Raymond Arroyo: He is an auxiliary bishop in Kazakhstan and a staunch defender of traditional church teaching. Last week I spoke to him at length about the Pachamama idol controversy, the Amazon Synod, and his new book with journalist Diane Montagna, Christus Vincit, Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age. This week, I am pleased to bring you part two of this very important interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Take a look.
Your Excellency, you spend a chapter in the book Christus Vincit discussing secularism and this new dictatorship, which I would suspect is responsible for much of what we have been discussing, the ambiguity in the church, the ambiguity, and the confusion we see. This is what you write. Now we have reached a peak of secularism, of this complete independence of man, of this enormous anthropocentrism where everyone decides for himself what is true and what is good or evil. Such secularism brings us a horrible and cruel society. We are witnessing this. It is cruel, and the result is egoism. Secularism leads to egoism. We have now reached a peak of egoism, and egoism is cruel only to me and no one else. Where does this lead, this idea, this thinking, this pervasive movement in society? And how is this related to Benedict the 16th dictatorship of relativism?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, maybe we can go back further. This secularism and anthropocentrism are, in my opinion, the core of sin itself because when Adam and Eve sinned, they wanted to be without God. And so this is secularism without God. We alone God. We exclude God. And this is the core of every sin. This is the continuous temptation of man, individually and collectively, to exclude God from personal life or social life. But there cannot be a vacuum. When you exclude God, you have to put something in his place, and these are idols. Therefore, the entire humanity lived in idolatry. This was the gravest sin in the Jews, the Hebrew people, and all the prophets continuously fought against this deep sin. Then Christ redeemed us from all sins, especially from this gravest sin of idolatry, of secularism.
Raymond Arroyo: When you were last here, we spoke about interreligious dialogue, particularly the Abu Dhabi document, which I will get to in a moment. In the book, you spend an entire chapter devoted to Islam and the de-Christianization of Europe, and you write this. For several years now in Europe, we have been witnessing a massive influx and presence of Islam, and its effect is supplanting and in some cases overtly opposing what remains of Christian European culture. But since the recent war in Syria, the influx of Muslims into Europe has been at least in part organized by those who plan to Islamicize Europe. And to Islamicize Europe means practically to destroy Christianity in the region, to de-Christianize Europe. What is to be gained by de-Christianizing Europe, by whom?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Only one religion, as we already said, the only true religion built by God is the Catholic Church, the Catholic Christianity. This is the only religion that is supernatural, to give God the central place, the true God, Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, in our life and in public life. Secularism, starting in the eighteenth century, specifically supported and spread with the Freemasonic ideology and political powers, aimed to eliminate Christianity or at least the influence of the light of Christ in public life. They did this throughout two hundred years, and now Europe is practically no longer Christian in public life, and in this vacuum, Islam is now coming. This is also a strategic movement to use Islam to further de-Christianize Europe, which was already de-Christianized through secularism in European countries.
Raymond Arroyo: And we need to talk about the other. As I said a moment ago, we talked about that Abu Dhabi statement that the Pope signed earlier this year. In it, he says, or the document says, the pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race, and language are willed by God in his wisdom. Does God really will that kind of pluralism, religious pluralism, other religions?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Of course, no. This is a contradiction to the entire divine revelation. God said in the first commandment, You shall not have other gods. This was the constant appeal of the prophets in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ also said there is no other way than I. I am the way. Only Jesus said I am the truth. This statement contradicts divine revelation to say that God wills the diversity of religions. This contradicts the entire revelation completely and opens the door to the movement we are now witnessing in Europe, welcoming the spread of the Islamic religio,n according to this phrase in the Abu Dhabi document, God wills the diversity and pluralism of religion. So God wills the Pachamama religion with their cult. It was a logical consequence. We have to go back to the roots and reject this phrase in this statement or similar statements as contradicting divine revelation.
Raymond Arroyo: Another subject you cover in your book is the doctrinal confusion we have been seeing over the last few years. Here, I want you to react to a point in the book where you talk about decentralization. Here is the quote: There can be no decentralization in doctrinal matters, otherwise the Catholic Church would be transformed into countless doctrinally different Christian denominations, as we can see occurring daily in the Protestant world. There can be a decentralization in pastoral approaches, which always have to be in conformity with doctrine. How do you square that with the synodal approach to governance we are seeing coming out of Rome?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, we have to clarify what synodal means. In my opinion, it is only a means to promote a specific agenda, the agenda to protestantize the Catholic Church further and to introduce new doctrines and new practices in the church, as we already mentioned in the Synod of the Amazon, the abolition of priestly celibacy or the introduction of a female diaconate, and the equality and diversity of all religions. This is a further step, and they only use the word synodality for this aim.
Raymond Arroyo: You talk about the loss of the supernatural in the book. You dedicate a whole chapter to that as well. How important is it to recover a sense of the supernatural, and why has it been lost? People clearly want it. I see it when I speak to children in schools. They have a very refined sense of the supernatural. You have to almost beat it out of them. What has happened to us as a society and a church?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Supernatural is God himself. His divine life is supernatural by definition. Christian creatures are natural, not supernatural. This is the basic difference between God and the creature: the supernatural. The greatest gift and mercy of God was that he was so condescending to us, to invite us, feeble, humble creatures from our simple nature, to go to this other level of life and knowledge in his life, his own divine life. This is supernatural, to give us a part in his own life. The Amazon Synod was contrary to the gospel because the main impact was put on the material aspects of nature, the temporal, not on the supernatural.
Raymond Arroyo: Before I let you go, you talk about reforming the church. At the end of the book, what would be your recommendations to reform the College of Cardinals?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: We have to reform the College of Cardinals with men who are true men of God, who are true apostles, who have the purity and integrity of the Catholic and Apostolic faith, as it is called in the canon of the mass. We have to renew the College of Cardinals with men who are one hundred percent sure in the purity and integrity of the Catholic faith and also in moral life.
Raymond Arroyo: What would be your advice to the layman watching tonight, considering all that is coming out of Rome now and what they are hearing in their own communities and around the world?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: First, I would say, dear brothers and sisters of the laity, I thank you very much as a bishop for your fidelity, which you have kept in these dark times. Please keep this fidelity and read a good catechism. You know better the old catechism because this is clear and simple and reflects the gospel. This is some advice to you. The other is to pray in the family, to pray the rosary, to make hours of reparation for the sins of the high clergy who betray Christ today, and also to pray for good new priests and to support good bishops who remain, that they have courage and strength and wisdom to be faithful shepherds in these dark times.
Raymond Arroyo: Christus Vincit, Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age by Bishop Athanasius Schneider is available at bookstores everywhere, online, and through EWTN Religious Catalog at EWTNRC.com.