Athanasius Schneider

On June 10, 2019, Schneider and four other bishops and cardinals published a 40-point "Declaration of Truths" claiming to reaffirm traditional Church teaching. The bishops wrote that such a declaration was necessary in a time of "almost universal doctrinal confusion and disorientation." Specific passages in the declaration implicitly relate to several writings by Pope Francis. The declaration states that "the religion born of faith in Jesus Christ" is the "only religion positively willed by God," seemingly alluding to the document signed by Pope Francis called "Human Fraternity" which stated that the "diversity of religions" is "willed by God." Following recent changes to the Catechism to oppose capital punishment, the declaration states that the Church "did not err" in teaching that civil authorities may "lawfully exercise capital punishment" when it is "truly necessary" and to preserve the "just order of societies."

In September 2019, Schneider and Burke published an 8-page letter denouncing what they alleged to be six theological errors in the working document for the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region and asking that Pope Francis "confirm his brethren in the faith by an unambiguous rejection of the errors." Burke and Schneider criticized the document for its "implicit pantheism," support for married clergy and a greater role for women in the liturgy, and for what they considered to be excessive openness to pagan rituals and practices common among the Amazonian peoples. They asked that the laity and the clergy pray at least one decade of the Rosary and fast weekly for the rejection of such ideas over a 40-day period, from September 17 to October 26.

Schneider has vigorously upheld the traditional teaching of the Church that divorce and remarriage outside of it constitutes adultery, a mortal sin, therefore making one ineligible to receive Holy Communion. In a 2014 interview, Schneider said that calls for change to this practice came from "anti-Christian media." He suggested this was "a false concept of mercy," saying: "It is comparable to a doctor who gives a [diabetic] patient sugar, although he knows it will kill him." In 2016, Pope Francis released the apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, which seemed to allow divorced and remarried persons to receive the sacrament. This was extremely controversial, and afterwards some bishops began to allow the divorced and remarried to receive the sacrament. This development was strongly criticized by Schneider, who said that perennial teaching on marriage and Communion is "more powerful and surer than the discordant voice and practice of admitting unrepentant adulterers to Holy Communion, even if this practice is promoted by a single Pope or the diocesan bishops." On April 7, 2018, Schneider, along with conservative cardinals Raymond Leo Burke and Walter Brandmüller, participated in a conference rejecting the outline proposed by German bishops to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist. Schneider spoke of the duty of popes to be "custodians" of authority.

On August 25, 2018 Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, released an 11-page letter describing a series of warnings to the Vatican regarding sexual misconduct by Theodore McCarrick, accusing Francis of failing to act on these reports and calling on him to resign. Schneider said that there was "no reasonable and plausible cause to doubt the truth content of the document." He demanded "ruthlessness and transparency" in cleansing the Church of evils, particularly "homosexual cliques and networks" in the curia that he and some others have blamed for helping to cause the abuse epidemic. Schneider called on all "cardinals, bishops and priests to renounce any compromise and any flirt with the world."

Schneider has criticized clergy members whom he believes do not fully adhere to the faith and who instead surrender to what he calls a "cruel pagan world." In 2014, he compared them to "members of the clergy and even bishops who put grains of incense in front of the statue of the emperor or of a pagan idol or who delivered the books of the Holy Scripture to be burned." Schneider alleged that even in the present age there are "traitors of the Faith."

Schneider stated in a January 2013 interview that proselytizing by "false religions and sects" may be restricted in majority-Catholic counties. "When there is (a Catholic majority) then false religions and sects have not the right to make propaganda there," he said. Schneider added that this does not mean that governments can "suppress them, they can live, but (governments) cannot give them the same right to make propaganda to the detriment of Catholics."

Schneider has spoken out against Muslim immigration into Europe. He stated that high levels of Muslim immigration into Europe during the 2010s was orchestrated by "international powerful political organizations...to take away from Europe its Christian and its national identity. It is meant to dilute the Christian and the national character of Europe." Schneider alleged that the Syrian Civil War was created by international powers in order to stimulate a migrant crisis to de-Christianize Europe, and that mass immigration into Europe from Northern Africa was likewise "artificially created."

At a theological conference in Rome in December 2010, Schneider proposed the need for "a new Syllabus" (recalling the Syllabus of Errors of 1864), in which papal teaching authority would correct erroneous interpretations of the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

Schneider encourages Catholics who truly believe they are receiving Christ in the Blessed Sacrament to kneel and receive Communion on their tongues. In 2009, he wrote, "The awareness of the greatness of the eucharistic mystery is demonstrated in a special way by the manner in which the body of the Lord is distributed and received."

In 1982, Schneider joined the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra, a Roman Catholic religious order within the Opus Sanctorum Angelorum, in Austria. He took the religious name of Athanasius upon joining the order. Schneider was ordained a priest by Bishop Manuel Pestana Filho of the Diocese of Anápolis on 25 March 1990, and spent several years as a priest in Brazil before returning to Central Asia. Starting in 1999, he taught Patristics at Mary, Mother of the Church Seminary in Karaganda. On 2 June 2006 he was consecrated a bishop at the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter in the Vatican by Angelo Cardinal Sodano. In 2011 he was transferred to the position of auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Astana. He is the General Secretary of the Bishops' Conference of Kazakhstan.

Anton Schneider was born in Tokmok, Kirghiz SSR, in the Soviet Union. His parents were Black Sea Germans from Odessa in the Ukraine. After the Second World War they were sent by Stalin to a gulag in Krasnokamsk in the Ural Mountains. In Krasnokamsk, the family was closely involved with the underground church. Schneider's mother, Maria, was one of several women who helped shelter the Blessed :uk:Oleksa Zaryckyj, a Ukrainian priest, who would later be imprisoned in the infamous Karlag by the Soviet regime for his ministry; he would eventually be martyred in 1963. The family traveled to the Kirghiz SSR after being released from the camps. Later, they left Central Asia for Estonia. As a boy, Schneider and his three siblings would attend clandestine masses with their parents, often traveling sixty miles from the family's home in Valga to Tartu, taking the first train in the morning under the cover of darkness and returning with the last train at night. Due to the great distance, infrequent visits by the clergy, and crackdowns by the Soviet authorities, they were able to make the trip only once a month. In 1973, shortly after making his first Holy Communion in secret, Schneider emigrated with his family to Rottweil in West Germany.

Athanasius Schneider, O.R.C. (born Anton Schneider on 7 April 1961) is a Kazakhstani Roman Catholic bishop, the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan. He is a member of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra.

Three lectures, a sermon and an exclusive interview. Hungarian and English language e-book version: http://mek.oszk.hu/15500/15547/15547.pdf (For the English version, see page 77)