“The Catholic Church is Not the Pope’s Church and Catholics are Therefore Not Papists but Christians”: An Exclusive Interview With Cardinal Gerhard Müller, by Cole DeSantis

By Cole DeSantis, Crisis Magazine, Jan. 18, 2024

Cole DeSantis is a writer, researcher, documentarian and public speaker who specializes in theology. He received his B.A. and M.A. in theology from Providence College, a Catholic college run by the Dominican Order in the Diocese of Providence (Rhode Island). He also works as a freelance journalist and an adjunct professor of theology at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island.

Cardinal Müller addresses the nature of papal infallibility, the limits of papal authority, and the possibility of a heretical pope.

I recently sent some questions to Cardinal Gerhard Müller regarding papal infallibility and the Cardinal’s recent words describing Pope Francis as having endorsed material heresy. The Cardinal was gracious enough to answer my questions in the following email exchange.

How would you describe the nature of papal infallibility? Under what circumstances does papal infallibility apply?

Cardinal Müller: The nature, conditions, and limits of papal infallibility as an expression of the infallibility of the whole Church are defined in Chapter 4 of the Dogmatic Constitution Pastor aeternus of the First Vatican Council (1870). With reference to the integration of the supreme authority in the college of bishops, of which he is the visible head, Vatican II declares:

The infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished to endow his Church in defining a doctrine of faith and morals extends as far as the deposit of divine revelation (divinae Revelationis depositum), which must be purely preserved and faithfully interpreted, requires. (Lumen Gentium 25) ….

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