Transcript:
Bishop Athanasius Schnieder: Because of this wrong point of view, the consequence is that the papacy is vacant, or that the Pope loses his office when he is pronouncing an error, and so on. He is not losing his office because he is in the church’s hands of God, and he cannot pronounce a heresy “ex cathedra”; this is impossible, and it is against the dogma. When he is doing this outside of “ex cathedra” pronunciations, this is possible, but he is not eternal, and an “ex-Pope” will come to correct him, as was the case with Honorius. And so we have to pray for him and we must not follow him in the error and keep our faith and admonish him because of love for him, not because we hate him or we want but we want a love for him, and therefore we say we cannot follow you, Holy Father in this case because this is contrary to the divine revelation.
And when you when you we are not obeying you, we are helping you as contrary we would be also culpable when we follow you in these errors, and therefore it is a positive attitude when we will not obey a clear, ambiguous statement of a pope and we will keep our faith and pray for him that he may be illuminated as was John the 22nd before he died, and yes, and then God will intervene. And the church is not in the hands of a pope; we have to state this. It is not his private property; the pope is not the boss of the church; it is Jesus Christ.
The Pope is only a vicar of Christ. The Pope is not the successor of Christ. These people with this attitude, as you mentioned, are transforming the pope into a successor of Christ. He’s only the successor of Peter, and he’s only a vicar, vicar, representative, an administrator, humble, “servo servorum Dei.” In any case, this must be against the stated traditional meaning of the Fathers of the Church. And then we have examples, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Bridget of Sweden, St. Hildegard of Bingen, these three great saints, women, they admonished the popes of their time even with very clear statements, even Saint Catherine of Siena after several admonitions the Pope did not listen and he did things which were damaging the church, not directly heresies, but in the Avignon schism, she admonished the popes, one pope, and he did not obey. He did not accept. And then he wrote him a letter, Saint Catherine, doctor of the church. She wrote, “Most holy father, you are sweet Christ on earth, ‘is Dolce Christo.’” But if you will not convert, if you will not change your attitude, please renounce the papacy, “Your beloved daughter, Catherine.” Very strong, and she was canonized; she was declared a doctor of the church, in spite of these very tough expressions, which are very important.
Fr. Serafino: And thank you for this reassurance, Your Excellency. So you say clearly that the Pope can teach, unfortunately, errors, but the fact of teaching errors doesn’t mean that he loses his office, patron office, as a city is vacant.
Bishop Athanasius Schnieder: No, it doesn’t. It will finish in confusion, tremendous confusion. Simply, it’s against common reason, common sense and and again, the Pope is not God, he is not, the church is not in his hands. This is in Christ’s hands. We have to stress this, the church is in the hands of Jesus Christ always, yes, yes.
Fr. Serafino: There is a common root, I think, to this issue, which is from a kind of conciliarism applied to Vatican II; Vatican was the only Council of the church. Now we have come to the Pope as the only person in the church, the church completely absorbed into the person of the Pope. Now, the council is for the church; first, there is the church, and then there is the council, and then there is the Pope for the church, but behind the church and the Pope, there is Christ. Christ is the rock. In fact, what can we say to the Catholic people who think and say that Pope Francis is not a pope due to so many inappropriate things he says?
Cardinal Müller: Pope Francis is the Pope, and there’s no contradiction on the side of the College of Cardinals; there’s no doubt that he is a legitimate Pope. And, Jesus didn’t give us the guarantee that the bishops and the Popes are always doing the best, only in the case of the dogma “ex cathedra,” the Pope is infallible, and also in the ordinary magisterium. But not all that the Pope is saying in the interviews and so is always the best. We have first, not to criticize the Pope, not publicly, but to pray for him, to feel united, and if there are questions, we are there, cardinals, bishops, theologians, parish priests, to forgive you, and can give you the right answer. That’s the criticism we have of the Bible, perhaps the great documents of the magisterium, and they have manifested the faith of the Catholic Church.
Fr. Serafino: Sometimes we expect the Pope to be like in Rome, you know, “la bocca della verità,” whatever the Pope says is the truth, but the Pope is not “la bocca della verità.” The Pope is a poor human person like everyone else. He himself should first believe right in order to teach correctly the faith.
Cardinal Müller: misunderstanding of the papal authority, you know, to make him the “oraculum of Delphi,” yes, one of the apostles, successor of Saint Peter. And Saint Peter also was in some trouble with Saint Paul about the right understanding and right interpretation. But Saint Paul never doubts his authority to Saint Peter given to him by Jesus Christ. But we are all bishops, priests, and all the lay people we are during our earthly life, we can fall into errors, we can fall in sins, and we need all the time of forgiveness of God, and we must pray for one another and to help one another. And Saint Peter was in prison, the entire Christian community prayed for him. Nobody knows how he will react and what his behavior is in question in times of temptation and persecution, or the false propaganda that is made today in the world.