[Like Faux News, Jeff Mirus claims to be "fair and balanced"]
More on Archbishop Müller: Attacked by Modernists
By Dr. Jeff Mirus | July 11, 2012
www.catholicculture.org/commentary/the-city-gates.cfm?id=353
As a postscript to my comments on the orthodoxy of the new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, please note that within minutes of his appointment, Catholic journalists were receiving denunciations not only from Traditionalists but also from Modernists. Indeed, Modernists have had many conflicts with Archbishop Müller, whom they despise (as one critic put it) for his “Nazi-like” insistence on obedience to the Church.
Then there is this message which I received today from one of our readers in Europe, Christof Liechtenstein, who is closer to the scene than we are here in the States:
Thank you very much for your commentary about the lies against this conservative bishop, who is the most hated man by all modernists in Germany. May God forgive the people of, for instance, Rorate Coeli, for their lies by using out-of-context citations. Having suffered so much for his fidelity towards pope and faith, the archbishop has not deserved this treatment.
It has often been said that you can judge a man by his friends, but I think it easier to judge him by his enemies. Archbishop Müller seems to have, as his most vocal enemies, those on every side who reject whatever teachings of the Church they do not like.
Yes, this man suffers for his fidelity to ‘the faith’ but only problem it isn’t the Catholic faith.
You see – he is facing the same problem that the Modernist JPII was facing, namely that when some began to take his teachings to their extreme logical conclusion he couldn’t handle that and want to pull in the tide that he had created and promoted. The same with this heretic.
No matter how one wants to twist his words – I am sorry to say, but yes, Archbishop Muller is a Modernist.
Bishop Müller :
On the Perpetual Virginity of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary:
In his 900-page work “Katholische Dogmatik. Für Studium und Praxis der Theologie” (Freiburg. 5th Edition, 2003), Müller denies the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary claiming that the doctrine is “not so much concerned with specific physiological proprieties in the natural process of birth (such as the birth canal not having been opened, the hymen not being broken, or the absence of birth pangs), but with the healing and saving influence of the grace of the Savior on human nature.”
On the Real Presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Lord in the transubstantiated Eucharistic species:
In 2002, bishop Müller published the book “Die Messe – Quelle des christlichen Lebens” (St. Ulrich Verlag, Augsburg). In this book, he speaks of the Sacrament of the Altar and warns against using the terms “body and blood” in this context. These terms would cause “misunderstandings”, “when flesh and blood are considered to mean the physical and biological components of the human Jesus. Neither is it simply the transfigured body of the resurrected Lord that is being designated.”
Bishop Müller continues: “In reality, the body and blood of Christ do not mean the material components of the human person of Jesus during his lifetime or in his transfigured corporality. Here, body and blood mean the presence of Christ in the signs of the medium of bread and wine.”
Holy Communion transmits according to Müller a “community with Jesus Christ, mediated by eating and drinking the bread and the wine. Even in the merely personal human sphere, something like a letter may represent the friendship between people and, that is to say, show and embody the sympathy of the sender for the receiver.” Bread and wine thus only become “symbols of his salvific presence”.
That is how Mgr Müller explains a “change of being” in the Eucharistic gifts:
“The essential definition of bread and wine has to be conceived in an anthropological way. The natural essence of these offerings [bread and wine] as the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands, as the unity of natural and cultural products consists in clarifying the nourishment and sustenance of man and the communion of the people in the sign of a common meal [...]. This natural essence of bread and wine is transfigured by God in the sense that the essence of bread and wine is made to consist exclusively in showing and realizing the salvific communion with God.”
On Protestantism and the unicity and salvific universality of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as recalled in the Declaration Dominus Iesus:
Bp. Müller revealed a very vague ecclesiastical conception on October 11, 2011, during an honorific speech for Johannes Friedrich, regional “bishop” of the ‘Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Bavaria’. The occasion was the bestowal of the ecumenical award of the ‘Catholic Academy of Bavaria’.
On this occasion Mgr Müller said the following:
“Baptism is the fundamental sign that sacramentally unites us in Christ, and which presents us as the one Church in front of the world. Thus, we as Catholic and Evangelical Christians are already united even in what we call the visible Church. Strictly speaking, there are not several Churches one beside the other — these are rather divisions and separations within the one people and house of God.”
For Bishop Müller opposition against “Dominus Iesus” was merely based on “misunderstanding”:
“The assertion that the Ecclesial Communities that have not upheld valid episcopacy … are not Churches (plural) in a proper sense is not translated theologically correctly by the bold statement that ‘the Evangelical Church is not actually a Church’. That is because the plural designates the Churches as local Churches with a bishop. The question here is not whether the confessional Churches of reformed character are actual Churches — it is rather whether sacramental episcopacy is a constitutive element of a local Church or of a diocese. The difference between an Evangelical local Church and a Catholic diocese is being described — not evaluated. The Catholic Magisterium is far from denying an ecclesial character or an ecclesial existence to ‘the separated Churches and ecclesial Communities of the West’ (UR 19).”
Bishop Müller describes the heart of ecumenism as follows:
“We no longer define the relations among us on the basis of existing differences in doctrine, life or in the constitution of the Church, but rather based on what we have in common, that is, on the very foundation on which we stand.”
If that isn’t modernism that what is?
“Bishop Müller describes the heart of ecumenism as follows:
“We no longer define the relations among us on the basis of existing differences in doctrine, life or in the constitution of the Church, but rather based on what we have in common, that is, on the very foundation on which we stand.” ”
I think this is a case of what even Vatican II condemns: false irenicism. The Church has always had much in common with all the heretical sects: the Arians, Nestorians, Docetists. Monothelitists, Cathars…you name it. In fact a lot of the arch-heretics were more Catholic than the Evangelical “Church” is. Imagine if the Church had chosen to “define the relations” with the Arians on the basis of “what we had in common” rather than condemning the heresy for what it was – that misbegotten sect would still be dragging gullible souls to hell right now.
When will these crazy ecumaniacs realise that they do not serve the cause of “Christian unity” at all, but rather destroy it by encouraging the benighted to cling to their error?
The only positive result of “ecumenism” since the Council was when the Pope realised that most Anglicans were a lost cause, stopped talking, and made it easier for them to convert to Catholicism.
Deacon Augustine said, “The only positive result of “ecumenism” since the Council was when the Pope realised that most Anglicans were a lost cause, stopped talking, and made it easier for them to convert to Catholicism.”
Much to the chagrin of Kasper, the friendly ecumenist!
I am amazed that Dr. Mirus is attacking Traditionalists on this issue. Hmmm, maybe amazed is the wrong word. This is entirely consistent with his prior behaviour.
With regards to the quoted references to the Real Presence.
Reading +Mueller’s passages give me a headache.
In one manner it could be construed as Our Lord’s Body and Blood being substantially present under the appearances of Bread and Wine. But he doesn’t come out and say it explicitly.
Sure smells like a modernistic approach to theology. Put another way, if you have to do mental gymnastics in order to see an alignment with Catholic Doctrine something is ‘rotten in Denmark’.
Too bad +Mueller didn’t take the opportunity to clarify his position with regards to these teachings or at least affirmed Trent. It would’ve gone a long way to clearing the path for discussions with the SSPX. Now it will probably be one of the topics for discussion if/when the SSPX discussions resume.
For refreshing clarity here’s an excerpt from Trent:
…
On the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.
In the first place, the holy Synod teaches, and openly and simply professes, that, in the august sacrament of the holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things. For neither are these things mutually repugnant,-that our Saviour Himself always sitteth at the right hand of the Father in heaven, according to the natural mode of existing, and that, nevertheless, He be, in many other places, sacramentally present to us in his own substance, by a manner of existing, which, though we can scarcely express it in words, yet can we, by the understanding illuminated by faith, conceive, and we ought most firmly to believe, to be possible unto God: for thus all our forefathers, as many as were in the true Church of Christ, who have treated of this most holy Sacrament, have most openly professed, that our Redeemer instituted this so admirable a sacrament at the last supper, when, after the blessing of the bread and wine, He testified, in express and clear words, that He gave them His own very Body, and His own Blood; words which,-recorded by the holy Evangelists, and afterwards repeated by Saint Paul, whereas they carry with them that proper and most manifest meaning in which they were understood by the Fathers,-it is indeed a crime the most unworthy that they should be wrested, by certain contentions and wicked men, to fictitious and imaginary tropes, whereby the verity of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, as the pillar and ground of truth, has detested, as satanical, these inventions devised by impious men; she recognising, with a mind ever grateful and unforgetting, this most excellent benefit of Christ.
…
source: www.thecounciloftrent.com/ch13.htm
For good measure here’s an excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
…
In order to forestall at the very outset, the unworthy notion, that in the Eucharist we receive merely the Body and merely the Blood of Christ but not Christ in His entirety, the Council of Trent defined the Real Presence to be such as to include with Christ’s Body and His Soul and Divinity as well. A strictly logical conclusion from the words of promise: “he that eateth me the same also shall live by me”, this Totality of Presence was also the constant property of tradition, which characterized the partaking of separated parts of the Savior as a sarcophagy (flesh-eating) altogether derogatory to God.
…
By chance (or Divine Providence) ChurchMilitantTV’s (former RealCatholicTV) Michael Voris on his pilgrimage this week to Trent, Italy, weighs in on the same topic in his Vortex today, although he does not mention those in today’s Church who might be considered Luther’s “heretic buddies”:
Heresy and the Eucharist 07-12-2012
What Martin Luther and his heretic buddies set in motion was a denial of the Real Presence of Our Blessed Lord in the Eucharist.
Transcript at www.churchmilitant.tv/scripts/vort-2012-07-12.pdf
You’ve got to kidding. We are criticized for defending the Faith passed down to us before the modernists imposed their will upon us? Either Archbishop Müller is a formal or material heretic, or words mean don’t mean diddly squat anymore. The real problem, though, is the one who appointed him and we must pray for him that God will change him accordingly.