July 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Athanasius Schneider, the Auxiliary Bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, has stated that Pope Francis has a "strict duty, as given to him by God" to uphold the "apostolic inheritance of priestly celibacy" at the upcoming Amazon Synod and to pass on this inheritance "to his own successor and to the next generation."
"He may not support in the slightest way – by silence or by an ambiguous conduct – the obviously Gnostic and naturalistic contents of parts of the Instrumentum laboris (working document), as well as the abolishment of the apostolic duty of priestly celibacy (which first would be regional, and then naturally, and step by step, then becomes universal)," said Bishop Schneider in an 8-page document that criticized the synod's working document along with statements by Bishop Erwin Kräutler, a key organizer of the upcoming Synod and one of the main authors of the working document. Schneider's comments were first published in German in Austrian website Kath.net and appear here in English on LifeSiteNews (read full document below).
"Even if the Pope would do this at the upcoming Amazon Synod," continued Schneider, "then he would gravely violate his duty as the Successor of Peter and the Representative of Christ, and he would then cause an intermittent spiritual eclipse in the Church. But Christ, the invincible Sun of Truth, will re-illuminate this brief eclipse by again sending His Church holy, courageous, and faithful popes, because the gates of hell are not able to overcome the rock of Peter (see Matthew 16:18). The prayer of Christ for Peter and his successors is infallible. That is to say, that, after their conversion, they will again strengthen their brothers in the Faith (see Luke 22:32)."
Bishop Schneider said that the synod is about a European clerical elite that wishes to establish “an 'Amazonian-Catholic' sect – which practices the adoration of nature and which will have a female priesthood.” These prelates mostly with European descent “really want a new Christian confession,” Schneider explained.
Schneider critiques in detail Bishop Kräutler's own recent interview with the Austrian TV channel ORF in which he calls for, as reported by LifeSiteNews, a married priesthood and “at least female deacons” due to the lack of priests in the Amazon region. Bishop Schneider contradicted his fellow bishop, arguing that there is no “right to the Holy Eucharist,” but, rather, that the “Sacrament of the Eucharist is the ultimate gift of God.” The real scandal, he said, is “the fact that, during the last decades in the Amazon, intensive pastoral initiatives to foster vocations were not launched.”
Indeed, Bishop Kräutler himself, in this recent ORF interview, was asked as to why there were so few vocations in his diocese during his more than 30 years of being the ordinary bishop there. He admitted that he only ordained some priests, and that half of them had left the priesthood.
Bishop Schneider recommended that instead of abolishing priestly celibacy, prayer initiatives for the increase of vocations should be started throughout the Amazon and that “an exemplary and holy way of life on the part of the missionaries” would be needed. One should establish there “a well-organized system with wandering missionary priests who should go to the individual places – even if only a few times a year – in order to hold a truly spiritual feast with good confessions and with Holy Masses which are celebrated in a dignified manner.”
Schneider proposed that the Blessed Sacrament should be reserved in parishes where no priest can be present and that the faithful be instructed to have regular hours of Eucharistic Adoration. He also recommended the practice of Spiritual Communions at times when no priest is available and pointed to the history of Japanese Catholics who kept the Faith without priests for two hundred years. Essential is, according to Bishop Schneider, the Faith, prayer, and a life according to God's Commandments.
As Schneider shows, in the last decades, “some missionaries in the Amazon have turned away from the true spirit of Jesus Christ, of the Apostles, and of the holy missionaries; they, instead, have turned to the spirit of this world.” It seems clear that Bishop Kräutler “and many of his clerical fellow travelers now demand are, rather, caricature-priests in the form of aid workers, NGO employees, socialist syndicalists, and eco-specialists.”
“The truth of the matter,” Bishop Schneider continued, “is that those who defend a married Amazonian clergy with the help of the ruse of the elegantly formulated motto 'proven men' (“viri probati”) consider the Amazonian peoples to be inferior, because they assume from the onset that they do not have the capacity to give to the Church, from out of their own midst, celibate priests.”
"In the course of 2,000 years, all peoples and even barbarians were capable to raise their own sons, with the help of Christ's grace, to a celibate priesthood according to the example of Jesus Christ. The calls for married priests for the Amazonian peoples – which comes precisely from clergymen of European descent – contain in themselves a hidden racism. To put it to a point, one could say it this way: 'We Europeans, i.e., we white men are indeed capable of a celibate priesthood. But for you Amazonians, this is a little bit too much,'" he added.
Thus, the Kazakh prelate rejects worldly solutions to the problems in the Amazon, such as the married priesthood. “The introduction of a married priesthood in the Amazon,” he explained, “would not bring forth true apostles, but, rather, a new category of priests with a sort of dynasty.” One has to be mindful that the Amazon indigenous culture “has not yet reached a reliable and proven maturity of whole Christian generations which are thoroughly permeated by the spirit of the Gospel.”
Bishop Schneider goes on to say that indigenous peoples throughout the Church's history – such as the German tribes – first received the instruction from great missionaries, until they had a deeply rooted Catholic Faith and culture and were able to bring forth their own priests. However, this can take at times centuries, he added.
From his own experience in Brazil – Bishop Schneider went to a seminary there – he insists that indigenous cultures “are also in truth themselves thirsting for the sources of divine, eternal life.”
Bishop Schneider strongly rebuked the reformist prelates who are now involved in the preparation of the Amazon synod. He states that “by abusing the name of Jesus and of the holy episcopal and priestly office, missionaries and even bishops have preached in the Amazon mostly a gospel of earthly life, a gospel of the stomach, as it were, and not a Gospel of the Cross; a gospel of the adoration of nature, of the forest, of the water, of the sun, a gospel of the adoration of this so brief earthly material life.”
Schneider is not the only voice of resistance against this upcoming Amazon Synod. Cardinals Walter Brandmüller, Gerhard Müller, Raymond Burke, and Bishop Marian Eleganti have made strong criticisms of the June 17 synodal working document, and Father Nicola Bux, a respected theologian, just also published his own fundamental rejection of the main claims of that document. Bux says that the Amazon Synod is an attempt to “create another church” by “demolishing” the true Church from within.
The Pan-Amazon Synod will take place in Rome from October 6-27, with most of the synod fathers stemming from the Amazon region. Thus, some more conservative bishops from regions such as Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa, will not be able to give a counterweight to the more progressive ideas coming out from the Amazon.