Freemasons have infiltrated the Church to corrupt it with their ideas of relativism, naturalism, and anthropocentrism, including putting a man (priests) at the center of the Mass instead of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, discussed during an interview released Friday the evils of Freemasonry and its deep infiltration of the Church since the Second Vatican Council.
During an interview on the YouTube channel, Adrian Milag TV, that aired publicly on May 22, Bishop Schneider said while discussing his book Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith that he included a chapter on Freemasonry because it is one of the key modern evils that is not addressed in the Church’s official Catechism. The bishop went on to emphasize that Freemasonry is a form of Gnosticism and relativism that has deeply infiltrated the Church since the Second Vatican Council, especially through ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and the “man-centered” reorientation of the liturgy.
The section on Freemasonry is viewable in the link below, beginning at 20:52.
“This is one of the most dangerous sects and secret pseudo-religious sects, which is a form of (Gnosticism),” the bishop said. “In higher levels (of Freemasonry), it is ever more approaching the worship of Satan … and the basic dogma of Freemasonry is relativism, (they believe) ‘there is no truth in religion, all religions are equal, and everyone can choose his own god.’”
“The second dogma is the anthropocentrism that man must be in the center of all, not God,” he added.
Schneider then delved into why Freemasons have now infiltrated the Church.
“The greatest obstacle for the ideology of Freemasonry is Jesus Christ, the incarnated God,” His Excellency said. “This is most contrary to the entire spiritual edifice of Freemasonry. And, therefore, the true, full Catholic faith … is considered (to) the Freemasons the greatest antagonism to them.”
“And therefore, since Freemasonry has had the aim to marginalize the Catholic faith and to fight it,” he added. “And now they changed to another tactic (that) is really demonic in order to fight directly against the Catholic faith, they started to infiltrate within the Church to corrupt the Church with their ideas of relativism, of naturalism, of anthropocentrism within … this is the root of the current crisis of the Church since the Second Vatican Council.”
Schneider stressed that while he is not saying the Freemasons are directly responsible for the crisis in the Church, the similarities to masonic ideology since the Council are “really amazing,” especially ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and man becoming the center of the liturgy.
“The crisis (for) 60 years from the Council (onward) is the primacy (of) relativism, through the so-called ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. Jesus Christ is dissolved (of) His uniqueness among other religions,” he said.
“The second phenomenon within the Catholic Church since the Council is to put man at the center in the liturgy … and Christ is put at the corner, on the side, even in the churches. The Holy Eucharist … the living Christ, the living incarnated God, is put in the corner and the priest puts himself in his chair, in the center,” he added. “This is so anthropocentric, and the manner to celebrate Holy Mass facing the people like a closed circle … the altar is no longer an altar. No, it is a table, and the center is the priest (no longer) Christ. They say in theory, yes, but not in practice.”
READ: Bishop Schneider demolishes Cardinal Roche’s attack on Latin Mass
Schneider continued:
And so this is another basic characteristic of the crisis of the Catholic Church, which is also, I repeat, a characteristic of Freemasonry ideology. This is to say that ‘The primacy must be given to the nature (of) the current life here on earth, to the earthly realities’ to the harm of the eternal truth, to the harm of (the) grace of the spiritual life of grace with God, and this is our crisis. We must return again to … Christ … He must be the center.
In recent years, several Catholic prelates and thinkers have noted the apparent freemasonic infiltration of the Catholic Church. In 2024, Father Frank Unterhalt highlighted how Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich had striking visions of Freemasonic infiltration of the Church.
The state of the whole Church was shown to her, as always in such visions, in the image of St. Peter’s Church, and the secret sect branching out over the whole world in an uninterrupted war of destruction against it as the kingdom of the Antichrist,” the priest wrote. “The sect receives its signature from the apocalyptic beast, which, having risen from the sea, dwells with it and drives it to fight against the flock of Christ.”
“The mystic recognized that the goal of the enemy was infiltration and destruction,” he continued. “She saw ‘the people of the secret sect constantly breaking down the great church’ and saw the abominable beast among them.”
It often lay among them while they worked; they also went to it in the cave where it sometimes hid. During this time, I saw many good, pious people and especially clergymen being tortured, imprisoned and oppressed here and there throughout the world, and I had the feeling that they would one day become new martyrs.