The Synod on Synodality is underway, under the watchful gaze – both figuratively and literally – of its guiding light, the Prince of Darkness. (And you thought I was going to say Jorge.)
As readers are likely aware, Bishop Athanasius Schneider composed a prayer for the Synod, the major purpose of which is to beg the Lord “to frustrate the plans of your enemies within the synod assembly.”
Hurray for Bishop Schneider!
But wait… Did you know that the prayer was commissioned by Michael “Unite the Clowns” Matt, inheritor of the world’s oldest traditional… (you know the rest)?
It’s true, and Mike is making sure that everyone knows to give credit where credit is due, writing on the Remnant website:
During the runup to the Catholic Identity Conference 2023, I asked His Excellency, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, to compose a prayer for God’s intervention at the Synod on Synodality taking place in Rome this month … His Excellency graciously agreed to do so…
Amen I say to you, I have not found so great humility on display since Jorge condescended to ride in a compact automobile!
Given the “inspiration” for the prayer, it should come as little surprise that it’s riddled with near-misses and false assumptions that render it less-than-Catholic in content, not unlike pretty much everything else that Schneider produces, despite any good intentions.
Right out of the gate, the prayer sets itself against basic Catholic ecclesiology:
Our Holy Mother Church has been subjected [to] doctrinal confusion, moral abomination, and liturgical abuse [which] have, in our day, reached an unprecedented height.
Let us ask: What is Holy Mother Church’s relationship with “doctrinal confusion, moral abomination,” etc.? Of course, she encounters these things, and will until the end of time, but is she ever truly “subjected” to such things?
The answer is no; Hell no, in fact.
Holy Mother Church is the “pillar and bulwark of truth” (1 Tim 3:15). As such, doctrinal confusion and moral abominations are subjected to her, to her teaching authority and her judgement.
The vast majority of sincere self-identified Catholics in this post-conciliar age, Schneider included, have utterly lost sight of the militancy of the Church on earth, which itself is the logical extension of the conciliar church’s denial of Christ’s Kingship.
In his encyclical on the priesthood, Ad Catholici Sacerdotii, Pope Pius XI made it plain who is subject to whom:
Let then obedience bind ever closer together these various members of the Hierarchy, one with another, and all with the Head; and thus make the Church Militant a foe truly terrible to the enemies of God, ut castrorum aciem ordinatam, “as an army set in array.”
Contrast this description of Catholic churchmen – priests and bishops united to the Holy Roman Pontiff – with the events presently taking place in the hideous Paul VI Hall in Rome.
Bishop Schneider described those events in his prayer as follows:
Churchmen who have lost the true Faith and become promoters of a worldly globalist agenda, are intent on changing Your truths and Commandments, the Divine Constitution of the Church, and the Apostolic tradition.
O Lord, with humble spirit and contrite heart we beseech You, prevent the enemies of the Church from exulting in a victory over the authentic Catholic Church obtained by imposing a counterfeit church under the guise of “synodality.”
First, let us be perfectly clear: We need not pray that there will be no “victory over the authentic Catholic Church.” This is the very definition of the gates of Hell prevailing, and Our Lord has already promised that this will not happen.
Elsewhere, Schneider writes in his prayer:
We firmly believe that the gates of Hell will not prevail against Your Church.
How perfectly conciliar! First, he undermines the true faith, distorting its meaning, and then, just a paragraph or two later, he reiterates the true doctrine as if to embrace it!
So, why is Bishop Schneider moved to utter such contradictory words? Is he deliberately sowing the seeds of confusion?
No, I wouldn’t presume to say that, rather, it is born of a more basic error.
Bishop Schneider is of the mistaken view that men who have “lost the true faith” – and have made manifest the fact that they are “enemies of the Church” – are not only members of the Mystical Body of Christ, but they are also members of the sacred hierarchy!
In truth, they are neither.
Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith … The cooperation of all of the Church’s members must also be externally manifest through their profession of the same faith. (cf Pius XII, Mystici Corporis 22, 69)
Does Athanasius Schneider believe this? Apparently not. If he did, he would realize that these men who have “lost the true faith,” despite their clerical garb, haven’t the authority to “impose” anything.
If it is not yet entirely clear that Bishop Schneider’s ecclesiology is a theological trainwreck, his prayer goes on to say:
For where sin and apostasy in the Church abounds, the victory of Your grace will abound the more.
A handful of sentences after this Bergoglianesque twist on Sacred Scripture, the prayer once again speaks of “the sins of sacrilege and apostasy within the Church.”
Apostasy within the Church is about as oxymoronic as a statement can possibly be!
On an intellectual level, certainly Bishop Schneider knows this. And yet, in composing his prayer for the Synod, the spiritual blindness that infects all such men of the Council reigned supreme. Again.
On the brighter side, it must be noted that Bishop Schneider is not entirely without sight.
For example, he is correct in suggesting that if these “enemies of the Church” prevail in establishing their agenda contra Apostolic tradition, it will amount to the emergence of a “counterfeit church,” i.e., one that is not the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
This is true enough, but Schneider’s declaration, unbeknownst to him, is roughly six decades late.
As I’ve written and stated numerous times (so I will not belabor the point here yet again), Vatican Council II, having departed from Apostolic tradition in various ways, gave birth to a counterfeit church that merely presents itself to the world as the Catholic Church, but is nothing of the kind.
This is the church that is presently meeting in Rome, the same to which Bishop Schneider belongs, despite any genuine desire to be a member of the one true Church.
He’s also evidently flummoxed with respect to the identity of the Holy Father as he prays for the Lord “to bring heavenly light to the Pope and synod participants, and to frustrate the plans of your enemies within the synod assembly.”
It is perfectly obvious that Schneider, with a wink and a nod to his fan club, is lumping Jorge Bergoglio in with the “enemies” of the Lord who dwell in darkness.
He prays as if the First Vatican Council erred when it taught that Our Lord has “divinely conferred the gift of truth and never-failing faith on Peter and his successors” (cf First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ).
Elsewhere Bishop Schneider prays:
Through the Blessed Virgin Mary, grant us a holy Pope, zealous in promoting and defending the Catholic Faith, we implore You, grant it!
Wow! Did you see that? Schneider is suggesting that Jorge isn’t holy!
Seriously, folks, none of this is news. Even a preponderance of the heretics know that Jorge Bergoglio is a Cretan, ever the liar, an evil beast, with a slothful belly (cf Titus 1:12).
Amoris Laetitia settled any debate that may have been swirling on this point previously.
You do remember that Apostolic [sic] Exhortation, don’t you?
Evidently, Athanasius Schneider doesn’t. It was the fruit of another “synodal” process, one that did exactly what he is praying the current synodal circus will fail to do.
Even so, he still goes about behaving as if the Argentinian heretic is the pope and the church over which he reigns is Catholic.
And guess what? If the Synod on Synodality ultimately approves of female ordination, the blessing of homo-deviant unions, and even worse, it’s a safe bet that he’ll continue playing the tradservative conference circuit, and Michael J. Matt will continue Uniting the Clowns all the way to the Bank of Beelzebub.
