Cardinal Müller calls for American bishops to excommunicate Biden

Most Rev. Gerhard Cardinal Müller, the former prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Vatican’s highest doctrinal office), condemned American President Joe Biden’s support for abortion, saying it is "infanticide" and that those promoting "infanticide" should be "excommunicated".

"The word ‘abortion’ is too much a soft word," said the prelate. "The reality is killing, murder of a living person,” said Gerhard Cardinal Müller. "There’s no right to kill another person. It’s absolutely against the Fifth Commandment."

The cardinal made his comments condemning President Joe Biden during an extensive interview with LifeSiteNews in Rome. Click here to read the original article, which contains links to the video of the interview.

His forthright critique of Mr Biden's very public and consistent pro-abortion stance came shortly after the President [pro tem. Ed.] used his 2024 State of the Union Address to promise to "restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again."

Cardinal Müller likened the killing of the unborn and the elderly to the Nazi times, saying that "it’s absolutely unacceptable that you can say you are a Catholic and promote and justify killing of human persons, human beings [from] the beginning in the mother’s womb, until the last respiration [with] euthanasia… Killing of ill people, like in the Nazi times, is euthanasia."

Mr Biden is very public about his self-professed Catholic faith, but Cardinal Müller suggested that while Biden is "nominally a Catholic, in reality he is a Nihilist. It’s cynicism and absolute cynicism."

The prelate contrasted Mr Biden with Catholics and other Christians throughout America who "know and accept as everybody also, the nonbelievers, with their own mere reason, they can understand that it’s not possible that one human being has a right to kill another one."

VIDEO: Leading cardinal warns Vatican insiders out to destroy Church

For years now, most Roman Catholic bishops, priests and laypeople have been saying -- "hoping" would be a better word -- that their is no crisis in the Church, that everyone is onboard with the unoly crusade of the man who calls himself Pope Francis to merge the True Faith with all the other faiths into a One World Church, the religion of the New World Order.

That's a lie! Pope Bergoglio is opposed by millions of traditional Catholics who cling for dear life -- eternal life -- to the True Faith. This week, one of the most powerful princes of the Church, Gerhard Cardinal Müller, Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, declared war on those inside the Vatican who are "occupying the Catholic Church" and, according to the Cardinal, engaging in a "hostile takeover."

In the latest edition of the Remnant Underground, Michael Matt presents and comments on portions of Raymond Arroyo's recent interview with the Cardinal Müller on the topic of Francis' "Church of Accompaniment". Listen as the prelate warns that if we don't resist, they will "destroy the Catholic Church!"

Note from Ed.: This is an edited version of the original Remnant Underground video. We wanted to focus solely on Raymond Arroyo's interview with Cardinal Müller, and Michael Matt's comments. In the first 15 minutes of so of the full-length video, Mr Matt talks about the election of Giorgina Meloni as Prime Minister of Italy, and the controversy over over which side we should take in the war in the Ukraine. Click here to see the video in its entirety on Remnant TV.

Francis silent as ChiComms put Cardinal Zen on trial

Walt is saddened, not not shocked, to report that Joseph Cardinal Zen, a longtime foe of the Chinese Communists, is the defendant in a show trial set to begin today in Hong Kong. You might think that the man who calls himself Pope Francis would spring to the defence of the retired Archbishop of Hong Kong, but you would be wrong.

The prelate is being tried alongside Margaret Ng, a prominent former legislator; scholar Hui Po-keung; Cyd Ho, a former legislator; Sze Ching-wee, secretary of the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund secretary; and Denise Ho, a popular singer and gay-rights activist.

The 612 fund was set up to help pay legal costs for those arrested in the 2019-20 pro-democracy demonstrations. Prosecutors claim the fund wasn’t registered properly under Hong Kong's Societies Ordinance -- a law frequently used against triads, or secret societies. 

If convicted, the defendants could be fined about $1300. But in Cardinal Zen's case, the Communists may not be satisfied with a mere fine. The defendants were originally arrested for "collusion with foreign forces", for which they could be jailed for life!

The timing of the trial is bad for the NWR (New World Religion) forces at the Vatican, coming as it does when the Vatican Holy See's 2018 sellout to the Communists is up for renewal. Although he had retired from his position as Archbishop of Hong Kong, he was vocal in his condemnation of the deal by which Beijing's schismatic Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association took control all Catholics in China, including those in the "underground church" which remained loyal to Rome.

Further reading: "Vatican-China agreement 'terrible, terrible, terrible': Cardinal Zen", WWW 4/12/19, and "Cardinal Zen decries/Vatican defends sell-out of Chinese Catholics", WWW 3/3/20. 

Just two years ago, Cardinal Zen flew to Rome in a desperate attempt to get Pope Bergoglio to reconsider his China deal. But a pope who always seems to have time for private audiences with celebrities -- including heretics, apostates and non-believers -- refused to meet a cardinal with long firsthand experience of the persecution of Christians by the Chinese Communists.

The architect of the still-secret deal with Beijing, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro "Peter the Roman" Parolin, professed his "closeness" to his fellow prelate, but then revealed his true priorities, saying, "The most concrete hope is that initiatives such as this one will not complicate the already complex and not simple path of dialogue."

Cardinal Gerhard Müller noted that no senior Vatican official had offered an expression of solidarity or a prayer initiative for Cardinal Zen at last month's gathering of cardinals in Rome. On a return flight from Kazakhstan last Thursday, Francis suggested this is no accident. When a reporter asked about Cardinal Zen, the pope offered not a word of support, noting only that the cardinal "says what he feels" despite knowing there are "limitations".

The Pachamamma pope wouldn't even go so far as to call China "undemocratic". One wonders what it would take for the Vatican to admit that the deal with the Commies was a mistake? (Don't ever expect to hear words like "sellout" or "betrayal".)  If a show trial for a prince of the Church isn't enough, what would be? After his arrest, Cardinal Zen said, "Martyrdom is normal in our church. We may not have to do that, but we may have to bear some pain and steel ourselves for our loyalty to our faith."

Since His Church is doing nothing, let us pray that God will protect His faithful priest, and deliver all Chinese Christians from Communist oppression and persecution. 

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.

Cardinals say Church's problems stem from "progressives" undermining core Catholic beliefs

Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Archbishop Emeritus of Hong Kong,  has published a scathing rebuke to Jorge "Pope Francis" Bergoglio for ongoing attack on the traditional Latin Mass and other sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church.

In July, as reported here, the man who claims to be pope issued an apostolic letter, Traditionis Custodes (Guardians of Tradition - NOT!), restricting the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass in Catholic parishes and eliminating many existing accommodations for priests who wanted to use the traditional Tridentine form (called "the Extraordinary Form" by Benedict XVI) of the Catholic liturgy. 

In his post (link to English and Chinese versions at bottom), Cardinal Zen says Francis' letter contains "many tendentious generalizations" which "hurt more than expected the hearts of many good people."

The prelate goes on to say that the papal text "considers the very existence of a parallel rite [alongside the Novus Ordo or "new mass"] to be an evil," and clearly wishes "for the death of the [traditional] groups."

Traditionis Custodes was supposed to have been the result of a consultation with the bishops of the Church, but His Eminence claims it came "as a bitter surprise to me personally that the 'widespread' consultation did not reach me, a cardinal and once a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments." He writes, "Not having known either the questionnaire or the responses to the questionnaire, I cannot judge, but only suspect that there was much misunderstanding (or perhaps even manipulation) in the process."

Then comes the real sting. The real problem is not "which rite do people prefer," but rather "why don’t they go to Mass anymore?" 

Thus Cardinal Zen echoes the reflections of fellow Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former chief of the Congregation for the Defence of the Faith, who in an article published in July chided Francis for trying to suppress the traditional Latin Mass while at the same time allowing progressives to reject with impunity basic tenets of the True Faith.

Francis has "drastically restricted" the celebration of the Latin Mass (the prelate wrote) with the clear intent to "condemn the Extraordinary Form to extinction in the long run."

Worse, the Cardinal observed, by punishing the conservative peripheries, Francis "ignores the religious feelings of the (often young) participants in the Masses according to the Missal John XXIII" without the "slightest empathy.... Instead of appreciating the smell of the sheep, the shepherd here hits them hard with his crook!"

In summary, both Cardinal Zen and Cardinal Müller are saying unequivocally that the very real problems of today's Catholic Church do not come from traditionalists, but from progressives who undermine the core of Catholic belief.

Further reading: "Why do they see problem where there is none and close their eyes to the problem, for which they are also responsible?" - complete text of Cardinal Zen's blog post. And here's the Chinese version: "為什麼他們見到不存在的問題，卻見不到實在的問題，且也是他們有份造成的?"

What is Francis trying to say? A Lenten confession, perhaps?

Catholic World News reports that in the latest Vatican yearbook, the Annuario Pontificio, the title "Vicar of Christ" does not appear on the listing for Pope Francis.

In the 2020 edition of the Annuario, the page devoted to Pope Francis is headed simply by his name: Jorge Maria Bergoglio. Past editions have always been headed by the titles accorded to the Pope, beginning with "Vicar of Jesus Christ".

Other titles have been "Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman province, Sovereign of the Vatican City-State." In the 2020 edition, these titles appear at the bottom of the page devoted to Pope Francis, where they are identified only as "historical" titles.

Such a change would undoubtedly have required the approval of the Pontiff. What, then, is the significance of this deletion?

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI dropped another traditional title: "Patriarch of the West". The Vatican explained that the elimination of this title "could prove useful to ecumenical dialogue." The statement also noted that the significance of that title "was never very clear, and over history has become obsolete and practically unusable."

But this change is different. The title "Vicar of Jesus Christ" has a clear and unmistakable theological significance. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, called the downgrading of the title a "theological barbarism."

To date the Vatican has not issued any explanation for the change, but Walt has a thought... or two... From the very beginning, the legitimacy of Cardinal Bergoglio's election has been called into question. There were those who said, with the weight of precedent behind them, that the position of Vicar of Christ (etc etc) wasn't open, since the incumbent, Benedict XVI, was still alive. His purported resignation, they said, was a nullity. One pope at a time is enough!

Then, leaks from within the conclave of Cardinals which chose him suggested that a good deal of campaigning and lobbying was done, contrary to the norms for such events, and that all necessary steps were taken to ensure that (as the hockey metaphor says) the puck was nailed to Jorge's stick.

Favours were promised, they said, and any number of things Pope Bergoglio said and did after his elevation to the Chair of Peter suggest that the promises were kept. Many somewhat traditional bishops were cast out, and liberals put in their places. The Church founded by Jesus Christ has now become simply the "church of accompaniment". One wonders if the next word to be deleted will be "Catholic".

And then came the Amazon Synod, which seemed even to many "moderate" Catholics -- never mind the Traditionalists -- a step too far. Was God Himself displeased? Is it merely a coincidence that the entire world, and particularly the once-Catholic countries of Italy and Spain, have been smitten with a modern-day plague -- the corona virus? Could Covid-19 be God's way of telling us -- especially you, Francis -- "Wait just a minute there!" And just in time for Easter too!

Could it be that Pope Bergoglio -- if "pope" he is -- has seen the error his ways? He was leading us into heresy -- women priests, sodomy not a sin, you don't have to be Catholic to be saved -- and now God, who will not be mocked, is telling him to set things right, and quick too! Stripping himself of the title "Vicar of Christ" could be a tacit admission that he was not legitimately elected, and therefore not pope after all.

From there, it would be easy enough to step down. In theory (as I understand it) that would leave Benedict XVI in the position. When he dies, a new pope could be elected -- one who, we pray, would be worthy of the title "Vicar of Christ".

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!

Battle between modernism and tradition heats up as Pope fires 3IC

Full in the panting heart of Rome (as went the old hymn) there is a civil war going on. Make that a religious war. The Roman Catholic Church, which we used to think of as universal (which is what "catholic" means) and monolithic, is divided as it has not been since the Great Schism of the Middle Ages. The conflict is not between Catholic Tradition and modernism, or conservatives and liberals, but between the liberals who slavishly follow the false teachings of Vatican II and the ultra-liberals who want to finish what Martin Luther started and lead the Church into heresies from which She can never recover.

The champion of the "progressive" faction, the modernizing deniers of Catholic dogma, is none other than Pope Francis himself. In the opposite corner, so to speak, is Gerhard Cardinal Müller, who was named head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, precisely to halt the descent into syncretism, relativism and other heresies which had thrown the Church into a crisis of faith.

On Saturday, while Canadians (or some of them) were celebrating their country's 150th anniversary, the Pope ordered Cardinal Müller (also third in command at the Vatican after the Pope and the Secretary of State) into retirement. Thus, Francis neutralized one of the few princes of the church whose job it was to call out the pope for his seemingly endless appetite for doctrinal change.

The prelate represented the conservative -- read "less liberal" -- wing of the Church that has looked askance at the pontiff’s disregard for centuries-old tradition and restrictions. Ever since Francis assumed the Throne of Peter in 2013, he and the cardinal seemed to be on a collision course. Cardinal Müller was not at all pleased when Francis, answering a question about his feelings toward gay Catholics, shrugged and said, "Who am I to judge?". When Francis announced that he wanted to create a commission to discuss allowing women to become deacons, the prelate effectively quashed the idea.

The excrement really interfaced with the air-conditioning device when Francis ignored Cardinal Müller's suggested alterations to his "apostolic exhortation", Amoris Laetitia. The prelate opposed Pope Bergoglio's attempt to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion -- an act of rejecting Christ's teaching that traditionally carries with it the penalty of excommunication. The anti-Catholic teachings of Amoris Laetitia have been openly resisted by many, including four cardinals who, last September, published their dubia (an expression of confusion or doubt), which the Poope has yet to answer.

By refusing to extend Cardinal Müller's tenure as head of the CDF, Francis has effectively fired the prelate, and scored a huge win in his battle to impose his ultra-liberal, anti-Catholic views on Holy Mother Church. To make matters even worse, His Humbleness replaced Cardinal Müller with Archbishop Luis Ladaria -- a liberal Jesuit like the Pope -- thus virtually eliminating any chance of opposition from the one office in the Church with the duty to interpret Catholic magisterium –- that is, spreading doctrinal teaching to the Church's billion plus adherents.

When Pope Ratzinger appointed Archbishop Ladaria Secretary of the CDF in 2008, his appointment was openly criticized because of the prelate's heterodox (read: heretical) teachings on Original Sin and Grace. Cardinal Müller was bad enough, but Abp Ladaria promises to be worse. There is no truly Catholic prelate left in the Roman Catholic Church. No, not one.

Dear Catholic readers, let us pray to Saint Michael the Archangel and to the sainted Popes Pius V and Pius X to defend us as the battle to preserve the Faith of our fathers nears its climax, and to confound and defeat those within the highest echelons of the Church who would lead us into heresy and damnation. Amen.

Even a liberal Cardinal calls pro-LGBT Synod report "worthless"

Something got lost in the translation! Believe it or not, that, according to the Catholic News Agency's Vatican observer, Andrea Gagliarducci, is the Vatican's excuse for how the controversial Interim Report of the Synod on the Family came to be "misunderstood".

The document was written in Italian, which Pope Francis directed to be used as the official language of the synod. He did this because, as New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan admitted not long ago, few of the prelates can read or understand Latin any more. That the language of the Church has at last become "dead" is yet another of the poisoned fruits of Vatican II. Too bad, because Latin has always been esteemed by lawyers and theologians for its precision and lack of ambiguity.

The hoo-hah about the Church's sudden admiration for the LGBT community, as reported here on Tuesday, arises (they tell us now) from a mistranslation of paragraph 50 of the relatio [report]. The Italian original, after praising the "gifts and talents" homosexuals may [my emphasis] give to the Christian community, asked: "le nostre comunità sono in grado di esserlo accettando e valutando il loro orientamento sessuale, senza compromettere la dottrina cattolica su famiglia e matrimonio?"

In the English translation provided by the Vatican, this is rendered as: "Are our communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family and matrimony?"

The key word "valutando" would be better translated as "evaluating," and, in this context, "weighing" or "considering". The English translation, however, suggests that the homosexual orientation should be "valued", a notion that old fuddie-duddies who are faithful to the traditional teaching of the Church find confusing, to say the least. Any suggestion that the use of "valuing" by the Vatican Press Office reveals a pro-LGBT bias are of course groundless!

Meanwhile... Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- aka the Holy Office in the old days when the name was appropriate -- has denounced the report as "worthless". Speaking in one of the Synod’s small working groups after the release of the relatio post disceptationem, the prelate said the document was "completely wrong" in its portrayal of the Synod fathers’ discussion. He added that it was "shameful" that the report had suppressed some points of view while promoting, errr, certain others.

More pushback came from South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, who told journalists the document had been misunderstood and that’s why it had caused "such an upset" -- the more so because the relatio is only an "interim report", and the Synod has not yet ended. "We couldn't possibly have agreed on it," he said, yet "The message has gone out, it is not what we are saying at all.... [But] there’s no way of retrieving it. It is not a true position. Whatever goes out after looks like damage control."

In a full page interview published in the Italian daily Il Foglio, American Cardinal Raymond Burke said, "It seems to me that information is being manipulated in a way that gives comment to only one theory instead of faithfully reporting the various positions expressed.... This worries me very much because a significant number of bishops do not accept the ideas of an opening, but few [people] know that."

Curiously, "Bully" Burke did not name those whom he held responsible for pushing the pro-queer agenda. He could only have meant the Vatican Press Office, which, as noted above, supplied the translation. Walt would have thought the Cardinal would have felt a little more freedom to name names, since he's being demoted from head of the Apostolic Signatura (the Vatican "Supreme Court") to exile in the largely ceremonial role as head of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. See "Pope Plans on Exiling Conservative Catholic Hero Cardinal Raymond Burke" on Breitbart.

Also on Tuesday, Cardinal Burke told Catholic World Report that the bishops "cannot accept" any changes that are not based in Scripture or Church teaching. He also said that a statement on the issue from Pope Francis is "long overdue". According to Marco Tosatti, writing in La Stampa, the Pope doesn't say anything during the Synod sessions, but contents himself with scribbling little notes which he passes to the Synod’s secretary-general, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri.

Further reading: Sinodo, il cardinale Mueller all'attacco: "Relazione vergognosa". Right... it's in Italian. But you can use Google Translator.