By Chris Jackson
Cardinal Gerhard Müller has done something useful.
Asked on K-TV whether confessions heard by priests of the Society of Saint Pius X remain valid, he answered that they are valid though illicit. Two days later, after the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith had claimed the opposite in its July 2 explanatory note, Müller doubled down. He called the note unclear, pointed to the sacramental power conferred in Holy Orders, and invoked the accepted validity of absolution in the separated Eastern Churches.
That public contradiction matters more than another round of internet canon-law combat.
Rome’s campaign against the SSPX depends heavily on fear. Bishops can be condemned, priests can be branded, and chapels can be stigmatized, yet the deepest pressure reaches the faithful through the confessional. Tell a Catholic that his absolution failed and you reach straight into his conscience. Tell a mother that years of family confessions may have been empty ceremonies and you create panic. Tell the dying that the priest who came to their home lacks the power to forgive, and the decree becomes a weapon against peace of soul.
Fernández wanted a clean declaration. Müller has exposed a dispute at the highest level of the Roman establishment.
The scare no longer looks clean.
