Transcript:
Host: In this video, we share Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s letter to Bishop Joseph Strickland.
Letter from Bishop Schneider: Praised be Jesus Christ, Your Excellency Bishop Strickland, dear and esteemed brother in the episcopate. It is for me a privilege and a joy to express to you all my gratitude and appreciation for your intrepid dedication to uncompromisingly keep, transmit, and defend the Catholic faith which the apostles handed over to the church. All generations of Catholics, especially our ancestors, our fathers and mothers, our priests and religious sisters, and catechists, were themselves nurtured. In all truth, we can apply to you, dear Bishop Strickland, what Saint Basil once stated in his time:
“The one charge which is now sure to secure severe punishment is the careful keeping of the traditions of the fathers.”
Let me share with you the following highly timely words of the same great and holy bishop:
“The doctrines of true religion are overthrown.
The laws of the church are in confusion.
The ambition of men who have no fear of God rushes into high posts in the church, and exalted office is now publicly known as the prize of impiety.
The worse a man blasphemes, the more the people think him to be a bishop.
Clerical dignity is a thing of the past.
There is a complete lack of men shepherding the Lord’s flock with knowledge.
Churchmen in authority are afraid to speak.
Those who have reached power by human interest are slaves to those to whom they owe their advancement.
Faith is uncertain.
Souls are drenched in ignorance because adulterators of the word imitate the truth.
The mouths of true believers are dumb, while every blasphemous tongue wags free.
Holy things are trodden underfoot.”
We are indeed living in such a time as described by Saint Basil with striking similarity. The words of Saint Basil in his letter to Pope Saint Damasus, in which he asked for the Pope’s help and efficacious intervention, are fully applicable to our situation today.
The wisdom of this world wins the highest prizes in the church and has rejected the glory of the cross. Shepherds are banished, and in their places are introduced grievous wolves, hurrying the flock of Christ. Houses of prayer have none to assemble in them; desert places are full of lamenting crowds. The elders lament when they compare the present with the past. The younger are even more to be compassionated, for they do not know what they have been deprived of.
Dear Bishop Strickland, unlike Saint Basil, who addressed Pope Damasus, you do not, unfortunately, have the real chance to address Pope Francis in order that he may help you zealously keep the holy traditions of the past. On the contrary, the Holy See now puts you under scrutiny and threatens you with intimidation and deprivation of the episcopal care of your flock in Tyler, basically for the one reason that you, like Saint Basil, Saint Athanasius, and many other confessor bishops in history, are keeping the traditions of the fathers.
Only because you are not silencing the truth, only because you are not behaving like not a few bishops of our day who, using the words of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, are serving the times and demands of the masses, leaving their boat to the wind which happens to blow at the moment, and like chameleons, know how to give their word many colors.
However, dear Bishop Strickland, you have the happiness that all the popes of the past, all the courageous confessor bishops of the past, all the Catholic martyrs who, in the words of Saint Teresa of Avila, were resolved to undergo a thousand deaths for any one article of the Creed, are supporting and encouraging you.
Furthermore, the little ones in the church pray for you and support you. They are an ever-growing, yet small army of lay faithful in the United States as well as all over the world, who were put on the periphery by high-ranking churchmen, even in the Vatican, whose main concern seems to be pleasing the world and promoting their naturalistic agenda and the approval of the sin of homosexual activity under the guise of welcoming and inclusion.
Dear Bishop Strickland, thank you for being resolved to serve the Lord and not the times, as Saint Athanasius once admonished the bishops. I pray that more bishops in our day may, like you, raise their voices in defense of the Catholic faith, providing spiritual nourishment and consolation for many Catholics who often feel abandoned, like orphans.
For sure, future popes will thank you for your intrepid fidelity to the Catholic faith and its holy traditions, by which you have contributed to the honor of the Holy See, which was partly darkened and stained by our unfavorable times.
Saint Joseph, your patron, the good and faithful servant, be always by your side. And the Blessed Virgin Mary, our sweet Heavenly Mother, the destroyer of all heresies, be your strength and refuge.
With deep esteem, united in the holy battle for the faith and in prayers,
Bishop Athanasius Schneider
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