Munich’s ‘Cardinal’ Reinhard Marx: “Obviously Jesus Does Not Mean to Proclaim a Divine Doctrine”

Blasphemy and heresy — par for the course for this clown

Munich’s ‘Cardinal’ Reinhard Marx: “Obviously Jesus Does Not Mean to Proclaim a Divine Doctrine”

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The notorious Archlayman of Munich and Freising, “Cardinal” Reinhard Marx (b. 1953), has done it again. In an Oct. 2022 special edition of the German Modernist rag Herder Korrespondenz, “His Eminence” dropped a whopper, or more than one.

In a two-and-a-half page article entitled “Speaking of God Today?”, Marx has the gall to claim: “The crisis of the Church is perhaps … also the crisis of an institution that has claimed and still does claim to know a lot about God and to be able to communicate His Will to all people in an authoritative manner” (“Heute von Gott reden?”, Herder Korrespondenz Spezial [Oct. 2022], p. 8; our translation). Given the context and the way in which he writes, it is clear that the author sneers at, and seeks to overcome, such an “outdated” idea of a Church that thinks it knows a lot about God and presumes teach the world on His behalf. How dare she!

With these cynical words, Marx blasphemously rejects the Divine Commission, indeed the very origin, nature, and purpose of the Church herself:

And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Matthew 28:198-20)

And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned. (Mark 16:15-16)

These things I write to thee, hoping that I shall come to thee shortly. But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. (1 Timothy 3:14-15)

But then, Modernists of course don’t believe in Holy Scripture anyway. They’ll believe all day long that the “Spirit” is present in and speaks through the “People of God” at some contemporary “synod” they have convoked and organized and in which they are fraternally “walking together”; but when it comes to text written by divinely-inspired authors “at the dictation of the Holy Ghost” (Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Providentissimus, n. 20), they are not so sure it is truly God speaking to them. Right, “Fr.” Arturo Sosa?

A little further on in his highly misleading article, Marx says concerning evangelization that it is “a common journey in the footsteps of the Man of Nazareth, the celebration of the presence of God in our midst, and the common search for the ever greater truth we call God” (p. 8). This is typical Novus Ordo gibberish inasmuch as it is vague and ambiguous and one is not really sure just what is actually being asserted.

Let’s look at this a bit more closely. Just what is a “common journey in the footsteps” of Christ? Such a description could work for various scenarios, for example, it could refer to a group of martyrs being led to the execution chamber. Similarly, the “celebration of the presence of God in our midst” can describe a number of things, whether it be Catholics making a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, a group of monks solemnly chanting the Divine Office, or a family kneeling in front of the Christmas crèche. Lastly, evangelization is mostly certainly not a “common search” for God, although such an idiotic definition might work well for ecumenism.

In any case, we can see that Marx’s alternative definition of “evangelization” is simply false and quite misleading. Of course that is but par for the course for the Munich Modernist, but it must be pointed out nonetheless.

We need not reinvent the wheel here. Evangelization is nothing other than the charitable preaching of the Gospel for the sake of converting souls to Christ and His Church. We can see this verified in the very first evangelization efforts by the Apostles right after they received the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. Pope St. Peter preached a wonderful sermon that very day, which is recorded in Acts 2. His efforts, obviously assisted by divine grace, bore immediate abundant fruit: “And with very many other words did he testify and exhort them, saying: Save yourselves from this perverse generation. They therefore that received his word, were baptized; and there were added in that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:40-41).

It may be news to Reinhard Marx, but yes, the Apostles used words to preach the doctrine of the Gospel: “And as they were speaking to the people, the priests, and the officer of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:1-2). They preached, explained, argued, refuted, convinced — all for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls: “He disputed, therefore, in the synagogue with the Jews, and with them that served God, and in the marketplace, every day with them that were there” (Acts 17:17).

Marx further claims that the essence of the Christian Faith is not self-assured talk of God but an experience of Jesus Christ. He then proceeds to make a statement that is blasphemous and heretical: “Obviously Jesus does not mean to proclaim a divine teaching, a doctrine; rather, by means of his examples and parables concerning the kingdom of God he wishes to illustrate the meaning of the presence of God in our midst right now, what it means for heaven and earth to come into contact with each other.”

This offensive statement jibes entirely with the “encounterist” theology of “Pope” Francis, who is on record teaching that “being a Christian is not about adhering to a doctrine, or a temple or an ethnic group. Being Christian is about an encounter, an encounter with Jesus Christ.” That, certainly, is itself a doctrine, but we’ll let that slide for now.

The claim that Jesus Christ did not come to disclose a divine doctrine, a supernatural revelation for mankind to accept, is so asinine that one simply cannot ascribe it to ignorance on Marx’s part, even the culpable kind. It is hard to come up with any other realistic explanation than that the Munich Modernist fully intends to deny divine truth — that is, he is willfully spreading heresy.

In 1870, the First Vatican Council clearly proclaimed that one must give “the assent of faith” to “the peaching of the Gospel”, and this in order “to attain salvation”:

Moreover, although the assent of faith is by no means a blind movement of the intellect, nevertheless, no one can “assent to the preaching of the Gospel,” as he must to attain salvation, “without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all a sweetness in consenting to and believing in truth” [Council of Orange]. Wherefore, “faith” itself in itself, even if it “worketh not by charity” [Gal 5:6], is a gift of God, and its act is a work pertaining to salvation, by which man offers a free obedience to God Himself by agreeing to, and cooperating with His grace, which he could resist.

(Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, ch. 3; Denz. 1791)

Nothing there about encounter, experience, or tenderness.

Marx’s heretical thesis about our Blessed Lord not bringing a doctrine can perhaps also be considered as a denial of the very Person of Jesus Christ Himself, since He is, after all, the Definitive Revelation of the Father: “God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world” (Heb 1:1-2). Our Blessed Lord is truly the Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1). Indeed, St. John the Evangelist tells us that “the law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17).

The New Testament is not only filled to the brim with references to Christ’s doctrine, it in fact lays out in detail what that doctrine is. Aside from the history contained in the sacred pages, practically the entire New Testament is concerned with doctrine.

If Christ did not preach a divine doctrine, one wonders why “the people were in admiration at his doctrine” (Mt 7:28). If our Lord did not teach anything to the people, it is hard to understand why they thought “he was teaching them as one having power, and not as the scribes” (Mk 1:22). If Jesus did not preach doctrine, one cannot fathom why He proclaimed: “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me” (Jn 7:16). Nor can it then be explained how it is that the first Christians “were persevering in the doctrine of the apostles, and in the communication of the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).

There are so many other passages confounding the nonsense spouted by His Marxist Eminence regarding Christ supposedly not preaching a doctrine. Here are a few of them:

The high priest therefore asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine. (Jn 18:19)

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest asked them, saying: Commanding we commanded you, that you should not teach in this name; and behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and you have a mind to bring the blood of this man upon us. (Acts 5:27-28)

Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle. (2 Thessalonians 2:14)

I wonder that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, unto another gospel. Which is not another, only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema. (Galatians 1:6-9)

Now I beseech you, brethren, to mark them who make dissensions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and avoid them. (Romans 16:17)

Which things also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom; but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:13)

These things proposing to the brethren, thou shalt be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished up in the words of faith, and of the good doctrine which thou hast attained unto. Till I come, attend unto reading, to exhortation, and to doctrine. (1 Timothy 4:6,13)

If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to that doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing… (1 Timothy 6:3-4)

Exhort servants to be obedient to their masters, in all things pleasing, not gainsaying: Not defrauding, but in all things shewing good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. (Titus 2:9-10)

Why this aversion to dogma on Marx’s part? Quite simply because he does not believe. He is not a Catholic but a Modernist.

In the Anti-Modernist Syllabus of 1907, Pope St. Pius X condemned the following proposition: “The dogmas which the Church professes as revealed are not truths fallen from heaven, but they are a kind of interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind by a laborious effort prepared for itself” (Decree Lamentabili Sane, error n. 22; Denz. 2022); and also the very proposition that, it seems, is Marx’s own: “Christ did not teach a defined body of doctrine applicable to all times and to all men, but rather began a religious movement adapted, or to be adapted to different times and places” (error n. 59; Denz. 2059).

From the very beginning our Divine Savior lamented people’s failure to believe His teachings. The following words of His clearly apply also to “Cardinal” Marx: “If I have spoken to you earthly things, and you believe not; how will you believe, if I shall speak to you heavenly things?” (Jn 3:12).

Munich’s most notorious Modernist is one of those false prophets condemned by St. Peter, of whom there are a great many in our day: “But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there shall be among you lying teachers, who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them: bringing upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Pet 2:1).

Indeed, Marx is one of those “teachers, having itching ears” who “will not endure sound doctrine” (ha!), warned against by St. Paul:

Preach the word: be instant in season, out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables.

(2 Timothy 4:2-4)

To understand just how warped Marx’s theological mind is, we need but recall that he is on record endorsing sodomy and claiming that it is impossible to insult God (source in German). Yes, you read that right: Munich’s theological mastermind has imbibed so much Nouvelle Théologie (New Theology) that he believes it is impossible to offend the Lord.

The fact that Marx uttered this idiotic statement in the context of a potential German law against blasphemy, aggravates the matter even more. He is not concerned about offending God but about offending the religious sensibilities of the people. No wonder he doesn’t want to speak about God — he worships man! “They are of the world: therefore of the world they speak, and the world heareth them” (1 Jn 4:5).

At the very beginning of his article in Herder Korrespondenz, Marx points out that when during a round table discussion a young priest told him that it was important to speak of God more — as opposed to, presumably, sustainable development, discrimination against “LGBTQ Catholics”, or the global average temperature in 2050 — he immediately responded that perhaps they have been speaking too much of Him. God, Marx asserts, remains “absolute mystery”. Sounds profoundly spiritual!

However, what his rotund “Eminence” leaves out of consideration and in fact denies, as we have seen, is that God has disclosed Himself in natural and especially supernatural revelation. With his response, Marx gives the impression that God is completely inaccessible to the human mind, but that is false. There are truths we know about God through natural reason (for example, His existence, His goodness, His omniscience; cf. Denz. 1785, 1806), and then there are truths we know about Him only because He has revealed them to us. These divinely-revealed supernatural truths are the object of the virtue of Faith, which is precisely why Faith is properly defined as the firm assent of the mind, aided by grace, to what God has revealed because He, who cannot deceive nor be deceived, has revealed it (see Act of Faith). That’s what Faith is. It’s not an “encounter” with God or an experience of His presence.

The Catholic Church speaks about God with strong conviction and proclaims her dogmas with complete certitude because God is her Founder and her dogma is His revealed Truth. It is God who entrusted the Deposit of Faith to His Apostles: “I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth” (Jn 16:12-13a). Our Lord made clear to those He sent that they were acting on His behalf: “He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me” (Lk 10:16).

Under the pretext of God transcending all human language, which is merely a half-truth, Marx sows dangerous doubt regarding the objective truth of dogma and introduces a reprehensible agnostic attitude. From this he then draws the conclusion that we should speak less of God! What an audacious heretical blasphemer!

Granted, all our knowledge of God will always remain incomplete and imperfect; and when we affirm certain truths about God, we affirm them analogically, not univocally. However, this does not mean that the knowledge is false knowledge or that the understanding is really misunderstanding. Our knowledge of divine truth is limited and imperfect, but it is nevertheless true:

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is hidden, which God ordained before the world, unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him. But to us God hath revealed them, by his Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

(1 Corinthians 2:7-10)

Furthermore, the First Vatican Council explains:

And, indeed, reason illustrated by faith, when it zealously, piously, and soberly seeks, attains with the help of God some understanding of the mysteries, and that a most profitable one, not only from the analogy of those things which it knows naturally, but also from the connection of the mysteries among themselves and with the last end of man; nevertheless, it is never capable of perceiving those mysteries in the way it does the truths which constitute its own proper object. For, divine mysteries by their nature exceed the created intellect so much that, even when handed down by revelation and accepted by faith, they nevertheless remain covered by the veil of faith itself, and wrapped in a certain mist, as it were, as long as in this mortal life, “we are absent from the Lord: for we walk by faith and not by sight” [2 Cor 5:6-7].

(Vatican I, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, ch. 4; Denz. 1796; underlining added.)

In his landmark encyclical against the renascent Modernism of his time, Pope Pius XII chided the very thinkers from whom Marx and the entire Novus Ordo theological club learned their trade:

In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.

Moreover they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries.

It is evident from what We have already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it. The contempt of doctrine commonly taught and of the terms in which it is expressed strongly favor it. Everyone is aware that the terminology employed in the schools and even that used by the Teaching Authority of the Church itself is capable of being perfected and polished; and we know also that the Church itself has not always used the same terms in the same way. It is also manifest that the Church cannot be bound to every system of philosophy that has existed for a short space of time. Nevertheless, the things that have been composed through common effort by Catholic teachers over the course of the centuries to bring about some understanding of dogma are certainly not based on any such weak foundation. These things are based on principles and notions deduced from a true knowledge of created things. In the process of deducing, this knowledge, like a star, gave enlightenment to the human mind through the Church. Hence it is not astonishing that some of these notions have not only been used by the Oecumenical Councils, but even sanctioned by them, so that it is wrong to depart from them.

Hence to neglect, or to reject, or to devalue so many and such great resources which have been conceived, expressed and perfected so often by the age-old work of men endowed with no common talent and holiness, working under the vigilant supervision of the holy magisterium and with the light and leadership of the Holy Ghost in order to state the truths of the faith ever more accurately, to do this so that these things may be replaced by conjectural notions and by some formless and unstable tenets of a new philosophy, tenets which, like the flowers of the field, are in existence today and die tomorrow; this is supreme imprudence and something that would make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. The contempt for terms and notions habitually used by scholastic theologians leads of itself to the weakening of what they call speculative theology, a discipline which these men consider devoid of true certitude because it is based on theological reasoning.

(Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Humani Generis, nn. 14-17; underlining added.)

It is amply evident that Modernism has perverted Marx’s mind. He has long abandoned the Catholic Faith — the true doctrine of the Faith — and thus has every reason to fear: “Whosoever revolteth, and continueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that continueth in the doctrine, the same hath both the Father and the Son. If any man come to you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you” (2 Jn 9-10).

Let “Cardinal” Marx speak of this rotten world; the Catholic Church will continue to speak of Jesus Christ and His doctrine.

“For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Lk 6:45).

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