The Sun Shall be Darkened

Bishop Schneider on the spiritual battle of our times

Christus Vincit (Angelico Press, 2019) is Bishop Schneider’s response to modernity as what Pius X termed ‘the synthesis of all heresies’. The Catholic Church built Western civilisation, and now a pincer movement of two great heresies threatens it: Freemasonry underpinning totalitarian gender ideology on the one hand and Islam on the other.

But he faces the darkness without despair. The book begins with his grandmother, newly married, seeing Communists take his grandfather away in the night. They shot him. A ‘catacomb atmosphere’ descended on all Christians. But his parents joyfully told him they’d managed to find a church 'only 100 kilometers’ away, and his grandmother said the Communists would have to shoot her before she worked on Sundays. They left her alone.

Then as now, threats to the Catholic Church also lurked within it. Bishop Schneider didn’t choose to become a Bishop, but he recognises ‘it is better in life that God decides’. And he sees the hand of God in the fact that Bishop Manuel, who ordained him, had seen his own diocese ‘destroyed by Liberation Theology’. Having lost tradition, he knew its value and taught it: accordingly, for Bishop Schneider, 'the meaning of my day, of my life, is the Mass’, and he is steadfast in fighting the ‘dictatorship of gender ideology’.

He sees secularism as, at root, anthropocentrism. Its aim is to 'ban Jesus Christ from public life’. Since relativism means what is true for one generation is not true for the next, it is a ‘flight from reality’. And ‘ultimately Satan is behind it’. Why? Because it is ‘the unhealthy autonomy of man towards God’. Non serviam (I will not serve).

Autonomy is the core of liberalism, and for Bishop Schneider Protestantism is liberalism in religious form. It meant ‘man declared himself the centre, and this is subjectivism’. Not only is secularism ‘the necessary consequence of Protestantism’. Gender ideology is ‘the logical consequence of the independence of man’. It takes sex, the greatest mystery, and wreaks havoc with 'blasphemy, rebellion, and insanity at the same time’ by trying to make man, not God, its architect.

Liberalism — man’s ‘unhealthy autonomy’ — thus underpins woke. And Bishop Schneider traces its genealogy back to Satanism via Freemasonry, Secular Humanism and Gnosticism. As Cardinal Manning said, ‘all human conflict is ultimately theological’. With Bishop Schneider’s help, then, let’s go beyond the secular infighting of the West’s so-called culture war, a media industry for liberals who all agree on sodomy.

According to the Gnostics, matter is evil. The visible world is evil. And the God of the Bible is evil because He made it. The Gnostics believe they must therefore do the opposite of what God commands. The Devil is actually the good god.

If God says divorce is bad, for example, it’s good. The Freemasons — philosophically Gnostic and founded by the Protestant pastor, James Anderson, in 1717 — thus introduced divorce laws. And they not only acknowledged the French Revolution as their work but also dethroned the Tsar in 1917. As Pius VIII said, ‘their law is untruth, their god is the devil, and their cult is turpitude.’

Because of the Freemasonic program to create chaos to bring about a new order opposed to God, Bishop Schneider says that 'we are again in a neo-pagan society’. The Freemasons themselves (Voltaire, Rousseau and others) 'called the eighteenth century — the century in which Freemasonry officially began — the century of "the Enlightenment”.’ And the logical consequences of small mistakes made then are becoming clear now.

The Enlightenment quest to make autonomous man ‘master of nature’ (as Francis Bacon, another Mason, put it) is now being reduced to absurdity. Autonomy now means liberation from biology. As Bishop Schneider warns, ‘there is no civilisation when you separate yourself from God, from the revelation of God, and from the natural law, which is the signature of God’.

We must return to the social kingship of Christ. Beginning with Constantine in the 4th century, that produced the supreme flowering of Western civilisation by the 13th and 14th centuries. 'All things are created for Christ’, and that is why ‘the civilisation built by Christianity has already collapsed’.

‘Without me, you can do nothing’ (John 15:5) is the tough truth dooming all attempts at autonomy.

Not only must we return to the reign of Christ in society. We must also reestablish natural law. Freemasonic, liberal opponents of Catholicism weaponise Islam to destroy the West. Religious indifferentism is dangerous. Error should not be spread freely. It has ‘no rights by nature’. All societies and all governments must worship Christ.

It is a liberal lie that man can go without worship. Bishop Schneider reminds us of Bishop Fulton Sheen’s remark that we are faced with either the autonomous, liberal God-man or God. These are the ‘two absolutes’. Liberalism promises man that he can be ‘like God without God.’ Instead, we must remember we are dust and ashes.

We must put Christ 'back at the centre’ because that is where He belongs. Hence when the kings heard of Christ’s birth, “they were troubled” (Matt 2:3).

So how can we do this? Bishop Schneider regards the internet and social media as 'providential tools’. And he reminds us that Vatican II was neither inspired nor infallible. ‘The pope is ultimately the person in the Church with the least freedom’ because he is merely Christ’s servant. The pope must not focus on secular affairs, and he shouldn’t speak much.

This doesn’t mean the Church has nothing to do with the state. Traditional Catholic doctrine makes a distinction between Church and state but no separation. ‘The Protestants strictly separated the spiritual and secular domains’, but ultimately politics must be subordinated to the spiritual destiny of man.

The Church is suffering from a sick heart because the Eucharist has been degraded. We must receive Communion on the tongue so that we are like babies receiving milk because unless we become like little children we shall not enter Heaven. Priests must celebrate the Mass ad orientem — facing the East, the same direction as the congregation. ‘The loss of the supernatural is a turning of man towards himself’. And we must remember that the Eucharist is not the Last Supper but the Sacrifice of Cavalry.

He also stresses the importance of the Double Confiteor — where the priest first confesses to the congregation before they confess to him. It is a reminder that Christianity is about both community and hierarchy. He describes being moved to tears by a dialogue Mass in Africa, hearing the little children praying for him in perfect Latin.

And the Church must resist the ‘heresy of action’. This stems from ‘a reversal of the order of truth and love’ — caring more about feelings than facts. He stresses that, ‘in the Holy Trinity, Love proceeds from Truth’. You can’t love someone with a lie. To approve homosexuality, for example, is a failure to love. As Aquinas said, ‘It is part of our love for our brother that we hate the fault and the lack of good in him, since desire for another's good is equivalent to hatred of his evil.'

Bishop Schneider hopes that, as they have done historically, the lay people will preserve the Faith. The growing popularity of the Traditional Latin Mass is a good sign. He believes that young men in particular are drawn to it because it has 'the solemnity of a military discipline’. He also recommends reading the Catechism of the Council of Trent and the Baltimore Catechism. We must be like ‘spiritual salmon’ going against the stream to return to source.

Since sex is the focus of the attack on the West, it must be the focus of the counterattack. He stresses that any attempt at ‘excluding new life in the sexual encounter promotes selfishness’. Adam and Eve wanted to be alone without God after they had sinned. But the wages of sin are death. God Himself pronounced the first death penalty sentence — on Adam and Eve. And modern sexuality is dying because it is trying to exist alone without God.

Responding to the idea that Putin’s Christianity is fake and he’s still a covert Communist, Bishop Schneider notes that, ‘even if Putin is still a Communist, God can use him to re-Christianise Russian society and to counteract the homosexual agenda and the implementation of the atheistic Masonic One World Government.’

By contrast, ‘Trump publicly promotes the so-called LGBT agenda’. But we must have 'a government that recognises the necessity of maintaining the basic order of natural law’. This is urgent because natural law is under attack:

‘There is ever more evidence of the establishment of a One World Government by the United Nations and ultimately by powerful Masonic organisations, which act behind the scenes in order politically to implement the novus ordo saeculorum, the New World Order, the atheist One World Government. This One World Government reveals a clear ideological program which is essentially atheist, materialist, anti-Christian, and even blasphemous, with the totalitarian imposition of abortion “rights”, homosexual indoctrination, the climate change myth and the destruction of national identities…Such a recognisably Masonic and atheist One World Government is in the process of realizing the final stage of the Marxist-Communist plan…The world urgently needs heroic and noble resistance fighters against the world dictatorship which enslaves people through the absurdity of gender ideology, the moral corruption of innocent children, and the genocide of unborn children.’

Bishop Schneider reminds us that ‘we are in a spiritual battle of a magnitude rarely seen before in history’. Christians must therefore develop their fortitude because persecution is likely in the future. The Eucharist must return to full health as the heart of the Church. We must catechise our families. We must integrate the Faith into daily life. Husbands and wives must ‘never go to bed without reconciliation’. They must ‘never speak negatively of one another.’ And they must withdraw their children from school if they are ‘in moral danger.’

Tough times are ahead. Roughly a third of the angels fell, he grimly notes. And he explains the connection between the Incarnation and their fall by quoting St. Michael’s words as he expelled Satan, Quis ut Deus? (Who is like God?).

In addition to the Sanctus, Bishop Schneider recommends the prayer of St. Michael:

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.