(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has defended Christianity as being central to the success of Western culture, telling Tucker Carlson that “without Christianity, the West is nothing.”
In an interview published on Holy Saturday, Carlson asked Cardinal Müller about his view of the current state of the Western world.
When the high-profile conservative show host asked Müller what he thought the West would look like in 100 years, the German cardinal said he could not predict the future but offered an explanation of the guiding principles that he thinks are needed.
The former doctrinal chief said that a better future is only possible “with a renewal of a Christian understanding, which is our culture.”
“Without Christianity, the West is nothing; it is only a territory, but without culture, without spirit, without an identity.”
“Therefore, it’s very important to look to the roots of our culture, the Greek philosophy, the Roman [law]… together [with] the Old and New Testament, Christian, and Jewish, a great tradition. In spite of the differences we have, the basis for this Western culture is the same,” Müller stated.
“With the Gospel, the good news, we can prepare the way of the Lord.”
Müller stressed that through Christ, everybody has “the hope that the bad things, the suffering, the death,” and the “injustice of the rich and powerful against the poor and the normal people will not be the last word.”
Instead, “In Jesus Christ, we have the last word of God, and he is our savior,” he said.
Müller: There is a war against ‘unborn children’ and the elderly
Müller told Carlson that there are not only “military wars” but also “wars against human life, against unborn children, against the old people.”
The prelate criticized the materialistic “functional thinking” that leads people to assume the elderly, because they no longer provide economic value, have “no more deeper worth.”
“It’s absolutely against our Christian conviction,” he stressed. “Everybody has a deep dignity, which he can never lose.”
That is, for me, the situation in this world; we also have to fight for the dignity of everybody.
We [Christians] are the heralds of the dignity of everybody in every country, and we have to work for freedom, for social justice, and for so promoting all human values. That is the importance of the Church, of all Christians, of [all of] Christianity for the world of today and for our coming century. And I think, without Christianity, there is no real hope for humanity.
World War III would be ‘the last World War’
Müller warned that a third World War must be avoided because “if we have the third World War, it will be called ‘the last World War.’” Continuing, he stated:
This will be the end of our human community on this planet because the power of weapons today is so brutal they can finish our human existence.
It is absolutely against the will of God, we are, in spite of the differences in our faith and our religions, […] we are brothers and sisters of one God, the Father.
The concept of brotherhood is deepened in Jesus Christ and the Christian revelation, but at the beginning of the creation of our human existence, we are brothers and sisters, and every one of us has his father and his mother, grandfather, grandmother. And so, the running along all the generations and there we are biologically and culturally, we are linked in the one mankind.
We are facing ‘anti-human powers’
Müller told Carlson that “we are threatened by anti-human powers, where the party or the ideology is more important than the wealth and the good of their own people.”
“They want to make big expansions of their power, all these wrongdoings that are leading to wars and to sufferings of millions and millions of people.”
The German cardinal said there is “a great task in the United States to overcome the temptations to become an Orwellian state. When one party wants to dominate with its ideology, it must penetrate all the universities and all the mass media. We need the diversity; we need a free discussion.”
At one point during the interview, Carlson asked Müller if he thought it was true that, under Pope Francis, the Vatican “seems much more aligned with a global political movement with progressive politics than at any time in the past.”
The cardinal offered a veiled critique of Francis’ alignment with globalist policies without naming the Pontiff directly.
Müller said that a pope, as “a moral authority all over the world,” should not give the political elites in the world “the impression they could use and abuse the papal authority for their ideas, the so-called New World Order and Agenda 2030.”
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“He [the Pope] has some meetings with this so-called elite or the politicians or leaders of state, but I think it’s more important to admonish them and to say what is right and what is good and what is bad.”
“And therefore, we must keep a certain distance to the political leadership, and we must give a big contrast to the wrong ideologies, which are behind the ideology of power,” the cardinal stated.
“I think nobody is able to make a New World Order only with money and with political power. I think the so-called self-appointed elite do not have the intellectual and moral instruments for reshaping the world. They are only interested in their moneymaking and if these people are in the first places in the Forbes list, that will not say that they have a special qualification for running the world,” he concluded.