Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith Regains Its German Flavour

By Andrea Tornielli
Vatican Insider
July 2, 2012

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The entrance to the Congregation's headquarters

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has regained the German feel it had for a whole twenty three years, from 1982 to 2005, during the then cardinal Ratzinger’s long service in the dicastery. The Pope has chosen the Bishop of Regensburg, Gerhard Ludwig Muller, to lead the Congregation, after he accepted U.S. cardinal William Levada’s resignation. The news was announced simultaneously in Regensburg and in the Congregation, where Muller was, at midday today.

The new Prefect who is being elevated to the dignity of archbishop and will receive the cardinal’s biretta at the next Consistory is 64 years old and comes from Magonza, in the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate. He was a priest for 30 years and a bishop for 54 and was also Professor of Dogmatics at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich for 16 years.

The supervisor for his PhD thesis and qualification was Karl Lehmann, today a cardinal, who had been president of the German Bishops’ Conference for a number of years. But it is not believed that the newly appointed Prefect shares Lehmann’s opinions.

Muller has lived in Bavaria since 1986, when he became Professor of Dogmatics. When he was selected as head of the Diocese of Regensburg ten years ago, in October 2002, he strengthened his ties with Ratzinger. Regensburg is home to the university where the Pope taught until 1977 and where his brother Georg Ratzinger still lives. For ten years Georg led the Domspatzen (the Cathedral’s little sparrows) choir. Muller accompanied the Pope during his visit to Bavaria in 2006. And during the crisis caused by the paedophilia scandal in 2010, the bishop apologised to victims of abuse committed in the past, following Benedict XVI’s example. At the same time, he reacted firmly against those who tried to implicate the Pope’s brother (who had nothing to do with the scandal) in the cases of sex abuse which took place in the college where the Domspatzen resided. A detailed reconstruction of events was published on the diocese’s website. This demonstrated that the abuse had taken place before Georg Ratzinger - who had never had any accusations made against him – came to direct the choir.

One text Muller published stands out in particular, it is entitled: Katholische Dogmatik. Fur Studium und Praxis der Teologie (Catholic Dogmatics: For the Study and Practice of Theology) and is a complete manual on Catholic dogmatics. In Germany the new Prefect is considered a professor and bishop who is a close follower of the Pope’s doctrine and has stemmed the influence of the “We are Church” movement in his diocese.

Some have noticed similarities with the thinking of Karl Rahner in Muller’s theological work (Lehmann had worked with Rahner). In the months when the Pope was considering Muller ‘s candidacy the latter’s link with one of the fathers of the Theology of Freedom, Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, whose texts were closely examined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (which at the time was headed by cardinal Ratzinger) with no sentence or sanction being imposed. The new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith experienced Church life first hand, by going to Latin America and spending some time living with the farmers in a parish near Lake Titicaca, on the border with Bolivia.

Those who met him insist that Muller was never showed any excessive support for new movements. However, he did not express any particular fondness for the Society of St. Pius X. The new Prefect, formerly a member of the Congregation, kept track of developments in the dialogue with the Lefebvrians, which has now reached a critical point: Now that Muller is President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, he will be directly involved in negotiations with the Fraternity. The Bishop of Regensburg is also an expert on ecumenical matters: up until now he was President of the German Bishops Conference’s Ecumenism Commission. He is also the editor of Ratzinger’s Opera Omnia.

The new Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is quite a timid man, a personality trait which is sometimes mistaken for abruptness in his relations with collaborators. Muller chose “Dominus Jesus” (Jesus is the Lord) as the motto for his bishop’s coat of arms. The phrase comes from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which is also the title of the declaration on the saving unity of Christ promoted by John Paul II and fostered by the then cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, back in 2000.

In the years prior to this, there had been much talk about the Bishop of Regensburg’s candidacy for the position as head of the Archdiocese of Munich. The Pope finally chose Reinhard Marx who was considered to be a less high profile figure than Muller. Muller’s appointment and the Pope’s decision not to heed the advice of those who saw the Bishop of Regensburg as theologically too open minded, confirm the direction in which the Pope wishes to steer the Roman Curia, also given last week’s nominations.