Cardinal Muller: “Christ did not want to go to the Cross”
Muller is praised by false traditionalists and in reality is just another material heretic
The “guardian of orthodoxy” strikes again…
- Cardeal Müller: “As autoridades da Igreja são o único grupo que luta absolutamente contra o abuso de menores” (Observador)
Answering a question regarding how to treat those who are in an adulterous union but seek to be active in church life, the prefect of the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” responds:
It is not possible to have two kinds of Christianity: one for the elite, which respects the Word of God, and the other for the rest, to whom we grant only certain rights and sacraments, letting life runs its course. Jesus came to change the old sinful world, of which divorce was a part. Jesus explained this very clearly. It is not that easy to fulfill the will of God. Jesus did not want to go to the Cross. We can say that it was necessary for Jesus to die for our sins, but this does not depend on our personal will, on our own opinion. When people say yes to one person, for life, and God grants them the matrimonial bond, He establishes an alliance between these two people. We must respect the reality of the sacrament we receive. Surely for many in the world this is strange. Many people are unable to understand this and seek ways to escape this reality. But if we are baptized, we are baptized, we are Christians. We cannot say, “Ah, I live in a world of Muslims, I go to the mosque, because we can praise God everywhere.” If we are Christians, we are Christians. We must accept the consequences. If we marry as Christians, we have to bear the consequences. We cannot say, “First I got married, had two children, and then I married another person, I had other children and now I do not want to have anything to do with the first ones.” There are obligations that result from marriage and they must be acknowledged.Take a good look at the underlined sentence: “Jesus did not want to go to the Cross”! It will probably go unnoticed by most bloggers and journalists out there, who can be expected to focus on Muller’s “courageous defense of the marriage bond” instead.
(Gerhard Ludwig Muller, in Rita Garcia, “Cardeal Müller: ‘As autoridades da Igreja são o único grupo que luta absolutamente contra o abuso de menores'”, Observador, May 9, 2017; translation by Novus Ordo Watch.)
But this is no small matter: To say that Christ did not want to go to the Cross, without further elaboration and drawing the necessary distinctions, is highly misleading. Muller is giving the impression that Christ’s human will did not really desire the Cross, thus making it appear as though our Lord’s human will were contrary to His divine will, which is heresy:
And so we proclaim two natural wills in Him [i.e. one according to His divine nature and one according to His human nature], and two natural operations indivisibly, inconvertibly, inseparably, unfusedly according to the doctrine of the holy Father, and two natural wills not contrary, God forbid, according as impious heretics have asserted, but the human will following and not resisting or hesitating, but rather even submitting to His divine and omnipotent will.Granted, the subject matter is a bit complex, and we do not mean to be excessively harsh with regard to Cardinal Muller, but he really does not deserve the benefit of the doubt, as we demonstrate further below.
(Third Council of Constantinople; Denz. 291; underlining added.)
It is very important to understand the gratuitousness of our Blessed Lord’s Redemption because it demonstrates His great Love towards us, even while we were His enemies (cf. Rom 5:6-9). This is seen, for example, in the following passages:
He was offered because it was his own will, and he opened not his mouth: he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth. (Isaias 53:7)It is entirely clear that our Lord laid down His Life voluntarily, personally and freely choosing the death of the Cross, in loving and perfect yet free obedience to the Father’s will, for which He was glorified by Him.
Therefore doth the Father love me: because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me: but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again. This commandment have I received of my Father. (John 10:17-18)
He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names…. (Philippians 2:8-9)
Looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who, having joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)
Catholic teaching emphasizes that Christ was entirely free from necessity or compulsion even in His human will: “The human will of Christ, even in suffering death, was free from necessity; in fact it remained free even under the absolute and rigorous precept of dying” (Iesu Solano, S.J., and J. A. de Aldama, S.J., Sacrae Theologiae Summa IIIA: On the Incarnate Word, Thesis 18, p. 193).
The dogmatic theologian Fr. Ludwig Ott states the Catholic position thus: “God was not compelled to redeem mankind by either an internal or an external compulsion”; and he designates this teaching as theologically certain (see Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 178).
Some will object that our Blessed Lord desired to avoid His Passion when He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done” (Lk 22:42; cf. Jn 6:38), and that this is what Mr. Muller was referring to.
To evaluate this objection, let’s have a look at two traditional Catholic Bible commentaries explaining Christ’s agony in the Garden of Olives:
An angel … strengthening him. Christ, our Redeemer, was truly God and truly man. And being made man by a real union of his divine person and nature, to our weak and infirm human nature, he likewise took upon him our infirmities, sin excepted. We must consider him as man, when we read of his being tempted in the wilderness, (Matthew iv.) when he wept at the raising of Lazarus out of the grave, (John xi.) as often as we read of his praying; and here, when we read of his praying, and redoubling his prayer in the garden, when we find him seized with fear, sadness, and grief: for though, as God, he could prevent and hinder these passions and affections natural to man, yet he could also permit them to affect his human nature; as he permitted himself to be seized with hunger, after fasting forty days; and so he permitted his human nature to be seized with fear and grief in this garden of Gethsemani. As angels came and ministered to him after his fast in the wilderness, so an angel came as it were to propose to him the divine decree, that he was to suffer and die for the redemption of mankind; and as man, he is said to be strengthened and comforted by the angel: he, who as God, was Lord and maker of the angels, and so needed not to be strengthened by his creatures. Besides what happened to Christ as man, were ordained as instructions for us. We are taught by angels appearing, that they were not only ready to assist and wait upon Christ, but that, by the order of divine Providence, they are also ready to assist us in our temptations and afflictions. — In an agony. This Greek word signifies, a strife, or combat; not that there could be any opposition or contrariety in the interior of Christ, whose human will was always perfectly subject to his divine will, and the sensitive part to reason: yet, inasmuch as he was truly man, his human nature dreaded all those sufferings which at that time were represented to his soul, and which in a few hours he was to undergo. (Witham)The Great Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide also explains this quite eloquently in his explanation of the parallel passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 26:39):
(Haydock Commentary on Luke 22:43; underlining added.)
Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt. Here it is plain, as against the Monothelites, that there are two wills in Christ : not only the Divine, to supply the place of the human will, as they said, but the will He had as man, by which He obtained our redemption. The Sixth Synod (Acts 4 and 10) proves that there were in Him two wills, and that the human was by obedience subject to the Divine ; and this on the authority of SS. Athanasius, Augustine, Ambrose, and Leo. Nay, rather, though the human will was in itself one, yet in its power and action it was twofold, the one natural, with which it shrank from death ; the other rational and free, with which He subjected Himself to the will of God. “Nevertheless, not what I will” naturally, “but what Thou wilt.” By My reasonable will I subject My natural will to Thee, O Father, and only will what Thou willest. And, accordingly, the natural will of Christ was conditional and of no avail, because it wished to escape death only under the condition that it pleased God. But His rational will was absolute and effectual, because He embraced death for the same reason that God willed it, that is, for man’s redemption. But the natural will of Christ seemed materially contrary to the Divine will. But by the rule of subordination it was conformable to it, as suffering itself to be guided by the rational will, and thus by the Divine will ; and, on the other hand, the will of God, as well as the rational will of Christ, wishes on deliberate and just ground that His natural will should express this natural fear of death. In both aspects, therefore, was the will of Christ in all respects conformable to the Divine. Christ here teaches us, as a moral duty, that our sole remedy in affliction is submission to the Divine will, and that in every temptation we must betake ourselves to the aid of God, who alone can free us from them or strengthen us under them if we submit ourselves humbly, reverently, and lovingly to His will. “This voice of the Head,” says S. Leo, “is the salvation of the whole body. It taught the faithful, it inspired confessors, it crowned the martyrs. For who could overcome the hatred of the world, the whirlwinds of temptations, the terrors of persecution, had not Christ in all and for all said in submission to His Father, Thy will be done?”Thus Christ willed His sufferings, not in themselves, it is true, but insofar as they were going to be the instrument of our Redemption. For this reason, Catholic theology speaks of a diversity of wills in Christ but does not admit of an opposition of wills (cf. Denz. 291-292; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, q. 18, aa. 5-6).
(The Great Commentary of Cornelius à Lapide, Vol. 3, trans. by Thomas W. Mossman, 5th ed. [London: John Hodges, 1908], pp. 208-209; underlining added.)
A full theological treatment of this and the surrounding issues, which are rather complex, can be found in the pre-Vatican II theology manual Sacrae Theologiae Summa, which is now available in English (see vol. IIIA: On the Incarnate Word, nn. 408-489).
So, without drawing these important and necessary distinctions, it is dangerously misleading to simply say, “Christ did not want to go to the Cross”, especially for someone whose putative job is the guarding of sound doctrine. Why is it that these Novus Ordo clerics always manage to speak confusingly and ambiguously, expressing themselves in such wise that one can easily take heresy from what they say, even if in many cases their words can still be spun into an orthodox sense? Why do they not simply speak clearly, as Christ Himself commanded (see Mt 5:37)?
“Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged”, Pope Pius VI commanded (Bull Auctorem Fidei, intr.). Likewise, Pope Clement XIII warned that “diabolical error, when it has artfully colored its lies, easily clothes itself in the likeness of truth while very brief additions or changes corrupt the meaning of expressions; and confession, which usually works salvation, sometimes, with a slight change, inches toward death” (Encyclical In Dominico Agro, n. 2).
For this reason we must be very vigilant, especially with regard to Cardinal Muller, to whom the much-celebrated “benefit of the doubt” can hardly be extended. Why? Because he has a solid track record of disseminating heresy.
For example, he is on record denying the dogmas of Transubstantiation, the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, and the Resurrection of Christ. In his book Die Messe – Quelle christlichen Lebens (“The Mass – Source of Christian Life”), he even denies that the Holy Eucharist is confected by the words of consecration, claiming that the issue of precisely when the bread and wine become “real signs [!] of the communication of salvation with God in Jesus Christ” — the Mullerite version of the Real Presence — is a question that “does not really make sense theologically” (pp. 141-142).
In other words, he is not the kind of guy you would give the benefit of the doubt when he flirts with heresy, any more than you would assume that your local abortionist has suddenly become pro-life simply because he advertises “women’s health services” without mentioning abortion.
But Muller is not only a heretic. Coming from the German carnival city of Mainz, he also has a great sense of humor: Earlier this year, the “guardian of orthodoxy” told Bp. Bernard Fellay of the Society of St. Pius X that Francis wanted them back in the fold in order to “help us fight the Modernists”.
If only it were funny.