Cardinal Müller Wants Us to Think of Our Nations as Extensions of Our Own Families

Cardinal Gerhard Müller calls on Europeans to prevent Muslim migrants from rendering them “marginalized” in their own countries: “Top Conservative Cardinal Blasts Mass Migration, Defends Rights of Nations,” by Thomas Colsy, European Conservative, March 15, 2026:

Although he believes there are adverse material, social, and political conditions making family formation difficult, Müller also believes there are ideational and spiritual anti-familial forces let loose upon the population.

“It’s a natural feeling to have children if you are living in matrimony,” he said. “It’s against nature and against grace not to.”…

Family formation is harder when most women now work; the expense of child raising also discourages having more than one child. In major European cities, undisciplined Muslim children in the public schools cause non-Muslim parents to put their children in private schools; that cost further discourages non-Muslims from having more children.

He stated that “now we also have to defend the right of the nations” to exist and sustain themselves.

Articulating his understanding, Müller explained that “nations developed in the West after the Roman Empire” and the arrival of the Christian faith. He acknowledged that there have been excesses of nationalism and imperialism and colonialism in the past, aspects of which have been “terrible” and “absolutely anti-Christian.”

He is no doubt thinking of European colonialism in “the scramble for Africa,” and of the hyper-nationalism of Italian Fascism and the German Nazis, that made the state itself, and its supreme leader, the objects of worship.

Nevertheless, he does not believe nations or ethnic differences to be something evil to be destroyed but instead sees them as something that helpfully and healthily orders societies along the model of the extended family….

Cardinal Müller wants us to think of our nations as extensions of our own families; they deserve our protection against those forces that, through demography, would dilute and ultimately destroy them.

Müller recognises there is often necessarily an ethnic and ancestral component to nationalities, which have real cultural and historical and ideational forms and shapes, meaning that “we can say ‘I’m a typical Englishman or German’ without absolutising it.”

“Jesus became flesh in all human contexts,” he continued. “Therefore there is a right for all nations to continue with their special culture without contradiction to the others. It is a good image to say we are a family in mankind. But we are in a European family and so on.”…

Not just a “family,” but “a European family” made up of nations that need to preserve their own history and identity within that larger family, and must refuse to disappear under an ever-increasing Muslim flood.

“We are against globalism. We are a universal Church. But a universal Church in the house of my father,” Müller clarified. “There are different habitations for everyone.”

The Church is universal, but “within my Father’s house are many mansions.” The nations of Europe need to preserve what makes each of them unique — whether it is language, culture, education, artistic works, folk legends, or their political and military history. And they need not only preserve their national uniqueness within Europe, but much more importantly, should resist the tidal wave of Islam by greatly reducing, or ending altogether, Muslim migration. Claims for asylum need to be rigorously examined; those Muslims who may have fled civil wars in their countries to find safety in Europe — as millions of Syrians did — must be returned to their countries of origin once the civil war is over. Muslims convicted of crimes must be promptly deported. Muslims who are found to support terrorism, even if only on the evidence that they “liked” and reposted posts praising Hamas or Hezbollah, should be deported. Muslim economic migrants must be required to be gainfully employed for at least five years before they can become eligible for any welfare benefits; that should make their migration to Europe much less attractive.

Above all, Europeans must celebrate their own nation-states, and understand the need to preserve them from the Muslim flood that would, if not resisted, dissolve all of them in what would become part of an ever-expanding Dar al-Islam. Cardinal Müller rejects the pollyannish views of Popes Francis and Leo, nether of whom expressed any alarm about Muslim migrants in Europe; Pope Francis actually celebrated their presence, for he insisted, preposterously, that Islam “is a religion of peace.” Cardinal Muller, who warns of “civil wars” that may result between Muslim migrants and European peoples who foolishly allowed them to settle in their midst, knows better.