Bishop Schneider: We have to understand that the source of martyrdom is supernatural love, not only love, but supernatural love.
John-Henry Westen: Bishop Schneider, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for your invitation. Let’s begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross. If you could lead us, please.
Bishop Schneider: In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
John-Henry Westen: Amen. Talking about your book on the martyrs, I thought it would be amazing to speak first of all about something that has captured the imagination of the world, and particularly the United States, with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It was a massive thing, and right away, people started talking about martyrdom, but of course, he was not a Catholic. Now there were theories that he might be joining the church. One Bishop, in fact, his brother, said that he was indeed going to join the church. But those are other questions. He wasn’t a Catholic. Maybe wanted to be. Maybe it would have been, we could say.
But how is a Catholic to make sense of the idea that he’s being thought of as a martyr? He obviously spoke for Christ and for His truth on life and on family, perhaps more courageously than many Catholics, perhaps even many Catholic religious leaders. And yet comes the question: Charlie Kirk, could he be considered a martyr?
Bishop Schneider: I think yes, because we could see in his life that he was really very committed to defend the Christian faith, the uniqueness of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the faith in Him as the only Redeemer of the world, and also, he boldly defended God’s commandments about marriage and family, and also life. He was a defender of life. Also, these two main, or I would say, three main attacks of the world against Christianity and also Catholicism, I would say, are the first attack against the first commandment of God, with the relativism saying that there are many religions, and so Jesus Christ is one who obeys, even some high-ranking clergy are speaking so and behaving. And so this is the first, and then the other attack is against the fifth commandment, not to kill. And this is the, I think, the greatest wound in our current world, the worldwide genocide of the unborn children. This is horrible, and we have to fight against this, really, and in the other command, the sixth commandment, simply, it is all these agendas, against family, against marriage, the so-called gender ideology, or the LGBT agendas, are a direct attack against the sixth commandment.
It is basically an abolition, a total abolition of the sixth commandment of God. And so these three attacks, we could see that Charlie Kirk was defending Christ and God’s commandment on these three issues: the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus Christ, inviting especially young people to believe in Jesus Christ as the only Savior, and then to be defenders of life against the anti-culture of death, and then the sanctity of marriage and family. Therefore, we have to acknowledge it. And I think God will reward him for this, his commitment, courageous, and he was, of course, conscious that with this his commitment, he was going against the current and was also provoking enemies and hatred against him, and he had known it on other occasions. Therefore, we can say he was killed objectively. We can say out of hatred against these, his commitments, which he did.
In this sense, we can consider him a martyr, but of course, we cannot celebrate him in a Catholic church as a martyr, because it would. It would cause another confusion, so relative revision between the uniqueness of the Catholic Church as the unique God willed religion and others, even Protestant communities, which are not the true full way to God, which is not these are a separation from the true Church. But of course, Charlie Kirk did it in, I assume, in a so-called invincible ignorance. He was convinced that he was remaining in his community. He is serving God. Only God can judge his intentions of the heart. We cannot do it. We can assume that he had a good will bona fide, as the theologians say, and but nevertheless, we cannot celebrate him as a martyr liturgically in the Catholic Church, we can have a deep esteem of this courageous man, and ask God that His sacrifice of His life can produce fruits of conversion of the young people who had listened him to the Catholic truth and fullness,
ADS: The most repeated phrase in Scripture is Do not be afraid. We are called to speak the truth, to proclaim the gospel, and to live our lives without fear. For the past three years, we’ve brought this mission to the very heart of the church at the Rome Life Forum. You won’t just hear truth proclaimed. You’ll have the chance to ask your questions directly to the speakers. This is your opportunity to engage, to challenge, and to go deeper into the battles we face today. Fear not, her Immaculate Heart will triumph.
John-Henry Westen: On the very same thing of as you mentioned about Charlie and his invincible ignorance. He, by his own testimony, was looking to Catholicism, but then he mentioned the number one thing keeping him back from Catholicism was the confusion coming from Pope Francis, and that was a very difficult thing for him.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, I think this is also a kind of mitigating circumstance, this huge confusion, which, unfortunately, the last pontificate of Pope Francis caused in the church and outside the church, and therefore God will also take into account this very difficult circumstance of confusion for those non Catholic Christians who were seeking the truth. I think if we would, we’ve had a pope which which had been strong and crystal clear in defending Jesus Christ, the only see where the sacredness of marriage, of God’s creation of men and women, and fighting, even as a pope, against the worldwide gender ideology, courageously and inviting the other Christians To join the fullness of the Catholic faith explaining them. I think that Charlie Kirkwood had joined the Catholic Church.
John-Henry Westen: Beautiful. Now, one of the things in your book, you mentioned that you yourself have known martyrs for the faith, and describe them in rip. Tell us about that.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, I had the grace of God that I grew up in my childhood in the underground church in the Soviet Union, and especially one martyr who was his little beatified a priest martyr blessed Alexei Zaritsky, a Ukrainian by ritualist priest. He was very close to my parents. So in the parents were in the Ural Mountains, in the forced labor camps, and in the ghettos for Germans, and he came several times. And so my parents helped him in some way. Then my parents were underground church activists and helped Father blessed Alexei, the smarter priest, several times, even hiding him, helping him to organize the Masses. And then he visited us in Kyrgyzstan, where I was born, even so, celebrated in our house, the traditional Latin Mass in 62, and I was one year old, and my mother put me in a cradle on the side of the table where he was celebrating Mass. So in some, I became an altar boy in one year, and he blessed me and my siblings. And so this was how I saw him with my eyes, but I don’t remember.
Of course, I was one year old, and he blessed me. And then when he left us, it was May 62 from Kyrgyzstan. And. Back to Kazakhstan, where he was in a kind of house arrest. And then he was straight away arrested by the KGB, the Secret Service in Karaganda city, and put into the karlak Gulak, one of the famous gulaks outside Karaganda, and there he still suffered one and a half year these horrible conditions, and then died as a consequence of these conditions in the in the prison in 63 and his feast will be after tomorrow, we celebrate here in Kazakhstan the feast of this martyr priest who gave his life here in Kazakhstan for Christ and for the Catholic faith. And his main phrase was, oftentimes this, when he said, remain faithful to the faith of your forefathers. It’s very timely for our day, also even for us in the Western world, to remain faithful to the faith of your forefathers.
So those generations who gave us this true and full Catholic faith. And so this is one person, and the other priest was Father Yanis pavlovsky’s a Capuchin priest from Latvia. He also spent many years in the Gulag in Karaganda, even there, where I was first a bishop auxiliary in the same town in the 50s during the Stalin time. And then when he was freed, he could go back to Latvia. And then he was a parish priest in Estonia, where we moved from Kyrgyzstan to Estonia, and where he was my parish priest. My first Holy Confession was with this confessor priest, and he gave me Holy Communion. And on Sundays, since we had to travel the farthest family to travel to the church, 70 miles, he invited us after mass, only our family. We were four siblings and our parents went into his room, to spend some hours there, to drink something, and to rest before we had to travel by train in the evening. And so I had four years, saw close contact with this holy confessor, a priest. He died. He did not die directly as a martyr, but he suffered so many sufferings in the camp of concentration camp, and he left such a deep impression on my soul. I was 12 years old. I perceived it and my parents that it was a holy priest. He irradiated simply holiness and what he gave us, to me and my siblings, my parents, when he left, when we left the Soviet Union at the end of 73, and said farewell to him, he gave us a blessing. And then he said these words to us, I remember this, when you come to Germany, be attentive.
There are some churches where communion is given in the hand. Don’t go to these churches. And when we heard this, it was incredible for us. My mother spontaneously said, What a horror. This was the first reaction of my mother and me. At my age, as a boy, I could not understand why we were so strange when I heard this first Word, the Holy Sacrament is giving you the hand. We were so deeply educated in the reverence by the blessed father, Zaritski, by other priests, and by this father, Yanis Pavlovsky, that I could not imagine it. And the other person is a virgin. Get through the Tetzel, a German in Kazakhstan in Karaganda in my previous diocese. She was a lay catechist, and really, she helped a priest, the underground priest, to teach children catechism. She prepared the adults for sacraments, for holy marriage in the absence of the priest. Shiva was leading prayers for burial because there was no priest to bury people, and she led the prayers there, and sometimes, in emergency cases, she baptized children before they died. There was no priest. You see, this was, this is the true collaboration of women in the church. Not to occupy offices of administration or even hierarchical ranks, starting with, of course, with Deacon, and then they will promote, and so on.
As in our day, we are witnessing these efforts in the Catholic Church to promote this false promotion of women, this virgin gets through the dead cell. She was so many years old. She was imprisoned in the Gulag only because she was teaching catechism, only because she was hurrying the faithful, and then she was preparing the young couples for matrimony, and she gave all her life, and then she suffered so much in prisons. In the prison, she organized a kind of secret church. She managed this in the women’s barracks. Every Sunday, there was a worship without a priest, of course, but she led the prayers and so on, at the danger that she could be even condemned to high punishments, she did it, and even sometimes, she was so zealous that she tried even to convert the waiters and the bosses of the camp of concentration. She was called several times, and very often she called during the night for interrogations. Very hard. She had to work all day, hard, like a man, and then all night, not sleeping. They did not allow her to sleep.
They were interrogating. And during these interrogations, she started to evangelize them. And she had such a strong personality and convincing words, I think it was the Holy Spirit that the officers there were shocked. And then one day, she’s she was called in the night again, and then the first question she asked the boss was, Do you know what today is the today? And he said, Well, today is 15 of May. No, today is the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven. And then she started they make a catechesis of Jesus Christ and His ascension, and so on. And then the boss said, Take away this woman. Otherwise, I will start to believe also. And then she was even expelled from the camp because they feared that she was evangelizing all the prisoners there. And for these, I would say, confess a virgin. She was a virgin living in the world, and she now started the process of beatification. And last week, all the documents were brought to Rome to the dicastery of the canonizations, and there you will start the apostolic process of her beatification. And so these three confessors and our martyr. I also presented in my book, which was published recently, No Greater Love or martyrdom.
John-Henry Westen: Beautiful, so one of the things you present in your book, which is very interesting, you speak about our Lady, the Virgin Mary, as a martyr. And of course, for most people, it’s going to be what she wasn’t. She wasn’t killed or anything. And yet, it answers a question as well, because in the church, we call her the queen of martyrs. And so if you can tell us about that,
Bishop Schneider: Yes, St Augustine says it is not the suffering that makes one a martyr, it is the cause, the reason. And so our Lord, of course, is the source of martyrdom, the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross, the redeeming sacrifice, is the source of all martyrdom, because he What is martyrdom? Our Lord demonstrated and revealed in His redeeming death on the cross, in his sacrifice, it is love, really. We have to understand that the source of martyrdom is supernatural love, not only love, supernatural love, because our Lord said no one has more love than who gives his life for his friends, and you are my friends. He said, I’m calling you no more servants, but friends. And so he gave his life out of love for the Father. This is the first. Us. And then out of love for all the sinful humanity, for every soul to be redeemed from the sins and to open them at the gate of heaven. Of course, everyone must individually accept Christ to be saved.
And then our lady, she was beneath the cross, and she was the creature on earth who most closely participated interiorly with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, with his intention, with his interior sacrifice, in St Bernard of Clairvaux, he wrote very beautifully. Explains it that when the soldier pierced the heart of the Lord on the cross, he first pierced the soul of Our Lady, and then, from this piercing of her soul, the he pierced our Lord, that the body of our Lord, before the soldier reached the body of our Lord, his physical heart, he first trespassed and pierced the soul of Our Lady, so she was really the most closest united to him.
And therefore she is called, in some way, the cordemprix, in the sense that she was participating with con, with the Redeemer, the closest possible, because she was the most pure creature, immaculate. And therefore she had she could the deepest suffering of a pure soul, because all the other human creatures were sinners, except our lady, and therefore her sufferings were the deepest ones which a human being can endure. And so the church, from the first times, venerated her as the closest participant in the redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then she was called later, even the queen of Martyrs.
John-Henry Westen: Beautiful. I think a lot of people, especially if they practice traditional old prayers. I remember very well the Stabat Mater, which we used to sing or pray in between the Stations of the Cross that let you relate to our Lady as someone who suffered with her son in a very special a unique way, and so spoke to that very, very much amazing in your book. Who are some of the others that you list in terms of the martyrs?
Bishop Schneider: Well, I started chronologically with the Old Testament. They so called the Maccabee martyrs of the book of Maccabees and even the church, since the first century, is the Fathers of the Church, they considered the Maccabee martyrs as Christian martyrs, because the mother was the seven brothers, and there was a feast of them on the first of August in the old missal, the church celebrated them, yes and the Church Fathers, even St Augustine and other church fathers, St John Chrysostom, they raised them.
And why? Of course, they lived before Christ, but all the just in the Old Testament implicitly believed in Jesus Christ already. This is the constant teaching of the Church Apostle Paul and all the church fathers, and therefore we we celebrate in the liturgy, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Eliah and so on, as our saints, because they believed in Jesus Christ implicitly and the Maccabees, they gave their life for the fidelity to the Divine Law which they received from Moses, and they were convinced that this is the will of God. We cannot participate in pagan rites or usages like the food prescriptions. They considered it so holy that they died, not so much, I would say, for this food, but not to eat pork. But they died simply for fidelity to the law of God, to which God gave them. And so they are. They died for the. Truth. And in this sense, they gave their life implicitly, also for Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are one God, and the Holy Trinity gave the law in the Old Testament.
And therefore our Lord, the Son of God, the eternal Son of God, also gave this law to the Old Testament. And they died also because they were faithful to the Son of God, which, of course, they did not yet fully recognize at that time. But they were implicit Christians, and then the next is St John the Baptist, whom the church, since the first centuries, regarded as a martyr. And he died not directly because he confessed Jesus Christ directly, but he died for the holiness of God’s commandment of the indissolubility of marriage. And the church father says he died for the truth. And Jesus Christ is the truth. And he died in his quality as the precursor of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this quality, he was appointed to the Lord.
This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And so all his life was to decrease, and Jesus Christ may grow and increase. This was his motto all his life. And therefore his death is a kind of crowning of what he always desired, to decrease and to enhance our Lord Jesus Christ, to make him great, his truth. So these are chronological. And then, of course, the protomartyr of the church. This St. Stephen, the deacon, who is the well, I forgot still the Bethlehem, innocent children who died, also for Jesus Christ, even in their age, not explicitly conscious, but de facto, they died because of hatred against the Lord Jesus Christ. They sent children of Bethlehem and the church, also, since the first century, celebrated their feast as the first Christians who gave their lives for Jesus Christ because of hatred of Jesus Christ.
And then the next explicit, conscious adult was then st Stephen, the deacon, who, because of his confession of the divinity of our Lord, Jesus Christ and his uniqueness, he was provoking the hatred of the Jews, the Pharisees, and was and gave his life for the Lord the importance is the next, I think, the apostles and Peter And Paul, the greatest apostles who died both in Rome, gave their life, shed their blood in Rome, and so they sanctified Rome with their martyrdom for all time. Therefore, Rome became paid by divine providence, of course, by divine Council, the seat of Peter and his successors, the popes, the Roman pontiffs, the visible center of the Catholic Church.
And this city, which was even a kind of spiritual Babylon, where was the center of the sin at that time of idolatry and so on, became the center of Christianity, but in the beginning, sanctified with the blood of martyrdom of the two apostles, the greatest apostles, Peter and Paul, and therefore the Romans considered them both like parents, spiritual parents of Rome. And then, of course, the famous first martyrs of Rome and Nero, the Emperor, who were more or less at the same time as the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, the first Roman martyrs. They were cruelly martyred, as we know from even the pagan historians, they were bound on trees, and they were burned like fire in the park of Nero. Where is the city of Vatican City.
There was Matthew St Peter, and there were also, cruelly, the first Christians in Rome. And then the other famous material, which remains for all times, a luminous example is st Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and martyr, who was Bishop already in the first century, and he became a famous martyr in his old age, 86 he was brought to Rome and given to the beasts, and was so martyred being eaten, literally by the by the lions and other beasts. And he had known it, so he consciously accepted it, and he desired to be a martyr only then I will the most closest united to our My Lord Jesus Christ, when I will shed my blood for him, then only I will be the closest possible way, united to my Lord Jesus Christ, and he was burning desiring in his heart a fire to to be a martyr, to be united with the sacrifice of love. Even he said, I want to be the bread of God, a martyr tomb eaten by the teeth of the beasts.
So I will be the wheat, the pure will to be a bread, then of God, and such a deep spirituality of the meaning of Christian martyrdom he left for us. So I think these are the main and more important figures in the Christian history of martyrdom. They are, of course, continuously and will be until the end of time, martyrs and great martyrs, we have also in some specific figures. But I think these first martyrs, Old Testament in the first century, remain the most luminous examples for all time.
John-Henry Westen: One of the things in your book that was a surprise to me. I read about three types of martyrdom. Now I think many Catholics have heard of martyrdom, red or white, but there’s also green. Why don’t you explain to us about the three types of martyrdom?
Bishop Schneider: Well, the first is evident, the blood, the martyrdom of blood to shedding, literally, your blood for Christ. This is the common meaning of martyrdom. The second is the white martyrdom. It is the life of total consecration to God all your life to make through the Vows, specifically of chastity, obedience, and poverty, the religious vows, but basically the chastity, so the virginity, it is the first in the church when the time of martyrdom ended. We know that in the first three centuries, the church was the church of martyrs. For three centuries, the pagan Empire persecuted Christians until Constantine, and then came the peace of the church. There were no more martyrs.
The Holy Spirit raised in the church a new form of life, a total radical consecration, giving your life as a sacrifice, not as a bloody but as a spiritual sacrifice, in imitation of the martyrdom, it was the religious monastic life, first in the desert, in Egypt, the Desert Fathers and then the other monastic life flourished, and for the women, the consecrated virgins, living in the world already in the First centuries. Because martyrdom it’s the sacrifice of love. This is the essence of martyrdom. In union with Jesus Christ, to participate, to give your life completely to Christ. This is martyrdom, and the same is the religious life, the virginity, the consecrated virginity that you give your life, completely without reserves, as a spiritual fragrance sacrifice to the Lord through a life of purity of chastity, with God’s grace, of course, and you cannot live.
This white martyrdom, the total consecration to God in religious life, you cannot live it unless you have this fire of love in your soul. So and this is the connection with martyrdom, the complete surrender and consecration to the Lord of all your life, moved by the fire of love in your soul, for Jesus Christ, and to be one in with his sacrifice.
The other the green. It is another type. It’s not people living in the world who, let us say, even in marriage, did not make this total sacrifice of all their life in chastity and virginity, but they accept the acceptance of the crosses, even of very big sacrifices in their lives. And there are, let us say, the sick people who really consciously unite their sacrifice with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, some of them in the spirit of repentance, of in the spirit of reparation, atonement. And so this is also, we could say, a kind of martyrdom, in the so called green martyrdom, as in some tradition, it’s called, but this all is united with one element that is the fire of love, burning in the soul of which desires To be in his situation, let us say bloody, consecrated virgin sufferings to be united most closely to our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the source of martyrs.
John-Henry Westen: It’s beautiful, as you were speaking there of green martyrdom. I thought right away of Louis Martin, the father of st Therese of Lisieux, losing all his daughters, his wife and all of his daughters, to religious life, even though there’s a lot of joy in that, there’s a lot of suffering too, and then even to lose, you know, his own sense of things in the end, but all knowingly giving himself beautiful. Last question for you, we had the book that talks about Christ as the origin and the divine gift of martyrdom. If you can, maybe you touched on it earlier, but maybe go a little bit more into that for us.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, because the only true sacrifice of love, of supernatural love, is the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross, and because he is at the same time true God and true man. So, he is a divine person. So he gave his love, the sacrifice of fragrance, to the Father. In his humanity, he offered his humanity completely as a gift to the Father, expiation, but moved by unspeakable love, because, therefore, the value of his sacrifice is infinite, really infinite, because he was a divine person. And so this sacrifice is made by a divine person in his humanity, of course, but by a divine person, the second person of the Holy Trinity. And therefore the sacrifice on the Cross has infinite value and infinite spiritual power to redeem, to atone. And so the Lord invited all the Christians to take their cross and to follow Him. So in this sense, inviting all the Christians to look, to watch on the cross, to be united with Him on the cross, all the life of a Christian. And therefore he says, We have to give rather our life than to commit a sin. This is also the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And therefore, why we must be always united spiritually to the sacrifice of our Lord on the cross, and therefore he left for us in the church, His sacrifice on the Cross really present in every holy mass, there is the real presence of this Golgotha sacrifice, the Real Presence of the Act, the infinite act of redeeming love and glorification of God the Father. It’s the same act, inseparably, glorification of the Father and the atonement, saving sacrifice for sinful humanity, redeeming sacrifice. And so this is continuously present in all the altars, a very celebrated Holy Mass. And so we go to the Holy Mass when we need strength in our sufferings, when we need strength to be confessors, we go to the Holy Mass, to this concrete source, there is the source, and receive the body and blood of Christ, whose Body and Blood were immolated, the hot blood.
It is the hot blood in the Sacrifice of the Mass during the holy consecration, there is again the body of Christ offered, immolated, and the blood shed as the first, as the words of consecration speak it, and so and what is a sacrament? A sacrament is that through visible signs, bread and wine, and the word, these visible signs in the word signify and realize what they signify. It is the sacrifice of the cross is realized spiritually, present in its substance, not in the historical context. Which are secondary elements, let us say, the place in Jerusalem, or the soldiers. And so this secondary, but the substance of the sacrifice is present every time, in the holy mess. And so how happy we are Catholics, that we have access to the direct source of the sacrifice of love, the direct source to be confessors, to be faithful to Jesus Christ in our lives.
John-Henry Westen: I guess we’re allowed to, like St. Ignatius, did want to be martyrs, well, maybe even to blood, but, but also in that sense of what I hear you describe is sort of a martyrdom as a consuming love for our Lord, so that it sort of overtakes us and we sort of die of love. If you can speak that way.
Bishop Schneider: And therefore, we have to remember also that the Lord said, unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it will not produce fruit. And this he spoke of his own sacrifice, and also signifying our sacrifices when we have to die the martyrs, or in the spiritual way, to bear fruit. And therefore, the time of martyrs, God made the most fruitful time spiritual of the church, is edifying, purifying the church. And in our day, we have not to forget also the current time. The martyrs who are in our day really suffer a bloody martyr, martyrdom; we have to mention our dear brothers and sisters in Nigeria who are really suffering a bloody martyrdom because of hatred of Christ. They are the target, and unfortunately, they are in some way forgotten. We have to remember them and speak about them. And other places where our persecution is still like China, North Korea, in some Arabic countries, where to be a Christian, or to become a Christian, you will be killed, especially when a Muslim discovers Jesus Christ as his Savior and becomes a Christian. He will be killed. He will be a martyr in Islamic countries.
Also, we have to silence this, to be honest, not to make polemics, but simply say, this is a reality, and we have to pray for these brothers. Sisters and to ask the Lord that their sacrifice will bear many fruits of new conversions, of the purification of the church. Again, we can also mention this famous example of the Coptic Christians, 21 I think, who were four or five years ago, they were, in a cruel way, martyred on the beach in Libya. Simply. They were cutting their heads like sheep. They’re in some way literally giving their life like the sheep, like the lambs, and even so, they were not Catholics, but they are Coptic Christians. Nevertheless, they were true martyrs. I would say that we have to ask the Lord every one of us, from the Pope to the to the most, the last faithful, I think that we will be confirmed ever everyday waste until death, that we may confess Him always courageously in with conviction, with calm, sure, convicted, even happily confessing our Lord, Jesus, Christ and God’s law, at least, we must invoke that the Lord Holy Spirit pour out again in the church, the spirit of martyrdom to the Holy Father, to the bishops, to the priest, to the youth people, to families.
John-Henry Westen: Bishop Schneider, I remember back in I think it was 2016 it was one of my first interviews with you, and you were explaining both about your childhood, how you grew up, but also the crisis that we were experiencing at that time, for the last couple of years in the church, with the synods, extraordinary Synod and Synod on the Family. But I asked you at the time, what can we do? What can the faithful do? And you said to me, parents should teach their children or get them ready for martyrdom. And it struck me when you said that I was Whoa, really. So it’s no surprise to me that you’ve now authored this book, No Greater Love, the true meaning of martyrdom. Thank you for your witness in the church, your courageous witness in the church. And I would ask you if you could give us any final thoughts you might have, but also your final blessing.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, as I said, let us ask the Lord, every one of us, to be strengthened with the spirit of the martyrs. It means to be faithful to the Lord, to the Catholic faith, to confess Him, and the grace of Be fearless, the grace of courage, and until the end that we can die every one of us as confessors, not necessarily bloody way, but at least as confessors of our Lord and Catholic faith.
And for this, I now give the blessing:
Dominus vobiscum
John-Henry Westen: Et cum, spiritu tuo.
Bishop Schneider: Et benedictio dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et spiritus Santi descendant, super vos et maneat semper. Amen
Praise be Jesus Christ
John-Henry Westen: Now and forever. Thank you so very much. Bishop Schneider, I encourage everyone, please go out and pick up Bishop Schneider’s new book called No Greater Love, the true meaning of martyrdom. Thank you again for joining us. May God bless you.