Transcript:
Robert Nugent: So I’m joined today by His Excellency, Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider, who is the auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan. Like many of us, we’ve been reading many of your books over the years, especially, and my favorite was Christus Vincit, and the latest one, Credo, which has been very, very interesting. And thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about the new book that has been published, called Flee From Heresy.
Many of us in the Church who love the faith struggle a little bit sometimes, trying to understand what is going on when so many bishops and many priests teach us one thing, and we know that the Faith is another. For example, in Ireland, recently, a priest refused communion to a politician who promotes abortion, who voted for abortion, and other priests in the country were saying, “No, you should give Communion to everybody.” And I think a lot of Catholics are left confused. And so, your book, Flee From Heresy, is very timely. Could you give us a little understanding of why you have written this book, and how it’s structured, and how it can help us in the faith?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: First, it was not my idea. It was again the faithful who asked me, the same as with Credo and with Christus Vincit. So I wrote a smaller book as a gesture of love for the faithful, as a bishop, as a shepherd in the church, in a difficult time of evident confusion, very widespread in the church. And so, as a bishop, in my conscience, I cannot simply be silent and leave the faithful without an answer, without guidance, because we are one family in the church. And the bishops, they have their holy duty in the bishops’ ordination to also be concerned with the good of the entire church, not only of their flock. This spoke the Second Vatican Council in the Lumen Gentium document. Yes, every bishop must always be concerned with the entire good of the church, because not intervening in administrative and canonical issues of other dioceses this is not the case. But to state the faith, to proclaim the faith of all times, of our Holy Mother Church, this is a manifestation, a gesture of love for the faithful, I consider, even a promotion for the love, for the church, for the Holy See, and so. And with this intention, I published the book because we are living in an evident, confusing time.
And you see, we can compare this with the material world, with the, let us say, with the physician, the entire body of physicians, of the doctors, when there is a spread, let us say, an epidemic, or viruses are spreading, and you are a physician, a doctor, and you are doing nothing, it is a grave omission in your conscience, and you have to warn people, “This is a virus, these are the dangers,” and so on. And now the same is even more important for the soul, for the spiritual world, because here is in danger the eternal life, the eternal destiny of a soul, or eternal condemnation, because people can be condemned by God by obstinately refusing his divinely revealed truth. This is a fact. This is the doctrine of Holy Scripture, of the entire tradition of the church. You can be condemned forever in hell by obstinately denying a divinely revealed truth. So, and therefore, I have to warn people who are now engaging in heresy, or priests, or bishops, even unfortunately, and to recall to them the ever-valid, perennial teaching of the Church, which cannot be changed by any council, by no pope can change a perennial, always valid doctrine which was transmitted uninterruptedly through the 2000 years. And so we have to address this and to warn people, to give them again the sense of being sure in faith, that this can say, “I know my faith, and this I am convinced of my faith,” because for something ambiguous, no one will give their life for. You will give your life only for the real truth in the divine truth. For this, yes, we will give our lives with God’s grace.
Robert Nugent: When I was reading your book, you touched on some very relevant topics that impact us today, such as Fiducia Supplicans, which was published before Christmas last year. And many commentators, like lay podcasters like myself, who said, “This is a radical departure from the faith that we have been taught.” And, you know, I have friends that are gay and I’ve explained it to them over the years, “Look, marriage is between a man and a woman, that’s the only relationship that can be blessed. You know, it is a sin to live in these relationships,” and all of a sudden they were throwing back at me, “Well, now the Pope is allowing us to be blessed.” Robert, how can you defend the faith in it, and it’s almost like we’re caught on the back foot here, trying to defend what we were taught was the faith of the church, and you have touched on it in your book. Is it not? It’s very difficult for Catholics to respectfully challenge the Holy Father and these confusing teachings at this moment in time. What is the way forward for us Catholics with these problems?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Well, the church is a family, and the Pope is not a dictator. He is a father, and so we have to be afraid when we express our sincere, honest concerns about an evident harm to the church, as in this case, the blessing of homosexual couples or adulterous couples. And we have examples from the Holy Scripture itself, Saint Paul publicly admonished, advised, admonished corrected Peter, the first Pope in Antioch. You can read the letter to the Galatians, second chapter, and it was publicly, not privately, publicly. And Saint Paul said to the first Pope, “You are not going correctly according to the truth of the gospel.”
And why did he decide, Saint Paul, nevertheless, to write this down, even though he could have made only the admonition to Peter orally and not fix it in written form for all generations, for all times to see? It was important that all generations know that it can occur, that even the highest member of the church, the pope, can make an error and must be admonished. This said, also Saint Augustine, when Saint Augustine was commenting on this, the Letter to the Galatians, he said that it was from the Holy Spirit inspired to write this down, this episode, not to silence this episode. Why? And then Saint Thomas Aquinas also, he is interprets this, quoting Saint Augustine. Saint Thomas Aquinas said, it is from the Holy Spirit that it was fixed, because even the subjects in the church can or must, in some cases, admonish, of course, respectfully, even the highest superior.
So you see, the Church Fathers accepted the possibility even to admonish the Pope, and he is evidently doing something harmful. There is a case, for example, in history, which happened in, I think it was in the fifth century. There was the spreading of Monothelitism, Monophysitism, denying the true humanity of Christ from the East. And there was a Patriarch in Constantinople who was very ambiguous and almost heretical. And the Pope was there, Constantinople returned to Rome, and the Pope did not condemn this patriarch or this text. And he was in Santa Maria Maggiore, and all the people, the faithful, were in the cathedral, in the Basilica, and then they stood up, all the faithful, and said to the Pope, “We will not go out, and we will not permit you now to continue the Holy Mass, if you will not promise us that you will condemn this heretical, ambiguous text,” and the Pope said, “Yes, I promise I will condemn it.”
Robert Nugent: This is a very moving example from history of the church where the faithful, in their sense of faith, publicly admonished the Pope to condemn something which is erroneous or harmful, or ambiguous for the faith, for the good of the church. So it was not a rebellion. It was a gesture of the children towards the father to admonish him to do something, to avoid something that is harmful for the entire family. And so we have to address these issues in the same way.
I thank you so much for giving us this clarity, because so many Catholics feel a bit frustrated about voicing their opinion. But when in Ireland, we lived through some very, very difficult times. We lived through two referendums and especially the last referendum, where many bishops were very quiet, and they let various groups, such as the Association of Catholic Priests, say, “Look, we can’t be dogmatic about abortion. We can’t, you know, say, ‘Well, if it’s right or wrong,'” which I found very, very disheartening. And because the church was so weak here, we passed it with an overwhelming majority, because so many bishops, so many priests, were quiet, and we went from 2,000 abortions to 10,000 abortions. And we’ve seen this kind of low destruction of the faith in Ireland. And with the synodal process, we saw really how far we had fallen. What is the way forward for bishops and priests now, when we see that we will be closing so many churches, and so many parishes are dwindling? How can we move forward now and rebuild a church?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: We can only move forward on a solid foundation. Otherwise, it is an illusion. As our Lord said in the Gospel, we cannot continue to build upon sand. Yes, it’s in our eyes, it’s collapsing. They are closing churches. This is a collapse because it’s built on sand over the past, yes, years. And so we have to return to the traditional Catholic faith, a crystal clear, simple faith. Take the old catechisms and learn them. Read the good, crystal clear encyclicals of the popes from the past. They are ever valid and timely. Read the Church Fathers, and some, of course, also valid documents in our time, like the Credo of Paul the Sixth, it’s very valid, Humanae Vitae, Pope John Paul the Second, Evangelium Vitae on the uncompromising defense of human life, and his encyclical on morality as Veritatis Splendor. So there are some, and stick to these texts, to the crystal clear texts. Some texts, unfortunately, are ambiguous or not so clear. It’s not helping us, even if these texts are from the council or of some post-conciliar popes, it’s not helping us. But take these texts which are crystal clear, and this so that you can say, every one of us, “I know my faith,” and for this divine faith, with God’s grace, I’m ready to give my life.
I will never give my life; no one will give their life for something ambiguous. No, he will not give for something ambiguous and then to build upon the solid, ever valid, traditional faith to be rebuilt in the church and on the liturgy, on the worship with sacredness, respect, reverence, all sublimity. This we must restore. There is no other way. There will be no renewal of the church without again the traditional forms, ever valid and proven by saints for millennia, not by 50 years liturgically, but by centuries, by millennium, the liturgy of the saints. Saint Patrick, of all the other saints, the same basically, the same spirit of awe, the same forms of reverence, and so on, of silence, of adoration. This we must restore, the utmost reverence in the Holy Eucharist, without these, there’s no healing in the church. All the rest is simply human work condemned to collapse.
We must not take care of the leaves of the tree, but of the roots of the tree. When we don’t take care of the roots, the tree will bear no fruit, and the leaves will be dry. So we must take care of the roots. And in our day, it seems that the church, bureaucracy, and administration, synodal meetings and ways, and so on, are circling around the leaves only of the tree, not of the roots. We have to go back to the roots. This is the only true way to renew the church.
Robert Nugent: Yes, I firmly believe this. I’ve been blogging about this for a number of years, how we treat the Eucharist with such disrespect in Ireland. Sometimes we go to Masses, and even bishops and priests won’t minister at the Eucharist; they will get lay people to do this. And then we’re wondering why we have no vocations, why we have no, why people are not going to confession. And we’ve really broken the connection to sanctifying grace by, well, we’ve gotten rid of confession, and people then don’t understand what they’re receiving. Is there a way forward for the Novus Ordo to re-encounter this divine reality of encountering our Lord, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, but by giving him the proper focus?
Because at the moment, there’s a lot of debate in the church about this, and people saying, “Oh, you’re fixated on a form, Robert, why are you blogging about the TLM?” And I’m just saying we spend so little time, we spend so little time meditating on our Lord in contemplation. What is so wrong with half an hour or an hour of contemplation of a well-catechized congregation worshiping our Lord in the TLM? Is there a way that we can propose this beauty to the church, but without being divisive or without being accused of being divisive, of being, acting in some way superior? What are your thoughts on this?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: There is no issue of divisive or superior. These are the categories that I don’t work with in this issue. It is about the Lord. Simply, it’s about the Lord, not about us. It’s about him. And so we have to turn again towards the Lord. We turned our backs, even literally, materially, to the Lord. This is the disease. This is the root of the crisis and of the lack of fecundity, fruits, in the church.
We have, again, bodily, visibly, the entire church and assembly really to turn towards the Lord in the liturgy, all looking upon him, to give him this way to say, “He is the most important.” We must really turn to the Lord. And this visible turning to the Lord during the Mass is a manifestation of our interior conversion to the Lord. Conversion means in Latin, conversatio, which means conversing, to turn to the other way. And so, this is the first indispensable, visible, concrete act, because we cannot renew the church only with beautiful words and theories. This is not working. This is gnostic. This is Protestant. We must have the incarnational method. Incarnation means concrete, and so completely, please turn to the Lord, priest and faithful, during the Mass. This is what already many times Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger already explained and asked for when he was a cardinal, and then as a pope, and also Cardinal Robert Sarah, several times, asked that the church might again celebrate the Holy Mass towards the Lord, not the Traditional Latin Mass, the Novus Ordo. We have to turn to the Lord. I think this is the first.
The second, very important, is to kneel down and to venerate with the utmost reverence the holy host, the Lord, during the reception of Holy Communion. We must manifest publicly, to all, that we believe that he is here, that this Holy Host is not a kind of common fruit or something symbolically, but this is the entire divinity, the immense divinity of God, of Christ, is here in this small host present, really, so we must fall down simply, as the church did during millennium. Always received Holy Communion on their knees, the people.
It was an instinctive manifestation of the faith. It was even a requirement of your heart, of your believing heart, to simply fall down and say, as Saint Thomas the Apostle, “My God and my Lord,” and so and receive him on the tongue, to avoid any danger of irreverence or of falling down of the small fragments from the host, because you are touching it first with your two fingers, then with the palm of the hand and with your fingers and so on, without a convenient plate. All these elements are very dangerous, a lack of care, a lack of guarantee, a lack of security. We have to avoid these.
And even when the Holy Host, the small Holy Host, which is the entire divinity of Christ, there is his holy body and blood and soul, and this is for you, really the Lord and the most holy, then you will instantaneously fall down. You will instantaneously avoid any possible exterior moment of insecurity, carelessness, and so on, as is the case in receiving in the hand today. Yes. And so these two points, I think, are to convert, to turn to the Lord during the Mass celebrations, and to kneel down and receive on the tongue our Lord, like the converted sinner and like the child. Jesus Christ said, “If you will not convert and become like a child, you will not enter the kingdom of God.” He did not say, “If you will not convert and be like an adult, standing and taking the food.” No. He said, “If you will not convert and become like a child.” A child, a small child, receives food from the mother by feeding, not self-feeding.
And so we have really to take it seriously, the faith in the Eucharist, the Real Presence of our Lord. And we had a divine, heavenly instruction on how to proceed for the communion in Fatima. The Angel of Fatima, who appeared in 1916 to the three children, demonstrated how to receive. The Angel himself knelt down, and he commanded the children, “Kneel down,” and then he took the chalice and gave Holy Communion to the children kneeling and on the tongue, you see. We have, and this apparition is approved by the church, by all the popes since then, as supernatural; that this is surely supernatural, it is. This is the judgment of the church on Fatima, so we have a heavenly instruction on how to receive the holy commandment. So these two, it’s not an issue of formality, no, it’s an issue of faith. It’s an issue of love. When you love someone, just as a young man loves his bride, he will be inventive and make gestures of flowers to give flowers, to give attention. And then someone will accuse him, “Oh, you are playing only with formality.” No one will accept this. No, because I love my bride. I have respect for my bride, not only love, but I respect her. Therefore, I am showing her not only love, but also some kind of respect also, and dignity. This is a requirement of love. But here more in the Eucharist, a requirement of faith, of love.
And so these two pillars, and then, of course, the Catechism, to restore the traditional crystal clear teaching on the entire faith and this, and then the life we have to promote on all levels, a real Christian, moral life, in our personal moral life, that priests, bishops may give an example of really holy life, at least of desire to strive for holiness. Lay people, families to again, to awaken the desire of all to strive for holiness. As the Second Vatican Council again repeated, and in this, I consider the main importance of the Second Vatican Council to be a universal call of all members of the Church, seriously to call for holiness, these two pillars, true faith, true liturgy, the tradition, the reverence, and a desire for a true Christian holy life. These are the three pillars that we must promote for a true, authentic renewal of the church.
Robert Nugent: Yes, I think a lot of Catholics will find this very heartening, because so many people write to me. They feel very dejected because they go up for communion and then kneel down, and the priest says, “No, I don’t give communion on the tongue.” And then they come to me, and then I say, “Well, look, here is the document that is still the norm of the church. It isn’t the exception. It is the norm of the church.” And I was in a cathedral in Singapore two years ago, and the priest wouldn’t give me communion on the tongue. And a few weeks later, the Cardinal of Singapore wrote to all his priests, and he reminded them, “Do not embarrass faithful who ask for communion on the tongue, because communion on the tongue is the norm,” and I was very grateful to the good Cardinal for clarifying that. But so many priests don’t give communion on the tongue, and not only that, don’t actually defend the basics of the Catholic faith. So thank you for this book and for being somebody to look to when there’s doubt and confusion.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: You’re welcome, and I would like to encourage you to continue and to be a witness to the Catholic faith, even though you mentioned this case yourself. Thank you for your public witness. We have to be a witness of the Lord and not be afraid, not to be ashamed of anyone, to kneel down to confess Him as our Lord, because we will be judged by the Lord, not by this priest or by this bishop, even not by the Pope. Every one of us will be judged by the Lord, and then he will say, “Who confessed me before man, I will confess him before my Father in heaven.” And this matters. Eternity matters, not only the temporal life. We have to look at eternity, at this supernatural reality, because Christians are essentially supernatural directed. Of course, we are with our two feet on earth, all very completely incarnational, but at the same time with a desire, with a look for eternity.
Robert Nugent: Thank you. So again, the book that I like to promote is called Flee From Heresy, and it’s published by Sophia Press, and you will probably be able to find it on Amazon, but it will also be available in the National Shrine in Ireland in Knock. The book Credo is already available there, and other books that you have published, along with Christus Vincit, and there’s another book that was on sale yesterday. I forgot the title, but thank you so much for taking the time to encourage us Irish Catholics. And if you would, would you like to end with a prayer for us?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Dominus vobiscum, et cum, spiritu tuo. Et benedictio dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et spiritus Santi descendant, super vos et maneat semper
Praise be Jesus Christ.
Robert Nugent: Thank you. Thank you very much.