The Theological Blurriness of Cardinal Marx
Who is Reinhard Cardinal Marx — and why should we care?
Cardinal Marx is the archbishop of Munich and Freising. The only reason anyone outside of Germany has heard of him is because he is president of the German Bishops’ Conference, a position he’s used as a bully pulpit since his election to the post in March 2014.
Buoyed by what he perceives as Pope Francis’s reform-minded attitude toward the Church in general and toward marriage and family life in particular, Cardinal Marx has emerged as a leading critic of Gerhard Cardinal Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a post held by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger during most of John Paul II’s papacy.
Cardinal Marx made news around the world this February when he stated that the German bishops were unwilling to wait until the second session of the Synod on the Family, slated for this coming October, before moving ahead with the implementation of Walter Cardinal Kasper’s proposed pastoral plan to allow divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion. (You guessed it: Kasper is German too.)
Both Kasper and Marx have implied by their words and actions that national episcopal conferences can form their own doctrinal and pastoral policies apart from Rome and contrary to the Church’s universal teaching. It sounds like they’ve spent a little too much time in Wittenberg.
You May Also Enjoy
He proposes an existential approach to God that focuses not on ontology but on the way in which the Bible reveals that the Almighty relates mercifully to humanity.
Would that all bishops followed the lead of Robert F. Vasa.
What options does a parish that currently offers celebrations of the Mass in the extraordinary form have if it finds itself unable to continue doing so?