In an offering published on Diana Montagna’s website and reproduced on Rorate Caeli in early June, 2026, Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, asserted that the long debate over the proposal by the Society of St Pius X to consecrate bishops on July 1^st coming, has largely bypassed the central issue raised by the Society.[1]  The bishop argues some of the Catholic case well, but his paper exposes grave problems with his claim to be an orthodox Catholic.

 

He cites a principle uttered by Pope Pius VI in 1794 in the Introduction to his Bull condemning the determinations of the pseudo-synod of Pistoia, Auctorem Fidei:

“Ambiguity can never be tolerated in a Synod (Council), whose principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error.”

The quote seems to support his diminution to the merely problematic of the offensiveness of the innumerable utterances of the Vatican synod held between 1962 and 1965.

“Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has been experiencing a climate of general ambiguity, vagueness, and uncertainty regarding important doctrines such as the uniqueness of Christ the Redeemer, the uniqueness of the Catholic Church, the divinely established monarchical structure of the Church (on the universal and the local level), and the sacrificial character of the Holy Mass…”

 

But he misquotes Pius VI, as may be seen when the paragraph in Auctorem Fidei is viewed in full.

“In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide their tortuous manoeuvres by seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the subtlest manner.  Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by gradual errors to their eternal damnation.  Regardless of the circumstances under which it is used this manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious.  It can never be tolerated in a synod for the reason that a synod’s principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error.”

Pius VI did not chide the bishops at Pistoia for “ambiguity”, or promoting “a climate of vagueness or uncertainty”.  He condemned them for the viciousness of their lying and dissimulation.

 

Bishop Schneider regards ‘Vatican II’ as an ecumenical, or general, council of the Catholic Church.  He discounts the harm it produced because it was only “a pastoral council”, not instituted for dogmatic purposes.  To justify his position, he notes that that many determinations of the Church’s twenty ecumenical councils (the last, the Vatican Council, in 1870) involved matters which were pastoral, disciplinary, not intended to bind irrevocably.  But, as he would be only too well aware, the ‘non-definitive’ nature of ‘Vatican II’s’ teachings has not prevented the synod’s promoters from vaunting them as definitive.   Their obsession with its ‘authority’ over that of all the ecumenical councils provides an answer to a question he raises:

“Today… to be in full communion with the Holy See, one must accept those affirmations and teachings of Vatican II that are pastoral and certainly non-definitive in terms of their magisterial nature… Why is the unconditional acceptance of the texts of Vatican II presented as a conditio sine qua non for full communion with the Holy See, while no comparable requirement exists with respect to the pastoral, disciplinary, or non-definitive teachings of the preceding twenty Ecumenical Councils?”

This is weak!  Those running the Vatican at the moment think ‘Vatican II’ superior even to the dogmatic teachings of the twenty ecumenical councils!

 

He goes on:

“Among the non-definitive teachings of Vatican II there are several—particularly those concerning religious liberty, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, and collegiality—whose formulations are ambiguous and difficult to reconcile with doctrines taught consistently by the Magisterium from the era of the Church Fathers through the period immediately preceding the Council.”

But these teachings are not just “ambiguous”, not just “difficult to reconcile with doctrines taught consistently by the Magisterium”, they are directly contrary to the Church’s constant teaching, many of them heretical in content, if not in effect.  Thirty-five of these aberrant “teachings” are listed in the article cited in the footnote that follows.[2]  The reader is invited to inspect the list and make his own assessment.

 

The bishop resorts to vagueness and the passive/impersonal, to avoid appearing judgmental.  He treats the entity identified as ‘the Church of Vatican II’ as a chimera, condemning what he describes as “the tendency to produce this ambiguous, relativistic, and worldly form of the Catholic Church through a hermeneutic of continuity”, as “dishonest and unconvincing”.   Yet he refrains from naming the cause of this “tendency”.  His shooting at shadows in this way exposes a wilful blindness to the reality that in the course of their activities, the popes and bishops of the Vatican synod, eager to reduce the Catholic Church to their heretical predispositions, created ‘the Church of Vatican II’ as a counterfeit.  He neglects, moreover, to advert to the reality, which is that every pope since John XXIII has treated the counterfeit as if it was the Catholic Church!

 

Indeed, the bishop himself behaves as if the two are identical.

 

Is the 1983 Code of Canon Law, or is it not, a document of the Catholic Church?  Bishop Schneider concedes, in his text, that it is.  But, if the Code is a document of the Catholic Church, how could it contain a provision, Canon 844, which contravenes the Church’s constant teaching against indulging in communicatio in sacris?  If the Code is a document of the Catholic Church, how could it contain a provision, Canon 375 § 2, which asserts, in breach of her long-standing teaching against the assertion, that consecration of a priest as a bishop confers jurisdiction as well as power?

 

What about the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992—is that a document of the Catholic Church?  Again, one would expect the bishop to affirm that it is.  But, how could it be a Catholic document if it neglects to set forth ipsissimis verbis the clear definition of the Church’s sacred tradition laid down by Trent and confirmed by the Vatican Council in 1870?  How could it, when it repeats as if it is Catholic teaching, elements of the heretical understanding of tradition set forth in the synod’s Dei Verbum n. 8?  How could it be a Catholic document when it contains not the slightest mention of the only pope the Church had canonised in 400 years, Pius X?  Or of his initiative that the age for first reception of Holy Communion is a child’s reaching the age of reason?  Or of his identification of the worst of all the heresies ever to afflict the Catholic Church, Modernism?  How could it be Catholic, when it endorses (in paragraphs 1399 and 1401), as if these were elements of the Catholic faith, the heterodox provisions in Canon 844 of the 1983 Code referred to above?

 

The only rational answer to these questions involves acceptance that ‘Vatican II’s’ protocols have been assumed by the Catholic Church; that is, that the Church of Vatican II is now identical with the Catholic Church!  Accordingly, it is just to conclude that Bishop Schneider endorses the view that the two are identical.  His to-ing and fro-ing—approbating and reprobating—shows that he is prepared to ignore the demands of the first principle of logic, and reality.[3]

 

This logical flaw reappears in his vacillating over the descriptor “the synodal church”.  He condemns it in this passage—

“Since the Council… a process has been underway to establish… under the new name of the “Synodal Church”… a relativist religion adapted to the world…”—

then endorses it in a later one where he calls for papal magnanimity towards the SSPX—

“The synodal Church of our day should be capable of such pastoral breadth and generosity.”

[The expression “synodal church” is, incidentally, a Modernist term.  It encapsulates involvement of the laity in the Church’s management, a solecism explicitly condemned by Pius X in Pascendi n. 27.  The evil was endorsed by the Vatican synod and embraced by the Church of Vatican II.  It is this counterfeit entity, not the Catholic Church, which is “the synodal church”.]

 

It is demonstrable that the Modernist heresy has been the cause of the sixty-year malaise the Catholic faithful have suffered.  The SSPX insists on it: Archbishop Lefebvre identified it as the cause, and founded his Society specifically to counter it, choosing as its patron the saintly pontiff who condemned it.  Yet Bishop Schneider never mentions the heresy once!  Moreover, he reveals not the slightest understanding of how the heresy’s diminution of religion from something objective, to a species of shared consciousness, dominates the behaviour of Pope Leo.

 

The bishop is silent on the Pope’s departures from Catholic principle, though these have occurred almost daily since Robert Prevost’s elevation thirteen months ago, each a cause of grave scandal.  He is silent on the Pope’s endorsement of the appalling ‘doctrinal note’ issued by the ‘Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’, Mater Populi Fidelis, which derogated from the dignity the Church accords Our Blessed Lady.  While the Pope has the Power of the Keys, he conducts himself, daily, as the worst of Modernist heretics, that is—to spell it out—Pope Leo thinks religion is something that originates from within man, not something objective, and that this is the case, not just with Catholicism but with all religion.  This is why he can see no impediment to welcoming heretics into the Vatican![4]

 

Given these realities, it is morally impossible—if not absolutely so, for Almighty God can work miracles!—that Pope Leo will extend to the SSPX, its bishops and priests, the concessions for which the bishop appeals.

_______________________

 

     In March, 2026, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò criticised Cardinals Müller, Sarah and Burke for their failure to address the current crisis confronting the Catholic Church and her faithful, and their negative attitude to the SSPX proposal to conduct episcopal consecrations.  He said:

“All three cardinals are convinced Ratzingerians and supporters of that ecclesial variant of the Hegelian dialectical process, according to which it is supposedly possible to reconcile the thesis of Catholic orthodoxy and the antithesis of modernist heresy within the conciliar synthesis… Their claim that there is no rupture between the pre and post conciliar periods merely begs the question, is devoid of any foundation, and contradicts the reality of a devastating crisis, but nevertheless proves consistent with Benedict XVI’s hermeneutic of continuity, influenced by the Hegelian education of the German theologian.”[5]

The archbishop went on to say:

“[T]hey cannot renounce either themselves or their mentors—Ratzinger first and foremost—as protagonists or supporters of Vatican II.  For this reason, they must necessarily find a compromise that does not benefit the unity of the Church, but rather numbs all dissent in the name of a false obedience that has nothing Catholic about it…”

 

Bishop Schneider differs from the three cardinals over the SSPX’s initiative.  He makes a Catholic response on this issue, for which the Catholic faithful must be grateful, yet his position is flawed by his agreement with them on the crucial issue of compromise with the Modernist ukase.  This is something no Catholic bishop would do.

 

Accordingly, while the bishop seems to conduct himself as a Catholic, his paper reveals him to be one who stands with the three cardinals in the category identified by Pius X in Pascendi n. 27, as ‘conservative Modernist’.

 

 

Michael Baker

June 29^th, 2026—Feast of Sts Peter and Paul