Switzerland: The new nuncio judged too "Traditionalist"

The new Apostolic Nuncio for Switzerland and Lichtenstein, in office in Bern since October 2015, is considered "too close to the Traditional Catholics". That is the opinion of progressivists like theologian Markus Arnold, professor of ethics at the University of Lucerne, and the Swiss League of Catholic Women (SKF), who sent a warning letter to the Swiss Federal Counsel, the executive organ of the Swiss Confederation. According to the website of the Swiss Catholic Church on February 2, 2016, Bishop Thomas E. Gullickson (in the picture) aroused the criticism of those who are habitually opposed to the bishop of Chur, Bishop Vitus Huonder. The 65-year-old American bishop supposedly has an "ultraconservative" attitude that "endangers religious peace". For what reasons? "He recommended reading an antimodernist book from the 19th century" written by a Catalan priest, Félix Sardá y Salvany, Le libéralisme est un péché (Liberalism is a Sin). Perhaps feeling targeted by the work, the ethics professor of Lucerne considers that the Nuncio "is poisoning the debate", and he even assimilates him to "religious fanatics", declaring that we "already have enough problems" with them.

Theologian Erwin Koller, president of the Herbert Haag Foundation "for freedom in the Church" nonetheless declared that "for the federal Counsel to intervene, there would have to be 'manifest' facts against Bishop Gullickson." And such, he regretted, "is not the case for the moment." Also questioned, a journalist of the German-speaking Swiss television hopes for an intervention from the Swiss Bishops' Conference, for in his opinion, "Bishop Gullickson will soon reject the essential decisions of Vatican Council II."

Grison Giusep Nay, former president of the federal Tribunal, also considers that the nuncio's attitude is "a poison for ecumenism". If one desires the support of the federal Counsel, he declared, "one should not showcase the internal conflict in the Church between conservative and liberal Catholics, but rather the nuncio's possible influence on the choice of a successor for the present bishop of Chur, Bishop Vitus Huonder." That is doubtless the main goal of this warning letter.

(sources: kath.ch/apic – DICI no.330 Feb. 12, 2016)

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