Transcript:
Michael: People today seem confused about everything. People of all backgrounds recognize that something has gone wrong. There’s a great deal of confusion, but many remain unclear about what we should believe and what we should reject. I believe this confusion goes all the way down to the most fundamental questions, the first principles.
To help us sort all of that out, I’m honored to welcome a man I’ve greatly admired for a long time: His Excellency, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan. Your Excellency, thank you so much for joining us.
Bishop Schneider: Thank you for your invitation.
Michael: I have one of your books here, Credo for those who don’t speak Latin, which means I believe. You also have another book titled Flee from Heresy, and a biographical work called Christus Vincit. I suppose that’s where I’d like to begin.
How does one become the Bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan?
Bishop Schneider: Well, it’s a long story. I was born in the south of Kazakhstan, in what is today called Kyrgyzstan, into a German family. We belong to the community known as the Germans of Russia, and we are Catholic.
My parents and I lived under the Soviet regime, during the persecution of the Church, so I grew up in what you could call a “catacomb church.” My parents were activists in the underground Church; they helped priests hide and organized secret Masses. I consider it one of the greatest gifts of my life to have grown up in a persecuted Church, to have received the Catholic faith, as it were, with my mother’s milk, during that persecution.
Then, by the grace of God, we were able to emigrate to West Germany. It was there that we realized the state of the Church after the Council. We were in the 1970s, and my parents, siblings, and I were still in high school, were shocked to see what had happened after the Council. So many strange elements were introduced into the worship and the liturgy, including a lack of reverence, sacredness, and seriousness.
After finishing high school, I entered the Congregation of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross in Austria. Following my novitiate, I was sent on mission to Brazil, where I had the privilege to live and work with a holy bishop at that time, Bishop Manuel, who was a staunch defender of the Catholic faith during the difficult period of Liberation Theology. He ordained me a priest, and I served in a rural area, ministering to simple, humble people.
Later, I was sent to Rome to pursue a doctorate in Patristics, the study of the Church Fathers. About 25 years ago, I was invited back to where I was born in Central Asia. The priests and the bishop there needed help in training seminarians and rebuilding the Church after the collapse of Communism. Since I still spoke Russian, which is commonly used there, I obeyed my superiors and returned to help teach and form priests to be missionaries in the region of my birth. I never imagined I would return from the far West Brazil to the far East Central Asia.
Michael: The story, in a way, came full circle. But there’s a remarkable twist: the place where I was born was under oppressive external persecution, yet when I came to the West, I discovered a different kind of oppression from within the Church itself. This is a result of the post-Vatican II period. Yes, that’s an interesting contrast between persecution from without versus confusion or crisis from within.
Bishop Schneider: Exactly. The late Pope Benedict XVI wrote an essay after his papacy in which he described the cultural revolutions of the 1960s, especially the Summer of ’68, as a pivotal moment. He said the reforms following the Second Vatican Council were both a consequence and a cause of that cultural revolution.
So yes, what you observed is precise and true. After Vatican II, there was a kind of internal persecution within the Church. My family and I experienced this because we remained faithful to the traditional faith, the faith of the confessors like St. Martius during persecution. We held fast to the catechism we were taught, the faith passed down from my grandparents to my parents, and to me.
For this, we were labeled troublemakers or called “pre-Vatican II,” “traditionalists,” and many other names. We resisted the novelties introduced after the Council, such as the lack of reverence during the Mass or the changes in how Holy Communion was received. In the persecuted Church of my youth, the Lord was truly adored as King. We were obliged to stand, to make a profound sign of reverence; these were obvious acts of faith and respect.
We could not accept the casualness and loss of reverence we saw, so we were marginalized by many in the post-conciliar Church. But this did not shake us deeply because we were convinced of what we believed. We had endured actual persecution, so this internal opposition was less frightening. When we came to the West after Vatican II, we encountered many ambiguities, many things that were unclear or uncertain. But you can never give your life for something ambiguous.
You only give your life for something you are truly convinced is true. This was the situation in the Church, a situation that has sadly become widespread and intensified even further in our time. What started as ambiguity and uncertainty has grown into an effort to please the world.
And this is the deepest problem in the current crisis of the Church: the desire to please the world. They seek recognition, sympathy, and acceptance from the world. But this is an illusion. Christ told us clearly: “I was persecuted, and you will always be persecuted.” The world will never accept the faithful. Our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles warned us: “If anyone wants to be a friend of the world, he becomes an enemy of God.”
As I mentioned, when I returned to the region where I was born, I served as a missionary priest. Later, Pope Benedict XVI appointed me auxiliary bishop first of the Diocese of Karaganda, which during Soviet times was called the “Rome of Central Asia” because it was the center of the underground Church, with secret bishops and clandestine priests. It was truly the heart of Catholic life in the persecuted Church there. After that, about 13 years ago, I was transferred to the capital, Astana, where I currently serve as auxiliary bishop.
Michael: When you mention irrelevance creeping into the Church, it seems to accompany many other forms of ambiguity and confusion. Some people listening to this, whether secular, Protestant, or Catholic, might say, “What does it matter if I receive Holy Communion kneeling or standing? Or if I receive it on the tongue or in the hand? What difference do statues or liturgical adornments make? Why must the liturgy be in Latin or include certain prayers? Isn’t it just about my personal relationship with God, not about external forms?” What would you say to that?
Bishop Schneider: It matters very much. It is about taking God seriously. God is not something we treat however we like. God is God. This is a fundamental attitude, deeply rooted in human nature itself: a profound desire to manifest reverence to God, even outwardly.
This is not just a Christian instinct; it’s something you can observe in all religions, even false ones. People try to express reverence for the sacred in their worship, even if their beliefs are mistaken. This expression of reverence is essential and must be restored today.
Unfortunately, in many places in the Catholic Church, worship has been reduced to entertainment. Man is placed at the center, and God is pushed aside. We end up worshiping ourselves. This is the death of true religious sense; it is no longer worship but self-admiration.
Since the time of the apostles and even in the Old Testament, the Church has preserved exterior expressions of reverence because these reflect the interior faith and love we hold for God. When you truly believe in God’s infinite majesty, beauty, and love, you cannot help but fall down in adoration. Standing or kneeling is not the same; these bodily expressions communicate our interior disposition. In everyday human life, when you receive a very important guest, say, the King of England, you would never treat him casually. You would show profound respect and reverence because the external expressions match the honor due.
When you prepare for a very important event down to the smallest details, like the napkin or the glass, you would never show up in jeans or a T-shirt. That would be unacceptable to everyone, and it would offend your guests. Yet this is just a gathering with mortal people, even a king.
But when you come to worship and receive the King of kings, Jesus Christ, in the Church, during the Holy Mass, the Church has instinctively, for 2,000 years, manifested the greatest possible reverence through external signs. This was not mere formalism; it was a true expression of faith and love.
When you love someone, you respect them and show it in tangible ways. Think of a young man in love with a woman; he shows her beauty, brings flowers, and offers signs of his affection. How much more should we honor God, who is infinite love and holiness?
Therefore, it is urgent that we restore in the Catholic Church the time-tested, millennia-old forms of worship practiced with deep love and faith by all the saints and our ancestors so that we can faithfully pass this heritage to future generations.
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Michael: The first time I ever saw you, Your Excellency, you were unaware of it. It was probably in West Hollywood, where there was a Traditional Latin Mass, a form of the liturgy I am quite partial to. It played a big role in my own reversion to the faith. I know many people who have converted or returned to the faith because of this traditional liturgy, often called the Mass of the Ages, the Mass celebrated by virtually all the saints throughout history.
You were visiting West Hollywood of all places, and I walked into the church and thought, “Why is it so busy tonight?” Usually, the Latin Mass in West Hollywood is rather sparse. Then I learned that the Bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan was here. At the time, I didn’t understand your significance in the Church, especially for those who hope for a restoration of reverence and tradition. It was intriguing.
Years later, I’ve seen the fruits of the Traditional Latin Mass, especially as many modern parishes are emptying, being sold, or even converted into coffee shops. Meanwhile, the traditional Latin Masses often in far-flung parts of town, in humble or even makeshift buildings, are packed to the brim. And it’s not just older people attending; many are young, getting married, having lots of children. These traditional parishes tend to be vocations factories, producing priests and religious at a time when many other parishes are not.
If I were sitting in the Vatican, not that I have been asked, I would say: “This clearly works for the good of the Church. We must restore traditional practices.” But why isn’t that happening?
Bishop Schneider: This is very sad, and it reflects the reality we live in. Unfortunately, there are people in high-ranking offices in the Church administration who have a different vision. They do not want to see a flourishing of vocations or a vibrant traditional Church. Instead, they desire a Church more aligned with the spirit of the world, more adapted to worldly concerns, focusing on issues like climate change or accommodating current ideologies.
But this is not the mission of the Church. This is a betrayal of the mission of Jesus Christ and the apostles. We must be zealous missionaries, bringing to the whole world the beauty and supernatural joy of the truth, leading all people to Jesus Christ, the one true Savior, and manifesting our love for God through reverent worship.
At the same time, the Church is not merely a human institution; she is divine and indestructible. The clergy, even those who harm the Church, can damage her, as we witness today. But they will not succeed. There is a famous story about Napoleon, who arrested the Pope at that time and brought him from Rome as a prisoner to place him in a castle there, Fontainebleau, close to Paris.
Sometimes Napoleon came to the Pope and demanded that he sign documents, some of which would harm the Church. The Pope refused to sign or agree with Napoleon. One day, Napoleon came again and asked the Pope to do it. The Pope refused. Then he became angry. Napoleon, at the height of his power, faced one man who resisted him: the Pope.
He shouted at the Pope, threatening, “I will destroy the Catholic Church.” Then a cardinal standing by the Pope, Cardinal Gonsalvi, responded to Napoleon, “Your Majesty, what we priests and bishops have tried to do for 1,800 years and have not succeeded in, you will not succeed either.”
Michael: There’s a line from Hilaire Belloc: “I have to take it as a matter of faith that the Church is divinely instituted, but for non-believers, a proof of its divine institution would be that no other organization, conducted with such knavish imbecility, would have lasted a fortnight.” That’s actually a great consolation, a great source of hope.
You mentioned the King of England. I’m reminded of King Charles speaking about the traditionalist philosopher René Guénon. He said that Guénon’s insight was that the real divide in modernity is not between nations or even necessarily between ideologies. It is a divide in the understanding of the sacred. Before modernity, people at least had a sense of the sacred, just as you were describing. Modernity seems either immune to the sacred or intrinsically adverse to it. So then, what do we do about it? How does one restore sense, responsibility, sanity, and the sacred?
Bishop Schneider: First, when we speak as believers and faithful members of the Church, we must keep the faith. This is the greatest treasure God has given us: the revealed truth. It is divine. It is beautiful. It makes us happy. The divine truth, which God revealed and entrusted to the apostles, must be kept, explained, and transmitted.
Unchangeably, until the Second Coming of Christ and for all generations, nothing is to be changed. We are true stewards and administrators only, vicars only, to transmit it. The Pope and the bishops are not the lords of the faith, not the bosses. They are the servants, the vicars.
This is why, first of all, we must know our faith. So, read the good catechisms, the old ones, the most reliable, because they are crystal clear. There is no ambiguous language. Clarity is charity, as some say. That is exactly why I composed and wrote this book, Credo, I Believe, in a style of questions and answers, with short responses, covering the whole Christian life.
The first part is about what we must believe to be saved. The second part is how we must live and apply, in our moral life, what we believe, because there must not be a contradiction between what we believe and how we live. Then, the third consequence is how we must pray in the right manner. First, to believe in the right manner. Second, to live in the right manner. And third, to pray in the right manner. That means having liturgy and worship that corresponds to our faith and to our life. So, I encourage you: please read the good old catechisms. They are crystal clear.
Michael: I also love, Your Excellency, the way you spoke about how we are to pray. Many modern people, Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise, will say, “Well, God doesn’t care how we pray, only that we pray. The form doesn’t matter.” But I recall reading the Book of Exodus, and really much of the Old Testament, which is a figure of the New Testament. And in both, God is actually quite specific about how we are to pray.
There are many pages devoted to the details of Old Testament liturgy. And in the New Testament, our Lord says, “When you pray, pray like this,” and gives us the Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer.
Bishop Schneider: Exactly. And our Lord said, “These are the true worshipers, who worship in spirit and in truth.” So, worship must be in truth. And truth has requirements.
Of course, the deepest prayer is in our heart, and God must live in our soul, and we must pray from the heart. But since we are not angels, but have bodies, it also requires a bodily expression. What you have in your heart must be expressed physically. It would be a contradiction a lie if you say, “I worship God only in my heart.” That is a lie and a contradiction, because you are not an angel. You are created by God with a body, and you must worship God and express your faith and love with your body, with your gestures as well. Interior attitude and exterior expression are always connected.
So now, we must restore our faith. Everyone must be able to say, “I know my faith. I know what I believe. And with God’s grace, I am ready to give my life for this,” as the apostles and all the saints did. From this conviction of faith will come true prayer, true worship, and a true life. And this will renew and bring about the so-called springtime of the Church, which was spoken of at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council. But no springtime came. On the contrary, the evidence is so clear that winter came, not flourishing.
But God is the Lord of the Church, and He is now waking up and restoring. In this new time of true renewal, the true springtime of the Church, it is happening with the little ones, as I call them, not with the establishment, but with the little ones. The other families you mentioned are the young families who love the faith, who love true worship, and the youth, the young seminarians, who instinctively love tradition. Because it is true, it is beautiful, and it gives us hope.
These realities of the little ones, as I call them, are present all over the world, flourishing little by little. Even though they are partially considered or marginalized by the establishment in the Church, those who now hold high-ranking offices are often despised by them, just like the Pharisees did.
The Pharisees did not allow the simple people to express their worship of Jesus Christ. They reprimanded them on Palm Sunday. And the Pharisee who invited our Lord to dinner, Simon was his name showed no sign of respect to Him. But a sinner woman came and anointed the feet of our Lord with the most precious oil of nard. It was the most expensive. A small bottle of oil, this woman brought.
This was not only a sinner, but a repented sinner, and a great one. She brought this small bottle, and the evangelist even mentions its price. Judas, the traitor, criticized it: “We could sell this for 300 denarii and give it to the poor.” But Jesus rebuked him and said, “No, she did the greatest work for Me, for My body.” This was a huge sum of money, the income of an entire year for a middle-class man. And it was for a small sign of exterior reverence to our Lord.
Our Lord rebuked Simon: “You did not give Me water to wash My hands. You did not kiss me.” But this woman anointed My feet, wept, and kissed them. This is, in our day, a similar situation. And yet, I repeat, we have many signs of hope, even in the midst of darkness. A true Catholic, a true believer, must always be a person of hope. Because we know what we believe, and we know that our faith is the victory.
Michael: Your description of that Gospel scene highlights the shallowness of modern humanitarian religion. Humanitarianism can sound nice, just as selling the oil to give to the poor sounds nice, but it isn’t grounded in anything real.
Our Lord, who truly cares for the poor, and we see that in the Gospels still says, “She has done a wonderful thing for Me.” He says, “The poor will always be with you, but I will not always be with you.” Charity has to be grounded in truth and in God. Otherwise, it becomes performative humanitarianism, which, as you observe, is a kind of Pharisaism.
Bishop Schneider: Yes, exactly. And history has shown us that the greatest saints who cared for the poor were also those who paid the greatest attention to giving to God the beauty of worship.
They built beautiful churches and gave great care to sacred liturgy. Saint Basil the Great, for example, was very attentive to the beauty of the liturgy. He was one of the first in history to build hospitals and soup kitchens. He was also a zealous bishop in defending the truth of the faith and celebrating splendid, sublime liturgies. That was already in the fourth century.
We also have other examples, like Saint Jean Marie Vianney. He built a house for orphans to help them. But at the same time, he had the most beautiful ornaments, chasubles, and chalices for the Church. In his own home, he was poor, but he made beautiful the house of God, while also performing charitable works.
Michael: This is also a gift for the poor, who can raise their eyes to heaven and join together in due worship of God.
Bishop Schneider: Exactly.
Michael: Before we finish, you keep returning to the theme of certainty. We live in an age that feels so uncertain. Even some Christians will say, “Well, we can’t know for certain that God exists. We just have to take a radical leap of faith, we’re just guessing, and hopefully it turns out we’re right.” We can’t even say with certainty what a man or a woman is now. How do you convince people that we actually can know things? Can we have certainty and act on conclusions?
Bishop Schneider: Yes. The deepest certainty is the existence of God. It is inscribed in our nature. Every human being is capable of knowing the existence of God the Creator, at least by the light of natural human reason.
This is proven throughout history. It is deeply rooted in every human being. You cannot simply erase this. You can repress it and say, “Oh, I’m not sure,” but that’s not true. Deep in your heart, you know God exists. There is no atheist in the foxhole, as the saying goes. No matter what people say, in the moment of crisis, they say what they know deep down.
So those who speak like this are superficial. They are forgetting the deepest roots of their soul and their existence. They may be living for temporary advantages and pleasures, but those will end. Tomorrow they will end, and then you will face the Lord, surely.
So, we have to be missionaries. One of the greatest signs of charity toward our neighbor is to share with him the truth, not by imposing, but with love. When you do not share the truth, it’s a sign of egoism. You are depriving your neighbor of the most precious thing that exists: the truth of God, the truth of Jesus Christ. He is the incarnate God, the crucified God, our Savior.
We must show people the path to heaven. We were not created only for this earth to live like animals, seeking only pleasure and living in uncertainty. That is not why we were created. We are created by God to know Him, and in knowing Him, to love Him. And in loving Him, to be with Him one day in unspeakable happiness for all eternity. This matters. This is the truth. This is certain. And for this, we give our lives. For this purpose, we help all people to come to heaven.
Michael: Amen. And Credo, which is my response, and also the title of the book. Go get Credo. Go flee from heresy. Go get Christus Vincit. Go pray, and go to Mass. Your Excellency, thank you so much.
Bishop Schneider: You’re welcome.