ROME, May 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — In the midst of the crisis in the Church, Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan warned Catholics at a conference in Rome last week to be aware of interpretations of Catholic doctrine that wear a “deceptive appearance of truth” while departing from the real doctrine of the faith.
Reading and commenting on texts from the First Vatican Council (1869-70) about the fact that the truths of the faith are revealed by God — and therefore cannot be changed or called into question — Schneider noted that it is “our situation today” that there are some within the Church who, while having accepted the faith under the guidance of the Church, are now seeking to change that faith and are even calling the deposit of faith into question. He spoke on May 6 at the Rome Life Forum, which took place at the Hotel Columbus just steps away from St. Peter’s Basilica.
The bishop read directly from a 1870 portion of the Council declaration dealing with faith and reason, which stated that the doctrine of the faith, as revealed by God, cannot be “perfected by human intelligence” but is a “divine deposit committed to the spouse of Christ to be faithfully protected and infallibly promulgated.”
“Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to be maintained, which has once been declared by Holy Mother Church, and there must never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more profound understanding,” Schneider quoted the Council fathers saying.
He read from the same Council that those in position of authority within the Church, especially the pope, have as their duty the “warding off and elimination of errors from the Church” in order to safeguard the “spreading of the light of the pure faith.”
Commenting on this, he said: “So, it is claritatis laetitia, the joy of clarity, [that is now required],” he said, adding that the Council’s insight was “very, very up to date.”
Schneider then went on to quote extensively from Pope St. Pius X, who in 1903 warned the faithful that a “sacrilegious war is now, almost everywhere, stirred up and fomented against God.”
He continued quoting Pius X: “Such, in truth, is the audacity and the wrath employed everywhere in persecuting religion, in combating the dogmas of the faith, in brazen effort to uproot and destroy all relations between man and the Divinity! While, on the other hand, and this according to the same apostle (cf. 2 Thess. 2: 3) is the distinguishing mark of Antichrist, man has with infinite temerity put himself in the place of God, raising himself above all that is called God; in such wise that although he cannot utterly extinguish in himself all knowledge of God, he has contemned God’s majesty and, as it were, made of the universe a temple wherein he himself is to be adored.”
Schneider commented that Pope Pius X’s analysis can be “fully applied” to the current time. “It was for me a discovery how prophetical [are his words]. This pope had a vision, and examined the real situation,” he said.
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