Bishop Schneider says Dignitatis Humanae should be “corrected.”

thana­sius Schnei­der, aux­il­iary bish­op of Kaza­khstan, once again feels a need to tell us that God does not pos­i­tive­ly will the diver­si­ty of reli­gions we find in the world. We’ve been through this before. It all goes back to a joint state­ment that the pope signed with Mus­lim lead­ers at Abu Dhabi in Feb­ru­ary of 2019. The key part of the state­ment reads: “The plu­ral­ism and the diver­si­ty of reli­gions, colour, sex, race and lan­guage are willed by God in His wis­dom, through which He cre­at­ed human beings.” Even Fr. Z under­stood that the ref­er­ence here is to God’s per­mis­sive will, not His pos­i­tive will, since the doc­u­ment describes this diver­si­ty as a con­se­quence of human free­dom. Noth­ing, not even the Holo­caust, hap­pens apart from God’s will.

“You can say,” the pope lat­er told Schnei­der him­self, “that the phrase in ques­tion on the diver­si­ty of reli­gions means the per­mis­sive will of God.” “Schnei­der wins clar­i­fi­ca­tion from pope!” Life­Site­News shout­ed from the rooftops. The Abu Dhabi state­ment is ful­ly ortho­dox! But just two months lat­er, in May, Schnei­der was grous­ing again; Pope Fran­cis must “cor­rect” the error, he told Life­Site. Even though he had clar­i­fied, and Abu Dhabi turned out to be ortho­dox, some­how the pope still need­ed to make a cor­rec­tion. By August, the pope hav­ing failed to cor­rect what was not in error, Schnei­der gave anoth­er inter­view to Life­Site and this time accused the pope of “betray­ing Jesus Christ.” This month Schnei­der has decid­ed to esca­late things fur­ther; on June 1 he pub­lished an opin­ion essay for Life­Site. “There is no divine pos­i­tive will or nat­ur­al right to the diver­si­ty of reli­gions!” he cries — as though Pope Fran­cis ever said there was; as though the clar­i­fi­ca­tion nev­er hap­pened. This time Schnei­der says that Vat­i­can II itself must be cor­rect­ed by a future pope; if Pope Fran­cis is con­fus­ing, it’s the fault of Dig­ni­tatis Humanae!

Dear read­er, if this is what hap­pens when the pope clar­i­fies one sen­tence, it’s no won­der he refus­es to answer the dubia.

Schnei­der notes that the joint state­ment from Abu Dhabi cites Dig­ni­tatis Humanae sev­er­al times. He even finds much to praise in DH. For exam­ple, he likes this part:

We believe that th[e] one true reli­gion sub­sists in the Catholic and Apos­tolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus com­mit­ted the duty of spread­ing it abroad among all men. Thus He spoke to the Apos­tles: “Go, there­fore, and make dis­ci­ples of all nations, bap­tiz­ing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spir­it, teach­ing them to observe all things what­so­ev­er I have enjoined upon you” (Matt. 28: 19–20). On their part, all men are bound to seek the truth, espe­cial­ly in what con­cerns God and His Church, and to embrace the truth they come to know, and to hold fast to it.

That part warms Schnei­der’s heart. But soon enough he finds all sorts of error and con­fu­sion in Vat­i­can II. Sec­tion 2 of DH begins:

This Vat­i­can Coun­cil declares that the human per­son has a right to reli­gious free­dom. This free­dom means that all men are to be immune from coer­cion on the part of indi­vid­u­als or of social groups and of any human pow­er, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a man­ner con­trary to his own beliefs.

Schnei­der likes that. But he does­n’t like what fol­lows:

[M]en can­not [pur­sue the truth] unless they enjoy immu­ni­ty from exter­nal coer­cion as well as psy­cho­log­i­cal free­dom. There­fore the right to reli­gious free­dom has its foun­da­tion not in the sub­jec­tive dis­po­si­tion of the per­son, but in his very nature. In con­se­quence, the right to this immu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to exist even in those who do not live up to their oblig­a­tion of seek­ing the truth and adher­ing to it and the exer­cise of this right is not to be imped­ed, pro­vid­ed that just pub­lic order be observed.

Schnei­der likes it very much when the Coun­cil says that Catholics have reli­gious free­dom and the state can not force them to act against their con­science. He says:

Immu­ni­ty from exter­nal coer­cion in accept­ing the only one true Faith is a nat­ur­al right. It is also a nat­ur­al right not to be forced to car­ry out evil (sin) or error (false reli­gion).

But he does­n’t like it at all when he finds out that Mus­lims or Bud­dhists have a right to reli­gious free­dom too. That caus­es him to rend his cler­i­cals and dash his biret­ta to the ground. Only Catholics have a nat­ur­al right to reli­gious free­dom:

It does not fol­low … that God wills pos­i­tive­ly (nat­ur­al right), that man should not be pre­vent­ed from choos­ing, car­ry­ing out and spread­ing evil (sin) or error (false reli­gion).

 

[I’m not sure how Schnei­der thinks some­one is to be “pre­vent­ed” from becom­ing Mus­lim. Should the pope send the Swiss Guard to round them up and force them into an RCIA class? The prac­tice of forced con­ver­sions has long since been dis­cred­it­ed. Does Schnei­der real­ly want to return to that?]

 

One has to keep in mind this fun­da­men­tal dis­tinc­tion between the fac­ul­ty to choose and do evil, and the right to choose and do evil. God tol­er­ates evil and error and false reli­gions; He even tol­er­ates the wor­ship of the so-called “church of Satan.” How­ev­er, God’s tol­er­ance or allowance (His per­mis­sive will) of evil and error does not con­sti­tute in man a nat­ur­al right to choose, prac­tice and spread them, i.e. it does not con­sti­tute God’s pos­i­tive will.

Schnei­der wastes a lot of vir­tu­al ink here at Life­Site point­ing out what no one dis­putes. Of course no one has a nat­ur­al right to embrace error. But Dig­ni­tatis does not say that any­one does. Read again what it actu­al­ly says:

[Every­one is] impelled by nature and also bound by a moral oblig­a­tion to seek the truth, espe­cial­ly reli­gious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth, once it is known, and to order their whole lives in accord with the demands of truth.

But what human beings do have a nat­ur­al right to is the free­dom from coer­cion. No one may be coerced to embrace the truth. That often means that human beings, who have free will, will embrace reli­gions that are false. God per­mis­sive­ly wills a diver­si­ty of reli­gions because he pos­i­tive­ly wills human free­dom. God will no more coerce us than should the state or a soci­ety. This is all Dig­ni­tatis Humanae says, and it is all the Abu Dhabi state­ment says.

•••

Schnei­der puts a great deal of effort into deny­ing what no one claimed and remind­ing us of what every­one already knows. In that frame of mind, he once more demands the Church “cor­rect” a doc­u­ment that needs no cor­rec­tion in the first place.

And how does Schnei­der imag­ine that a pope can cor­rect a Coun­cil? By repeat­ing, nat­u­ral­ly, the Tra­di­tion­al­ist claim that Vat­i­can II was not dog­mat­ic and did not mean to teach any­thing. One won­ders how he thinks Dig­ni­tatis taught error if it was­n’t teach­ing any­thing at all. But then Schnei­der bran­dish­es a mag­ni­fy­ing glass and goes peer­ing through Church his­to­ry to find instances of popes chang­ing things that pri­or coun­cils said. If I did­n’t know any bet­ter, I’d think he was an anti-Catholic apol­o­gist pulling gotchas like rab­bits out of a hat: See, the Church does change its teach­ings!

• The Fourth Coun­cil of Con­stan­tino­ple con­demned the patri­arch of Con­stan­tino­ple, who today is ven­er­at­ed as a saint in the Byzan­tine Ortho­dox Church.

Yes. Schnei­der is aware that the “Byzan­tine Ortho­dox Church” is not the Roman Catholic Church, right? Sure, sure, he says. But if the schism ever ends, that con­dem­na­tion would most cer­tain­ly be lift­ed!

I’m not sure how Schnei­der knows this, but either way, Con­stan­tino­ple IV is not an exam­ple of some­thing being changed. It’s an exam­ple of some­thing hav­ing no appli­ca­tion out­side the Catholic Church and Schnei­der spec­u­lat­ing that it might be changed.

• The Third Lat­er­an Coun­cil said that Jews and Mus­lims could not employ Chris­tians in their homes.

Yes. Schnei­der is aware that Canon 26 was con­tin­gent upon his­tor­i­cal cir­cum­stances that no longer exist? Lat­er­an III was not set­ting down a law for all time but one that made sense giv­en the real­i­ties of the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry.

• The Coun­cil of Con­stance excom­mu­ni­cat­ed priests who dis­trib­uted com­mu­nion under both species

Yes. Schnei­der is aware that the Church has the author­i­ty to bind and to loose? If the Church says in one cen­tu­ry that com­mu­nion can only be dis­trib­uted under one species, it can lift that require­ment in anoth­er. This has noth­ing to do with truths that the Church teach­es, only with the exer­cise of its dis­ci­pli­nary author­i­ty.

• The Coun­cil of Flo­rence said that the mat­ter of priest­ly ordi­na­tion was the deliv­ery of the chal­ice, and did not men­tion the lay­ing on of hands. Pius XII changed this in 1947.

Yes. Here were the pope’s words:

We do by Our Apos­tolic Author­i­ty declare, and if there was ever a law­ful dis­po­si­tion to the con­trary, We now decree that at least in the future the tra­di­tio instru­men­to­rum is not nec­es­sary for the valid­i­ty of the Sacred Orders of the Dia­conate, the Priest­hood, and the Epis­co­pa­cy.

Pius con­cedes what Schnei­der does not, which is that the Coun­cil of Flo­rence described a man­ner of ordi­na­tion that was law­ful. In oth­er words, what was at issue was Church law, not Church teach­ing, still less divine rev­e­la­tion. So Pius XII cer­tain­ly had the author­i­ty to change it because no one imag­ined this had any­thing to do with doc­trine or dog­ma in the first place.

Schnei­der sounds less like a Catholic bish­op than a Protes­tant anti-Catholic who mix­es up Church dis­ci­pline and Church teach­ing and always needs us to remind him of the dif­fer­ence. Dig­ni­tatis Humanae says that “reli­gious free­dom has its foun­da­tion in the very dig­ni­ty of the human per­son as this dig­ni­ty is known through the revealed word of God and by rea­son itself.” The “revealed word of God” is dog­mat­ic by def­i­n­i­tion. It’s not at all the same as whether Jews may employ Chris­tians or when the Church should excom­mu­ni­cate some­one. It’s sim­ply absurd to think that the exam­ples above give a pope any prece­dent what­ev­er to change what a coun­cil calls “the revealed word of God.”

Amaz­ing­ly, Schnei­der ends by telling us that the Church is “the pil­lar and bul­wark of the truth.” Error has crept in, he says. The Church needs to remove it, because that will show the world that the Church is the pil­lar and bul­wark of truth.

What a remark­able way for him to end: The Church is the pil­lar and bul­wark of truth, but error has crept in.

Athana­sius Schnei­der, ladies and gen­tle­men.