The Five Questions for Cardinal Muller - and the rest of us!

According to this report, Cardinal Müller was called to the Apostolic Palace on 30 June, and he thus went there with his working files, assuming that this meeting would be a usual working session. The pope told him, however, that he only had five questions for him: 

• Are you in favor of, or against, a female diaconate? “I am against it,” responded Cardinal Müller.
• Are you in favor of, or against, the repeal of celibacy? “Of course I am against it,” the cardinal responded.
• Are you in favor of, or against female priests? “I am very decisively against it,” replied Cardinal Müller.
• Are you willing to defend Amoris Laetitia? “As far as it is possible for me,” the Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith replied: “there still exist ambiguities.”
• Are you willing to retract your complaint concerning the dismissal of three of your own employees? Cardinal Müller responded: “Holy Father, these were good, unblemished men whom I now lack, and it was not correct to dismiss them over my head, shortly before Christmas, so that they had to clear their offices by 28 December. I am missing them now.”

Thereupon the pope answered: “Good. Cardinal Müller, I only wanted to let you know that I will not extend your mandate [i.e., beyond 2 July] as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith.” Without any farewell or explanation, the pope left the room. Cardinal Müller at first thought that the pope left in order to fetch a token of gratitude, and thus he waited patiently. But, there was no such gift, nor even an expression of gratitude for his service. The Prefect of the Papal Household, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, then had to explain to him that the meeting was over, and that it was time for him to leave.

At the time of this writing, we have not been able to obtain confirmation of these events from Cardinal Müller, nor from his secretary, to whom we reached out for comment. Similarly, we requested a comment from Greg Burke at the Vatican Press Office, but as of press time, we have received no response.

If this report is true – and, given the sources, we have little reason to doubt it – we can well imagine why Cardinal Meisner would have been distressed after hearing about this meeting in the hours before his death. Did these five questions with their yes or no answers, if indeed they were asked of Cardinal Müller, constitute a sort of reverse dubia? Were the Cardinal’s responses, insofar as they were in accordance with orthodox Catholic thought, the reason he was not asked to continue in his role as Prefect of the CDF? Of the five questions, three (female diaconate, priestly celibacy, and the promotion of Amoris Laetitia) have been widely discussed as part of the pope’s “reform” agenda. (It seems worthy of mention in this regard that Archbishop Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., who has been tapped as Müller’s replacement as CDF Prefect, was appointed last year as President of the Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women.) But is the female priesthood really expected to be reviewed in relation to the female diaconate, even though Pope Francis has already personally affirmed the understanding that Pope John Paul II ruled definitively against the possibility? And what of the final alleged question — the one pertaining to the pope’s dismissal of three priests from the CDF last year without cause? If such a question were asked, was it merely a test of unquestioning obedience? Recall that the pope’s reported answer, when asked by Cardinal Müller about the dismissal of these three priests, was simply to say, “I am the pope, I do not need to give reasons for any of my decisions. I have decided that they have to leave and they have to leave.”