Declaration Fiducia Supplicans

By:

Statement of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana regarding the Declaration Fiducia supplicans, published by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith and approved by Pope Francis on December 18, 2023.

The manifest purpose of the Declaration of the Holy See, Fiducia supplicans, is to allow “the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples”. At the same time, the document insists that such blessings are performed “without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage”.

The fact that the document does not give permission for the “marriage” of same-sex couples should not blind pastors and faithful to the great deception and the evil that resides in the very permission to bless couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples. Such a blessing directly and seriously contradicts Divine Revelation and the uninterrupted, bimillennial doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church. To bless couples in an irregular situation and same-sex couples is a serious abuse of the most Holy Name of God, since this name is invoked upon an objectively sinful union of adultery or of homosexual activity.

Therefore, none, not even the most beautiful, of the statements contained in this Declaration of the Holy See, can minimize the far-reaching and destructive consequences resulting from this effort to legitimize such blessings. With such blessings, the Catholic Church becomes, if not in theory, then in practice, a propagandist of the globalist and ungodly “gender ideology”.

As successors of the Apostles, and faithful to our solemn oath on the occasion of our episcopal consecration “to preserve the deposit of faith in purity and integrity, according to the tradition always and everywhere observed in the Church since the time of the Apostles”, we exhort and prohibit priests and the faithful of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana from accepting or performing any form of blessing whatsoever of couples in an irregular situation and same-sex couples. It goes without saying that every sincerely repentant sinner with the firm intention to no longer sin and to put an end to his public sinful situation (such as, e.g., cohabitation outside of a canonically valid marriage, union between people of the same sex) can receive a blessing.

With sincere brotherly love, and with due respect, we address Pope Francis, who – by allowing the blessing of couples in an irregular situation and same-sex couples – “does not walk uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel” (see Gal. 2:14), to borrow the words with which Saint Paul the Apostle publicly admonished the first Pope in Antioch. Therefore, in the spirit of episcopal collegiality, we ask Pope Francis to revoke the permission to bless couples in an irregular situation and same-sex couples, so that the Catholic Church may shine clearly as the “pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15) for all those who sincerely seek to know the will of God and, by fulfilling it, to attain eternal life.

Astana, 19 December 2023

+ Tomash Peta, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana

+ Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana

The Deposition of
Bishop Joseph E. Strickland

“The one charge which is now sure to secure severe punishment is the careful keeping of the traditions of the Fathers.” These words of St. Basil (Ep. 243) can most aptly illustrate the deposition of the Bishop of Tyler, TX/USA, His Excellency Joseph E. Strickland. The deposition of Bishop Joseph E. Strickland signifies a black day for the Catholic Church of our day. We are witnessing a blatant injustice towards a bishop who did his duty in preaching and defending with parrhesia the immutable Catholic faith and morals and in promoting the sacredness of the liturgy, especially in the immemorial traditional rite of the Mass. All understand, and even the declared enemies of this Confessor Bishop, that the accusations brought against him are ultimately insubstantial and disproportionate and were used as a welcome opportunity to silence an uncomfortable prophetic voice within the Church.

What happened to the Bishops during the Arian crisis in the 4th century, who were deposed and exiled only because they intrepidly preached the traditional Catholic Faith, is again happening in our day. At the same time several Bishops, who publicly support heresy, liturgical abuses, gender ideology and openly invite their priests to bless same-sex couples, are not in the least importuned or sanctioned by the Holy See.

Bishop Strickland will probably go down in history as an “Athanasius of the Church in the USA”, who however, unlike St. Athanasius, is not persecuted by the secular power, but incredibly by the Pope himself. It seems that a kind of “purge” of Bishops, who are faithful to the immutable Catholic Faith and the Apostolic discipline, and which has been going on already for some time, has reached now a decisive phase.

May the sacrifice, which Our Lord asked from Bishop Strickland bear plenty spiritual fruits for time and eternity. Bishop Strickland and other faithful Bishops, who were already asked to resign, who are currently marginalized or who will be the next in der row, should say in all sincerity to Pope Francis: “Holy Father, why are you persecuting and beating us? We tried to do what all holy Popes asked us to do? With fraternal love we offer the sacrifice of this kind of persecution and exile for the salvation of your soul and for the good state of the Holy Roman Church. Indeed, we are your best friends, Most Holy Father!”

+ Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of Saint Mary in Astana