EXCLUSIVE: Cdl. Müller says ‘new evangelization’ must counter atheistic ideologies in the West

ROME (LifeSiteNews) — A leading conservative member of the College of Cardinals castigated the introduction of new anti-life policies in the West, and laid out that a primary task of the “new evangelization” lies in countering the negative influence of contemporary ideologies and philosophies, in an exclusive interview with LifeSiteNews in his Roman apartment.

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, speaking in the wake of January’s extraordinary consistory, judged that “behind all this is atheism,” insisting that Westerners must recover the understanding that “God is the origin and aim and finis of our human existence.”

Müller, prefect-emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, confirmed that he was troubled by recent developments in the West, in both its thinking and its policies. He lamented the political situations of Britain and Canada, where “today, you can be sent to prison if you are praying in favor of life.”

“That belongs more to a dictatorship,” he added.

“It has nothing to do with a modern democracy,” Müller insisted. “There is a falling back into authoritarianism.”

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Müller thought these developments regrettable, since the Western world struggled against Stalinism and Hitlerism in the 20th century, but has not rid the “atheistic anthropology” that lay behind both totalitarianisms of left and right.

These philosophies trace their fundamental error, Müller diagnosed, to the fact “they deny creation and the dignity of every man.”

“We have all these bad traditions,” he said, “such as where Karl Marx defined human beings as only an ensemble, a mix of some social conditions. And Freudianism: only psychological conditions. Everywhere, behind all this, is atheism – the denying of the essence of every human being as a person in relation to his Creator, and to his Saviour, God.”

Meanwhile, Catholic thinking saves us from such mistakes he noted, because “we can say ‘Our Father’ in our prayer, with a direct relation to God. With all respect to the next authority, in relation to God, and eventually to all.”

“This is behind this anti-Christian wave,” Müller said, criticizing the arrest of anti-abortion campaigners praying silently in Britain. “A lot of politicians have lost the faith, a direct contact to their Christian roots. They see that this ideology is an instrument to have absolute power over the people, over their thinking. We are going toward an Orwellian world.”

It was in this context, Müller said, “the cardinals wanted to talk about the ‘new evangelization.’”

When asked about the liturgical issue, Müller acknowledged that the liturgy was discussed in brief and that it would be more substantively covered in June’s consistory.

“Liturgy is a central element for the realization of the Church,” the cardinal explained, “but if the Church is not respected as an instrument for salvation in Jesus Christ – liturgy, for the atheist, is only a collection of some rites without deeper meaning or translation of grace and real contact with God. For them, liturgy is only a propaganda show of the Church.”

“It is an absolute misunderstanding; a misinterpretation,” he acknowledged, revealing why in the context of evangelization it may feasibly be understood by some as not the first priority. “They [atheists] are not able to understand what the dimension of transcendence is because they are immanentists. In the end, they hate human existence because their first dogma and last dogma is that a single human being is not more than an animal.”

“In former times, according to the old ‘illuminism,’ a human being [was] only machine, homo machina. Later, in Darwin’s time, humans were seen as not more than a higher-developed animal,” Müller stated, further criticizing the ideologies which work against the Church and man, which he wishes to see opposed.

He reiterated: “But they don’t accept the essential difference between things and animals and us. Therefore, in the end, they hate themselves.”

“And then you get elites,” he continued, not mentioning by name the Epstein scandal, “they want to be gods and they want to make definitions for themselves and the masses, the rest of mankind, and that is absolutely against our Christian understanding that God created everybody in his likeness and image.”

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As for the consistory itself, Müller remained positive but was not without some constructive criticisms. He found the “working groups are a little bit neutralizing” and that “free interventions” were “very, very short. So-called free interventions were not free but forced.”

Müller hoped that the cardinals might help initiate a new evangelization which might resurrect the understanding that, “Before our historical existence, was the eternal providence of God, we existed in the Son – because we are created in the Son, in the Logos.”

“Therefore, for our historical existence,” he explained, “we exist in the salvation plan of God.”

“This is also the basis for the immortality of the soul. And for the resurrection of man, soul and body.”

“We are part of this world,” Müller clarified, defending the need to be philosophically and politically engaged, “but most important is [the fact] that all is created for the human being for our salvation. God came to earth, as we confess in the Credo. God is the origin and aim and finis of our human existence, our thinking.”