Bishop Schneider: Synodality. It is a circling ourselves. It is, for me, such a cheap, poor church life centered on yourself.
John-Henry Westen: Hello, my friends. Welcome to the John Henry Weston Show. We have a very special guest for you here today. We have Bishop Athanasius Schneider with us to talk about what is going on in the Church because we just experienced the conclave, where we were expecting a discussion on the liturgy. It did not happen. They focused on other things, but we did learn that there would be a catechism coming based on the Second Vatican Council, which Pope Leo called the guiding star of the Church.
We are going to go into what the possibilities are. What does Bishop Schneider see as the possibilities coming from this focus on liturgy, which will happen, and what is going to become of the traditional Latin Mass and of the Novus Ordo, and where are we going? Is there going to be a third possibility, Bishop Schneider? Thank you so very much for joining us.
Bishop Schneider: You are welcome.
John-Henry Westen: If you could please start us off at the sign of the cross.
Bishop Schneider: In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
John-Henry Westen: Thank you, Your Excellency. You have said in the past that the Second Vatican Council has had some ambiguities. It was a pastoral document, but you also talked about the need for some clarifications or corrections of some parts. Now that Pope Leo has said this about the Second Vatican Council, that it is a guiding star of the Church, and there is a catechism coming out on it, are you thinking maybe there might be those clarifications, those corrections in there, or what do you foresee?
Bishop Schneider: Well, first, we have to say that the council is not the guiding star for the Church, but that it is Jesus Christ. He is the only guiding star, the incarnate God, the eternal Word of God, who revealed to us all divine truth. So the word of Jesus Christ, His work, the Gospel, His person, His very person, He is the guiding star.
We must return the entire Church to put Jesus Christ really, concretely, visibly, in the center of all our endeavors, of all our meetings, but first by putting Him in the center of our worship, that He is really the center in the Church, in the tabernacle, on the altar, His sacrifice, His cross, and this is the manner in which we celebrate.
This was the most evident and perfect way the Church reached through the millennium in the traditional form of the Holy Mass. Therefore, I think the key to all problems in the Church is Jesus Christ. He will resolve all, and this is the first thing to say.
Concretely, one council cannot be the star, because what is a council? A council is only a manner, a mode, an instrument of the magisterium, which can help, along with other instruments. Of course, a council is the most solemn way, but it is usually the ordinary magisterium throughout the centuries and places that proclaims Christ and His truth, His unchangeable truth.
The Vatican Council itself formulated a very important phrase, saying that the magisterium, meaning the Pope and the bishops or the council, is not above the Word of God, the written Word of God, and the transmitted Word of God. This is Holy Tradition, sacred Tradition. The magisterium, all bishops and councils, are beneath the Word of God and must serve Him. Their task is only to transmit this revelation of God, the deposit of faith, in the clearest possible manner, in the most faithful manner, even in a scrupulous manner.
This is what the Church has always done and said. Therefore, it is impossible to say that the magisterium itself is the light. In ancient times, the Fathers of the Church were so humble. The great saints, the Fathers of the Church, had this vision of the Church. The Church is not the light. The Church is like the moon, which receives all its light from the sun, which is Jesus Christ.
The Church must be a humble servant. She is the Bride. She is like Saint John the Baptist, always pointing to Jesus Christ. Therefore, I think this formulation is not so happy. It promotes a kind of ecclesiastical and propositional reason, or I would say magisteriocentrism. We must be Christ-centered.
Of course, there are ambiguities or ambiguous formulations in the text. I think no honest person could deny it. To deny it would not be honest. It would be a kind of mental acrobatics, as some try to do. Of course, there are also good formulations which we can accept, and we accept them with gratitude.
I think the most important element of what Vatican Two means is, in my opinion, the call to universal holiness in the Church. All in the Church, from the Pope to the lowest member, are called by God to holiness, to strive for holiness. This vocation is, in my opinion, the most important message Vatican Two gave, and it is often forgotten and not spoken of.
The rest, I think, is not so much a real contribution to the clarity of divine truth, but more or less pastoral explanations of it, categorical explanations, or homiletic explanations. This was the aim of the council, which John the Twenty Third formulated. He said this council was not tasked with formulating new dogmas or definitive teachings, but only to explain the deposit of faith from a pastoral point of view, regarding the current situation of the world.
One month after the council, Paul the Sixth basically repeated this and said this council did not proclaim any dogma of its own. It did not propose any definitive teaching because its main characteristic and aim were pastoral. This is simply a fact we must bear in mind, and therefore we must not overstate a council.
This is one of many councils and cannot be isolated from the other twenty councils. No council did this. To do so would be a kind of presumption or pride. This has occurred for some people during the council, after the council, and in our day. They use the council as a pretext, as a mask, to hide a liberal and modernistic agenda, to change the Church of Christ into another human-shaped organization, adapted to the moods and fashions of the world.
Therefore, we must put the council in a more modest position and not overstate it. Sixty years have already passed. It was another time, with other problems. Let us not fix ourselves on this. Let us fix ourselves on the unchanging, beautiful truth of God, of Christ, which the Church has preserved intact and unchanging for two thousand years. This will again bring people to God.
John-Henry Westen: We just had the conclave. The Holy Father just met with the cardinals on the roster. That meeting was actually said beforehand to be about liturgy. A lot of people were thinking, perhaps this is the long-awaited discussion over the traditional Latin Mass, and perhaps doing away with Traditionis Custodes or amending it somehow to allow openness once again to the traditional Latin Mass.
However, when they got there, they decided they were not going to talk about that. They were going to talk about mission and synodality, and so that went unaddressed, but it is still happening. I just saw an interview with Cardinal Müller where he talked about it. He seemingly just met with the Holy Father himself, and he said that Pope Leo will come up with a solution for the Mass that will make everyone happy. That is saying a lot.
As I wondered then, there was a lot of talk a while back about a reform of the reform and so on. That leaves us with a few possibilities, and I am wondering if you could address those. One possibility would be a single unified Roman Rite which would incorporate elements of both the traditional Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo, effectively replacing both. You would not really have either one; you would just have one form, perhaps with much more Latin.
A second possibility could be that the Novus Ordo remains the same, but the traditional Latin Mass is changed into a kind of Latinized Novus Ordo, with different elements that some bishops or the Holy Father want incorporated into the traditional Latin Mass.
The other possibility is the opposite. The traditional Latin Mass stays the same as it always was, but the Novus Ordo itself is changed, and elements are added to it. So there are three possibilities as I see it. I guess a fourth would be that everything just remains the same. Do you have a sense of any of those possibilities going forward? What is your sense of things, and where would you like to see things going?
Bishop Schneider: Maybe you allow me first to say that it was not a conclave. It was a consistory.
John-Henry Westen: Thank you for the correction.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, unfortunately, they did not speak about liturgy, but about evangelization, mission, and synodality. First, I think we must ask how we can speak about evangelization when there is no clarity of faith. This is the problem in the life of the Church, the enormous doctrinal confusion in the Church. We cannot proclaim Christ with one voice convincingly today, because there is contradictory preaching all over the world by Catholic bishops and cardinals. This is impossible.
The first step, in my opinion, which the Pope should address and propose to the cardinals, is to establish points that must be clarified so they can speak with one voice and evangelize. This is the indispensable condition. Clarification first, then synodality.
What does synodality mean? This is such confusion. Basically, no one knows exactly what it means. Synodality has become a kind of code word that everyone uses for their own agenda, to transform Church life into a continuous, permanent parliament-style debating club. This is contrary to the spirit of Christ, the apostles, and the Church of all times. This is not the method of the Catholic Church.
Of course, we can sometimes listen and speak; this is evident, but not to such an extent as to institutionalize it, and especially without clear aims, simply to sit together and discuss around a table. Even visually, it presents an anthropocentric message and structure.
This should be clarified first, what synodality means as the Church has always understood, taught, and practiced synods, not this newly invented method of synodality, which the Church never practiced in this way. It is alien to the constant Catholic tradition. This form is proper to Protestant and Anglican churches, and we know where it leads and has led, to increasing confusion, relativization, adaptation to the spirit of the world, and unfaithfulness to Christ and to the faith of the apostles and the Fathers.
Regarding the issue of liturgy, it should be stressed, as it was planned, but it was taken away from the agenda. Probably there was very little time. Of course, in one and a half days, it is difficult to treat such topics. They should be planned better in advance and given more time, because the liturgy is ontologically the first task of the Church.
Why. Because we are created to adore God, to worship Him, the entire creation. This will be our eternal happiness in heaven with the angels, the saints, and Our Lady, to adore God, to see Him lovingly, to praise Him without end. This is the first task of the Church; therefore, to adore God through the sacramental offering of the sacrifice of the cross, which is the highest possible act of adoration.
Then comes proclaiming the Gospel, the teaching of Christ, making people true disciples of Christ, members of His mystical body, the Church, and saving souls for eternity. This is the task of the Church, and this is what the Church always did. Now we are distracted by other topics. Synodality is circling about ourselves. It is, for me, such a cheap, poor vision, such a poor Church life centered on ourselves, on structures, rather than on Christ.
Now, regarding your concrete question about these possibilities, I do not know how the Pope or the higher authority will decide. But I am convinced that reform, in a good sense, must be done. The Novus Ordo, as it is, cannot continue in this way. This is not what Vatican Two had in mind at all.
First, it does not correspond to the text itself or to the intention and mind of Sacrosanctum Concilium. The text says that no novelties should be introduced, as stated in number 23, yet enormous novelties were introduced in the Novus Ordo. The council said that any changes should be organic developments from what already existed. Many elements in the Novus Ordo did not exist before. They were simply invented, often according to Protestant or Jewish prayer models.
Secondly, if we read the Acta Concilii, which contain the protocols of the debates of the council fathers, both oral and written, we see that most of the discussion focused on language, vernacular and Latin, and not on proposing concrete reforms of the Holy Mass. The council fathers were not engaged in designing a new Mass.
In 1965, the Pope already approved a new order of Mass according to the decisions of the council. This was the true Mass of Vatican Two. This is often forgotten. When the council fathers returned for the last session in September 1965, they celebrated this reformed Mass. It was a very cautious and slight reform, without rupture, as the council text demanded.
This 1965 Mass is what I would call the true Vatican Two Mass, not the form introduced later in 1970.
The structure is basically the same. All the rubrics are almost the same. Only Psalm 42 at the beginning was taken away, but this was not a complete novelty, because even before the council, during Requiem Masses and during Passiontide, Psalm 42 was also removed. So it was not such a huge reform.
The second change was that the last Gospel of Saint John was also removed. But even before the council, on some occasions when there was a subsequent celebration, it was also removed. In any case, the rest was not changed at all. It remained with the Canon, only the Roman Canon, and it was obligatory.
In 1965, you could not pray the Eucharistic prayer, the Roman Canon, in the vernacular language. It was only in Latin. The rubrics were the same, the signs of the cross, the genuflections, all the same as the traditional Latin Mass. Only the vernacular language was allowed from the beginning until the preface, and from the preface until the Pater Noster, it was only in Latin. Even the Canon was still prayed silently by the priest.
This is the Mass of Vatican Two, and we have to stress it. So I think the first step is that the traditional Latin Mass, as it is, should be kept and not changed, because of the old and venerable age of this rite, which in this form was celebrated for almost one thousand years, nearly a millennium. It is not a Tridentine Mass at all.
We have missals from one hundred years before the Council of Trent, where the Order of Mass is exactly the same without changes. I am speaking not of the missal itself, but of the Order of Mass. It was almost the same since the time of Pope Innocent the Third at the end of the twelfth century, who commented on the entire Mass. So we see it is the same.
Therefore, because of this venerable age, I would propose not to change it, but to leave it as it is. Then we should proceed step by step to reform the Novus Ordo, bringing the Novus Ordo closer to the traditional form. Step by step, over time, the so-called Novus Ordo, or the common form, we could even give it another name, would become basically the same as the old one, except for the use of the vernacular language.
I think the vernacular would be more present in that possibly reformed Mass, with slight rubrical differences, for example, some prayers could be spoken aloud, except the Canon, and there would be only one Canon. Then both forms would be basically the same Mass, with the difference being the use of the vernacular language and some small rubrical differences.
It would be one rite with slight adaptations. This also existed in ancient times, when some dioceses had adaptations of the Roman Rite. So this is possible. I think this could be done beautifully.
John-Henry Westen: What would be the elements? I have a few elements written down that I wanted to talk to you about, but in terms of moving the Novus Ordo, as you say, that needs to be done. I think the faithful recognize that it needs to be done, because those who love tradition but do not have access to it, there is a movement among the faithful in the Church to strive toward something closer to the traditional Mass.
Some of the elements I would like to talk to you about, I will name some, but I would also like you to name some. One example is that they are difficult because they push against modern wishes. For a long time, people have said they want women to have a higher place in the Church, and so on. Pope Francis made moves in that direction.
Yet in Holy Scripture, Saint Paul speaks very specifically, saying that women are to be silent in the Church. Even among lay faithful who are women, there is a movement to say no. I spoke with Peter Kwasniewski about this, asking why women are not supposed to be in the sanctuary. He explained that those in the sanctuary represent Jesus, represent Christ. There is a difference between the sanctuary and the choir loft.
So one of the elements would be female readers. This is countercultural today because there is such a strong movement in society for feminism, and also within the Church. Is that one of the elements you would see changing, and how could one go about that, despite the cultural pressure and the pressure within the Church to do otherwise?
Bishop Schneider: I think the first and most important change for the Novus Ordo should be that all Masses are celebrated toward the Lord, ad orientem. All Masses in the Catholic Church, Novus Ordo included, should be ordered by the Pope to be celebrated this way and made compulsory. This current form is contrary to the apostolic tradition and to the meaning of prayer itself.
This closed circle around ourselves must end. We must go out of this sickness of anthropocentric worship. This is, in my opinion, the deepest sickness of our time, in the world and in the Church. With this style, we basically give the message that it is about us. It is not about God. It is about raising ourselves. This must be the first change, to give prayer and adoration their true form and direction, and to express the essential meaning of the Mass, which is the sacrifice of the Cross.
In this form, the sacrifice is visibly manifested, not the banquet or the communion, which, of course, is an integral part, but it flows from the essence. It is not the essence itself. The moment of the table and the banquet is realized in Communion. The altar is the table, but first it is the altar of sacrifice. For the priest, the altar is also the table in this sense, because he receives Holy Communion there. For the people, this moment was traditionally expressed by the Communion rail, which in some languages is even called the table of the Lord. In ancient Germany, they said Ich gehe zum Tisch, meaning I go to the altar.
This is the first indispensable point. The second, almost of equal importance, is that all should receive Communion on the tongue and kneeling, for those who can kneel physically. This should be restored, because the current situation of Communion in the hand is the deepest wound in the Church. I say this with full conviction. Such treatment of the holiest of holies of Our Lord in the small host during Communion is unprecedented.
There are massive desecrations taking place. Of course, many people do not do this consciously, but materially it happens. Many fragments fall to the ground and are trampled. More and more cases occur where hosts are stolen. The entire image is one of minimal veneration, the minimum given to what should be the maximum of reverence, awe, and attention. This is our greatest treasure. It is the divinity of Our Lord hidden, and Holy Communion is treated in a banal, everyday manner, like ordinary food.
These two points must be introduced first because of their objective importance. Then I would say, yes, what you mentioned, women should no longer act in the sanctuary during Holy Mass. They should not be acolytes, altar servers, or readers of Sacred Scripture in the sanctuary. This is contrary to apostolic tradition and to the entire tradition of the Catholic Church.
It gives the sign of introducing feminism into the very core of the liturgy. It promotes giving women access, step by step, to holy ministry. First acolyte, then why not deacon? Then why not a priest? Then why not bishop? Then why not Pope? This is not a joke. It is the logical consequence.
The Anglican Church is an example. They now have a woman Archbishop of Canterbury. What a caricature this is. They are at least consistent. When they started with altar girls, it logically ended with a woman archbishop. We started with altar girls, and after many years, even Saint John Paul the Second allowed it. Now Pope Francis has officially introduced women as instituted acolytes. The logical consequence would be a woman pope.
We must stop this feminism in the sanctuary. A truly Catholic girl or woman would never go to the altar during Holy Mass. Never. Those who do are misled, often with good intentions, or pressured by priests. I appeal to these women, please step back and reflect. Would you imagine Our Lady going to the altar to act as an altar server or reader? Never. In her unspeakable humility and modesty, she always remained on the side throughout the life of Jesus, and she was the Queen of Heaven and the Mother of God.
She knew this mission was not for women. Her mission was motherhood. She was the heart, not someone who displayed herself. This is stronger for the Church. Women fulfill their mission like Mary, to be the loving heart of the Church, to support it with true feminine qualities, motherly and bridal. Every Catholic woman, whether married, virgin, or religious, must preserve this sense of spiritual maternity, like Our Lady.
This is very clear. Therefore, this reform is necessary. Then, as a next step, the music must be reformed. We must return to dignified sacred music, especially Gregorian chant, and spread it throughout the world, along with dignified polyphonic music. Protestant and Pentecostal styles with guitars and similar instruments must stop. This is not worthy of Catholic worship. It is worldly and leads toward paganism and disorder in worship.
Another important element is the greater use of Latin. This could be introduced by a papal norm. For example, every cathedral, shrine, or major church should celebrate the entire Mass in Latin at least once a month, except for the readings. In monasteries and religious communities, the conventional daily Mass should be in Latin, again with exceptions for readings.
In this way, Latin would once again become a common language for Catholics worldwide, especially today when travel and international contact are so common. I think these five elements could be introduced step by step. I believe that Divine Providence will guide the Church in this direction.
John-Henry Westen: Bishop Schneider, I want to thank you so much for your time and your generosity. I also ask you, if you would not mind, to please give us all your blessing for 2026, that we might fulfill the will of the Lord this year and be ever faithful to Him, as was His Holy Mother.
Bishop Schneider: Thank you. I will do this. I ask all listeners to pray fervently for Pope Leo, that he might receive God’s light and illumination to recognize the necessity of issuing a profession of faith regarding the errors of our time, to strengthen us and confirm us in the clarity of the faith.
Second, that Pope Leo might receive from God the illumination and the will to restore liturgical peace in the Church, to give full citizenship to the traditional Latin liturgy. This is the minimum required for justice and peace in the Church.
For these two intentions, I ask you to pray fervently for Pope Leo. I now give you the blessing.
Dominus vobiscum.
John-Henry Westen: Et cum spiritu tuo.
Bishop Schneider: Benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, descendat super vos et maneat semper. Amen.
Praise be Jesus Christ.
John-Henry Westen: Now and forever. Excellency, thank you so very much. God bless you. From all of us here at LifeSite and from all of our supporters, please accept our humble prayers as we pray for you to continue your powerful ministry of speaking the truth when so few will. God bless you, and God bless all of you. We will see you next time.