Michael: One last question, Your Excellency. I don’t want to make you late for your flight. You spoke in an interview a year or so ago in London, and you said that this is the fourth great crisis of the Church. The three previous crises, in your view, are what?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, according to my opinion, the first great crisis was, of course, the Arian crisis, Arianism, and this is commonly accepted. It was truly a general crisis of the Church, extremely grievous. The next was the so-called seculum obscurum, the dark century, the ninth and tenth centuries, when the papacy was occupied by immoral people, some from Roman families who put their sons on the papal throne. It was truly a dark time, a deep humiliation of the Holy See, but God permitted this.
The next, according to me, was the crisis of the Avignon exile, the exile in Avignon, and with this, the Great Western Schism. It was tremendous to have two popes at the same time, or even three. It was truly a great crisis. As part of this Avignon crisis began the crisis of the Renaissance papacy. I would include this as a branch of the same corruption, the scandals of the Renaissance popes, and the fact that they adopted the spirit of the world in those times, the pagan humanism. The popes adopted, in some way, an openness to the world, and this led to another form of crisis.
Today, we face an almost general crisis of relativism reigning inside the Church, doctrinally, morally, and liturgically. There is tremendous anarchy. This is, for me, a very grievous crisis. But in every crisis, God sends solutions and instruments, and often they begin as simple and hidden realities within the Church, through humble and small people. Time by time, God renews His Church. I can observe today, in many parts of the world, the beginning of a renewal of the Church, slowly but clearly. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and nobody can hinder the Holy Spirit, not a cardinal, not a bishop. The Holy Spirit is using the little ones in the Church to bring renewal. So I hope that we will proceed with patience and with much faith in this work of renewing our Holy Mother Church.