Jim Hale: Hello, once again, friends. I am Jim Hale, and it is such an exciting day here at LifeSiteNews. We have two big announcements to make. Number one, we are coming to you from our freshly painted, freshly built studio here in Front Royal. We wanted to tell you that from now on, starting today and henceforth, all of the videos that you see on all of our video platforms will now come under the LSN TV umbrella. So, LifeSiteNews and then LSN TV.
Number two to kick off our new studio, we have a very special guest. He is none other than His Excellency Bishop Schneider of Kazakhstan, Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Bishop, thank you so much for joining us here on our inaugural day for LSN TV.
Bishop Schneider: Thank you for your invitation. I think it was planned by divine providence, not by us.
Jim Hale: It just worked out.
Bishop Schneider: So often in our life important events are programmed by divine providence. I believe it is my last stay here in the States. The day after, I have to go to the airport. Now I still have the possibility to visit the studio and to speak with you.
Jim Hale: We are so honored, Your Excellency, that you have joined us here today. You are always introduced as the Bishop of Kazakhstan. I know there is often confusion because you are a native German speaker, but you grew up in the former Soviet Union. Could you tell us more about your background, because you have a fascinating history?
Bishop Schneider: It is a long story. I am from the so-called Black Sea Germans who were settlers in the nineteenth century. They were Catholic farmers from southwest Germany. My parents and ancestors came from the Alsace-Lorraine region to the Black Sea shore. There were German villages, and they had their own priests and churches, thanks be to God. They were very believing deeply believing Catholics.
After the Second World War, my parents and all these Germans were deported by Stalin to forced labor. My parents came to the Ural Mountains. After this horrible time, they could move freely and moved to Central Asia, to Kyrgyzstan, which is located in the south of Kazakhstan. There I was born. We already had a clandestine church in the Ural Mountains. My parents worked and participated in the life of the underground church, and the same in Kyrgyzstan.
My childhood was very deeply marked by the underground church and by holy priests. Then we moved from Kyrgyzstan to Estonia. There we had a holy priest, and I could receive my First Holy Communion. At the end of seventy three, we moved to West Germany with the entire family. At home, I spoke only German, but I had five years of Soviet Russian school. I grew up with two languages, German and Russian. I grew up with the true Catholic faith.
Jim Hale: Your Excellency, you said the underground church. This is what communist systems always do. They attack the Church and the family. Here we are again in the United States of America. This is not the Soviet oppression you knew growing up, but now we have major parts of the culture in the US and throughout the Western world that seem to be embracing Marxism. What is your reaction to that?
Bishop Schneider: Yes, it is. There are similarities that I recall. Western society, not only the United States but also Europe, is becoming ever more materialistic. Materialism was one of the main points of the ideology and life of the communist system in the Soviet Union and other communist countries. It reduced human existence to material aspects and earthly life. This has been growing for decades in the Western world.
Together with this, there is a new form of atheism, which is the other pillar of the communist system. It means to remove God completely from public life as if God does not exist. There is also ever more control over individuals. In the Soviet Union, we were almost completely controlled by the state and secret services. Now we are seeing this in the Western world.
Those who govern us, usually a small political elite, are controlling people through new technological tools. We are even more controlled than in past decades. You are not truly free. You are watched completely. With vaccination policies and COVID rules, you are ever more controlled. Communism also teaches that you no longer have privacy or property. Everything belongs to the state.
With the COVID crisis, we see more clearly that you are losing the right to determine your own body. You are losing ownership of your own body because the state or a small elite claims authority over it. Through forced vaccination, you are told you must comply, and therefore, you no longer have the freedom to manage your own body.
Jim Hale: And they say they own our children, too, like you must have your children vaccinated. And that’s actually happening in some places.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, this is a further developed step of communism. What we are now witnessing with the COVID rules is that we are completely controlled. We are living in a kind of global prison. With all these so-called green passes, you cannot go there. You are watched like in a prison. You no longer own your body because you are completely under control. We can also call this a slave society because you are marked by the vaccine. They will probably repeat the vaccinations, continuously controlling you. They determine how you must behave with your body.
This is a slave system because slaves cannot determine their own bodies. This system that the Covid sanitary dictatorship is producing treats society as if we are children who cannot use reason or free will. This elite group, which governs and gives directions to all governments of the world, sets the same rules and terminology for everyone. They say, we know what is best for your health. You do not have enough intellect or reason. Therefore, we determine how you must behave under these Covid rules. Of course, they claim they only want your health, but they decide because they say you have no reason or free will. They are treating us as if we were children or slaves.
Jim Hale: Your Excellency, this is all in direct contradiction to what the Church teaches and what it means to be a Christian. Yet we are hearing this same kind of language coming out of the Vatican now. You have reminded us many times that we are called to live in this time God has given us, to respond to these challenges. So what can the Church do? And what can Catholics do? Because it sounds like the same kind of globalist collectivist language is coming right out of the Vatican.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, this is where we must speak the facts. The communist ideology, the spirit of communism, which is materialism, an almost exclusive concern for material realities, has slowly penetrated life within the Church over decades. The primary concern for earthly realities has been growing.
In recent years, unfortunately, the Vatican leadership and even the Pope himself have behaved as if material realities, climate aspects, care for Mother Earth, temporal matters, and even health are more important than the care of the soul. This is an expression of materialism.
Jim Hale: And utopianism, right? It is like they are trying to build heaven on earth.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, and this is communism, because Marx and Lenin said communism is paradise on earth. This spirit has penetrated Church life and is now the current agenda of the Holy See. Therefore, we, as Catholics, must oppose this respectfully. It is our duty to say we cannot promote such a materialistic neo communist, material-centered agenda. We have to restore the primacy of the soul, the care of the soul, and eternal life. This is the core of the Gospel.
Jesus Christ came to redeem us from sin, to save the soul, and to open the gates of heaven. He did not come primarily to restore material aspects on earth. When he was asked in the Gospel to judge a dispute over property, the Lord said he did not come to judge earthly inheritance. He came to redeem us from sin and to open the gates of heaven. This is the mission of the Church.
When the current agenda of the Holy See diminishes the first task of the Church, the eternal salvation of souls, we must restore it. The first Pope, Peter, said in the Acts of the Apostles, and it should be recalled by every Pope, that it is not good to abandon prayer, liturgy, and preaching the truth in order to serve the tables. This was a way of prioritizing earthly concerns over spiritual matters.
Jim Hale: And that’s exactly, I mean, that’s the very definition of modernism, right? It’s like we’re trying to do what man needs, what we think we want. And I wanted to ask you, Your Excellency. Right now, as we speak at the Vatican, we’re having the Synod on synodality, and much of this came about because of what they’re doing in the German church with an open promotion of women’s ordination, or at least to the diaconate. How dangerous is this Synod, and what could this mean for the church?
Bishop Schneider: According to what we can still observe, already, the agenda of this so-called synodal process, which the papers and the methods describe, is a kind of great style of Parliament: to speak, to debate, and to listen only to mend one another. But my preoccupation is that there is no listening to the eternal truth, which we have. We do not have to seek the truth. This is the error of this synodal process. We have the truth. Christ gave us the truth. The apostles preached the truth. The Church Fathers, the doctors of the Church, and all the Popes transmitted the truth and preached it ever more precisely and clearly over the past 2000 years. The task of the Church is to transmit the truth and to explain it ever more clearly, not ambiguously, but clearly. This is the first task of a synod.
So the first task of a synod is to state the clarity of the truth again. Clarity brings happiness to the human mind. A situation of ambiguity and insecurity never satisfies the human mind, never, and will never bring peace. Only clarity does. And we have the clarity, not of human parliaments, but the clarity of Christ and of the perennial, constant, clear teaching of the Church. This we have to transmit. This is the task of a synod.
Then, the task of a synod has always been, in the entire history of the Church, to eliminate heresies, to eliminate defects that have accumulated in the Church, because the Church is also a Church of sinners. Therefore, in the life of the Church, errors, infidelities, defects in discipline, and moral life will always emerge, first among the clergy and then among the faithful. Therefore, a good synod also has the purpose, I would say, of medicine, like a doctor: to cut away what is dangerous for the body, to heal the defects, and to protect the body against several and different spiritual viruses.
Jim Hale: Well, it seems like almost now what’s happening with this Synod is a virus in the Church?
Bishop Schneider: Yes, the virus is in the Church, as you mentioned, modernism, which, since the 19th century, has been slowly growing ever more. The core of modernism is that there is no perennial truth, that truth is changing, and that the history of man determines what will be truth tomorrow. It is completely changing. This is a system of Hegelianism. Hegel is the core of modernism. So there is never stability, and the dogmas are only a human expression, and we can change them again. This is really modernism in the Church, or the mentality of modernism, which is ultimately a religion of man, not a religion of God.
Jim Hale: And that’s the culture of death. Bishop, you are so beloved in this country. When I became Catholic, what was so wonderful to me was that we have this deposit of faith. If I know what that is, then that is truthful. And that’s what I’ve found in the U.S. Yes, we have a lot of people here who really want to be Catholic and who love being Catholic. This community that we live in right here in Front Royal is a wonderful Catholic community with people who are trying to live a Catholic life. And it’s just so hard to hear such criticism of American conservative Catholics coming right from the Pope himself. Why do you think Pope Francis has such contempt for the American Church?
Bishop Schneider: It is said that a Pope has to be a shepherd and a father for all. A Pope cannot publicly demonstrate or express depreciation or despising of one group of Catholics. This is not good for a Pope who is the father of all Catholics. Even when he personally does not agree with some stances of American Catholics, he should never use words that will offend their feelings. On the contrary, when American Catholics defend life very strictly and powerfully against the culture of death, he should be happy, I hope, and encourage them, saying, I bless you, I encourage you, continue, be not afraid of the culture of death, fight, fight. I will bless you for God, for the most vulnerable, the weakest, and the unborn.
And also, the American Catholic faithful to tradition, they are also Catholics. Unfortunately, in the States, there are others promoting another agenda. But I am referring, as you refer to, to Catholics who are faithful to the faith.
Jim Hale: Yes, well, let’s talk about those for a minute. What is your response to the notion of Father James Martin becoming a Cardinal? That’s the latest buzz, and I’m sure you know what his agenda is.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, this is very, very sad. We cannot promote persons who are, how do you say, undermining the truth continuously with ambiguous actions and words, like Father Martin, who, ultimately, with his style and words, is promoting sin in the Church. Homosexual acts, which are sodomy, are against the will of God, against nature, and against reason. Those who practice this can never be happy because their reason and their nature tell them it is against the order God created. They can only suppress the voice of their conscience and of their nature. You can suppress them, but you can never suppress their nature. When you suppress nature, it will revolt.
Those like Father Martin, who with his words encourage people even to practice homosexuality, are harming them. Sometimes he says he is not encouraging homosexual acts, only providing pastoral care, but de facto, he is encouraging so-called homosexual relationships. He says it is okay if they live chastely, but they declare themselves homosexuals and openly proclaim it. This harms them. Homosexual couples are in continuous danger of sin because they publicly demonstrate a union based on sexual attraction, which is against nature. Therefore, they are damaging themselves and putting themselves in a position to sin. It is irresponsible for a priest to encourage this.
Jim Hale: And encouraging the transgender movement is, to me, particularly offensive because it tries to redefine what man is. We see this now in the U.S., where laws require employers to acknowledge somebody’s chosen gender.
Bishop Schneider: This is the same. It is a revolt of pride against the order of creation, the order God established in His wisdom. It is a revolt in pride. This transgender movement will destroy the human being, because what is against nature and against the will of God is destructive. It always destroys. Ultimately, as you mentioned, these measures are against reason and are really transforming human life into craziness. We are living in a house in a hospital for the mentally ill.
Jim Hale: It’s a worldwide insane asylum, isn’t it?
Bishop Schneider: It is worldwide insanity, establishing the style of a hospital for mentally ill persons who have to be secured and helped. This demonstrates that sin, every sin, the core of every sin, is against reason. Every sin is insane. And this sin, which is committed in a proud manner, against nature and the order God established, is the height of insanity.
Jim Hale: Wow, Your Excellency. Now we know why you’re a best-selling author. I feel like we could just sit here. It’s such a treat to hear you speak the truth this way. Still, in this country, 300,000 unborn children are slaughtered every year in the United States of America, and it was recently brought to my attention that there are only two other countries that have laws in many states in the U.S., where a woman can abort her unborn baby right up until the time of birth. The only two other countries that permit this are China and North Korea. Some bishops in the U.S. were so concerned that they wanted to sign a letter saying any politician who endorsed this, who was against life, could not receive the Eucharist. It seemed like a logical and reasonable request to make of priests, and yet that was all stifled. What is your response? Should President Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who recently met with the Holy Father, or someone like them who promotes late-term abortions all the way up until birth, be able to receive the Eucharist?
Bishop Schneider: Never. It is impossible. It is against the meaning of the Holy Eucharist itself. It is against the meaning of being Catholic. And it is not only late-term abortion; any abortion, when someone publicly supports the killing of an innocent child, is a horrible crime that cries to heaven. When someone supports this, he is committing a grave sin because he is supporting murder. He cannot, under any circumstances, be admitted to Holy Communion until he repents and publicly retracts.
This is because Holy Communion is the greatest form of union with the faith and life of the Church and with God Himself. When we receive Jesus Christ in Holy Communion, we demonstrate union, first with Christ and with His will. Jesus Christ said, “Whoever observes My commandments, loves Me.” So when you do not observe the commandment of God, not to kill the innocent, you are not loving God, and you are not in union with Him. Yet, by going to Holy Communion, you display before all that you are in the closest union with God. Holy Communion is the closest possible union with God on Earth, through the sacramental reception of His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. At the same time, it is the greatest expression of union with the entire Church.
The Church always rejects and will always reject public immorality, such as abortion, the homosexual agenda, or same-sex marriage, because these are against the revealed will of God and against the true happiness of those involved. Politicians who openly promote abortion or same-sex marriage are not in union with the teaching of the Church. How, then, can they receive Communion, claiming full communion with the Church? This is a lie. To give Communion to such politicians is a false performance and a sacrilege. It is an offense to God, desecrating the most holy sacrament we have. By allowing them Communion, priests and bishops implicitly approve their lifestyle, which is anti-pastoral and a false witness to the faith of the Church.
It is also a grave act of uncharity toward these politicians themselves because by receiving Communion while opposing God’s will, they commit sacrilege and risk their own eternal salvation. As St. Paul says, they “eat their judgment” by taking Communion unworthily. Priests and bishops, by allowing it, participate in this harm. Therefore, any priest, when it is publicly known, must charitably refuse Communion, saying, “I do this because I love you. I do not want to harm your soul.” This refusal is an act of love. When these individuals die, they may remember this and be grateful that the priest spared them further grave sin. Politicians should never receive Holy Communion for the sake of their own eternal salvation.
Jim Hale: Your Excellency, you’ve been so generous with your time. There are so many topics I would like to cover with you, but I have to get your reaction to the Moto Proprio of this summer.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, this is very sad, because every objective observer who reads the Moto Proprio and the accompanying letter, every objective reader without prejudice, will state that it is a language of non-charity. It is uncharitable language. It is unjust language with general accusations that are unjust, saying that all these people are divisive, that they are against the Council, and so on. This is not true. It is offensive language, and first and foremost, it is an expression of rejection of the tradition itself, which has been loved and esteemed for millennia, not just centuries. The Latin liturgy, the old Mass, the so-called traditional Mass, is not the Tridentine Mass.
Jim Hale: Not at all. No, it goes back to Gregory the Great, right?
Bishop Schneider: Yes, we have no concrete… we have a Missal, the first printed Roman Missal from 1470, 100 years before the so-called Tridentine Missal was published in 1570. This Missal is the order of Mass, it is exactly the same, even in the details. Nothing changed. So it should not be called the Tridentine Mass.
Jim Hale: Yeah, that’s right, because critics will often say, “Oh, this Mass has only been around since…”
Bishop Schneider: It could be called a Tridentine Missal, but not the Tridentine Mass. Yes, we have manuscripts and descriptions of the Mass from the early second millennium, from the 11th and 12th centuries, which explain the details of the same Mass. So, in detail, the Mass has remained the same for a millennium. You cannot simply say that this form of prayer should be suppressed or is dangerous. Why? Because the Church, through the Saints, drew so many spiritual benefits from this Mass over a millennium. These Latin Masses, these traditional Masses, formed entire new Christian generations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. People grew up with missionaries and these Masses, which had a powerful formative effect on faith and culture.
Jim Hale: That’s what it is. I came into the Church just three and a half years ago because of that formation you speak of.
Bishop Schneider: Exactly. Yes. Otherwise, when we now reject it, when Pope Francis says it has to be suppressed, it implies that it is dangerous or harmful to the Church. By this Moto Proprio, the Pope implicitly says that the way the Church prayed publicly for at least a millennium was harmful, damaging the Church, and therefore must be suppressed. But this is against the nature of the Church. The Church always transmitted these treasures, accumulated and matured through the work of the Holy Spirit, slowly over centuries and millennia, as a form of liturgy.
Jim Hale: Your Excellency, what is your advice to traditional communities? We know some dear friends in Guadalajara, Mexico. A fraternity parish has already been shuttered there, not far from where we are. There is a beautiful Carmelite monastery just over the border in Fairfield, Pennsylvania, with 25 traditional Carmelite cloistered sisters. They have a waiting list for young women who want to go to this monastery. They recently had an apostolic visitation, and I can tell you the results were emotionally disturbing for those young women, and now they are threatened with being commissioned. It is so hard for all of us to understand this, Your Excellency. What would be your advice to the sisters?
Bishop Schneider: As I return to the first part of your question, I would only add to finish my previous point. For example, a pope cannot suppress a millennium-old rite that brought so many benefits to the Church. It is simply against the nature of the Church. Let us take the formula of the Creed that we use in the Holy Mass. I believe in one God, the so-called Nicene Creed, which we pray in Sunday Mass. It is an old formula from at least the fifth century, which the Church has used in the liturgy of the Latin Church for around a millennium. The formula is older, at least from the fifth century, and all Catholics in the world know this creed, or the Apostolic Creed, when we pray the Rosary.
These two forms are the Roman formulas of belief. They are also liturgical formulas, as the entire traditional Mass is a liturgical formulation. So, if a pope says, I will suppress the text of the Apostolic Creed or the Nicene Creed and substitute it with new formulas, even if these new formulas are correct and orthodox, I think a pope cannot simply abolish the Apostolic Creed. A pope cannot suppress the Nicene Creed even if he claims to give a better formula. It is simply against the principle of tradition.
Similarly, a pope cannot suppress the traditional Latin Mass because it is a long, concrete formula of prayer. Holy Mass is prayer, and the Roman Rite is a concrete formula of prayer. He cannot suppress this prayer formula any more than he could suppress the prayer formula of the Apostolic Creed or the Nicene Creed. They are venerable, ancient, and have been used constantly for a millennium. He can create a new formula, but not prohibit the old ones.
Therefore, I think the prohibition or limitation of the traditional Mass is an abuse of power. It was not given to the pope to suppress a millennium-old liturgical treasure of the Church. Priests and monasteries can continue to use it because it belongs to the Holy Mother Church of old times. It is not the private property of a single pope. Holy Mother Church is greater than any pope. The pope is only a member of Holy Mother Church. He is not God on earth.
Jim Hale: Your advice is that they should continue no matter what comes.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, I think they should, of course, exercise ecclesiastical spirit, without revolt or polemics, continuing to love and pray for the pope and the bishops, even to love Pope Francis more, pray more for him, and say, Holy Father, we cannot obey here because this will harm Mother Church. Evidently, we cannot collaborate in harming so great a treasure of Holy Mother Church, or of our cloistered charism, which the Church has blessed since Saint Teresa more than four centuries ago. To do so would deprive and harm the Church.
This will not honor the Holy See either. To obey in a way that harms the Church, by not celebrating this Holy Mass or not living our cloistered life strictly as Saint Teresa gave us, would be contrary to the Church, to souls, and to the honor of the Apostolic See. For the sake of the Church, the souls, and the honor of the Holy See, we will continue to celebrate the traditional Mass and live the cloistered life with peace, reverence, and love for the Church and for the pope. This is for the benefit of souls, and this is the greatest law of the Church. The greatest law and rule of the Church is the salvation of souls, and true obedience must be connected to this greater salvation.
I hope that this trial and time will pass. I am convinced that this motu proprio is short-lived. It cannot have a long life because it is against the nature of the Church’s tradition. In the future, God will surely give us popes who will restore the splendor of all the treasures of tradition, the cloistered life, and the priestly life for the benefit of the entire Church, to renew missionary zeal, convert souls to Christ, save souls, and glorify God.
This trial will pass, and we will offer it in humility as a cross united with Christ, sharing in the Church’s suffering, as in Golgotha. God will intervene as He always has. He is preparing the Holy Ghost with these beautiful communities of the traditional Mass all over the world, especially in the United States, with young families, youth, students, and young priests.
This gives us hope. In recent weeks, I had beautiful occasions to celebrate the traditional Mass with crowded communities and beautiful choirs praising God. I made a joke that in these liturgies, there were so many beautiful choirs that we even had the choir of the babies.
Jim Hale: That’s right, you can always count on that when you’re in the US.
Bishop Schneider: This is the hope. This is the youth. There’s nothing rigid as we are accused. Some say that those who love the Latin Mass, the traditional Mass, are rigid people, or that those who love the clarity of faith are rigid. No, I have never found anything rigid in all these places, nor anything contrary. There is joy, love for the Church, love for the Pope, and love for the bishop. This is the true renewal of the Church. Let us hope and have confidence in these difficult times.
Jim Hale: The choir of the babies, that’s really the best sound we can hear, isn’t it? Yes, Your Excellency, thank you so much for that encouragement. It means so much to hear from you. We love you so much. Here in the US and in Canada, we have a little Canadian flag over there, too, because, you know, that’s where John Henry is and Steve, so we pay homage to Canada as well. Are you going to write another book?
Bishop Schneider: Yes, it was not my intention and not my plan, as it was also not my intention to write a Christopher Wendt-style interview book. Other people pushed me to do this. I did it for love of souls, to illuminate souls with the doctrine. My book will be published first by Sophia Press in January. The title will be The Catholic Mass, with the subtitle Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy. The other book will be published in May, also by Sophia Press. It is an interview book with a Polish journalist. Again, it was not my intention, but he asked me, and I agreed. It will be a kind of continuation of the Christopher Wendt interview, where some topics are explained more deeply, and it will have the title The Springtime of the Church That Never Came.
Jim Hale: Ah, okay, so we have something to look forward to.
Bishop Schneider: And so, the truth will set us free. Only the truth, only the honest. We have to be intellectually honest before God. I love so much the motto of Saint Athanasius, my patron. In difficult times, he wrote to a bishop friend, in the first century, these words: it is not fitting that we live for the time. We have to live for the Lord.
Jim Hale: Well, he knew a little something about fighting heresy back then, didn’t he? And what a blessing he was to the Church, and what a blessing you are to the Church as well, Your Excellency. Thank you for your books. Were you surprised by the hundreds of thousands of copies your book sold?
Bishop Schneider: Yes. I am happy only if the book helps people to come closer to Christ and to love the Catholic truth more. Then I am happy also.
Jim Hale: Yes. Well, what a wonderful book it is. We look forward to your two forthcoming books as well, Your Excellency. Could you offer a blessing for us?
Bishop Schneider: First, I would like on this occasion to express my gratitude to Life Site News for its meritorious and heroic work in these difficult times. Thank you, Life Site News, for defending life, for taking a clear stance against the horror of the fetal industry, for opposing the abuse of the tissues and cell lines of our littlest brothers and sisters who are murdered for so-called health care and vaccines. Thank you, Life Site News, for your defense and clear voice, a solitary voice even in the Catholic media, to defend the littlest ones against the abuse of their cell lines for vaccinations or other medicines. God may reward all your work and bless you so that you may produce more fruits for the true renewal of the Church, for the salvation and illumination of souls with the truth of God. I will gladly bless this studio and all who are working here.
Jim Hale: Thank you, Your Excellency.
Bishop Schneider: Dominus vobiscum, et cum, spiritu tuo. Et benedictio dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et spiritus Santi descendant, super vos et maneat semper Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ now and forever.