Cardinal Hollerich, Archbishop of Luxembourg, is a Jesuit and friend of the Holy Father, President of the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union until about two weeks ago, Relator-General of the Synod on Synodality, and this year was added to the ‘C9’ group of inner advisers to the Pope, filling the vacancy left by Cardinal Pell. He is widely seen as papabile; he is practically a clone of Pope Francis.
After the young Baron Tschugguel threw the Pachamamas into the Tiber, Hollerich showed his solidarity with the Pope by posing for journalists, holding an image of the idol. He has said publicly that more than half the priests in his diocese are homosexual and has made remarks which suggest a desire for a change in Church teaching on this subject. One of his strangest remarks was an assertion that “in St. Paul’s time, people had no idea that there could be men and women attracted to the same sex.” Of all people, one could surely expect a Cardinal Archbishop to have read the entire Bible many times over, not least the crucial Letter to the Romans (1:26-27), in which St. Paul says:
26 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
Apparently he has never heard of the poet Sappho either.
For all these reasons, the Cardinal has become a major target for criticism among conservative Catholic writers and bloggers, as the arch-defender of everything that is wrong with this pontificate.
As always, however, things are more complicated and more nuanced than they seem. To understand the Cardinal, you must first understand Luxembourg, his native land whose sole archdiocese is his see. This Grand Duchy, about the size of Kent, exists because its position was so strategic that none of the neighbouring powers would agree to the others keeping it. Until a couple of generations ago Luxembourgers were mostly of either peasant or mining stock. They speak Luxembourgish, which is sufficiently different from German and Flemish to have the status of a language in its own right.
Hollerich was born in a mining area of the Grand Duchy but grew up in a picturesque village in the rural north. 1958, the year he was born, was the year the Treaty of Rome was implemented. This led to the biggest social change in Luxembourg’s history, for it meant the arrival of the EU Institutions. Hitherto, the country had never had a middle class to speak of; now white-collar workers poured in, eventually outnumbering the indigenous Luxembourgers. They needed to buy land for offices and accommodation, and the canny Luxembourgers made a lot of money in the process. But at the same time a bitter national resentment grew against the foreigners who had made them rich. Jealousy is a national pastime in Luxembourg.
However, despite being a native speaking Luxembourger, Claude Hollerich was not stereotypical. Early in his career he studied in Japan for four years, where he learned to speak Japanese so well that he astonishes Japanese residents in Luxembourg. His love for Japan is palpable: he chose to be ordained, not in his home country, but in Japan. Besides his native Luxembourgish, he is accomplished in other languages too—French, German, and English come easily to him. This is endearing to churchmen on the international stage, but not to Luxembourgers.
Resentment among Luxembourgish clergy towards Hollerich has been inflamed by his reaction to two important developments in the local Catholic Church. First, the constitutional requirement for the Archbishop to be a Luxembourger, from which he himself benefitted, has been abolished with, it is widely thought, his encouragement. Secondly, the 1801 Concordat between Church and State, which was similar to that enacted by Napoleon in France and had hardly changed since, was replaced in 2015 by a multifaith pact with the state. Under the Concordat, the State owned and paid for church upkeep and paid the salaries and pensions of the clergy. Under the new agreement which, eight years down the road has still not been implemented, the various faith communities will have to pay their own way.
These two reforms thus threaten the career prospects, salaries, and pensions of the clergy. The issue is made worse by the fact that the Luxembourgish church’s own revenue has collapsed, partly because the Concordat created a mentality among the faithful that there was little need to contribute as the State was paying for church upkeep, and partly because Luxembourgers barely go to church any more. Eighty-five parish churches in this small country are marked for closure. There are almost no vocations, so parishes are being clustered into groups of five. The biggest and most financially generous congregations are those who attend Mass in foreign vernaculars, as well as the parish Tridentine Mass which Hollerich authorised early on in this pontificate and which he has protected to this day.
This brings us to the Cardinal’s position on Church teaching. The fact that he is overseeing the Synod on Synodality, best known for its promotion of extreme opinions on female ordination and sexual ethics, has led the world to suppose that he favours the direction his synod seems to be taking. The Synod is being used, quite transparently, as an instrument to promote a view of the Catholic Church as, essentially, an NGO in line with modern secular opinion, especially on issues of sexuality.
In Catholic thinking and practice, it is the reception of the sacraments which forms an elaborate system of defences against sin. For non-Catholic readers it is worth summarising this. The starting point is that unless you die in a state of grace you cannot expect to go to heaven. But to be in a state of grace you must go to Mass every Sunday and take Holy Communion once a year. However, you cannot take Holy Communion if you know you have committed a mortal sin; if you have, then you must repent and receive absolution from a priest in the sacrament of confession. Only the priest has the power to confect the Eucharist in order to give you Holy Communion, and only he can absolve you. Furthermore, any kind of sexual activity outside marriage is mortally sinful, and marriage is for life, with no possibility of divorce. The sacraments of priestly ordination, reconciliation (confession), Holy Communion, and Holy Matrimony are thus interconnected. Undermine one and the whole structure collapses.
The famous footnote in the Papal Encyclical Amoris Laetitia, which seemed to allow Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, appeared to attack all those sacraments. If it is accepted that civilly remarried persons, who are by definition living outside a state of grace, may take Holy Communion, then confession becomes optional, and so indeed does going to Mass, because failing to do so is simply one more way of living outside the state of grace for which, logically, confession is no longer a requirement either.
The objective of the secularising activists within Synod is apparently the dismantling of the entire Catholic sacramental system—in effect the end of Catholicism itself, for without her sacraments the Church would in effect become Protestant. Moreover, the Church would have accepted a subjective view of sexual mores that allows her members to decide for themselves according to private conscience whom to have sex with and how to handle other moral questions such as abortion and euthanasia.
If this is the direction the Synod is taking, is this also what Cardinal Hollerich wants? Possibly, but not necessarily. In Luxembourg it is widely said that he simply wants to encourage “whatever works.” He has shown no hostility at all to the Tridentine Mass, which brings with it a complete acceptance of the old sacramental system. Equally, he has invited the Neocatechumenical Way as well as the broadly conservative nuns of the Servant of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará into his diocese. Why, then, his controversial remarks on homosexuality? The answer must lie, surely, in the government of Luxembourg, which since 2015 has held the Damoclean sword of Church-State reform over his head. The Prime Minister, Xavier Bettel, is civilly married to a man, and if he is to continue to suspend the 2015 reform he expects the Cardinal to kow-tow to his values.
Hollerich is thus besieged from all sides: his own clergy are furious with him, the state is putting pressure on him, in neighbouring Germany there are calls for same-sex blessings and female ordination, and he is caught up at the highest level in the tide of change which Pope Francis and his supporters have unleashed.
So, spare a thought and a prayer for the poor man. Despite the difficulties, he has not ended the Tridentine Mass in his Archdiocese.
Please also be aware of what he actually said on the subjects of homosexuality and the indirectly related proposal for female ordination. On homosexuality:
there is no room for a sacramental marriage between persons of the same sex, because same-sex unions lack the procreative character of marriage. But that does not mean that their affective relationship has no value.”
On female ordination: “I am not saying women should be ordained. I just do not know.”
Cardinal Hollerich: Beset From All Sides
Photo: AFP / Tiziana FABI
Cardinal Hollerich, Archbishop of Luxembourg, is a Jesuit and friend of the Holy Father, President of the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union until about two weeks ago, Relator-General of the Synod on Synodality, and this year was added to the ‘C9’ group of inner advisers to the Pope, filling the vacancy left by Cardinal Pell. He is widely seen as papabile; he is practically a clone of Pope Francis.
After the young Baron Tschugguel threw the Pachamamas into the Tiber, Hollerich showed his solidarity with the Pope by posing for journalists, holding an image of the idol. He has said publicly that more than half the priests in his diocese are homosexual and has made remarks which suggest a desire for a change in Church teaching on this subject. One of his strangest remarks was an assertion that “in St. Paul’s time, people had no idea that there could be men and women attracted to the same sex.” Of all people, one could surely expect a Cardinal Archbishop to have read the entire Bible many times over, not least the crucial Letter to the Romans (1:26-27), in which St. Paul says:
Apparently he has never heard of the poet Sappho either.
For all these reasons, the Cardinal has become a major target for criticism among conservative Catholic writers and bloggers, as the arch-defender of everything that is wrong with this pontificate.
As always, however, things are more complicated and more nuanced than they seem. To understand the Cardinal, you must first understand Luxembourg, his native land whose sole archdiocese is his see. This Grand Duchy, about the size of Kent, exists because its position was so strategic that none of the neighbouring powers would agree to the others keeping it. Until a couple of generations ago Luxembourgers were mostly of either peasant or mining stock. They speak Luxembourgish, which is sufficiently different from German and Flemish to have the status of a language in its own right.
Hollerich was born in a mining area of the Grand Duchy but grew up in a picturesque village in the rural north. 1958, the year he was born, was the year the Treaty of Rome was implemented. This led to the biggest social change in Luxembourg’s history, for it meant the arrival of the EU Institutions. Hitherto, the country had never had a middle class to speak of; now white-collar workers poured in, eventually outnumbering the indigenous Luxembourgers. They needed to buy land for offices and accommodation, and the canny Luxembourgers made a lot of money in the process. But at the same time a bitter national resentment grew against the foreigners who had made them rich. Jealousy is a national pastime in Luxembourg.
However, despite being a native speaking Luxembourger, Claude Hollerich was not stereotypical. Early in his career he studied in Japan for four years, where he learned to speak Japanese so well that he astonishes Japanese residents in Luxembourg. His love for Japan is palpable: he chose to be ordained, not in his home country, but in Japan. Besides his native Luxembourgish, he is accomplished in other languages too—French, German, and English come easily to him. This is endearing to churchmen on the international stage, but not to Luxembourgers.
Resentment among Luxembourgish clergy towards Hollerich has been inflamed by his reaction to two important developments in the local Catholic Church. First, the constitutional requirement for the Archbishop to be a Luxembourger, from which he himself benefitted, has been abolished with, it is widely thought, his encouragement. Secondly, the 1801 Concordat between Church and State, which was similar to that enacted by Napoleon in France and had hardly changed since, was replaced in 2015 by a multifaith pact with the state. Under the Concordat, the State owned and paid for church upkeep and paid the salaries and pensions of the clergy. Under the new agreement which, eight years down the road has still not been implemented, the various faith communities will have to pay their own way.
These two reforms thus threaten the career prospects, salaries, and pensions of the clergy. The issue is made worse by the fact that the Luxembourgish church’s own revenue has collapsed, partly because the Concordat created a mentality among the faithful that there was little need to contribute as the State was paying for church upkeep, and partly because Luxembourgers barely go to church any more. Eighty-five parish churches in this small country are marked for closure. There are almost no vocations, so parishes are being clustered into groups of five. The biggest and most financially generous congregations are those who attend Mass in foreign vernaculars, as well as the parish Tridentine Mass which Hollerich authorised early on in this pontificate and which he has protected to this day.
This brings us to the Cardinal’s position on Church teaching. The fact that he is overseeing the Synod on Synodality, best known for its promotion of extreme opinions on female ordination and sexual ethics, has led the world to suppose that he favours the direction his synod seems to be taking. The Synod is being used, quite transparently, as an instrument to promote a view of the Catholic Church as, essentially, an NGO in line with modern secular opinion, especially on issues of sexuality.
In Catholic thinking and practice, it is the reception of the sacraments which forms an elaborate system of defences against sin. For non-Catholic readers it is worth summarising this. The starting point is that unless you die in a state of grace you cannot expect to go to heaven. But to be in a state of grace you must go to Mass every Sunday and take Holy Communion once a year. However, you cannot take Holy Communion if you know you have committed a mortal sin; if you have, then you must repent and receive absolution from a priest in the sacrament of confession. Only the priest has the power to confect the Eucharist in order to give you Holy Communion, and only he can absolve you. Furthermore, any kind of sexual activity outside marriage is mortally sinful, and marriage is for life, with no possibility of divorce. The sacraments of priestly ordination, reconciliation (confession), Holy Communion, and Holy Matrimony are thus interconnected. Undermine one and the whole structure collapses.
The famous footnote in the Papal Encyclical Amoris Laetitia, which seemed to allow Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried, appeared to attack all those sacraments. If it is accepted that civilly remarried persons, who are by definition living outside a state of grace, may take Holy Communion, then confession becomes optional, and so indeed does going to Mass, because failing to do so is simply one more way of living outside the state of grace for which, logically, confession is no longer a requirement either.
The objective of the secularising activists within Synod is apparently the dismantling of the entire Catholic sacramental system—in effect the end of Catholicism itself, for without her sacraments the Church would in effect become Protestant. Moreover, the Church would have accepted a subjective view of sexual mores that allows her members to decide for themselves according to private conscience whom to have sex with and how to handle other moral questions such as abortion and euthanasia.
If this is the direction the Synod is taking, is this also what Cardinal Hollerich wants? Possibly, but not necessarily. In Luxembourg it is widely said that he simply wants to encourage “whatever works.” He has shown no hostility at all to the Tridentine Mass, which brings with it a complete acceptance of the old sacramental system. Equally, he has invited the Neocatechumenical Way as well as the broadly conservative nuns of the Servant of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará into his diocese. Why, then, his controversial remarks on homosexuality? The answer must lie, surely, in the government of Luxembourg, which since 2015 has held the Damoclean sword of Church-State reform over his head. The Prime Minister, Xavier Bettel, is civilly married to a man, and if he is to continue to suspend the 2015 reform he expects the Cardinal to kow-tow to his values.
Hollerich is thus besieged from all sides: his own clergy are furious with him, the state is putting pressure on him, in neighbouring Germany there are calls for same-sex blessings and female ordination, and he is caught up at the highest level in the tide of change which Pope Francis and his supporters have unleashed.
So, spare a thought and a prayer for the poor man. Despite the difficulties, he has not ended the Tridentine Mass in his Archdiocese.
Please also be aware of what he actually said on the subjects of homosexuality and the indirectly related proposal for female ordination. On homosexuality:
On female ordination: “I am not saying women should be ordained. I just do not know.”
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