Cardinal Müller: U.S. Election Will Determine Future of Democracy & Human Rights for Decades

In recent days, we’ve seen multiple pieces of political commentary from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who has stated that, in his view, President Trump has a “decisive” mission “in the epochal confrontation that has been unfolding in recent months.”

Viganò in fact went so far as to wax apocalyptic when he said:

If Trump loses the presidential elections, the final kathèkon [withholder] will fail (2 Thess 2:6-7), that which prevents the “mystery of iniquity” from revealing itself, and the dictatorship of the New World Order, which has already won Bergoglio over to its cause, will have an ally in the new American President.

I don’t know if our present moment is truly a prelude to the eschaton, but it is certainly an epoch-defining moment.

And now, another high-ranking Catholic prelate has stepped forward in agreement. This time, it’s he former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who is vocally emphasizing the pivotal nature of the present American election.

In an interview with Breitbart News, Müller gave an extremely candid assessment of the stakes, and his focus is largely on the looming threat posed by China – a threat he knows, even if he does not directly acknowledge, that Pope Francis is willfully complicit in.

“The outcome of the U.S. election,” Müller says, “will determine whether the U.S. remains the leading power in the world — for freedom and democracy — or whether a communist dictatorship will assume that role for the global community.”

The cardinal continues:

“American Catholics, Christians of other denominations, and all people of faith must render an account to God over whom they make commander of the flagship of the free world,” the cardinal said. “The world is looking to America because this fateful election will determine the future of democracy and human rights for decades to come.”

“The rivalry between the U.S. and Communist China is not a sporting competition for the first or second place of superpowers,” the cardinal insisted. “It is about the irreconcilable alternatives of democracy or dictatorship.”

“China has no diversity of political parties, no free parliament, and no democratically elected and therefore legitimate government,” Müller said, before proceeding to catalog some of the more egregious human rights violations of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“No government has the right to arbitrarily arrest and even torture its citizens, to brainwash them, to hold them in concentration camps, to murder them, to harvest their organs like spare parts and sell them on the world market,” he said, in reference to well-documented CCP practices on Falun Gong practitioners, Uighur Muslims, and others.

The cardinal also said that Beijing’s accusation of interference in China’s internal affairs for those who call out its atrocities must “unequivocally rejected.”

“Human rights are universal and we are all brothers and sisters because of our common human nature,” Müller said, and “we must therefore denounce the crimes of the CCP in defense of the dignity of every Chinese person.”

Müller, a native of Germany, sees direct and disturbing similarities between the CCP and the Nazis during the Second World War:

“America secured human rights against the godless ideology of National Socialism/Fascism during World War II,” he recalled. “And then the Cold War against the atheist communism of the Soviet Union was won only with the help and under the leadership of the United States.”

“The free world owes the American people the salvation of Western civilization, which has its foundation in the freedom and dignity of every person,” he said, but this legacy is “now being challenged.”

“What China’s Communist leaders intend to withhold from their own people and to steal from the rest of the world is the freedom and dignity to which every single person is inherently entitled,” Müller said. “The wealth of China, the national pride of its youth, and the diligence of the people of this ancient high culture are being used and abused in order to achieve the goal of communist world domination — this time under the Chinese flag.”

“Dictators always think that their citizens are their property and that they can use them and even sacrifice them as pawns for their interests,” he said. “In China, the motto of Nazi Germany is repeated: You are nothing — the state is everything. And yet the truth is the other way around: people are everything and the state exists only to serve the common good.”

The cardinal says he supports the use of the slogan “America first” as “justified and self-evident for every American.” He also admonishes Americans to recognize that their nation “is the world’s number one power: militarily, scientifically and economically” and that as such, it is her duty to “stop to the imperialist grip of a communist superpower that seeks world domination and allow the Chinese people and other oppressed peoples to enter the community and solidarity of free peoples.”

Müller examines some of the moral considerations that go into choosing a candidate, touching on the prioritization of matters like abortion over other, less significant concerns. He goes on to exhort Americans of good will to unite around a common cause, and lays out the most important issues as he sees them:

In this election, Christians, people of all faiths, and all people of good will must unite in seeking the common good and the best leader to defend and promote it, the cardinal asserted.

“The presidency of the United States is a political office, not a religious one,” he said. “No one chooses a candidate simply because he or she belongs to the same religion, social status, profession, gender, or ethnic origin.”

“A candidate must be fundamentally assessed as to whether he or she fully recognizes and is prepared to uphold human rights, beginning with the right to life,” he said.

“In this crucial election, it is vital that voters evaluate the candidates based on their willingness to do the right thing while in office,” he said, “and according to Catholic teaching, not all issues have the same weight.”

“Three points are decisive in the upcoming elections,” the cardinal noted: “First, the ‘yes’ to life against abortion, second, freedom of religion against the mainstreaming of gender ideology, and third, the mission of the United States to defend democracy and human rights against dictatorships.”

It’s a forceful showing from Müller, who has been known at times to be excessively diplomatic. His emphasis on the threat posed by China is hard not to interpret as a shot across the bow of the pope and the Vatican Secretariat of State, who together have sold out Chinese Catholics to an increasingly oppressive Beijing – allegedly in exchange for billions in cash from the CCP. Pope Francis refused this week to meet with Cardinal Zen, bishop-emeritus of Hong Kong, who came to Rome to urge the pope to appoint a bishop not aligned with the CCP to fill his former see, which has been vacant since January of 2019.

Tensions between the Holy See and the United States over the China issue have also been high, and after criticism of the Vatican’s deal with Beijing by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he, too, was snubbed by the pope during his visit to Rome this week, where the two had originally been expected to meet.

Archbishop Vigano, referencing Pompeo’s criticisms, said in commentary late last month that

Secretary of State Pompeo did well to censure the renewal of the secret agreement signed between Bergoglio and Xi Jinping! His lucid denunciation brings to light the aberrant Vatican attitude, the betrayal of the mission of the Church, the abandonment of the Chinese Catholic community out of sinister political calculation and the way it is in accord with aligned thought. Nor is the piqued reaction of the Jesuits and Catholic progressivism surprising, beginning with Avvenire [the daily newspaper of the Italian Episcopal Conference]. If Bergoglio can affirm with impunity that “Trump is not Christian”, evoking the ghosts of Nazism and populism, why would the U.S. Secretary of State not have the right to express his opinion – with the more than legitimate objective of international security – about the connivance of the Holy See with the communist dictatorship that is more ferocious but also more powerful and influential than ever? Why does the Vatican, which is silent in the face of the Democratic party’s support for abortion and the violation of the most basic human rights in China, consider the Trump Administration to have no right to interfere in an agreement that has obvious repercussions in the international political balance? It causes just as much astonishment to see that the parrhesia in political confrontation that is called for in words is contradicted in fact by those who see their wicked plans brought to light.

Viganò, who warns frequently about the collusion of the “Deep State” and the “Deep Church,” seems particularly incisive on this matter.

It appears that in Cardinal Müller, he may have a new ally in his fight.