Brandmüller said that there are too many cardinals who come from faraway places, so they lack experience with the Roman Curia and do not know one another, making them vulnerable to lobbies attempting to push a specific candidate forward.

In a speech given during this week's meeting of cardinals, Brandmüller said that in his view, a "serious reflection should be given to the idea of limiting the right to vote in conclave, for example to cardinals residing in Rome, while the others, still cardinals, could share the ‘status' of cardinals over eighty" who are ineligible to cast a vote. Continue reading

On Monday (NZ time) he will invite a gathering of bishops, men and women from religious orders, indigenous people and secular experts to think boldly about a remote but ecologically sensitive corner of the Earth: the endangered rain-forests which cover swathes of Brazil and eight other countries.

For a vocal faction of traditionalists this spirit of boldness is already on the verge of heresy.

The pontiff himself sees the three-week Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon as a logical outcome of his passionate belief in giving centre stage to people and places that were hitherto considered marginal.

It also reflects his conviction, driven home relentlessly during an African tour last month, that environmental care is inseparable from the fight against global inequality.

As he said in Madagascar, "there can be no true ecological approach...without the attainment of social justice...not only for present generations but those yet to come."

Some conservative Catholics, under the de facto leadership of Raymond Burke, an American cardinal, have been calling for the faithful to pray intensely during the Amazon synod: not for its success but for the avoidance of deadly theological and pastoral errors which they claim to see on the horizon.

The cardinal has called the instrumentum laboris, a working document prepared in advance of the synod, a "direct attack on the Lordship of Christ" by virtue of its openness to non-Christian forms of wisdom and religious practice.

"This is apostasy," he told First Things, an American journal.

Both he and a fellow traditionalist, Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, a 90-year-old German, are especially concerned about a proposal which more liberal-minded figures find welcome and exciting: the idea that married men, who have raised families and won respect in the community, should be ordained as priests.

Although the proposal is specifically linked to the Amazon, conservatives see it as a precedent which would end a millennium-old tradition that most priests should be celibate.

The German prelate's critique of the instrumentum laboris is especially sharp.

He claims to detect a "pantheistic idolatry of nature" similar in tone to an anthem penned in 1913 for a socialist workers' movement and later adopted by the Hitler Youth.

As arguments between the pope and his hard-line critics grow louder, the forthcoming synod is emerging as a kind of high-noon moment.

The very design of the meeting, almost ignoring national boundaries, is disruptive.

It empowers progressive figures like Bishop Erwin Kräutler, an Austrian-born missionary who led a vast, forested Brazilian territory for over 30 years, at the expense of better-known clerics who wield power in big cities.

Brazil's right-wing government has made clear its unhappiness over the synod, suspecting an assault on its national sovereignty.

It reacted in a similar way when this year's spate of forest fires triggered calls for global action to save the trees.

Although the call for married clerics has been the most contentious proposal, it is presented in strikingly cautious terms.

The document suggests that there could be "priestly ordinations of older people, preferably indigenous, respected and accepted by their communities, even if they have an established and stable family life, in order to ensure availability of the Sacraments."

As well as excoriating that idea, critics have focused on bits of the document which in their view raise even deeper problems.

They allege that it verges on paganism in the way it idealises creation; that in urging Catholics to learn from indigenous traditions, healing practices and lore, it is abandoning the truths of Christianity; and that it downgrades the human species by presenting it as simply one more link in an ecological chain.

As for the Americans who have found a leader in Cardinal Burke, many are unhappy with the radical economic view that underpins the synod: one that blames greedy extractive industries and agri-businesses based in the northern hemisphere for the felling and burning of trees whose existence is crucial to the planet. Continue reading

It is is not official church teaching, he says.

It is a way for bishops to listen to the local church's concerns.

The working document ( also called the Instrumentum Laboris) "isn't a document of the synod, it is for the synod," Hummes told journalists.

"It is the voice of the local church, the voice of the church in the Amazon: of the church, of the people, of the history and of the very earth, the voice of the earth," he said.

Hummes and Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, responded to a journalist's questions about criticisms against the synod and its working document.

The Vatican-based synod, which began on Sunday and will continue for most of this month, will focus on "Amazonia: New paths for the church and for an integral ecology."

In June, German Cardinal Walter Brandmuller published an essay in which he accused the synod's working document of being heretical.

This is because it refers to the rainforest as a place of divine revelation, he wrote.

He also criticized the synod for its plans to get involved in social and environmental affairs.

Other critics, U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke and Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan, voiced similar accusations in a released on 12 September.

In this, they cited "serious theological errors and heresies" in the synod's working document.

In response, Baldisseri said, "if there is a cardinal or a bishop who does not agree, who sees that there is content that does not correspond (to church teaching), well then, in the meantime I would say that it is necessary to listen and not judge because it isn't a magisterial document."

Baldisseri explained while he believes everyone should be free to express their disagreement, he also thinks it is inappropriate "that a judgment should be made about a document that isn't a pontifical document.

"This is just a working document that will be given to the synod fathers," he said.

"And that will be the basis to begin the work and build the final document from zero. It's also known as a ‘martyred document.'"

Hummes said the synod's working document arose from the church's desire to listen to the local church in the Amazon.

"The church didn't do it for the sake of doing it to only ignore them," he daid.

"No! If it was done, it was so that (the church) could to listen to them. This is the synodal path: to seriously listen."

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: America Magazine

The topics will be discussed at next month's Synod of Bishops on the Amazon.

Francis's mainly conservative, traditional Catholic critics say these topics distract from evangelisation.

"What do ecology, economy, and politics have to do with the mandate and mission of the Church?" German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller asks.

From Francis's perspective, these subjects are essential to evangelisation, not a distraction from it.

When Christians stand with people as they face such struggles, Francis believes they'll eventually wonder why we're doing it.

That's when the conversation begins, he says.

He spoke of his vision of evangelisation in a recent audience with members of a charismatic group called the Community of Abraham.

The meekness that the Holy Spirit gives us makes us witnesses, because the path of the Holy Spirit isn't proselytism [trying to convert people to their beliefs] it's witness," Francis told them.

"If someone comes to proselytise, that's not the Church, it's a sect."

"The Church the Lord wants, as Pope Benedict XVI said, doesn't grow through proselytism but by attraction, meaning the attractiveness of witness, and behind that witness there's always the Holy Spirit.

"This is the methodology we're called to live in the work of evangelisation.

"We need to walk together with the people of our time, listen to what they carry in their hearts, in order to offer them the most credible response with our lives, that is, the life that comes from God through Jesus Christ."

Francis says he is guided by advice St. Francis of Assisi gave his brothers when they started to evangelize:

‘Go, preach the Gospel, and, if necessary, use words.'"

"Start with witness, and then they'll ask you: ‘Why are you like this?' That's the moment to speak."

Source

• Crux Now
• Image: Kairos Canada

Cardinals Walter Brandmüller and Raymond Burke have both written to fellow members of the College of Cardinals raising concerns about the document.

"Some points...seem not only in dissonance with respect to the authentic teaching of the Church, but even contrary to it," Brandmüller, who is a German prelate wrote.

Parts of the working document are heretical, he says.

Noting what he calls the document's "nebulous formulations" Brandmüller pointed to topics the synod will focus on.

These include a proposal to create new ecclesial ministries for women and another enabling the priestly ordination of the so-called viri probati - married men of good reputation, who could act as priests in places where there are none.

Brandmüller says these topics' inclusion raises "strong suspicion that even priestly celibacy will be called into question,"

He also said Cardinal Claudio Hummes's appointment as the president of the synod means he "will exercise a grave influence in a negative sense," which presents "a well founded and realistic concern".

He said Brazilian emeritus bishop Erwin Kräutel (who is a long-time proponent of married priests) and Franz-Josef Overbeck of Germany are of concern.

Overbeck advocates reexamining the Church's teaching on ordination and sexual morality.

"We must face serious challenges to the integrity of the Deposit of the Faith, the sacramental and hierarchical structure of the Church and its Apostolic Tradition," Brandmüller wrote.

Today's situation "is unprecedented in church history," he said. All cardinals must consider how they will react to "any heretical statements or decisions of the synod."

Burke said he shares Brandmüller's concerns.

In his letter to fellow cardinals, he said the long working document is "marked by language which is not clear in its meaning, especially in what concerns the Depositum fidei [the body of revealed truth in the Scriptures and Tradition]".

It "contradicts the constant teaching of the Church," he wrote.

It also "obscured, if not denied" ... "the truth that God has revealed Himself fully and perfectly through the mystery of the Incarnation of the Redeemer, the Son of God.

He said he agreed with Brandmüller assessment that the document attacks the "hierarchical-sacramental structure" and "the Apostolic Tradition of the Church".

In his view, the working document portends "an apostasy from the Catholic faith."

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: ABC

According to Brandmüller's essay, the synod's recently-published preparatory document "burdens the Synod of Bishops, and finally the Pope, with a grave breach with the depositum fidei, which in its consequence means the self-destruction of the Church or the change of the Corpus Christi mysticum into a secular NGO with an ecological-social-psychological mandate." Read more

In them, Benedict says the "anger" some of his staunchest allies express risks tarnishing his own pontificate.

The New York Times says the letters were addressed to Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, one of the four ‘dubia' cardinals, who recently criticised Benedict's resignation in an interview with a German newspaper.

In one letter to Brandmüller in November last year, Benedict wrote: "I can well understand the deep-seated pain that the end of my pontificate caused you and many others.

"But for some — and it seems to me for you as well — the pain has turned to anger, which no longer just affects the abdication but my person and the entirety of my pontificate.

"In this way, the pontificate itself is being devalued and conflated with the sadness about the situation of the church today."

With regard to Brandmuller's statements that "the figure of ‘pope emeritus' does not exist in the entire history of the Church," and "the fact that a pope comes along and topples a 2,000-year-old tradition bowled over not just us cardinals," Benedict wrote:

"... You know very well, of course, that popes have abdicated, albeit very rarely. What were they afterward? Pope emeritus? Or what else?"

He referred to the case of Pope Pius XII, who had prepared a resignation in case he was captured by the Nazis, and went on to say:

"In my case it would certainly not have been sensible to simply claim a return to being cardinal. I would then have been constantly as exposed to the media as a cardinal is — even more so because people would have seen in me the former pope.

"Whether on purpose or not, this could have had difficult consequences, especially in the context of the current situation."

Benedict said he chose the title ‘pope emeritus' to make it clear that he no longer holds the Petrine office.

"With ‘pope emeritus,' I tried to create a situation in which I am absolutely not accessible to the media and in which it is completely clear that there is only one pope," he wrote.

"If you know of a better way, and believe that you can judge the one I chose, please tell me."

In another letter, Benedict said a "new agitation is gradually being generated" which could inspire more books like Fabrizio Grasso's ‘The Abdication,' which envisions a situation where multiple popes emeritus could dilute papal authority.

Source

• New York Times
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Catholic News Agency

He says they will be excommunicated from the church.

Brandmüller is one of the four "dubia" cardinals who has repeatedly asked Pope Francis to provide doctrinal clarity about some elements of Amoris Laetitia.

He was responding to comments by German politician Annegret Kramp-Karrenbaue.

Kramp-Karrenbaue, who is the General-Secretary of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told the Die Zeit newspaper on 10 May: "It is very clear: women have to take positions of leadership in the church."

She also said although she hoped for the ordination of female priests, a more realistic goal might be to concentrate on a "female diaconate."

Brandmüller says the question of female priests was authoritatively ruled out by Pope John Paul II.

In his opinion, the persistent demand for female priests, celibacy, intercommunion and remarriage after divorce will not bring about a revival of Catholics as is expected.

He notes that the German Evangelical Church - "where all these demands have already been actually fulfilled" - shows that "such demands have had the effect of emptying out the churches."

He also reminded Kramp-Karrenbauer (who is widely regarded as the frontrunner to succeed Angela Merkel as German Chancellor) that the Catholic Church is not "a human institution" but a community of those who believe in Jesus Christ, and it is "founded through the Sacraments."

Brandmüller pointed out that the Church lives according to the "forms, structures and laws as given to her by her Divine Founder about which no man has power [to change] - also no pope and no council."

He commented that it is "astonishing" that certain themes were being kept alive within the German Church.

In his view they are "always the same: female priesthood, celibacy, intercommunion, remarriage after divorce. Just recently there has been added the Church's ‘yes' to homosexuality."

Source

• Catholic Herald
• The Tablet
• Image: OnePeterFive