George Pell and Cardinals Warn Pope of Catholic Church Collapse

By Tess Livingstone
The Australian
October 14, 2015

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Civil war has erupted at the top of the Catholic Church, with 13 ­cardinals, including Australia’s George Pell, warning the Pope in a letter that the church is in ­danger of collapsing like liberal Protestant churches in the modern era.

The cardinals say the threat of collapse has been accelerated by the “abandonment of key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation’’.

As well as Cardinal Pell, the Vatican’s Secretary for the Economy, cardinals from Bologna, ­Toronto, New York, Galveston, Nairobi, Mexico, Utrecht, Durban and Caracas signed the letter, as well as other senior Vatican ­officials. These included Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, the church’s Prefect for Divine Worship, and German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the Prefect for Doctrine.

The row centres on the three-week Synod on the Family under way in Rome and being attended by about 300 delegates, mainly bishops, from around the world.

While the Pope encourages free debate, the cardinals’ move is courageous. Some analysts believe they have put their careers on the line in defence of church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage and the eucharist.

At the synod, one participant said “a little bit of smog or fog has entered the aura (auditorium)’’, a reference to Paul VI’s statement 50 years ago that “the smoke of Satan’’ had entered the church.