Since leaving his position as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2017, Müller has kept up a prodigious publishing schedule. He has not just one or two, but three books forthcoming in English, already published in German. Yet Müller has not merely retired to his study to think and write in quiet contemplation; rather he approaches his work with a missionary vigour and zeal.
It is not some foreign, far-away land Müller considers his mission territory. It is to the secularized West, ground lost, he suggests, to a pre-Christian paganism, that Müller is preaching.
While in eastern Canada in mid-September, part pastoral visit and part speaking tour, Müller sat down for an interview with The Catholic Register. Touching on many of the themes that have dominated his thinking and writing in recent years, Müller began by stating it is not just Western nation-states that have become secularized, but that the Church itself is in danger of succumbing.
“I think we are in a time of secularization of society, Western Christian societies, but also a secularization of the Church. We see everywhere signs and symbols of the collapsing of the Church. Not only the institutions of the Church, but also of faith and a deeper relation to God.”
Müller sees parallels between the current age and the period after the Council of Nicaea in 325 “when the Roman Emperors, the sons of Constantine, supported Arianism. So many bishops were confused and they, in turn, confused the sheep of their flock.”
“Now we have confused teaching, speaking through signs and symbols but not a clear declaration of what is truth and what is a lie.”
Societal secularization is displayed in a fundamental reordering of the notions of self and personhood, represented most starkly by the various gender theories that have been inserted into Western education, politics and jurisprudence.
Behind these gender theories, says Müller, is a “deeper, atheistic ideology,” one that “wants to destroy the Biblical anthropology.”
“Biblical anthropology,” in contrast, “is not only a theory about reality, but is an expression of reality, once and forever given in the creation. The creation is an expression of the Logos of God. Human relations — husband, wife, father, mother, children — all these relations have a substance, and they want to evacuate this substance.”
The ecclesiastical secularization, says Müller, comes from a desire to try to “make compromises.”
"We have the episcopate in some countries who seem unable to analyze the situation. To look to what is behind these ideologies.”
Müller says confusion emerges when solid theology and catechesis is supplanted with “a pastoral agenda,” and argues that “good theology” needs to be at the base of decision-making about individual pastoral concerns and needs.
“We need to make conclusions in favour of the people for salvation, and not for what makes them feel well in the moment, because the well-feeling, it's not identical with the will of God, with salvation.”
Müller speaks of a clash of civilizations, the role of the laity in those culture wars and what he thinks a Synodal Church truly means. He says that the laity are “confronted not just with theoretical questions” but “are living on the front of this clash of civilization; of love and life against the counter civilization of death and destruction.”
Living as they do on the front lines, “lay people need the support of the bishops.”
“We need a strong cooperation between the Magisterium and the well-informed lay people in the sciences and politics. We need Christians engaged in this fighting. Pope Francis is speaking about the Synodal Church, but Church must be a form of cooperation of all, with all their gifts.”
Müller spoke often of the need for both a well-formed laity and clergy. Well-formed does not just mean well-educated but formed by the practise of the faith.
“Everybody needs daily conversion to the Word of God, to the grace, to the presence of Jesus Christ, living with Him in the sacraments. I think this is a challenge for everybody, not only to follow in the traditional forms, but to reflect your own identity, Catholic identity. It could be also a chance not only be to be led by the shepherds, but also to evolve and to come to a deeper understanding what is Catholic: the Bible, the great tradition of the Church fathers, the great theologians, but also the great popes, the theology of Pope Benedict, John Paul II, but also of other leading Church figures.”
Speaking to the Canadian situation, particularly the rapid evolution of euthanasia praxis since 2016, Müller posits that it is a nihilism, the thought that life is meaningless, that lies behind both abortion and euthanasia regimes.
“Western countries need the immigrants, but they're killing their own children. In all difficult cases they propose euthanasia as a solution. There is an absolute nihilism behind it. The human life has no more innate dignity. Dignity is conditional on having a good lifestyle. If not, you can kill yourself or let yourself be killed. That is the same nihilism as we had in the national socialism and the communism and are behind all these ideologies of death.
“In this case, it's not enough for the bishops to say, ‘Oh yeah, we make some compromises with them.’ They must look behind, what are the principles of all this wrongdoing, these crimes against humanity.”
Müller insists that the “absolute solution” of death, abortion and euthanasia, being offered in all difficult circumstances is the “enemy of the life, of the dignity of every person.”
“Outside of Jewish and Christian tradition, the life didn't have an absolute dignity and worth. It was only in relation to the state, the polis. You are worthy only if you are useful for the polis. With the loss of the Christian thinking, not only with external forms but with real Christian thinking, paganism is coming back. The suffering or the being elder has no sense for them. They don't feel a responsibility for their life as a gift coming from a creator.”
Müller was one of the few bishops to take his fellow bishops to task for COVID-era restrictions on churches and the administration of the sacraments. These criticisms go back to his thoughts about a creeping secularization in the Church.
“I never heard of some bishops who were reflecting about the mistakes they made. I think they're not so convinced of the necessity of the sacraments. For them it is a service of symbols and spirituality that is the same if it is offered through the television. I think they lack deeper reflection on the sacramentality and visibility of grace in the hours of suffering and dangers. Jesus said everybody should come to me. He opens His arms.
“There are deeper doubts of the essence of Christianity. And therefore, there was conformity with this wrong propaganda. Grace is more important as all natural and secular things. Look first to the kingdom of God and the other things will be given to you.”
Müller says that the episcopate “didn't have the courage to resist to defend the Christian and human principles. They didn't understand what was behind all this campaign.”
Like the gender ideologies, the pandemic-era, in Müller’s estimation, introduced a new, but old, understanding of what it means to be human.
“We are no longer citizens, but we are the objects of the State. The new subject, the government, is like the absolute monarchy of the old times, the absolute sovereign, and we are only the objects, subjected to a majesty.”
Despite his academic demeanour and talking-points, Müller remains a pastor. At every point, formal and informal, in his September visit to Canada, Müller stopped to give his blessing to those who asked. It was in one observed exchange that Müller displayed a neat conflation of his theological interests and pastoral touch.
At St. Joseph’s Oratory, a grandfather requested a blessing from Müller for his grandson. It was unclear whether the man knew he was making his request to a prince of the Church or whether he was simply responding to Müller’s Roman collar. Müller performed the blessing and then enquired of the little boy's name. The boy was of an age where "nothing" seemed an appropriate answer. The Cardinal responded, "Nothing? You are not 'nothing'! You are a someone, you are a PERSON!!"