic to be saved from eternal damnation. See "Battle between modernism and tradition heats up as Pope fires 3IC", WWW 3/7/17.

Cardinal Müller's manifesto echos another restatement of the Faith, "Credo of the People of God", proclaimed in 1968 by Paul VI. That was a rather late-in-the-day attempt by the Pope to pour some oil on the troubled waters which he himself had stirred up. In the wake of Vatican II, the Church was in turmoil, and many Catholics were no longer sure what to believe. So, having opened the window through which "the smoke of Satan...entered the Church" (his own words!), Pope Montini felt it his duty to reaffirm the pillars of Church doctrine, taking as a starting point the Credo of the Council of Nicaea, aka the Nicene Creed, still recited by the faithful at traditional Catholic masses.

Instead of the Nicene Creed, Cardinal Müller has taken as the guideline for his "Manifesto of Faith", the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), adopted following Vatican II. His manifesto is thus not open to challenge as being an attempt to turn back the clock to a statement of the Faith as it was prior to the great "reform" of the Council. But even though it quotes the CCC, the manifesto accurately reflects and restates the stone truths of the Catholic Faith -- the Faith of our Fathers -- that the Church has always believed.

Saint Paul wrote to Saint Timothy, "there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. But be thou vigilant, labour in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil thy ministry." (II Timothy 4:3-5, DRV) That is what Cardinal Müller has done. Lack of space keeps us from posting his "Manifesto of Faith", but you can click here to read the complete text. This what Catholics believe. This is the True Faith.

Footnote: LifeSite News (which Walt reads regularly and recommends highly) has started a petition of support for Cardinal Müller in his efforts to correct at least some of the errors of Pope Francis' pontificate. Click here to find out more and add your signature!