Bishop Schneider invites world’s prelates to sign Profession of Immutable Truths

ROME, January 30, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – In an exclusive interview two weeks after issuing a profession of immutable truths about sacramental marriage, Bishop Athanasius Schneider is inviting his brother bishops around the world to join in raising a common voice in defense of the sanctity and the indissolubility of marriage, in the midst of a “neo-pagan society” where divorce has become “a plague.”

In conversation with LifeSiteNews on Jan. 15, 2018, the auxiliary bishop of Astana Kazakhstan said: “God decides the time, and the time will come when the Pope and the episcopacy again will proclaim, with all clarity, unambiguity and beauty, the sanctity of marriage, and of the family, and of the Eucharist.”

Schneider’s comments come just weeks after he and two fellow Kazakh Ordinaries issued a Profession of Immutable Truths about Sacramental Marriage. In the document, the three bishops solemnly professed the Church’s received teaching and discipline regarding sacramental marriage and the limited conditions (see Familiaris Consortio, n. 84) under which Catholics who are divorced and “remarried” may receive sacramental absolution and Holy Communion.

They presented their profession “before God who will judge us,” in response to certain pastoral norms issued by several bishops’ conferences aimed at implementing chapter 8 of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia. Some of these norms, Schneider told LifeSiteNews, give “implicit approval” of divorce and of sexual activity outside a valid marriage.

“This is contrary to Divine Revelation,” he said, adding that the “beautiful explanations” that are being presented to clergy and faithful as “discernment” and “pastoral accompaniment,” or a “change of paradigm” and “discovery of the subjective part of the truth,” when translated into “common sense language,” are tantamount to an allowance to sin.