Editor’s Note: Here are the key quotes in Cardinal Mueller’s January 2024 denunciation of Fiducia supplicans, in the fourth paragraph of the section entitled, “How does FS justify proposing a new doctrine without contradicting the previous 2021 document?”:
And this change of meaning is precisely what happens in FS, which invents a new category of blessings beyond those associated with either a sacrament or a blessing as the Church has understood them.
To teach something never taught before by the Church, so as to allow what never before was allowed, is precisely what one means by “contrary to Catholic doctrine”.
Again, in the 9th paragraph of the same section, the Cardinal writes:
A first observation is that there is no basis for this new usage in the biblical texts cited by FS, nor in any previous statement of the Magisterium.
But to teach what has never been taught by God in revelation, nor in the Magisterium, is by definition a novelty, condemned by Saint Paul in 1 Timothy 6:20, which in fact condemns the entire document of Fiducia supplicans.
Again in the 10th paragraph, the same Cardinal says:
This leads to a second observation: it is hazardous to invent new terms that go against the traditional usage of language. Such procedure can give rise to arbitrary exercises of power.
But a term whose meaning is “against the traditional usage of language” of the Church, is “contrary to Catholic Doctrine”, since “contrary” means “against”.
And again, in the 15th paragraph, the same Cardinal says:
Now to claim that one can separate the meaning of this blessing from the teaching of Christ is to postulate a dualism between what the Church does and what the Church says. But as the Second Vatican Council teaches, revelation is given to us by deeds and words, which are inseparable (Dei Verbum 2), and the Church’s proclamation cannot separate deeds from words. It is precisely the simple people, whom the document wishes to favor by promoting popular piety, who are most susceptible to being deceived by a symbolic deed that contradicts doctrine, since they intuitively grasp the doctrinal content of the deed.
Where the Cardinal clearly identifies the kinds of blessings described and promoted by Fiducia supplicans as “a symbolic deed that contradicts” Catholic “doctrine”.
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