Jim Havens: Our guest today is Bishop Athanasius Schneider. He is one of the foremost defenders of the Catholic faith in our time. He recently authored The Springtime That Never Came, published by Sophia Institute Press, sophiainstitute.com. You can also learn much more about him and his good work at the website gloria.tv. Your Excellency, Bishop Schneider, thank you so much for being with us today.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Thank you.
Jim Havens: Yes, Your Excellency, we greatly appreciate you being here. As you describe in the book, you experienced having the Catholic faith passed down to you through your ancestors like a treasure, an intact inheritance from generation to generation. That’s a great blessing. Sadly, it’s one that not too many seem to experience. Tell us a little of your personal story, specifically the formation in the faith that you received as a young person in your family. What was it like?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, it was my experience that the transmission of the Catholic faith in the family is very important. The family is the original place that God gave to transmit the Catholic faith. Therefore, the renewal of the Church will be promoted mostly by new, good Catholic families. It is necessary to prepare young people for a good Catholic marriage, to accept all the children God sends, and to educate them in the Catholic faith, always keeping in mind the final goal for which the family was created by God: to give new, not only earthly children, but children of God and members of the Catholic Church, and ultimately, citizens of heaven.
We have seen this in the history of the Church, in Christianity, where we had Christian society, the Catholic society in the Middle Ages, until the Protestant Revolution and the French Revolution. The entire society was filled with the Catholic spirit, thanks to the transmission of the Catholic faith in the family. I could experience this even under the persecution of the faith and the Catholic Church during Soviet communism, where I lived. We had the possibility to live our Catholic faith in the family because in society, in the schools, it was forbidden and persecuted. Not only my family, but others also transmitted and lived the Catholic faith clandestinely during these difficult times. Therefore, it is so important for our time to renew new Catholic families.
Jim Havens: Yes, Bishop Athanasius Schneider is with us. Bishop, you say later in the book that when you were sent to a boarding school in the 1970s, you saw priests without habits or cassocks for the first time. They were dressed like regular laypeople, wearing jackets and shirts with ties, and you could sense that something was not right. You say that the youth Mass, with guitars and practically secular music, was a new experience for you at that time, and you remember that when you were 13 or 14 years old, it really bothered you. Yet you conclude: “Thanks to my background, to the years spent under communist rule, and to the experience of persecution there, I was immune to all this progressive ecclesial liberalism. Thanks be to God, this immunity has stayed with me my whole life.”
Bishop, define this progressive ecclesial liberalism for us, and how can we make ourselves immune to it?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Progressive ecclesial liberalism has been at the root of our present crisis within the life of the Church for decades, since the council. It is the root of ecclesial liberalism and clerical liberalism. These clerics want their own personal advantages, power, and the glory of the world, not the glory of God. They seek approval not from God, but from the opinion of the world, from the powerful, and from public opinion and the mass media. To achieve this, they adapt themselves to the spirit of the world and become worldly.
Ultimately, this leads them to love what is in the world, as St. John the Apostle writes in his first letter: “My children, do not love what is in the world,” the concupiscence of the eyes, the flesh, and the glory of the world. These are the temptations yielded to by clergy under ecclesial liberalism. The spirit of the world never accepts constant truths revealed by God. It always tries to change the truth according to worldly opinions. For decades, these clerics have changed the meaning of the constant truths of the Church.
The spirit of the world never accepts the commandments of God. It wants to change them and live according to human will. The spirit of the world will never accept the glory of Christ, to put Christ at the center of our lives and in the liturgy. Ultimately, this liberalism is anthropocentrism, being centered on man, and naturalism, living within the natural level. It is a virus that has penetrated the clergy in recent decades. We have to be vigilant against this virus and educate new generations of priests and families in the perennial Holy Catholic faith.
Jim Havens: Yes, thank you for that. We’re going to hit a hard break in just a moment, but before we go, Bishop, for those just beginning to see what you’re talking about, can you tell them the solid sources of the faith they can go to, regardless of leadership failures, to grow closer to Jesus and truly live the Catholic faith?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: First, it is the Catholic faith itself and the good catechisms. For English-speaking people, I recommend the Baltimore Catechism. It is a very sure and integral exposition of the Catholic faith. Using these, they can be solid in their faith, unshakable in their faith. This is one of the means of a good Catholic catechism.
Jim Havens: Thank you very much. When we get back, we’ll have much more with Bishop Athanasius Schneider, a man of great wisdom. Read every single word of his book The Springtime That Never Came. You can get it at Sophia Institute Press, sophiainstitute.com. There is so much here we won’t get to today, but we will cover as much as possible. It’s very helpful, but again, there is no substitute for spending time with the book and pondering the ideas and solutions it offers.
Welcome back to the Simple Truth. Jim Hayes here with our guest today, Bishop Athanasius Schneider. He is one of the foremost defenders of the Catholic faith in our time. He recently authored The Springtime That Never Came. That’s what we’re talking about today. It’s published by Sophia Institute Press, sophiainstitute.com. You can also learn more about him and his good work at gloria.tv.
In chapter four of this book, “The Illusion of Progress,” you speak, Bishop, of a spiritual virus that has infiltrated the Church: “We can certainly speak of a spiritual virus that has infiltrated the Church after the council, despite the expectations and intentions of many of the council fathers, who wished for the exact opposite: the renewal and strengthening of the Church. Let me emphasize that the council documents include many valid and important points, but they also include some statements that have opened the door to ambiguity and relativism. Opinions never before found in the Church started to spread, such as the idea that everyone goes to heaven or that hell is not eternal. Priests who spread such beliefs were subsequently appointed bishops, even cardinals. We can certainly speak of a grave responsibility of the Holy See for appointing bishops and cardinals from among those whose preaching was ambiguous and for whom there was no guarantee that they would faithfully teach the constant faith of the Church. Men in the middle, advocates of compromise, in short, relativists, started being promoted. These were the people opening the doors of the Church wider to the deluge of relativism. There is no denying that the hierarchy is from whom these destructive actions came. Let me reiterate, the responsibility for this lies with the Holy See. I am convinced that future popes will have to repent for this. I believe that a future pope will make a public confession of sins, in which he will say, ‘We from the Holy See are accountable for the disastrous regress of many local churches, for the destruction of the true Catholic life of faith, dogmas, liturgy, and morality among so many Catholic nations because we promoted and tolerated heretical and worldly bishops and cardinals.'”
You also say later in the book that right now we are experiencing the widespread apostasy of bishops and cardinals. Tell us more about what you’re seeing.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: We could state these facts. It was evident in the decades since the council that the majority of episcopal nominations made by the Holy See and their nuncios were priests who were not zealous in defending and promoting the integrity of the Catholic faith, but so-called compromise candidates. Compromise candidates are neither cold nor hot; they are in the middle. Such people always yield to the attacks of the world and compromise the Catholic faith and liturgy. In the last 50 to 60 years, even if they were not explicit heretics or immoral, they were always compromising and yielding, or ambiguous.
This is not the standard of an apostolic man like the apostles, the Church Fathers, or the great bishops of history. These candidates are characteristic of compromise. The Holy See promoted them extensively, and we must acknowledge this responsibility. Pope Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century, was very careful in appointing bishops. He sometimes waited long periods or did not appoint if he could not find a good candidate. Some bishops rebuked him for being so demanding, and he explained, ‘Please go and seek, and you will find them. But good candidates are sometimes hidden, so you have to seek or wait.’
A diocese can remain vacant for some years, and the faithful will continue to believe and have sacraments. We lived in the Soviet times without a bishop for decades, and even with very few priests, the Catholic faith was transmitted and taught in families. It is better to leave a diocese without a bishop than to appoint a compromise candidate who will be ambiguous and allow the spread of modernism and liberalism. Cardinals and the Holy See must choose carefully, only men with clear fidelity to the Catholic faith, living and prayerful, with a real apostolic spirit.
Jim Havens: It’s very helpful and makes sense. None of this is against the truth of the Catholic Church. You are defending the truth. There is a sickness in the human leadership of the Church, an infiltration that has produced leaders who act contrary to the Catholic faith. Many Catholic media outlets won’t tell the truth, but we have an obligation to help people see this, or they will be deceived. Families are being destroyed, souls are lost.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: It is not so helpful simply to detect the sins of the clergy. This will discourage people. We have to promote positively the spirit of faith where we live: the true Catholic faith, good catechisms, good apologetics, and good Catholic books. Promote prayer groups, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the rosary, the living rosary, and a holy liturgy. We should implore God to give courageous, 100% Catholic bishops, cardinals, and popes through prayer, Eucharistic adoration, and penance. This is a more effective supernatural means for renewal than publishing the sins of the clergy. Abuses should be reported to Church authority, but broadcasting them worldwide does not benefit the Church. The laypeople’s contribution is through prayer, adoration, and imploring God to give us good shepherds.
Jim Havens: Oftentimes, people in an average parish are stuck in deception, thinking their pastor tells the truth, when actually errors are being taught in confession, like contraception. Unless we help people see this, they won’t understand the need to put Jesus at the center and to pray, not just follow worldly advice. Your book does this very well, explaining the history, errors, and heresies.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: This is the hour of the laypeople. One of the main topics of Vatican II was promoting the contribution of laypeople in the Church. Today, since most clergy are not transmitting the purity of the Catholic faith, laypeople must be apostles of the faith, first in their families, and then in their environment and work in the world.
Jim Havens: Yeah, this is what love compels us to do. This is authentic charity, right? This is vitally important. I hope people are seeing this. We’re going to be back with Bishop Athanasius Schneider. His new book is going to help you see through so much in The Springtime That Never Came. You can get it by going to SophiaInstitute.com, and when we get back, we’re going to go a lot deeper on some of this and point out some things more specifically. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned.
Welcome back to The Simple Truth. Jim Havens here with our guest today, Bishop Athanasius Schneider. His recent book is The Springtime That Never Came, published by Sophia Institute Press, SophiaInstitute.com. You can also learn more about him and his good work at GloriaDei.io. In chapter 10 of the book, entitled The Rupture of Continuity, Bishop, you say of Karl Rahner that you are convinced that in one or two hundred years, the Church will recognize that Rahner was one of the greatest and most dangerous heretics of the 20th century. Unlike others, he did not preach heresies directly, but spread them in an extremely clever, cunning, indirect way. You say Rahner can even be called the greatest Gnostic thinker in the Church in modern times, and that many priests who, after the Second Vatican Council, became bishops and cardinals were imbued with the theories of Karl Rahner. That’s when they were infected and started spreading errors after they assumed positions of power. What is most important for us to know when it comes to Rahner and the ongoing effects of his poison?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Rahner substantially had the spirit of Kant and Hegel, the German idealism, the German philosophical rationalism, which is, at its core, a kind of Gnosis. Gnosis was a movement 2,000 years ago, a philosophical and partly religious group or sect with the main idea that man constructs and builds up truth or reality himself. Therefore, they built up this fantastic religious or philosophical world called Gnosis, which means knowledge. Another main point was that only knowledge ultimately saves you, giving you salvation independently of the exterior world or your works. This is very dangerous because it is ultimately an expression of the independence of man from the Creator. Especially, it is unhistorical because it rejects the historical revelation of God, a historical intervention of God. Divine revelation happened only once in the Old Testament, God revealed Himself, and then fully and ultimately in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God. For the Gnosis, this was unacceptable. Rahner was a disciple, indirectly, of the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, which is partly a Gnostic mentality: to construct your own ideal world independently from the reality God created in creation, rejecting the possibility and effect of divine revelation.
Jim Havens: Yeah, that seems like an awful thing to fall into, and surely he wrapped it in ways that were very deceptive, as you say. I want to encourage anybody who might know a priest who is still reading Rahner or believes in his work to get them this book, The Springtime That Never Came, written by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, and give it to them as a gift, maybe for Father’s Day. It is an act of truly authentic charity, love of God for His own sake, and love of neighbor out of love of God. It would be a wonderful thing to do. Bishop, I want to ask you to unpack what became the title of the book, The Springtime That Never Came. You say that as soon as the news of the council was announced, it became a symbol of the so-called New Pentecost.
You go on to say there was no outpouring of the Spirit, no new Pentecost, no springtime. Pope Paul VI himself said, Instead of the expected springtime, winter has come. You point out that it is enough to compare what the Church looked like before and after the council. Fifty years later, there can no longer be any doubts about the fruit. We must give new soil to the tree and take care that the plants grow from the root, bearing healthy and good fruit. The true renewal of the Church can be achieved only by returning to tradition. The liturgy has been distorted. Instead of the worship of God, a form of self-adoration emerged. The Holy Mass has become, in many places, a show. Even if it is celebrated according to the rubrics, it does not express the essentially sacrificial character of the Mass. With the pontificate of Pope Francis, we have reached the height of the crisis. The greatest conformity to the world, paganism, has invaded the life of the Church. Bishops and cardinals talk and act as if they were pagans. Recently, an American bishop said that the greatest danger to life is not abortion, but climate change.
Not only do these bishops not lose their offices, but they are still apparently supported by those who have authority in the Vatican. All these facts speak for themselves. Stories about the springtime of the Church or about a new outpouring of the Spirit reveal a complete loss of contact with reality. One item I want to follow up on is your reference to a recent American bishop who said the greatest danger to life is not abortion but climate change. I believe the one you mentioned is Bishop McElroy of San Diego, and he was just named a cardinal by Pope Francis. Cardinal Cupich, who has caused disruption in the liturgy among other things, was named a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Francis. What are your thoughts on these recent appointments?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: One can only be sad about this. It is evident that damage to the truth and the integrity of Catholic life within the Church to appointing such people to high positions. These clergy, who publicly made such statements, like Bishop McElroy, contradict reality. It is cynicism, against reality, ideology promoting naturalism. The decentralization of liturgy is also damaging. To promote such people is incredible. Those in the Vatican who promote such clergy must agree with their positions, or they aim to change the Catholic Church into a more naturalistic organization, a Protestant organization, or an NGO. We can only lament this, but God will win, and the Catholic Truth will win despite these clerics. We must pity them because they will give account to God for all their words and deeds. There was a saint, a priest whom the pope wanted to appoint as cardinal, Philip Neri, I believe, and he did not accept, saying, “I want to go to heaven; therefore, I will not accept the appointment.” The higher your position in the Church, the stricter the account you give before God. These bishops promoted now must be pitied because their judgment will be strict. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit is working with the little ones in the Church, young families, seminarians, young priests, and some bishops who are promoting true renewal. This will not be defeated.
Jim Havens: Bishop Athanasius Schneider is with us. We are talking about his book, The Springtime That Never Came, published by Sophia Institute Press, SophiaInstitute.com. If you’re convinced by the words of Bishop Schneider, know that with God’s grace, we have control over whether a real springtime will take place within our own souls. This will affect the world around us. Whatever our vocation is, for me, it’s husband and father; we have serious responsibilities to fulfill. I need a new Pentecost in my soul. Will I humble myself, repent, go back to confession, receive the Holy Eucharist in a state of grace, and live a life of prayer? All of these things are up to us. We have to say yes. This will be the springtime. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned.
Welcome back to The Simple Truth. Jim Havens here with Bishop Athanasius Schneider. He is the recent author of The Springtime That Never Came, published by Sophia Institute Press, SophiaInstitute.com. You can also learn more about His Excellency at GloriaDei.io. Bishop, I have to ask you about Pope Francis. Many people wonder what to make of his pontificate. From reading your book, it seems you would not call Pope Francis a heretic outright, but you would say he is promoting heresy or tolerating heresy.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, he is promoting de facto heresies, not explicitly theoretical, but in practice. For example, when he approved the norms of the Buenos Aires bishops regarding the admittance of divorced and remarried people to Holy Communion, he approved this possibility and commanded that it be included in the official Acta Apostolicae Sedis. The Cardinal Secretary of State said this act of Pope Francis is part of the ordinary Magisterium. This is dangerous. The ordinary Magisterium of the Pope is not always infallible. We must abandon the exaggerated papalism accumulated over centuries. Only ex cathedra pronouncements receive the assistance of the Holy Spirit to be free from error.
Pope Francis has also promoted ambiguous acts and declarations, like the Abu Dhabi Declaration, stating that God wills the diversity of religions, which is impossible and against divine revelation. He tolerated the Pachamama idols in the Vatican, which were venerated, and allowed their display in St. Peter’s Basilica. This is grievous. We must pray for the pope and do penance for him so that he may regain clarity, strength, and courage to fulfill his duty as the successor of Peter.
Jim Havens: Thank you so much, Your Excellency. I highly encourage everybody to get The Springtime That Never Came. There is so much in it that is very helpful. It is published by Sophia Institute Press, SophiaInstitute.com. You can also learn more about Bishop Schneider at GloriaDei.io. Bishop, would you mind closing us out with a final blessing?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, Dominus vobiscum et cum spiritu tuo et benedictio Dei omnipotentis Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti descendat super vos et maneat semper. Amen.
Jim Havens: Amen. Thank you, Your Excellency. I want to encourage everybody to keep Bishop Schneider in your prayers and support the good work he is doing. Let us follow his lead, be courageous, hold true to the faith, reject evil, and strive, like our Blessed Mother, to follow her Son, our Lord Jesus, in every possible way by living our Catholic faith fully. God bless you.