Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) from 2012-2017, declared in a recent interview that the church needs to address the homosexual underpinnings of the clerical abuse crisis, saying that the “homosexual conduct of clergymen can in no case be tolerated.”

Speaking candidly with Dr. Maike Hickson of LifeSiteNews, the German prelate said leaders in the Catholic Church still underestimate what he called a “homosexual network” wreaking havoc in the church.

Müller expressed disgust for disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who resigned in July after an investigation found credible evidence that he was a “serial predator” of adults and minors when he was a priest in New York.

“That McCarrick, together with his clan and a homosexual network, was able to wreak havoc in a mafia-like manner in the Church is connected with the underestimation of the moral depravity of homosexual acts among adults,” Müller told LifeSite.

The conservative cardinal went on to criticize the Vatican for failing to look into all the rumors concerning McCarrick’s misbehavior for decades, saying that a public apology is in order.

Said Müller: “There should very clearly come out a public explanation about these events and the personal connections, as well as the question as to how much the involved Church authorities knew at each step; such an explanation could very well include an admission of a wrong assessment of persons and situations.”

The origin of this whole crisis lies in a secularization of the Church and the reduction of the priest to the role of a functionary. It is finally atheism that has spread within the Church. According to this evil spirit, the Revelation concerning Faith and morals is being adapted to the world without God so that it does not interfere anymore with a life according to one’s own lusts and needs. Only about 5% of the offenders are being assessed as pathologically pedophile, whereas the great mass of offenders have freely trampled upon the Sixth Commandment out of their own immorality and thus have defied, in a blaspheming way, the Holy Will of God.

Müller told Hickson it was a “disastrous error” to change the canon law regarding priestly offenses against the Sixth Commandment [“Thou shalt not commit adultery”]. It no longer mentions homosexuality as an offense and contains a more lenient set of penalties against abusive priests.

Hickson asked the cardinal for his thoughts on controversial remarks made by Cardinal Blase Cupich at the recent bishops conference in Baltimore.

“Cardinal Blase Cupich stated that one should ‘differentiate’ between consensual sexual acts between adults and the abuse of minors, implying that a priest’s homosexual relations with another adult is not a major problem,” LifeSite News reminded him. “What is your own response to this kind of approach?”

Müller replied, “One can differentiate everything – and then even consider oneself to be a great intellectual – but not a grave sin which excludes a person from the Kingdom of God, at least not as the bishop who is duty-bound not to exhibit the taste of the time [“Zeitgeschmack”], but rather, to defend the truth of the Gospels.” He added, “It seems the time has come ‘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.'”

The cardinal also pointed out that “more than 80 percent of the victims of these sexual offenders are teenagers of the male sex,” a point also made by Vatican whistleblower Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in his 11-page bombshell letter last August. Vigano is still in hiding in fear for his life. Müller continued:

It is part of the crisis that one does not wish to see the true causes and covers them up with the help of propaganda phrases of the homosexual lobby. Fornication with teenagers and adults is a mortal sin which no power on earth can declare to be morally neutral. That is the work of the devil – against whom Pope Francis often warns – that he declares sin to be good. “Some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to spirits of error, and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, and having their conscience seared.” (1 Tim 4:1f) It is indeed absurd that, suddenly, ecclesial authorities utilize the Jacobin, Nazi, and Communist anti-Church combat slogans against sacramentally ordained priests.

When asked for his reaction to the use of the term “LGBT Catholics,” used by LGBT activists such as Father James Martin, S.J., Müller said the “LGBT” ideology within the Church was “atheistic” and “has no place in Church documents.”

“The LGBT ideology is based upon a false anthropology which denies God as the Creator,” the prelate explained. “Since it is in principle atheistic or perhaps has only to do with a Christian concept of God at the margins, it has no place in Church documents. This is an example of the creeping influence of atheism in the Church, which has been responsible for the crisis of the Church for half a century. Unfortunately, it does not stop working in the minds of some shepherds who, in their naive belief of being modern, do not realize the poison that they day by day drink in, and that they then offer for others to drink.”

Müller speculated that the so-called homosexual lobby in the Church is probably pleased that he is “no longer tasked in the Congregation for the Doctrine [of the Faith] to deal with sexual crimes, especially also against male teenagers.”

A “highly-placed Vatican source” told LifesSite back in August that Pope Francis pushed Müller out of his position as CDF and dismissed three CDF priests because they had all tried to loyally follow Church teaching concerning abusive clergymen.

While the pope never gave him any reasons for his ouster, Müller told LifeSite that he suspects that it was related to his defense of Catholic doctrine on marriage in the wake of Pope Francis’ post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia.

Said Müller: “Amoris Laetitia has to be absolutely in accordance with Revelation, and it is not we who have to be in accord with Amoris Laetitia, at least not in the interpretation which contradicts, in a heretical manner, the Word of God. And it would be an abuse of power to discipline those who insist upon an orthodox interpretation of this encyclical and of all the papal magisterial documents.”

When asked how the Church could regain her trustworthiness in the midst of yet another clerical abuse scandal, the good cardinal replied, “The whole Church, with her priests and bishops, has to please God more than man. The obedience in the Faith is our salvation.”