by Maike Hickson
This article was first posted May 18, 2018, at One Peter Five.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has given an interview to the Italian journalist Costanza Miriano, who works for the Italian television broadcaster
RIA. In this new interview, the German cardinal rejects the notion of “homophobia” and explains that it is an instrument of an ideology that is contrary
to reality.
Miriano posted the interview on her own private blog, on which she also promotes two books of hers in which she advocates the traditional understanding
of marriage – namely, that wives be subject to their husbands and that
husbands protect their wives even with their lives. In her own introduction
to the new interview, she rejects the notion of “homophobia” – i.e., an aversion against homosexuals.
According to Giuseppe Nardi of Katholisches.info – who himself reports on this new interview – the aim of much of this gender ideology is to remove homosexuality, and more recently transsexuality,
from the World Health Organization (WHO) catalog of diseases. (In fact, homosexuality was already removed from the catalog in 1990, demonstrating the
effectiveness of such a strategy.)
Miriano’s interview with Cardinal Müller comes in the context of his upcoming participation in the presentation of a book about a man who has homosexual
inclinations but who resists them, and now describes the ideologization of this problem.
The author’s name is Daniel C. Mattson, and his book’s title is Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay: How I Reclaimed My Sexual Reality and Found Peace. (The book was first published in English by Ignatius Press, in 2017, with a preface by Cardinal Robert Sarah.) Cardinal Müller will present the Italian edition on 25 May in Rome.
In his interview with Mrs. Miriano, herself a mother of four, Cardinal Müller says the following about the concept of homophobia, in the context of the
17 May International Day Against Homophobia:
Homophobia simply does not exist. It is clearly an invention and an instrument of the totalitarian dominance over the thoughts of others. The homo-movement
is lacking scientific arguments, that is why it created an ideology which wants to dominate by creating its own reality. It is the Marxist pattern
according to which reality does not create thinking, but thinking creates its own reality. He who does not accept this created reality is to be
considered as being sick. It is as if one could influence an illness with the help of the police or with the help of courts. In the Soviet Union,
Christians were put into psychiatric clinics. These are the methods of totalitarian regimes, of National Socialism and of Communism. The same happens
in North Korea to those who do not accept the reigning way of thinking.
Costanza Miriano points out that she knows of several bishops who are more conservative, but who at the same time support such initiatives against homophobia,
and she asks Cardinal Müller why they accept this “game.” Cardinal Müller responds:
Some bishops today do not have the courage anymore to speak the truth, and they allow themselves to be intimidated. They do not understand that homophobia
is a deception which serves to threaten people. But we Christians may not have fear in the face of threats. In the first centuries [after Christ],
the disciples of Jesus were put into prison, or one had them eaten up by wild beasts. Today one tears them apart with the help of psycho terror,
while at the same time making use of the lack of knowledge. However, from a bishop and from a priest, one may expect that he is capable of looking
behind these ideologies. We are the ones who try, with the help of God’s Grace, to love all people, also those who feel attracted to the same sex.
But it must be clear that to love does not mean to obey the gender propaganda.
With reference to Daniel C. Mattson, the author of the new book, Cardinal Müller says that he tells his own story of his homosexuality in light of these
current ideologies and that he rejects being called “gay.” The cardinal insists that “he who feels such an attraction has to live chastely, just as
all, all of us who are not live in a valid and true marriage have to do.”
When asked about the fact that currently this gender agenda is being promoted by many governments in the West, the German cardinal responds, saying that
“our politicians in Europe have to take care of many people, of those without work, of the problem of the lack of births, of the family, of many serious
problems.” Instead, he adds, “they are busy turning our democracies into totalitarian systems. Ideology in itself is violent.” “How can a parliament
decide what is true and what not?” asks Müller.
With regard to the current attempts at undermining the teaching on contraception as laid out in Humanae Vitae, the cardinal says that he explains
this phenomenon “with the secularization of the Church.” “For some shepherds, the Church is only a means in order to make politics, in order to please
people,” he adds. “For them, it is more important to respect the masses, rather than to respect the Word of God.”
The text has been updated, in order to make clearer one statement that actually stems from Giuseppe Nardi himself.