Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller has warned that the expansion of Islam in Europe coincides with a profound identity crisis in the West, which is abandoning its Christian roots. “Muslims do not respect a weak Christianity that is ashamed of the Cross and reduces itself to a charitable organization or an environmental watchdog body,” stated the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Müller made these remarks in a prepared address for the Tavole di Assisi 2026, a gathering held on September 5 and 6 in Assisi, Italy, and organized by a committee chaired by former Italian senator Simone Pillon. According to the text of the conference, accessed by The Catholic Herald, the cardinal addressed the secularization of the West, the expansion of Islam, and the need to recover the missionary character of Christianity.
The German prelate maintains that the West is undergoing “an unprecedented identity crisis” that cannot be explained solely by external threats.
REALATED: Full Text of Cardinal Müller’s Speech
“Christianity in the West is no longer merely threatened by external forces; it is being eroded by an internal apostasy,” he stated.
Müller links this process to what he calls the “triumph of posthumanism,” a conception he describes as “a nihilistic ideology” that, in seeking to emancipate man from God, ultimately destroys the very conception of the human being.
In his view, this vision reduces the person “to manipulable matter, to an algorithm among algorithms,” ultimately stripping the individual of dignity as a creature made “in the image and likeness of the Creator.”
The cardinal believes that this internal weakening is compounded by the “vigorous expansion of Islam”, precisely as Western societies progressively renounce the religious convictions that historically shaped them.
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