Transcript:
Fr. Serafino: Yes, so you said sometimes that bishops are not employees of the Pope. What do you mean? Can you clarify more of that statement, which is, I think, very important to correct something coming from Vatican Two, according to which I think bishops think that they are servants of the Pope in their diocese, and because of the collegiality, episcopal collegiality, they have to agree with the Pope in any case, in any situation, in whatever the Pope says. What do you mean when you say that you are not an employee of Pope Francis?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Well, we have to look at the divine truth of the papacy and of the episcopacy. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when he established Peter as the rock of the church, his representative, he said to the apostles, “Do not behave like the bosses in the world who are suppressing their subjects. This should not be among you.” He said this to the apostles in the gospel, and so therefore, and he said, “You are all brothers.” This said Our Lord to Peter and to the apostles. Peter and the apostles were all brothers, and they declared themselves, “We are brothers.” Of course, Peter is the older brother with special powers, but nevertheless, a brother. The Popes, in all the times when they addressed the bishops, always addressed them as “venerable brothers.” They did not say “sons” or “servants.” Saint Paul, when he did not say, “I am Paul the servant of Peter.” No, he said, “I am Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ.” This is Catholic. Even Vatican One, with some maybe exaggerations of the papacy, stated and Pope Pius the Ninth stated already, that the bishops are not servants of the Pope in their diocese. The Episcopacy is a divine right, not only an ecclesiastical right. It is by divine constitution, the Episcopacy. So Pope and bishops are brothers. And of course, the Pope is the supreme pastor and has the power even above the bishops. He also has power over the bishops, but always in a fraternal manner. This is very important. When we are all brothers, we are subject brothers, but not in the worldly style as a boss and his employees. This is not according to the gospel and according to the tradition of the church. Unfortunately, there have been situations in the history of the church where Popes behaved like worldly bosses or like absolute monarchs towards their bishops. This was not correct, of course, and we have to.
The bishop is a member of the Magisterium, also of the entire corpus episcoporum, I would say, the entire body of the bishops, or college. You can also say that he is a member. He has a duty, and then he says this in his body of the bishops, “Something is wrong,” and when the head of this body, the Pope, is doing something wrong, evidently undermining the faith, then is his duty to admonish the Pope because we are brothers, because the church is not a dictatorship, where every bishop is fearing to speak something, and this would be very bad. Therefore, I am not criticizing his personal life. I am not criticizing his political decisions, but only the evident words and acts which are undermining the divine truth, the sacramental life of the church, the morality, or divinely revealed, and so on. Therefore, when I am doing this, I try to do this respectfully, not polemically, and I am motivated by love for the Pope, and also, the fraternal correction is an act of love for your neighbor. When I am not doing this, when I am observing really a danger for the entire church and for the Pope himself, when he is doing such things he is, it is a danger for himself also, because he is not doing his task correctly, and he has one day to answer this before the judgment of God. And I have to warn him fraternally. This is love. This is fraternal love.
Fr. Serafino: What is at stake is faith, the faith of the church, which matters, and not the political choices of the Pope, of the bishop trying not to speak. Hopefully, your great example and testimony will encourage more bishops who have come out. I would say, with Fiducia Supplicans, there is a good response in the Catholic way of bishops speaking out and saying, “This is not acceptable,” and this is also a good sign. I would say Fiducia Supplicans is not acceptable at all. But at the same time, it was something permitted by God to also give the church this opportunity to see that there are bishops like you and many others defending the revelation, defending God’s creation, what God did in creation, and God’s revelation about marriage between a man and a woman.