Dutch Cardinal Wim Eijk warned that the Catholic Church risks fostering deep confusion among the faithful unless Pope Leo speaks with clarity on doctrine.
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Dutch prelate Cardinal Willem Eijk has urged Pope Leo XIV to prioritize fostering “unity” in the Catholic Church by teaching the faith in a “clear and unambiguous” manner.
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference in Rome this past week, Eijk urged the newly elected Pope Leo XIV not to shy away from the fullness of the Catholic Faith.
“We should be clear in teaching, unambiguous,” Eijk said, when asked by The Pillar about his advice for the Pope. “Clear and courageous in teaching the truth of the Catholic faith, including the Catholic doctrine on moral issues, which is the most contested issue.”
Eijk, 71, is an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) and has served as the Archbishop of Utrecht since 2008. He has become a prominent voice in the Church and around the Vatican for his forthright promotion of Catholic teaching, especially in areas of life and the family.
Indeed, as he noted to The Pillar, morality is today the “most contested issue” and hence the most clarity is required in this area:
When the Pope is clear and unambiguous in proclaiming this part of the doctrine, that will be very helpful for people to rediscover the truth. And they should be helped in doing so. When people see ambiguity, they start to get confused. They start to doubt.
But when the Pope and the bishops are clear in the teaching, also the priests of course, that will be very helpful for the people to rediscover the truth of Christ, the Gospel, and the way in which they can follow Him.
The Dutch cardinal’s comments were made alongside a bioethics conference organized by the Jerome Lejeune Foundation – named after Dr. Jerome Lejeune who discovered the causes of Down syndrome and was named first president of the PAV by Pope John Paul II in 1994.
In more recent years, the PAV has become one of the most controversial bodies of the Vatican’s offices under Pope Francis.
In November 2016, Francis released new statutes for the PAV in which members were no longer required to sign a declaration that they uphold the Church’s pro-life teachings, while also expanding the PAV’s mandate to include a focus on the environment.
As a result, the PAV has been described as being permeated by “heretical gnosticism,” and Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia's leadership drew the academy into regular scandal and additional disrepute, prompting calls for his immediate resignation.
Last week, Leo XIV named Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro as the new president of the PAV, after he had served as chancellor since 2011, and as the right-hand man of the controversial former PAV president Paglia since 2016.
Questioned about what role the PAV should play during the current pontificate, Eijk again emphasized the need for unity based on clear teaching:
It is very important that we try to reestablish unity in the Church. And that needs to come from a proclamation of the faith that is clear and unambiguous. And that should also happen in the field of morality and ethics.
It may not be easy to witness Catholic morality. People may have difficulties with it, but we should be clear and unambiguous about the basic truths of our faith.
INTERVIEW: Dutch Cardinal Willem Eijk answers questions on crisis in Church, loss of faith
Eijk specifically mentioned the necessity of promoting the Church’s teaching “about marriage, about sexual life,” noting the the majority of couples in his archdiocesan marriage preparation class were ill-informed on the matter.
As transgender ideology appears to increasingly sweep through much of society, traditional teaching on marriage is placed under greater pressure from those looking to overturn marriage and the family.
Noting this growing problem, Eijk suggested that an encyclical directly addressing the dangers of transgenderism would be helpful, since “new techniques and issues have been developed,” such as the question of sex-change surgery.
The cardinal has previously made similar warnings about the prevalence of gender ideology, suggesting in 2016 that an encyclical “might appear to be necessary” in order to combat the spread of gender ideology.
“It [gender theory] is spreading and spreading everywhere in the Western world, and we have to warn people,” said Eijk. He added that Catholics were accepting the radical ideology “in a very easy way, even parents, because they don’t hear anything else.”
He then echoed this at the 2019 Rome Life Forum, stating that exposing the errors of gender theory is “of the utmost urgency, because as a result of that theory, not only sexual morality, but also the proclamation of the Christian faith in itself, are at stake.”
Eijk has similarly condemned the confusion caused by the 2015 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and by the promotion of same-sex blessings. Speaking to respected French journalist Jeanne Smits in 2019, Eijk suggested a two-pronged solution to the ecclesial crisis: calling upon the Pope to issue clarifying statements which are firm and unambiguous, and urging the Catholic laity to instruct themselves well in the faith while availing themselves properly of the sacramental life of the Church.
