SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The Vatican’s former doctrine head visited a pair of U.S. Catholic colleges this week to talk theology — and offered a fresh round of criticism of the Synod on Synodality just days before he’s set to participate in the event’s final session.

In a Sept. 24 interview with the Register following events at both Holy Cross College and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, Cardinal Gerhard Müller criticized the synod’s methodology, underlying theology and objectives ahead of the Oct. 2-27 gathering in Rome.

The longtime papal critic, who participated in last year’s synodal session after Pope Francis surprisingly invited him, said the synod was characterized by “manipulation,” following a stage-managed plan toward predetermined outcomes.

“I think the organizers of the synod have a certain purpose and goal and vision of the Church,” said the cardinal, referencing pushes to embrace “LGBT ideology” and the United Nations’ “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Cardinal Müller added that synod organizers treat bishop participants “as if we were people without theological formation, without competence, and we must be led by them.”

“Sometimes they talk about the Second Vatican Council as if they were professors who are speaking to the student of the first semester,” the former prefect of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) told the Register.

The Roman gatherings are the capstone of Pope Francis’s multiyear, multilevel effort to consult Catholics worldwide and to center “synodality” as the standard method in Church decision-making and practice. The concept emphasizes greater listening between members of the Church and more widespread participation, and proponents have presented it as both consistent with the early Church and the reforms called for by Vatican II. 

This October’s session will focus on “How to Be a Missionary Synodal Church,” as the synod’s 368 voting members consider proposals related to expanding the role of women, decentralizing Church teaching authority, and enhancing laity’s involvement in decision-making processes.

Cardinal Müller left last year’s synodal session on Oct. 25, four days before its conclusion, to ordain new priests in Poland. 

As an example of ways that he believes the synod is being manipulated, Cardinal Müller cited organizers’ decision to assign bishop participants into small groups, typically with laypeople, and to limit opportunities for participants to address the whole assembly. He said the effect has been to weaken the voice of the episcopacy.

“You can say something critical, but at the end, the spokesperson of your subgroup will not say anything openly which could be interpreted critically against the mainstream,” he shared.

Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, the synod secretary, said last week at a press conference that interventions (talks) before the entire body would be further limited this year, with more time going toward meetings between the representatives of the small groups.

When it was pointed out that synod delegates had successfully intervened to make changes between the draft and the final version of last year’s synthesis document, such as removing the term “LGBTQ,” Cardinal Müller said he wasn’t convinced that this meant organizers actually respected the viewpoints of dissenting voices.

“I wonder if it was only taken out only due to political reflections — ‘We cannot in this moment; we have to look for the unity of the Church’ — or for the insight that this is [actually] wrong,” he said.

The cardinal also expressed concerns about separate study groups that have been set up to answer questions related to the possibility of women deacons and the Church’s teaching on sexuality. The former curial official said these doctrinal questions should be authoritatively answered by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Pope Francis called for the creation of the groups, 10 in total, in order to give adequate attention to issues that had emerged at the 2023 synodal gathering but, “by their very nature, require in-depth study.” The groups, whose members include both bishops, priests and laypeople, will present their work at the October synod but have a mandate through June 2025.

Cardinal Müller said he anticipated that next month’s gathering will produce a lengthy final document with “big words, but not so much of substance.” He said that a scenario in which it “remains only the Pope as a single figure who decides” how to implement the results of the synod would not be consistent with “the ecclesiology of the Church, especially of the Second Vatican Council,” which emphasized collegiality among the Church’s bishops. 

The relationships between the papacy and the episcopacy, he said, is not “like the Roman emperor and the governors of the provinces, who had to obey.”

Cardinal Müller also criticized the idea Pope Francis has “a special relation to the Holy Spirit” beyond charisms linked to the institution of the papacy that would allow him to make significant changes in Church teaching and practice. 

The German prelate, 76, has been an open critic of the current pontificate following Pope Francis’ July 2017 decision not to renew his term to the DDF, a post he had held since Pope Benedict XVI appointed him in 2012.

A recent report from The Pillar suggested that the cardinal’s nonrenewal was linked to a financial investigation of the dicastery he led in 2015. Cardinal Müller has denied that he committed any financial malfeasance and described the report as “typical intrigue” meant to discredit his views ahead of the final session of the Synod on Synodality. 

The cardinal has been far and away the most critical synod participant, with his admonitions not slowing down between last year’s session and October’s.

In a recent article on a German Catholic website, he described the version of synodality animating the synod as “a brainwashing tool to discredit so-called conservatives as yesterday’s men and disguised Pharisees and to make us believe that the progressive ideologies that led to the decline of the Churches in the West in the 1970s are the completion of the reforms of Vatican II that were supposedly stopped by John Paul II and Benedict XVI.”

“There are political games behind the scenes,” Cardinal Müller told the Register. “That is not, from my understanding, what a synod is.”

He also criticized the ideas animating the synod as “invented,” not sufficiently grounded in Scripture or Tradition, and relying upon “emotions and slogans” rooted in a materialistic anthropology that denies humanity’s fundamental reliance upon God.

“Without moral principles rooted in the transcendence of God, you can’t find good solutions or live together in a community,” the cardinal said.

Cardinal Müller’s characterization of the synod’s underlying framework differed sharply from his description of Catholic theology, as presented at both Holy Cross and Notre Dame.

On Sept. 23, he delivered Holy Cross College’s Fall 2024 Mind & Heart Lecture on “The Mission of Theology Today.” 

The following day, he celebrated Mass at Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart, preaching on the theological vision of St. Thomas Aquinas. The Mass coincided with a Notre Dame conference on Aquinas’ legacy 800 years after the birth of the doctor of the Church.

In both presentations, the cardinal emphasized that theology must engage with the world, including grappling with questions raised by the natural sciences and humanities and proposing the Gospel in ways intelligible to different cultures, but that it must take as its first principle the revealed word of God. 

This posture, he said, is what allows the Church to offer something truly useful to a world in desperate need of meaning.

“Theology must prepare a new Christian humanism,” said Cardinal Müller. “Responsibility for the modern world and the hope of every person in God are signposts for today’s theology.” At Notre Dame, he added, “In Christianity there is no room for world-weariness, fatalism and nihilism, because we are all in God’s hands.”

Furthermore, in both talks, the theologian emphasized that, as a science, theology must be animated by the genuine interaction between faith and reason, rather than a “theology of feeling.” This central insight, which he said has been rejected by modernity, has been the defining theme of Western culture “and thus world civilization today.”

He said at Notre Dame, “The relationship between reason and faith is thus more important for the fate of humanity than climate neutrality and total wokeness.”