Transcript:
Kennedy Hall: A good day, ladies and gentlemen. I’m here with a very special guest, His Excellency Bishop Athanasia Schneider from Kazakhstan. Despite working with time differences, we made it work. We’re here today to talk about his recently published book. We’re recording this beforehand, but you’ll see it just as the book is coming out. I’m going to show you on the screen here. It’s called Flee from Heresy, A Guide to Ancient and Modern Errors, and we’re going to go through the contents and the idea behind this book as we go. But Your Excellency, thanks for joining me.
Would you mind leading us in a prayer to start?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes.
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Kennedy Hall: Thank you, Your Excellency, wonderful. All right, let’s dive right into the topic at hand. So this book, again, I’ll show you on the screen, ladies and gentlemen. Also, just as an FYI for my friends who are watching or listening, the link for this book is in the description area of this podcast, whether you’re watching it in video format or listening on Spotify, iTunes, or something like that. And just as a little side note, if you do click that link, it does help out your favorite, maybe your least favorite, podcast host by clicking that particular link, so please give that a shot.
So I’m going to read the synopsis here, Your Excellency, and then we’ll get into what’s going on here.
Society is lost and confused about God, morality, and eternity. Catholics face persecution from outside and inside the Church for living their faith. Priests speak out against errors and corruption in their own hierarchy, only to be marginalized and punished by their superiors. The few bishops who remain faithful to the changeless teachings of Christ are rebuked and canceled, even by the pope himself, and sent into exile. Catholics longing for reverent worship are forced out of their parishes and into makeshift venues. This is a description of the Catholic Church in the fourth century. Very good. I didn’t see that coming, with similar patterns recurring in our time.
One Catholic bishop is calling out to souls to know the errors and embrace the faith, the truth, in Flee from Heresy. Bishop Athanasia Schneider, raised among persecuted Catholics in the Soviet Union, offers a systematic treatment of more than 130 doctrinal errors from ancient times down to our own day, along with English translations of the Church’s major anti-heresy documents of the past two centuries.
In this fascinating exposé, you will discover the ideological roots of our unsteady times and be better equipped to test all things and hold fast to what is good. You will learn what a heresy is and what it is not, a sweeping history of heresies across the centuries, how heresy destroys charity in the spiritual life, why God allows heresy to afflict His Holy Church, names and categories of more than 130 doctrinal errors, the nefarious heresy of the Antichrist and anti-Mary, how heresy relates to schism, apostasy, excommunication, and why the Virgin Mary is invoked as destroyer of heresies.
Wow, that’s quite a full plate. So why don’t we begin, Your Excellency, with the inspiration for why you chose to take on such an undertaking, given the scope of the work?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, it is very evident in our day, and even a blind person can perceive that we are living in huge confusion within the Church, which has reached such an extent, almost globally, affecting all levels of Christian life, doctrine, morals, liturgy, and spiritual life. Therefore, as a bishop, I felt in my conscience the duty to address this situation and not simply remain quiet and say, “Oh, all is good.”
Several years ago, I remember a phrase from Cardinal Robert Sarah. He wrote a message to a congress in Germany for traditional Catholics, or normal Catholics, who were concerned about the crisis in the Church. It was several years ago, and in this address, Cardinal Sarah stated that, truly, we are living in huge confusion within the Church, and no one can deny this. But it seems that some clerics simply don’t acknowledge the reality and say, like the French saying goes, “Tu vas trébucher, Madame la Marquise,” in a sinking ship. They say, “All is very good, my lady,” but the ship, the ship is sinking, or the house is burning. It’s on fire.
This is our day. Sometimes we can perceive this. Some clergy say, “Why are you concerned? We are living in a good time.” But I think those clergy who deny the reality and the crisis of the Church have probably lost their faith or have made a compromise with the world for their own personal benefits. So I repeat, it was my duty, my conscience, to address the situation, to point out the errors, because a bishop is a shepherd, and he cannot simply watch when the sheep go to poisoned food. He has to warn them.
A bishop is also a spiritual physician, a doctor who must protect the spiritual health of the faithful. When a good physician observes a virus spreading, a kind of epidemic, he must warn people and enumerate the diseases and viruses. No one with a sane reason will criticize a physician who warns people about a real virus and sickness. The same is what I did in this book about heresies, to simply indicate to the faithful, to warn them, so they recognize the errors. Therefore, for me, it is a true pastoral act of charity towards the faithful.
Kennedy Hall: Wonderful. That’s an excellent answer. There’s something you mentioned about those who pretend the ship is not sinking. Obviously, we know the ship is not going to sink in the ultimate sense, but why? There is the disappearance of a great crisis and so forth.
Those who won’t acknowledge it are divorced from reality, or there is some kind of block there. As a small world example, I was recently in London, England, and had the pleasure of meeting Father O’Reilly, an Irish priest who I believe was ordained into the same congregation you are. He gave a sermon while I was there, and he said, The job of a priest is to bring people to reality in a world divorced from reality. I think that’s a wonderful way to put it.
I just recently submitted my manuscript to Sophia, the same publisher, for a book on modernism that will be out next year at some point. One thing you realize when you study Pius X over and over again is that there was a divorce from reality. It’s very hard to have a dialogue with someone committed to that divorce because it’s difficult to latch onto anything. So I appreciate that explanation.
Okay, so this is the inspiration for the book. Now, the words heresy the word error, these words are thrown around kind of interchangeably. We do know that in the Church, there is a canonical crime of heresy. You can be charged in an official sense, but it’s also a sin, and somehow it differs from error. Would you be able to break down for us, Your Excellency, what heresy is, what error is, the difference, and so forth?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Well, according to current canon law, heresy is defined as the obstinate denial of divinely revealed truth, which the Church presents to the faithful as such, as divinely revealed truth. So when someone obstinately denies or consciously doubts, he is committing not only the sin but also the canonical crime of heresy, which is connected with excommunication.
But in my book, I used the term heresy in a broader sense, as the Church Fathers in the patristic era used the concept. It included all errors or even ambiguities against the clarity of truth. Therefore, I chose the title from St. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the apostles, a great saint and martyr of the first century. He often warned his flock, and I took this expression from him: Flee from heresy. In his time, of course, there was not yet the Code of Canon Law. In the first century, he used this term simply for any doctrine, meaning, or opinion contrary to apostolic tradition and the preaching of the Church, or which undermined it or compromised the truth.
Kennedy Hall: I think that’s an important categorization of the term because in our age, Your Excellency, in my opinion, there is a tendency toward legalism. Recently, on the Sunday just before we recorded this episode, the Sunday Mass readings in the traditional Mass had to do with having greater justice than the Pharisees, part of the Gospel. Our priest explained that often Pharisees are seen as those who want you to do an excessive amount or to be extremely rigid. But he said the real spirit of the problem is that they think if you just do certain activities, that’s enough. You can check off the boxes. They might be rigorous, but the idea is that there is no heart put into it, no real devotion.
This definition of heresy from the Code of Canon Law makes sense in a canonical sense, but I think people look at it and say, “So and so is not really fitting the legal definition.” I look at that and say yes, but Christ deals with this notion in the Gospels. For example, a man may not have committed adultery physically, but if he has lusted after another woman who is not his wife, he has committed the sin in some sense, as Christ tells us. Catholics need to be more willing to look at the spirit of a thing.
So when we think about heresy, I’m not going to go around as a layperson and say so and so is a technical criminal in the eyes of the Church judiciary. But what he is saying pretty much sounds like heresy, and that is something we should try to avoid. Do you have anything to add to that, or should I ask our next question?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, I think that canon law could in the future also include anyone who is spreading ambiguity, not a formal heresy, but against the constant teaching of the Church, not just of a single pope, but doctrines or disciplines that are constant. Such people must be punished, not excluding excommunication. It would not be automatic like the canonical crime of heresy, but it must be punished.
I think those who spread errors, even if not formal heresy, clergy, bishops, and cardinals must address these and also be punished for such activities that undermine the truth of the faith and confuse the faithful.
Kennedy Hall: Yes, I agree there needs to be more clarity on that. Recently, while doing some work on the Pentecostal Charismatic Renewal, I found many things in the writings that I don’t know if they’re heresy, but they’re definitely erroneous about the nature of Christ and so forth. I wish there were more clarity from the Church on ambiguous teachings that lead souls into strange opinions.
Okay, so in your book, you mention how heresy destroys charity and the spiritual life. We hear the word “be charitable” all the time. As traditionalists, we hear it against us, “You’re not being charitable.” What does it mean for heresy to destroy charity in the spiritual life?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Of course, heresy is a spiritual poison. It is. It is affecting your spiritual life, and heresy even puts you in danger of losing your soul for all eternity, because when someone is consciously and obstinately denying what God reveals, the will of God, he is putting himself in danger of eternal condemnation. This spiritual poison develops and grows in his life. When no one warns him about this, it is a lack of charity. Of course, we must; another question is how we warn people about heresy. We must do this first with charity, of course. So charity and warning about heresy are not a contradiction. They go together. I repeat, if you do not warn, you will sin against charity toward your neighbor.
But I also repeat, it is not always easy when you defend the truth and warn against heresy to keep calm and charitable with these people. You can convince people more that way rather than losing your temper or using disrespectful language. That is not helping anyone. So you must pray to the Lord to have the wisdom, discipline, and charity to promote the truth with charity.
Kennedy Hall: Two things I want to ask you and add from that: Number one, what you said about having charity in warning people about heresy, I’ve been involved in some conversations like this before. I remember one time I was speaking to an individual about the doctrine that there is no salvation outside the Church, which is largely ignored and sometimes denied today by many. Of course, there is a way to distinguish baptism of desire, martyrdom, and so forth, but it is a very hard and fast doctrine with specific criteria.
I was talking to this person, and he became very upset. I took out my phone and showed him the Athanasian Creed as an example of something accepted for a long time about how you at least have to accept the Trinity. He became very upset with me, and all I did was show it. He said, “You’re being rigid. You’re being a Pharisee,” or whatever.
I thought to myself, people will ask how you speak to others without upsetting them. Well, sometimes you can’t. If you were fired from a job and came in to find a birthday cake and a new watch, but they said, “By the way, we love you very much, but you’re fired,” you’d still be very upset because it’s hard to hear bad news, no matter how nicely it’s delivered. People need to be prepared because there is no way to do it without offending people, but you still have to. As you said, discipline is key because it is very easy to get emotional and feel righteous; we’ve all been guilty of that. So that was good advice.
Now, the second thing I want to ask you to expand on: One accusation against traditionally minded, very conservative Catholics when they bring up things like heresy or warnings against heresy, or when they speak about the suppression of the traditional Mass, is that they are “causing division” and that “we need unity.” What do you say to the notion that just because you bring up heresy, you’re causing division? That seems counterproductive.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: To me, this is an emotional statement and, to some extent, lacking a sense of reality and logic. Because when everyone goes together approaching an abyss, and you avoid warning them and say, “You are troubling us, you are causing division,” but we are all going in the same direction, then you will collapse and fall together.
The same is true spiritually when we live in a time of epidemics or viruses and warn people to be careful, but they accuse you of being a troublemaker. They say, “We are very nice, there is no danger.” The same applies in spiritual reality with the spreading of errors, heresies, and ambiguities. It creates confusion, an atmosphere of obscuration. It is not clear, and you cannot feel comfortable in such a situation.
Therefore, those who warn people and say, “Let us have unity in the truth, because only the truth will set us free, and only the truth will open our eyes and free us from illusions,” are doing what is necessary. Only the truth will make us truly happy.
Kennedy Hall: That’s exactly correct. You keep mentioning viruses. I wish there were more zeal on behalf of the institutions in the church for spiritual viruses as much as there was for physical viruses a couple of years ago. We can only hope, though.
All right, so you mentioned many, and by the way, ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just joining us, I’m here of course with His Excellency Bishop Schneider, and I’m going to show you the book one more time, my friends, so you know where to get it. It is available here; you can see it on the screen. It is available at Sophia Institute Press. You can click the link in the description area of this podcast for a special link where, if you go through me, I get a little bit of an attaboy from Sophia for sending you there. So please click that one if you’re interested in the book. It’s about the reemergence of heresy in the church and error, what to do with that, how to categorize that, and it’s a very difficult time.
You do say here in the book, Your Excellency, that there are names and categories of more than 130 doctrinal errors. Well, we’re not going to sit here for 15 hours and go through all of them, but perhaps what are maybe two or three or however many you want to say of the main heresies or errors that have either reemerged or seem to be lingering in our day.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: I consider one of the most dangerous in history was when the church was infected by the series. It was diagnostic in the first two centuries, especially, and already St John the Apostle was fighting in his writings in the gospel and his writings against this movement, this mode of thinking of Gnosis. Especially the church fathers, the Apostolic Fathers, especially St Irenaeus of Leon he wrote Adversus Heresies specifically against Gnosticism. Then Tertullian also. This was a very dangerous heresy. I consider it one of the most dangerous that did not die out and reemerged in modern times. It is the basic error and danger of the gnostic spirit.
It is the denial of objective reality. Second, it is a denial of a historical revelation of God that revelation happened in history concretely, and therefore Gnosis categorically denies the truth of the Incarnation, of divine incarnation. Gnosis categorically denies the value of suffering. It is the greatest enemy of the cross of Christ, where the Gnostics, and therefore St. Paul, spoke of the enemies of the cross, and also the denial of the value of creation and of natural law. The Gnostics considered all that is visible, our body, for example, marriage, as something bad, evil, even the creation of two sexes, male and female. It was one of the pillars of diagnosticism to consider this something evil and therefore should overcome the division of the sexes. They promoted the so-called androgenism, which is a very confused thought that human beings must be together, male and female, mixed. You see this denial of divine revelation, reality and creation, and salvation. They propose the way of salvation only with your interior thoughts, so the better you elaborate in your mind, the better you have a guarantee to be saved. It’s very dangerous. You see, this Gnostic mentality reemerged and is a pillar in Freemasonic ideology. They took basically the historical Gnosis, the Freemasons.
Luther, in part, also had the tendency. He was not agnostic in a direct sense, but Luther was partly affected by gnostic thought, denying the incarnational principle in all its dimensions, sacramental visibility of the church, and so on. Then, Catholic modernism at the end of the 19th century, you mentioned Passendy, basically also adopted diagnostic thought in the sense that you yourself can produce by your thinking a truth which can be independent of historical divine revelation. That historical divine revelation is therefore relative and can be changed. Now we are in these decades after the council, with this pontificate, we have the summit, the height of these gnostic, relativistic thoughts which penetrated so much in the life of the church.
Kennedy Hall: Yeah, it’s interesting. All of that is, of course, amazing. You mentioned Helen Peshendi, who warns about this reemergence of the Gnostic spirit. Catholics need to be very aware of this era of vital imminence, this era of continual revelation. The great spiritual writers like Saint John of the Cross warned against, in a sense, a hyper-spiritualization or something like that, where you lose your categories of reason and think anything you’re thinking or hearing in prayer must be directly from God. The spiritual writers give us strong advice on how to understand that properly, because the logic of something being an answer from God every time we pray would mean it is infallible. If we think like that, we will have contradictions between our conceptions of doctrine, and that causes a lot of confusion. We need to be grounded in what that means.
One of the greatest saints, actually my patron, I’m in the third order of the Society of Saint Pius the 10th, and my third order name is Augustine. I absolutely adore Saint Augustine. He was a Manichaean, which was an early Gnostic sect. The realism of Platonist philosophy took him out of his Gnosticism, and from there he became one of the great apologists in the history of the church, especially on the nature of grace and the human person. Then we saw the reemergence of Manichaeism, generally speaking, a little different but pretty much the same as the Cathars and the Albigensians. The situation got so bad that two things happened: one, Our Lady gave us the mysteries of the Rosary, a perfect spiritual weapon against Gnosticism over time; two, the church called a crusade against the Albigensians. That was not just for heresy; there were other things going on, but if heaven sends us the mysteries of the Rosary and the Pope calls a crusade to deal with this error, it’s probably pretty bad. It’s very good. We have to be really careful of Gnosticism as it is a huge trend today as well, and the New Age stuff, people thinking they can manifest, and all these kinds of things. It’s very strange.
In your line of work, this is just an aside, but in your line of work, Your Excellency, have you noticed an uptick in the errors of a sort of New Age Gnosticism in the life of Catholics and your pastoral work?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, there are some. Not so much I noticed, but there are tendencies of false mysticism, I would say, and in some circles in the church, they penetrated partly the New Age thought. It was even in monasteries of religion, for example, the veneration of nature, or the veneration or worship of Mother Earth. It is a New Age form, also very much present in New Age thought. Once I saw a picture of nuns, religious sisters of course, without the habit already, and they were doing a spiritual retreat, and then they were going to the park, to the garden in this monastery. There was a huge thick tree, and they were embracing the tree to receive the energy of nature. Oh my goodness, yes, I saw this. This is a typical New Age manifestation and veneration of Earth. Also, partly the so-called Pachamama worship is partly a Neo-ancient Gnostic manifestation to worship the earth, which is declared a kind of Goddess. In this sense, we see some connections to the New Age Movement in this case.
Kennedy Hall: Okay, oops, I’m going to ask two more questions. I know you’re probably 11 hours ahead of me. Is it approaching 10 pm there or 9 pm?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: No, we have now 6:30.
Kennedy Hall: Oh, that’s not bad. I forgot about daylight saving time on my end. Okay, very good. I won’t keep you too long because I’m sure you have lots to do, but I wanted to ask two more questions that relate to the book. We’re presently around 30 to 35 minutes or so. I’d like to go for about 45 or so, maybe a little longer if you have the time.
In the book, you talk about the nefarious heresy of the Antichrist and anti-Mary. This is an issue, I think there’s a lot of mystery around. Our mutual friend, Mr. Taylor, Dr. Taylor Marshall, wrote a book unpacking the book of the Apocalypse, talking about this. A lot of people have been throwing around Antichrist statements, End Times, vaccine, mark of the beast, these kinds of conversations and themes are seemingly becoming more apparent. It doesn’t mean we’re moving toward the end. Who knows? People have been saying these things for a long time, but the themes themselves seem to be kind of in the zeitgeist.
So, how would you categorize the basic heresy of the Antichrist, and is that present today in some form?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, the basic heresy is explained in Saint Paul when he wrote about the Antichrist who will sit in the sanctuary and declare himself God, and he will demand to receive divine worship, to be adored. For me, this is the essential mark characteristic of the Antichrist. He will remove the true worship of God, especially of Christ, the incarnated God. Therefore, all attempts and movements that try to remove Christ and the reality of his incarnation from worship are already a kind of anti-Christian movement and a preparation for the Antichrist, and so the worship of man. It begins with the movement of anthropocentrism, which started with Renaissance humanism and then with Freemasonry.
Freemasonry is one of the very powerful tools preparing the time of the Antichrist because at the center of Freemasonry thought and cult is the worship of man only, avoiding Christ at any cost and eliminating Christ, but Christ the true Christ, because they have also an agnostic Christ in their mind who is not the true Christ but the true incarnated Jesus Christ, God and man, the Savior, the only savior. We have some signs of preparation for the time of the Antichrist. We don’t know the time, but we have to be vigilant. We cannot identify the time, but our Lord said it’s not upon you to know the time which the Father established, but we must always be vigilant and see the signs of the time and do concrete acts contrary to the anti-Christian movement. Therefore, we must put the incarnated God in the center of our church life, and concretely, the incarnated God in the Eucharist.
This is the concrete incarnation, most expressive, and is to promote the true devotion and veneration of the Holy Eucharist in the entire church. Without this, we will not renew the church, and this will be the greatest act against the anthropocentric duration of man and the Antichrist when the church will again convincingly establish the veneration and respect of Jesus Christ, the Eucharist, and the Eucharistic Lord. This is also connected to the Holy Mass, the Liturgy of the Holy Mass. As you mentioned, the simple weapon, the Holy Rosary. This is our weapon against the Antichrist, which Our Lady several times warned us against the dangers of our time, indicating it as a means of spiritual help and weapon, the Holy Rosary, especially Fatima. We must be very convinced of our faith, and we must have joy in our faith conviction and do what we can to promote the true renewal of the church, the Eucharistic renewal, and the prayer of the Rosary.
Kennedy Hall: Yeah, it seems to me this is a perennial theme in Scripture, the warnings in the Old Testament against the Israelites and their desire to make the earthly kingdom the be-all and end-all, and essentially worship idols and so forth as well. Then you find with Christ and Barabbas, a lot of people don’t know, but the word Barabbas is the son of the father. There’s a theme there that they have a choice between Barabbas and Christ, and it’s a small line in the New Testament, and many people miss this. He wasn’t just some random criminal; he was part of a sedition. He had this political, earthly political solution, and they wanted that instead of the kingship of Christ essentially. So any movement pushing against the kingship of Christ is an Antichristic movement, and we see this today, especially with the pride movement.
You know, I really know these disorders these people suffer from. They used to be listed as narcissism in psychological textbooks, and now you can’t do that, it’s politically incorrect or whatever. But it’s really a worship of self, a desire, a romance towards oneself. It’s really the sin of Narcissus from ancient myths, and it makes it impossible for God to have his rights in society if man worships himself as his own end. That’s why we should really be praying for the restoration of the kingship of Christ, because I think that’s probably the only solution. That’s what we’re going through right now. Okay, last thing I’ll ask you here, Your Excellency.
We hear a lot about schism, apostasy, and excommunication. Everyone knows, and you know as well, I’ve written on the Society of Saint Pius the 10th and accusations of being called a schismatic and all these kinds of things, although I’ve never received any letter from Rome saying so. I guess I’ve been excommunicated by the YouTube Magisterium.
But what about real schism, real excommunication, and so forth? What is the connection there with heresy and schism, and excommunication? How do they kind of go in tandem when they’re true?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Well, schism is also defined in the current canon law when someone refuses communion with the Pope, with the Holy See. It’s also a kind of heresy because papal primacy is a revealed divine truth. It’s a dogma of faith. But here, some people recognize the primacy as a dogma, but in practice, they establish their own parallel church, and this is schism.
In the last centuries, I think there was a very narrow meaning and understanding of schism, which is not what was in the Fathers of the Church in the first centuries and in the great tradition of the church. What I mean is that it was a very narrow meaning that any disobedience to the Pope was already labeled as schism. This is narrow. This does not correspond to the constant great tradition of the church.
Disobedience must not be automatically schism because the Pope is not God, and the Pope is not infallible 24 hours a day, infallible in all his acts. Even when he makes a precept in obedience to a bishop or to a community, it is not infallible in itself. He can err. When you are not obeying, you are not a schismatic as long as you recognize his authority, mention the Pope in the Holy Mass, pray for him, recognize his validity, but for serious reasons you cannot follow some of his orders.
Not because of some subjective Protestant style, but because these orders manifestly undermine or harm the constant perennial tradition of the church in doctrine and in liturgy. Therefore, when I am disobeying the Pope in this case, I am not adopting the Protestant style of subjectivism and my own judgment, but simply relying on the constant, perennial, millennium-old affirmations of the church, fathers, doctors, popes, and the constant prayer rule of the church.
I am not Protestant. I am Catholic. I am traditional. I am not establishing my own opinion, but I simply take the manifest opinion and practice of the Church of millennia. It’s nothing subjective here. These were the cases, for example, a very important case of St. Athanasius, when he disobeyed the order of Pope Liberius because the Pope commanded him to make peace with heretic bishops or semi-Arian bishops. Saint Athanasius refused because this would be a wrong, false obedience. Saint Athanasius refused to compromise the purity and integrity of faith.
The Pope did not demand from him to subscribe to a semi-heretical formula but to accept the heretical bishops, to enter with them in Holy Communion. This would be impossible for Athanasius because, practically, he would in some way bless their heresies or ambiguities. So he refused, and the Pope excommunicated him as a schismatic and called him a troublemaker and a divider of the church.
We have these fragments conserved by St. Hilary of Poitiers, who was a friend of Saint Athanasius. He reported these in four different fragments, which can be read in the Denzinger, and they are authentic. Some people who make papal apologies say these fragments of Hilary are not authentic, but basically, historians and serious scholars of patrology, even before the council, said this is true. We cannot deny that this happened. St. Hilary reported this truth.
So we have this famous case. Therefore, when Archbishop Lefebvre said he could not obey Paul VI to celebrate the new Mass and accept the new doctrine of religious freedom and ecumenism, which undermined at least the truth or was ambiguous, he was in the company of Saint Athanasius. I am convinced that in the future the church will say Archbishop Lefebvre’s disobedience was, in this case, a meritorious disobedience and not schismatic. The church will one day say this. I’m convinced.
Kennedy Hall: Well, that warms my heart, Your Excellency. Thank you for saying that.
You know, I know you spent some time in Brazil, and obviously, a very famous scholar for the traditional spirit is Plinio Correa. He had an example, which I think was very common sense and easy to understand. He said the church does not allow divorce, but in times of abuse, there is separation. No one denies that the marriage is true. No one denies the sacrament. No one says the sacrament is broken. No one denies the divine truth because it is divinely revealed that a woman must be subject to her husband. This is something in Holy Scripture authored by the Holy Ghost himself.
But as the late Father always said, the church never requires us to be ridiculous. We are not required to lose our reason or not use the image and likeness of God, which is the soul with our intellect in it. We are supposed to use these things and think through and not be like Protestants who proof-text. We are supposed to look at the whole picture.
In the same way, there can be a contentious relationship during a time of abuse with a spouse. She cannot remarry, so in a sense, she goes into schism in the marital sense. There can’t be that, but there is a time of difficulty, and you hope and pray it is reconciled, and there is peace among those involved. But you have to first protect yourself and your children. I think that’s how the analogy kind of works well.
And you are a bishop who is helping us. I’m so grateful you came to share your thoughts with us, Your Excellency. It really is an honor and a pleasure to speak with you. I’m very excited every time that it happens.
I just want to remind ladies and gentlemen here of the book. It is right here on the screen, Flee from Heresy: A Guide to Ancient and Modern Errors. I’m very excited to go through this whole thing. It’s available from Sophia Press. The link is in the description area. If you click that link, yours truly does get a little kickback, so please don’t feel shy to click that link.
Again, thank you, Your Excellency. Would you mind closing with a prayer and blessing if you’re able?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.
I would offer another prayer for Pope Francis in Latin:(Praying in Latin)
Kennedy Hall: Thank you, Your Excellency. And ladies and gentlemen, as always, let me know what you think in the comments. Reminder, I changed the name of the podcast. It’s now Mere Tradition with Kennedy Hall. So I’m not going to do my old sign-off. Thank you, Your Excellency, and I’ll talk to you soon.