Transcript:
Father Paisley: As I said at Mass, it’s such an honor to have Bishop Schneider here with us. We’re the little parish that has a big cathedral heart, I told him. We’re a small place in between the big cities of Washington and New York, and so he’s in the heartland of New Jersey. Down here in southern New Jersey, we have many people from Philadelphia and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, both from the city and the suburbs, who have come down. I think there may also be a few people from the state of Delaware who have come up. So, we welcome all of you to this wonderful day.
Thank you for praying to Our Lady for the weather. She came through wonderfully for us, and it’s just a gorgeous day.
As you know, Bishop Schneider is the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Astana in Kazakhstan. He is of German descent. His parents were originally from Ukraine, and during the time of the Soviets, they were forced into the gulags in Russia. They eventually ended up in Kazakhstan or what is now Uzbekistan. Later, they were able to move to Estonia, and eventually, as the Bishop said, by a miracle, they were able to leave the Soviet Union.
That’s where he joined the order of the Canons Regular in Austria, an ancient order based in Portugal. He spent many years teaching in a seminary in Brazil, then returned to Rome, earned his doctorate, and served on their general council. He went back to help in Kazakhstan and was made the Auxiliary Bishop there. He has been there ever since.
We all know him from his wonderful writings, especially Dominus Est, and his clear love for and expression of the truth of our faith and all its traditions.
So, with great honor, I introduce to you Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Dear Father Paisley, I thank you very much for your kind words of greeting and for your invitation to come here to Berlin and visit your parish. I am very grateful to the providence of God that I could celebrate this beautiful Mass with you today. I am very touched and moved, seeing here the young Church. We celebrated the Mass in the manner in which it was always celebrated, the Mass of all ages. But this is the young Church. This is the true springtime of the Church. Especially when we see the young people, the children, and the young clergy, it is a clear demonstration and a sign of hope for us.
Let us continue in this way, and God will bless our path. I also wish blessings to your Father, your parish priest here, and to all of you.
I would like to speak to you today about the social and universal Kingship of Christ. Jesus Christ is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. This is a truth of our faith. Jesus Christ, the incarnate God and the Savior of the world, is truly a King.
He Himself confessed this truth in the face of His salvific death on the Cross when He proclaimed before Pilate, before the representative of the pagan and unbelieving world power of those times, “Yes, I am a King.” And before He ascended into Heaven, Christ solemnly reiterated, “All power is given unto me in Heaven and on earth.”
In what does the Kingship of Jesus consist? His Kingship is not from this world, as He Himself has told us. Its origin is in Heaven, in God Himself. This Kingship was given to Jesus directly from God at the moment of His Incarnation. At that same moment, Jesus was constituted Priest forever.
The Kingship of Jesus is a Kingship of truth, of peace, of love, and of justice. It is the only Kingdom that truly sets human beings free. It frees man from various forms of slavery. The worst form of slavery is the slavery of sin. This slavery is the most cruel and dangerous because it corrupts man’s reason into error, and it turns man’s will toward evil, and ultimately, toward hatred.
Man, fallen in sin, as well as human societies, often choose for themselves not Christ as their King, but other kings. Human beings and human societies cannot exist without subjection to a king or a ruler. When man or society refuses to subject themselves to Christ as their King, they necessarily subject themselves, whether they like it or not, to another king who is not Christ.
Man, and human society as well, cannot exist and live in a neutral area, in an area without a king or a ruler. Oftentimes, men and human societies speak these rebellious and arrogant words, words ultimately instilled by Satan: We don’t want Christ to be our King, Renæ Christum nolumus.
Every human being and every human society has been created for a purpose: to accept Christ as their King. Instead, sinful man and unbelieving human and political societies proclaim, as did the Jewish priests and the Pharisees in front of Pilate, We have no other king except Caesar.
Every human person, and every human and political society, should say the contrary: We have no other King except Christ.
During the cruel persecution of Christians in Mexico by the Freemasonic government in the 1920s, and on behalf of the Communists in Spain in the 1930s, thousands of Catholics, including many children and adolescents, accepted martyrdom with the cry, Long live Christ the King! Viva Cristo Rey!
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that the duty of offering God genuine worship concerns man both individually and socially. I repeat this not only individually, but also socially. This is stated by the Catechism.
This is the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ. This is from Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae.
By constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward enabling them to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality, the moral laws, and the structures of the communities in which they live.
The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love for the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion, which is the Catholic and Apostolic Church. Christians are called to be the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the Kingship of Christ over all creation and, in particular, over human societies.
End of quotation. This is from the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, a very traditional teaching. I repeat, the Kingship of Christ is, in particular, also over human societies.
A true modern apostle of the social and universal Kingship of Christ was Cardinal Louis Pie, Bishop of Poitiers in France, in the second half of the 19th century. His episcopal magisterium prepared the Syllabus of Pope Pius IX and the papal teachings about the social Kingship of Christ in the 20th century.
There are some powerful witnesses of the Popes about this. Cardinal Pie was greatly admired by Pope Pius X, who, when giving an audience at the French seminary, declared that he had often read and re-read the works of Cardinal Pie.
This veneration of Pius X for the great Bishop of Poitiers is demonstrated for us by this account, found in a witness testimony from Canon Vigie. He says that a priest from Poitiers recalled that one day, he had the honor of being introduced into the office of the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius X. Pius X, in the company of a religious who was also from Poitiers, said, “Ah, the Diocese of Poitiers…”
The Holy Father exclaimed, raising his hands when he heard the name Poitiers mentioned, “I have almost the entire works of your Cardinal,” the saintly Pontiff continued, “and for years, there has hardly been a day that I have not read some of its pages.” So spoke Pius X.
Cardinal Pie himself, one year before his death, upon receiving the cardinal’s biretta, had spoken to the President of the Republic of France in these terms. I quote him:
“A most strict obligation is incumbent upon me to employ the remainder of my life, the final fervor of my soul, to inculcate upon our contemporaries the apostolic sentence, which the thirty years of my pastoral teaching has been nothing other than the expression of namely, let no person impose upon another any foundation outside of the one that has been laid by the hand of God, which is Christ Jesus. For people as well as individuals, for modern societies as well as ancient societies, for republics as well as monarchies, there has been no name under heaven given to man by which they can be saved, except the name of Jesus Christ.”
We can admire the following affirmations of Cardinal Pie, which reveal the true spirit of the Apostles and of the Church of all times and which, therefore, are fully relevant for our own time as well. He says:
“Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of the entire social edifice. Apart from Him, all is shaken, all is divided, all is lost.
Place, therefore, in the heart of your contemporaries, in the heart of our public men, this profound conviction that they cannot do anything for the security of the country and her liberties, so long as they do not hold Christ as the basic cornerstone, which has been laid by the divine hand.
Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of our country, the recapitulation of our country, the summary of our history. Jesus Christ is our entire future.”
Then he continues: “Calm yourselves, the doctrine of the Syllabus and of the First Vatican Council is as ancient as the doctrines of the Apostles.
It is not a new doctrine. The Syllabus and the Council are as ancient as the doctrine of the Scriptures.”
For example, to those who obstinately refuse to recognize the social authority of Christianity, look at the response given by Pope St. Gregory the Great. He is commenting on the Gospel chapter relating the Adoration of the Magi and explains the mystery of the gifts offered to Jesus by the representatives of the pagans. The holy Doctor of the Church, Gregory the Great, expresses himself in these terms:
“The Magi recognized in Jesus the triple quality of God, of Man, and of King.
They offered gold to the King, incense to God, and myrrh to the Man.”
Well, the Pope continues: “There are some heretics who believe that Jesus is God, and who equally believe that Jesus is Man, but who absolutely refuse to believe that His reign as King extends everywhere.
They only accept Him as God and as Man, but not as Ruler in every society, in all human realities.”
You say, brother, that you have a peaceful conscience, accepting, as you do, the program of liberal Catholicism, since you intend to remain orthodox, believing that it is enough to affirm the divinity and humanity of Christ, and that this suffices for unassailable Christianity.
Stop deceiving yourself. From the time of St. Gregory the Great, there were already heretics who believed these two points with you: only the divinity and the humanity of Christ, but not that He is King.
His Kingship includes His influence in society as well. Cardinal Pie continues, saying that their heresy consisted in not wanting to recognize at all that God made man also has a Kingship that extends everywhere and to all.
No, you are not irreproachable in your faith, and Pope St. Gregory, more energetic than the Syllabus, inflicts on you the note of heresy if you are among those who, making it their duty to offer incense to Jesus, do not wish at all to add the gold for Jesus.
Cardinal Pie also said: “The dethronement of God on earth is a crime to which we must never become resigned. Let us never cease to protest against it.”
Note the last words addressed by our Lord to His apostles before He ascended into Heaven: “All power is given to Me in Heaven and on earth. Go therefore and teach all nations.”
You will notice that our Lord Jesus Christ does not say “all men,” or “all individuals,” or “all families.” He says, Teach all nations. He does not merely say, baptize children, teach the catechism, bless marriages, administer the sacraments, or give religious burial to the dead. Of course, the mission He confers on the apostles includes all of that, but it includes more, because it has a public and social character.
Jesus Christ is King of peoples and nations. Go, teach all nations.
Explaining the Lord’s Prayer, Cardinal Pie illustrates the doctrine of the social Kingship of Christ with these words: Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
He insisted that all these phrases demand the public, social reign of God through the acknowledgement of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom the Father has sent.
The name of God is not hallowed as it should be if it is not hallowed publicly and socially. Our Lord’s Kingdom is meant to come not only in individual souls and in Heaven, but on Earth through the submission of states and nations to His rule. The will of God is not done on earth as it is in Heaven if organized societies here below do not acknowledge their duties to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Catholic, Cardinal Pie, goes on to say, is not a being who shuts himself up in an oratory, from which the tumult of the world is carefully excluded, and who, occupied exclusively with saving his own soul, takes no interest in the way the world is going.
When our Lord taught His apostles the Our Father, He made it clear that none of His followers could accomplish the first act of religion, which is prayer, without putting himself in relation with all that can advance or hinder the reign of God on earth. He must do this in proportion to his intellectual attainments and to the extent of the horizon open before him.
As long as this world lasts, let us never consent to limit the reign of God to Heaven only, or even to Heaven and interior souls.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. The dethronement of God on earth is a crime to which we must never become resigned. Let us never cease to protest against it.
Cardinal Pie writes further, stating: “Here we have the kernel of the question. Let us not forget, nor allow people to forget, what the great Apostle teaches: that Jesus Christ, after ascending into Heaven, went there in order to fill all things implevit omnia.
It is not a question of His presence as God, because this presence always was. Rather, it concerns His presence as God-Man at the same time.
In fact, Jesus Christ is, from now on, present to all things on earth as well as in Heaven. He fills the world with His name, with His law, with His light, and with His grace. Nothing is placed outside His sphere of attraction or of repulsion.
Nothing and no person can remain totally indifferent to Christ or estranged from Him. One is either for Him or against Him.
He is placed as the cornerstone, a construction stone for some, a stumbling stone for others, a touchstone for all.
The history of humanity, the history of nations, the history of peace and war above all, the history of the Church is only, and entirely, the history of Jesus, filling all things.”
Neither in His person, nor in carrying out His rights, can Jesus Christ be divided, dissolved, or splintered. In Him, the distinction between nature and operation can never become a separation or opposition. The divine cannot be hostile to the human, nor the human to the divine. On the contrary, He is peace, unity, and reconciliation. He is like the comma on the written page, the factor that makes two things one.
That is why St. John tells us: “Every spirit that dissolves Jesus Christ is not of God and belongs to him who is the Antichrist, of whom you have heard that he is coming and is already in the world.”
I hear certain noises getting louder and louder. I hear certain sayings becoming more common day after day. Something is being introduced that threatens the world, and it is being introduced into the heart of societies. It aims to dissolve that heart. So I cry out: Be on your guard against the Antichrist.
Cardinal Pie’s teaching is a true reflection of the teaching of the Apostles and of the constant doctrine of the Doctors of the Church. We find the same teaching expressed in the encyclicals and magisterial pronouncements of a great number of Popes.
Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Libertas, issued in the year 1888, states: “Wherefore, civil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey in reverence His power and authority.”
Justice, therefore, forbids, and reason itself forbids the state to be godless. This is very important. I repeat this statement: justice and reason themselves forbid that the state be godless or atheistic, or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness, namely, to treat the various religions, as they call them, alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges.
Pope Leo XIII wrote this in the 19th century, especially for Catholic nations. We have to observe that in those times, it was considered wrong for Catholic countries to place the Catholic religion on the same level as a sect. Against this error, Pope Leo XIII protested in his encyclical, which I now quote:
“Since then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the state, that religion must be professed which alone is true and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic states, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engraved upon it.
This religion, therefore, the rulers of the state must preserve and protect, if they would provide prudently and usefully for the good of the community.
For public authority exists for the welfare of those whom it governs, and although its proximate end is to lead men to the prosperity found in this life, yet in so doing it ought not to diminish, but rather to increase, man’s capability of attaining to the supreme good in which his everlasting happiness consists which never can be attained if religion is disregarded in civil society.”
These are the words of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical.
In 1939, Pope Pius XII transmitted the same ever-Catholic doctrine about the social and universal Kingdom of Christ. He says: “What heart is not inflamed, is not swept forward to help, at the sight of so many brothers and sisters who, misled by error, passion, temptation, and prejudice, have strayed away from faith in the true God and have lost contact with the joyful and life-giving message of Christ?
Who among the soldiers of Christ, ecclesiastical or layman, does not feel himself incited and spurred on to greater vigilance, to more determined resistance, by the sight of the ever-increasing hosts of Christ’s enemies?
As he perceives the spokesmen of these tendencies deny or in practice neglect the vivifying truth and the values inherent in belief in God and in Christ, as he sees them not only break the tables of God’s commandments, but substitute other tables and other standards, stripped of the ethical content of the Revelation standards in which the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross has no more place in society?”
This is very up-to-date. Pope Pius XII, in 1939, says that society breaks the tables of the Ten Commandments of God and substitutes these commandments with others, and creates societies in which the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross has no more place.
The same Pope continues: “The Holy Gospel narrates that when Jesus was crucified, there was darkness over the whole earth a terrifying symbol of what has happened and what still happens spiritually wherever incredulity, blind and proud of itself, has succeeded in excluding Christ from modern life, especially from public life, and has undermined faith in God as well as faith in Christ.
The consequence is that the moral values, by which in other times public and private conduct was guided…”
The moral values, by which, in other times, public and private conduct was guided, have fallen into disuse. The much-wanted civilization of society, which has made ever more rapid progress, has been withdrawing man, the family, and the state from the beneficent and regenerating effects of the idea of God and of the teaching of the Church. This has caused to reappearance, in regions in which for many centuries shone the splendors of Christian civilization, in a manner ever clearer, ever more distinct, ever more distressing the signs of a corrupt and corrupting paganism.
There was darkness when they crucified Jesus.
They did not perceive the inability of all human effort to replace the law of Christ with anything equal to it. They became vain in their thoughts, says Pope Pius XII.
When, in our days, individuals and entire societies reject Christ as King, we are called to confess Him and offer Him expiation and reparation. When, in our days, the truth of Christ is denied and perverted into its opposite even by some clerics inside the Church, we are called to confess courageously the unchanging, divine, and liberating truth of Christ.
Already in 1888, Pope Leo XIII left us this lucid and valid teaching. I quote him: “It is quite unlawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, of speech, of writing, or of worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man.
For if nature had really granted them, it would be lawful to refuse obedience to God, and there would be no restraint in human liberty.” So says Pope Leo XIII. We are living in a time where the commandments of God are denied, both in theory and in practice, and without blessing, perverted into their opposite.
We are talking here, for example, about the First Commandment. The First Commandment says: You shall have no other gods besides Me – Me, who am God, the Most Holy Trinity.
This is the only one and true God: the Holy Trinity. When there is no worship of the Most Holy Trinity, and concretely, when there is no worship of Christ, the King of kings, there is no true worship of God at all. There is no salvation, because all other forms of worship do not correspond to the will of God, except the worship of the Most Holy Trinity. They do not correspond to the will of God, to the First Commandment.
The First Commandment does not admit even the slightest ambiguity or vagueness.
A Catholic can acknowledge only the cult of the Most Holy Trinity and of Christ, the incarnate God and King. Therefore, a Catholic cannot participate even indirectly in any other religious cult that is not the cult of the Most Holy Trinity. A Catholic cannot burn even the smallest grain of incense before the images of the new idols, such as the idol of a standard religion, the idol of public opinion, or the idol of political correctness.
Pope Pius XII stated that many noble minds are recognizing in the Catholic Church principles of belief and life that have stood the test of two thousand years the strong cohesion of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which, in union with the successor of Peter, spends itself in enlightening minds with the teaching of the Gospel, in guiding and sanctifying man, and which is generous in its material condescension toward all, but firm when, even at the cost of torments or martyrdom, the Magisterium, the bishops, and the Pope have to say: Non licet it is not allowed to do this.
These words of Pius XII remain ever valid and up to date. They are a pure mirror of the words of the Apostles and of the Fathers of the Church.
The same Pope continues, saying: “In the recognition of the royal prerogatives of Christ, and in the return of individuals and of societies to the law and truth of Christ and to His love, lies the only way to salvation.
Following the sublime teaching of Christ, summed up by Himself in the twofold precept of love of God and of neighbor, millions of souls have reached, are reaching, and shall reach peace.
History, wisely called by a great Roman, the teacher of life, has proved for close on two thousand years how true is the word of Scripture: He will not have peace who resists God. He will not have peace who resists God. For Christ alone is the cornerstone on which man and society can find stability and salvation.”
On this cornerstone the Church is built, and hence against her the adversary can never prevail. The gates of hell shall not prevail, nor can they ever weaken her. Rather, internal and external struggles tend to augment her force and multiply the laurels of her glorious victories.
The Catholic Church is the City of God. The Catholic Church is the city whose King is Truth, whose law is Love, and whose measure is Eternity.
St. Augustine said this: Our measure in the Church is eternity, not temporal welfare.
And so, may all Catholics in our days, beginning with the Pope, and extending to the most humble and weak member of the Church, strive vigorously in their words, deeds, prayers, and sufferings for the installation of the social and universal Kingship of Christ.
Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.
Thank you for your attention.