Kazakhstan Bishop Schneider Broadcasts Seeds of Faith Around the World

Bishop Vasa, Archbishop Cordileone, and Bishop Schneider.

His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider, O.R.C, has been referred to in the National Catholic Register as “one of the leading voices of fidelity, continuity, and tradition in the Church today.”¹

In some ways, it is hard to account for the scope of his influence, in light of the fact that Bishop Schneider is auxiliary bishop of Astana, in Kazakhstan, a country with only around 150,000 Roman Catholics. Even though Kazakhstan is the world’s ninth largest country, many have never even heard of it. And so, it is a bit of a marvel that, in spite of the relative humble obscurity of his role as an auxiliary bishop serving in that less-than-famous locale, Bishop Schneider is invited so often to appear in so many far-flung places.

California Visit 2018

During February 2018, Bishop Athanasius Schneider came for a short visit to California.² He celebrated the Extraordinary Form Latin Mass at several San Francisco Bay Area churches, and he was the principal speaker, and celebrated two more Extraordinary Form Masses, at the 2018 Latin Mass/Keep the Faith conference on February 24 and 25 in Monterey. In Kazakhstan, Masses are usually celebrated in the Ordinary Form, but ad orientem, and Communion is distributed to the faithful on the tongue while they are kneeling.

In San José, Bishop Schneider celebrated a Pontifical Low Mass at the Oratory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on Thursday, February 22. Scores of the faithful gathered around him afterwards to receive his blessing. The next morning, he made time for an interview—which is included further below in this article—before he celebrated a mid-day low Mass again at the Oratory. He then performed a Pontifical Nuptial ceremony for a local couple celebrating their 10th anniversary, and he was driven to Monterey for the Latin Mass/Keep the Faith conference.

How Do We Know What is True Catholic Doctrine?

During the Latin Mass conference, Bishop Schneider gave a talk about the relationship between tradition and liturgy. He used quotations from St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Vincent of Lérins, and St. Thomas Aquinas, along with the writings of Dom Prosper Gueranger, to provide guidelines about how to discern when a teaching is authentic by its consistency with the tradition of the Church.³

To put Bishop Schneider’s remarks in context: A major topic during the conference, which was also discussed by other speakers from other perspectives, was how we are to understand the latest action by the Vatican concerning the controversial interpretation of two ambiguously worded footnotes of Chapter 8 of the Apostolic Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, which was signed the previous spring in March 19, 2017. The footnotes generated controversy ever since the release of the document because, according to the most radical possible interpretation, they seemed to open the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist to certain couples living in unblessed unions who do not commit to living as brother and sister.

Catholics at all levels of the Church had been confused about how to respond to a proposal that seemed to propose a radical change in practice, and to indicate a disregard for established doctrine, especially since the proposal came directly from the pope. Four Cardinals submitted five questions (dubia)⁴ to the pope to ask for clarification of the ambiguity, but they never received the courtesy of a reply. Instead, they were vilified by the pope’s supporters as legalistic, rigorists, Pharisees, and haters.

The radical interpretation, if intended, would be scandalously objectionable because it contradicts the perennial teachings of the Church. After all, Jesus Himself said, “God hates divorce.” And He told the woman taken in adultery to go and sin no more. Another important teaching violated by that interpretation is that the Church does not teach that God ever asks the impossible of us. God requires divorced Catholics to remain celibate, the same way He requires all others who are not in sacramental marriages; all are obliged to obey, no matter how difficult it may be.

The interpretation also contradicts the teaching that absolution cannot be obtained from the Sacrament of Penance without a commitment to stop sinning, and it would even be dangerous to those who might be allowed to receive Communion while living in an objective state of mortal sin— because from the time of St. Paul, the Church has warned that to receive Communion unworthily is to be guilty of the Body and Blood of Christ and to risk sickness and death.

And so, a major topic of discussion at the conference was that on December 2, 2017, almost a year after Amoris Laetitia was released, Pope Francis directed that two documents be included in the list of Apostolic Epistles Acta Apostolicae Sedis (AAS). And by this move, the pope finally made his interpretation absolutely clear. It was the radical one.

One of the documents included in AAS was a letter in which Argentinian bishops wrote that in some particular cases where divorced Catholics are in a new “union,” they may be eventually given the sacraments of penance and Eucharist—after “accompaniment” and “discernment” if they find living celibately to be “infeasible.” The other was a letter of “warm approval,” which Pope Francis wrote in September of 2016, in which the pope stated there is no other interpretation than that which the Argentinian bishops wrote. This action elevated the radical interpretation to the status of “authentic magisterium.”

To the relief of many attendees, theologian Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S., provided in his conference talk an explanation of how declaring something to be part of the “authentic magisterium” does not make it infallible, which is too complex to be covered adequately here. You can see the talk on Youtube, or if you prefer, read a shorter article “Authentic Confusion About Authentic Magisterium,” in which he covered the same points by following the links in the footnotes.⁵⁶

Although different in tone, Bishop Schneider’s talk perfectly corresponded to Fr. Harrison’s analysis in this way: They both agree that a change in practice or doctrine cannot be infallible when it contradicts an infallible teaching that has always been taught by the Church for 2,000 years.

“Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.”— St. Vincent of Lérins, quoted by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, 25 February 2018.

“Peter’s current Successor seems to have told all Catholics, in no uncertain terms, that as of December 2, 2017 we must accept as orthodox and true something that until the previous day we were always required to reject as unorthodox and false!” —Rev. Brian Harrison⁷

After the Latin Mass Conference

At the end of the busy two days of the conference, Bishop Schneider was welcomed at Archbishop Salvator Cordileone’s San Francisco residence on Sunday evening. The next morning, he celebrated a surprisingly well-attended, previously unscheduled, Extraordinary Form Mass at 7:30 a.m. at San Francisco’s Star of the Sea Church—which was publicized only on Facebook the night before—and then he left for the airport, on his way to Germany.

Seeing the bishop’s schedule had been so packed, I was surprised when the former prior of the Mount St. Joseph Monastery, Reverend Father Joseph Geoghehan, O.C.D., sent me a card a few days later with a photo of Bishop Schneider that he took when the bishop made a stop up there, as well. It’s hard for me to imagine how the bishop found time for that visit to the Discalced Carmelite monks in the hills of San José. Now I wonder where else he might have dropped in during his short time here.

Bishop Schneider did all these things even while suffering a cold that often reduced his voice to a whisper. He was always patient and in good spirits when I saw him, even though, when he was able to talk above a whisper, he often had to stop to cough.

Bishop Schneider is a remarkably kind, gentle, and humble man. When I got to his hotel early for our interview, I ran into him in the lobby trying to get some coffee. When he discovered the hotel restaurant was unexpectedly closed that morning, he showed no annoyance. I found a table and some chairs in the lobby where we could sit to conduct our interview, and he kindly brought me coffee and offered me granola bars, which the hotel had set out on a little table for guests. And before we could even start, he reversed our roles by asking me how I became interested in the traditional Latin Mass. I decided to go along with this role reversal and do the talking for a while so he could eat his granola bar, and drink some coffee before he had to start answering my questions.

Bishop Schneider’s Bay Area visit, which I witnessed only in part, was just a tiny segment of his busy schedule of travels.

Catholicism in Kazakhstan

The story of how Bishop Schneider came to become a contributor to the renewal of Catholicism in Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet area, before he become a world-traveling proponent of traditional Catholic teachings, is well worth reading about.

Bishop Schneider was born, baptized, and was named Anton in 1961 in the former Soviet Union. He first learned to practice and treasure his faith from devoutly Catholic parents, who experienced extreme hardships and upheavals during World War II, and later under Soviet rule.

His parents were originally among hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans whose forebears had settled in villages near Odessa in the Ukraine, on the Black Sea. In an interview quoted in a Zenit article,⁸

Bishop Schneider spoke extensively about his childhood, and the following quotes are from that article. Other biographical details were gleaned from other sources.

At the end of the Second World War, “the German Army took all these German people — 300,000 of them — [from the Black Sea area] to Berlin …. And when the Russian Army occupied Berlin, they took back these people as ‘forced labor’ to three places — Kazakhstan, Siberia and to the Ural Mountains.”

His parents were among those sent to the Ural Mountains. “They were forced to work there, and it’s a miracle that they survived. When they were freed, they moved to Central Asia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, a little republic close to the Chinese border, just below Kazakhstan.” He never went to the neighboring country of Kazakhstan to the north until many years later.

“There, I was born and spent my childhood. Then we moved from Kyrgyzstan to Estonia, which was still part of the Soviet Union. There, I lived for four years.”

Always when they lived under Soviet rule, the family had to practice its Catholic faith secretly, because religion was suppressed.

Finally, they were able to attend Mass when they lived in Estonia, but it was not at all easy. “We had a church which was 100 kilometers [62 miles] away, and we had to travel that 100 kilometers to attend the Holy Mass.” His parents took their four children to Mass by train once a month (because they could not afford the fare to go more often). At the time, he was between 10 and 12 years of age. They left for Mass on the first train before dawn, and returned on the last train after dark, and “it was dangerous, because, during those times, the Communist government forbade children from participating in the Holy Mass.”

In 1973, after Bishop Schneider made his First Holy Communion, he emigrated with his family to Rottweil in West Germany. Shocked at the age of 12 when he first saw people taking Communion in the hand, as he told the National Catholic Register, “I carried this pain in my soul,” and it prompted him to write his 2009 book on the Eucharist, “Dominus est—It is the Lord: Reflections of a Bishop of Central Asia on Holy Communion.”

As a young man, he joined the revived Order of the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra in Austria in 1982 and took the religious name of Athanasius. He studied philosophy at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome, and theology at the Sapientiae Institute of Anápolis, Brazil. After he was ordained a priest in March 1990, he obtained a doctorate in patristic theology in 1997 from the Augustinianum in Rome.

Bishop Schneider returned to Central Asia only by chance. When he was still in Rome, and planning to return to Brazil, a priest whom he had not previously met invited him to help foster the revival of the Catholic Church by coming to teach at the newly formed seminary in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. In Karaganda, Bishop Schneider not only taught, but he helped build the seminary, and while he was also building the Cathedral of Our Lady of Fatima, he commissioned the Italian artist, Rodolfo Papa, to make a series of fourteen paintings for the crypt of the cathedral on the theme of the Eucharist, a subject which is always close to his own heart.

After Athanasius Schneider was ordained a bishop in June of 2006 in St. Peter’s Basilica, he was first assigned as auxiliary bishop in Karaganda. In 2011, he was transferred to the position of auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Astana, also in Kazakhstan. He also still manages to teach at the seminary.

When I listened to Bishop Schneider’s description at the end of his answer to the first question in the interview—about how he tries to evangelize in Kazakhstan through presence, through witness, and through personal contacts—I also thought about how widely he travels and teaches. This made me realize that he is doing the same thing around the world as he does in his own diocese in evangelizing through presence, through witness, and through personal contact. He seems to me to be a kind of saintly “Johnny Appleseed,” planting seeds of authentic Catholic doctrine as he travels around.

You may watch Bishop Schneider’s February 24 talk at the Latin Mass Conference 2018, “The Relationship Between Tradition and Liturgy,” by clicking here.

To watch Bishop Schneider’s February 25 homily, “The Meaning, Necessity and Value of Prayer,” you may click here.

To watch Bishop Schneider’s February 22 Pontifical Low Mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory at Five Wounds Portuguese National Church, you may click here.

Interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider

Following is the text from my interview with Bishop Schneider on February 23, 2018, edited for clarity and space. The last two questions were not answered during the short time we had available to talk that first day, but I was able to get them answered during the Q & A session at the Latin Mass conference a few days later.

Q: Many of us on this side of the world are regrettably quite uninformed about Kazakhstan, but I saw that one recent article referred to Kazakhstan’s deep Christian roots,⁹ and another referred to Kazakhstan as an “Outpost of Catholic Orthodoxy.”¹⁰ Can you tell us something about the Christian history of the country up to now?

A: The Christian roots in Kazakhstan go back to the first millennium because in the 7th and 8th centuries, Nestorian missionaries [followers of the Nestorian heresy] did very advanced mission work in Central Asia, and in China. And so there have been Christians in the southern part of current-day Kazakhstan, and other places in Central Asia, from that time.

In the 9th and 10th centuries, an invasion of Islam occurred, but not yet in a totalitarian manner. And in the 14th century, maybe fifty percent of missionary work was done by Franciscans. Giovanni di Montecorvino [John of Montecorvino] was a famous Franciscan missionary who went into China, to Bejing, and established a metropolitan diocese there, in the Latin rite. Montecorvino also passed through Kazakhstan with his missionaries. He ordained a Franciscan, Richard of Burgundy, bishop of the historical diocese of Almalik, in the territory of the present Kazakhstan. He and his priests started churches and schools there.

This was during Genghis Khan’s reign. He was pagan, but he was very tolerant of other religions.

And then, in the midst of the 14th century, there was a violent invasion by Islam, and they destroyed every sign of Christianity. The Catholic community was small, only established about 50 or 70 years. The invaders killed the bishop. They destroyed the churches. They killed all the priests, and they forced all people to accept Islam or to die.

The Christian presence returned to this place again in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Russian Tzar annexed the territory of Central Asia to the Russian Empire. And so there came Russian Orthodoxy, and its churches and priests.

Since the end of the 19th century, there came also Catholics to Kazakhstan, who were mainly Polish and German. The Germans who came at that time were farmers who had first settled near the Volga River in Russia, “Volga Germans.”

The greatest immigration by Germans happened in the 20^th century, starting in the 1930s. In the 1940s, because of the mass deportations ordered by Stalin, the entire area of Kazakhstan was dotted with camps and gulags, which are a special type of concentration camp. [Two gulags where Alksander Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned were in Kazakhstan.]¹¹

The main location for the camps and gulags was around the city of Karaganda. Stalin deported to the area one million Catholics, more or less, for political, nationalistic reasons. Especially, he deported Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, who were all mostly Catholics.

Q: In a way, that was providential.

A: Yes. We have a joke that Stalin was the greatest evangelizer in the 20th century for Kazakhstan.

The million or so Catholics started to live in a clandestine church, with clandestine priests, and even had a clandestine bishop. The Catholic faith flourished in the families, because the families are very strong, especially the German families.

My parents were deported by Stalin from a German settlement on the Black Sea shore—first to a camp in the Ural Mountains for forced labor, and then after they were freed in the end of the 1950s from this forced labor camp, they moved for a time to Central Asia, to the region south of Kazakhstan, that is now called Kyrgyzstan—where I was born.

And so I grew up in this clandestine church during difficult times when the Soviets oppressed religion.

The dynamic underground church lasted until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. The Catholic Church came out from the underground and became public.

Now in Kazakhstan, we have four ecclesiastical jurisdictions. We built churches and a seminary, we have parishes, and we can, in our parishes, live and practice the faith more or less in freedom.

There are some legal restrictions. But, in general, we practice our faith openly. We are in a predominant Islamic environment. The majority—aboriginal, local people—are Muslims. Then there are a good number of Russian Orthodox. We Catholics make up about five-tenths of the population—a very little community. [Many Catholics moved away after the Stalin era.]

So, we are doing our missionary work. We cannot do it openly; it’s not allowed. We can only do it inside the church buildings, not outside the church buildings.

Our method of evangelization is more or less evangelizing through presence, through witness, through personal contacts. We are slowly growing by little steps.

Our strength is prayer, because prayer is the most powerful means of evangelization. In Our Mother of Perpetual Help Cathedral in Astana, we have Perpetual Adoration.

We try in all parishes to foster prayer, Eucharistic Adoration, the rosary, and other Christian piety, to give good catechesis to the people for faith formation, and to train good priests in the seminary. These are the main tools of our evangelization.

There are some conversions to the Catholic Church, even from Islamic backgrounds and Orthodox. But not so much, it is a slow process.

In Kazakhstan, the Catholic Church has very few administrative structures—the minimum. Thanks be to God! So, we have more time to evangelize and to pray.

We bishops try to keep and to teach the purity of faith and the dignity of the liturgy to our faithful.

Q: You celebrated Mass last night at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Oratory with two canons from the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. You also gave Lenten retreats at St. Stanislaus and at St. Mary’s in Wisconsin, which are also staffed by the institute. And in August at the yearly chapter, you spoke at the institute seminary in Gricigliano, Italy. Can you tell us more about your relationship with the institute, which—as you know—uses the traditional Latin Liturgy of 1962 for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the other sacraments?

A: My relationship with the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest started maybe ten years ago. The superiors invited me to their seminary—I suppose it was in 2009—to administer some minor ordinations in Gricigliano. And since then, they invited me to other ordinations and retreats and visits to their apostolates in other places.

I esteem the work of this institute. They are doing really exemplary work for the true renewal of the Church. They transmit the truth and the beauty of the liturgy with the spirit of St. Francis de Sales—with meekness. This is for me a very specific characteristic of this institute, which I like and appreciate.

And in several places—I consider this as providence from God—they are not only restoring the beauty of the liturgy itself, but also they have restored, and are restoring, some church buildings to the beauty that is worthy of God, and fitting for the public worship of the Church. I hope that this institute may grow and make a strong contribution for the true renewal of the Church in our day.

Q: You have a devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, and you helped build a cathedral in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, in her name. What kind of help can Our Lady of Fatima be to us in the current crisis in the Church, do you think?

A: I think that we have to believe Our Lady. She said “my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” We have to trust that that will come. When Our Lord, in the Eucharist, is again venerated, and put in the center of the manner in which we distribute and receive holy communion, and celebrate Mass, and when, once again, the most high honor is given to our Eucharistic King, then the Immaculate Heart will be joyful and will triumph. Our Lady wants nothing for herself. All she wants is for the mystical body of her Son to flourish. So, in my opinion, first the Church has to restore the Eucharistic Kingdom of Christ, and all its splendor and dignity, and then will come the time of the Immaculate Heart. This must be prepared for through prayer, and the other means indicated by Our Lady—the rosary, the First Saturdays, the spirit of expiation, and the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart in a specific and explicit way, which is still to come.

Q: I would like to get your thoughts about a disturbing discovery I made last year while reviewing a book called Index Lectionum, which compares which Scriptural passages are included in the old and the new forms of the Mass. I hope you don’t mind a long preamble to my question.

I found that many Scriptural passages were left out of the new, three-year lectionary, most relevantly the passages that talk about how receiving the Body and Blood of Our Lord unworthily is to be guilty of His death. Perhaps as a result, these verses by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians are never mentioned in the discussions about whether to allow some Catholics who are living in unblessed unions to receive Communion.

You know the verses, of course, so I don’t have to repeat them to you.

The verses below (1 Corinthians 11:20-22 and 27-32) never appear in the revised lectionary—
20 Brethren: When you come, therefore, into one place, it is not now to eat the Lord’s supper.
21 For every one taketh before his own supper to eat. And one indeed is hungry and another is drunk.
22 What, have you not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God and put them to shame that have not? What shall I say to you? Do I praise you? In this, I praise you not.
27 Therefore, whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and the Blood of the Lord.
28 But let a man prove himself; and so let him eat of that bread and drink of the chalice.
29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Body of the Lord.
30 Therefore are there many infirm and weak among you: and many sleep.
31 But if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.
32 But whilst we are judged, we are chastised by the Lord, that we be not condemned with this world.

Catholics who attend traditional Latin Masses are going to hear all of those verses read at least once a year if they attend the Mass on Holy Thursday and will hear most of this same set of verses on the feast of Corpus Christi, or at a votive Mass of the Most Holy Eucharist. A Catholic who attends Ordinary Form Masses is never going to hear any of those verses. It is distressing to me that some Catholics in adulterous, unblessed marriages are being told they can receive Communion, when St. Paul made it so clear that the consequences for the person who receives the Eucharist unworthily is for him, or her, to be guilty of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and to be in danger of sickening and dying.

In an introduction to Index Lectionum by Professor Peter Kwasniewski, he stated his belief that these significant verses were deliberately omitted to lay the groundwork to weaken sexual morality. What are your thoughts?

A: It is obvious that the omission of these verses had a policy, and an aim—because otherwise they would not have been omitted. How can you cut out these verses that the church has always been proclaiming since St. Paul? So, behind this there had to be evidently an ideological plan.

Since the reform of the liturgy, and also of church life since the Council, there has been a process of Protestantization of the Eucharist. It means that the Eucharist is becoming more and more—in understanding and in practice—a mere symbol, of fraternity, of hospitality, and so a kind of sociological means of: “Be kind to your people.” It’s ever more being reduced to a meal where you can exclude no one. According to this logic, it is okay [to include everyone, even public adulterers], so you cannot quote such a quotation [of those verses of St. Paul against unworthily receiving the Eucharist].

But such an attitude is contrary to the doctrine of Our Lord, and to the entire and constant tradition of the Church. It’s not Catholic any more.

And now we are witnessing this process that started after the Council, not in the Council I would say, not in the texts of the Council so much, but after. There has been a growth of theological relativism, not only concerning the Eucharist, but a general relativization of all Catholic doctrine.

Now we see the logical consequence of that attitude in the demand that public adulterers be admitted to Holy Communion. And now the German bishops have asked for Protestants to be admitted to Holy Communion just last week.

Always, of course, at first, they say “only in some exceptional occasions.” And then the exceptions become the rule. They use this expression “in exceptional occasions,” as a tactic to introduce and to promote a new practice that will eventually become a new doctrine. This progression from exception to universal practice ultimately will lead to a total relativization, and a banalization, of the Eucharist.

This Protestantization of the Eucharist is an attack on the Church, because the Eucharist is the heart of the Church. We must pray, and do all things possible, to restore the Church, from its heart.

Q: At the end of last year, you released a document titled “Profession of the immutable truths about sacramental marriage”¹² with two other Kazakhstan bishops, which stated that it is not licit to admit to sacramental communion Catholics who are divorced-and-remarried, if they are not living according to the long-standing teachings of the Church. What is happening with that?

A: Three of us released the statement on the indissolubility of marriage on December 31, 2017, the Feast of the Holy Family, in the Ordinary Form.

It is a deceit what is being said that the doctrine remains, but the practice can change. No! We have to say this: “The practice cannot be changed.”

We have to publicly state the truth.

We can only formulate and state the immutable teaching of the Church, and the immutable practice. We cannot judge the Pope; the Pope cannot be judged by anyone. A bishop or a general council cannot judge the Pope. But a pope can be judged by a following pope, and a following council ….

We can only admonish the Pope always with respect. To state the truth is a kind of indirect correction of the Pope, and indirect admonition.

Now we have ten bishops in the whole Church who publicly gave their name and signed. I have talked with other bishops and cardinals who said, “I agree with your text, it is completely good, but I cannot sign. I am afraid of persecution.” So, there are a number of bishops and cardinals who are really intimidated. Even so, they agree with our statement, and with the Dubia released by the four Cardinals.

In the cause of truth, it is not a case of numbers, but the truth itself will triumph. In the 4th century, there were only a couple of non-Arian bishops, you could count them on your fingers, and even so, they were supported by the faithful. St. Athanasius said to the faithful Catholics, “The Arians (the public bishops in those times), they have the churches, the buildings, but we have the faith.” Today, again it is true, they have the administrative power, but we have the faith. And this faith is more powerful; this is what will last.

Q: On December 27, 2011, you gave a talk at a Conference of Bishops in Rome in which you stated the need for an authoritative document to expose major abuses in how the teachings of the Second Vatican Council were implemented, similar to the old Index of Errors. What kind of reactions did you receive?

A: We urgently need a new syllabus to clarify most precisely what is authentic. It should be done in the future by a pope or a council. A syllabus is just a list, an enumeration. The tremendous confusion about what is authentic teaching is unique in the history of the church, and it is essential that it be done.

No sane person will be scandalized when a public minister of health publishes a list of dangers to one’s health. No one should be scandalized by the publication of a precise list of dangers to one’s soul.

After I gave that talk, I got letters from priests, and the faithful, asking me to make a syllabus. I said to them why don’t you start to make a syllabus? Start a group, study, and propose a list to prepare for a future papal syllabus. Why not?