Cardinal Mueller's Interview: the Cat is now Skinned even more thoroughly than before ....

Cardinal Mueller's 'interview' seems to me exactly what the current crisis in the Church required. Since, as he makes clear, his Dicastery is the organ which is charged with issuing doctrinal clarifications, he has adroitly set down a marker which automatically puts certain bishops in the wrong; I mean those prelates who have impertinently given their own "interpretations" which run contrary to his Eminence's clear explanations. He has wrong-footed those who had appealed to an alleged letter to some Argentinian bishops ... the existence of which I for one will not accept until I see it officially in print in AAS. And he has put a ring of defence round faithful bishops, such as Bishop Lopes, Bishop Egan, Archbishop Chaput. Nobody, however lofty, can take them on now without finding themselves also taking on the man who is specifically commissioned by the Sovereign Pontiff himself to be his doctrinal arm. Not a good day for Cardinal Farrell!! Probably not a good day, either, for 'Archbishop' 'Tucho' Fernandez. Or Mgr Rio Tinto. Et ubi nunc Scicluna?

And Mueller has deftly resurrected Veritatis Splendor. Unaccountably, the drafters of Amoris laetitia appeared to have mislaid their copies of that document, one of the most important doctrinal interventions of a Roman Pontiff in the twentieth century. (The Polish Bishops, I imagine, will be particularly gratified and chuffed by the Mueller Interview ... Gaude, Regina Poloniae!) Also resurrected is part of an important paragraph of Familiaris consortio which unaccountably slipped from the typeset when the first part of the same paragraph was reproduced in Amoris laetitia. And he has reprimanded those who construct revolutionary edifices upon the basis of a couple of possibly ambiguous footnotes [see my piece of January 16].

Happily, the Cardinal Prefect has implicitly and usefully contextualised the remarks which Cardinal the Graf von Schoenborn made when he was 'presenting' Amoris laetitia. Since doctrinal explanation of a document addressed (I presume) to the Universal Church is more the function of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith than it is of the Archiepiscopal See, however glorious, of Vienna, any elements of the Graf's 'presentation' which may be considered by some to be inconsistent with Cardinal Mueller's explanations must now clearly fall to the ground, where they may well get trampled under foot as all right-thinking men (and women) rush to open the prosecco.


His Eminence has reprobated a particular error which was raised in one of the Synods; and by the clearest implication he has put out of court the notion that different episcopal conferences might lawfully confect contrary and contradictory "interpretations" of Amoris laetitia.

And all this on the same day as that on which the splendid Statement of our four wonderful and faithful Confraternities of Catholic Clergy came out!!

Come along, all you grumpies! Rejoice! At least for today!

A good day for orthodoxy! 

Fugite, partes adversae!!!