Schneider and his team edited his own catechism, Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith, launched in Rome in 2023 and hailed as "the book of the century" for its doctrinal integrity and clarity on key Church teachings.

Now, after years of expert research, software development, and inspiring support from volunteers and donors around the world, his team is launching their Master Catechism—the most powerful Catholic catechism tool in history.

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Synodal Way dispute escalates

At the Council of European Bishops' Conference in Malta, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, Germany and Archbishop Stanislaw Gądecki of Poznan, Poland engaged in a tense encounter.

This followed Bätzing's public accusations against Gądecki for alleged false statements about the Synodal Way.

Bätzing accused his Polish counterpart of "overstepping his authority" and "unbrotherly behaviour" by not raising the issue during the synodal meeting in Rome.

Despite their discussion aiming for Church unity, tensions persisted, highlighting the ongoing discord about the controversial German process.

The Vatican's recent interventions and Pope Francis's stance have added weight to concerns, reflecting deeper divisions within the German Church.

Pope Francis acts against Cardinal Burke

Pope Francis has taken significant action against Cardinal Raymond Burke, revoking his subsidised Vatican apartment and salary, citing Burke's role in fomenting church disunity.

Burke has been a vocal critic of the pope's Church reforms.

According to an anonymous source, Francis was removing Burke's privileges because he used them against the church.

The move follows previous clashes between Burke and Francis over doctrinal questions and Burke's involvement in counter-synodal activities.

Letter to Pope: Synod report will disappoint

Leading reform-minded Catholics, including former Irish president Mary McAleese, penned an open letter expressing concern to Pope Francis and Synod participants.

The signatories anticipate the Synod's report will "disappoint and wound" Catholics worldwide.

They claim the Synod is one "in which prophetic voices won no significant concessions from the powerful and wealthy forces of conservatism".

The group found that the Synthesis Report published following last month's Synod was not "so much a synthesis as the minutes of an apparently unresolved quarrel".

The quarrel was between an "emerging lay church" and "bishops who have yet to find the courage to let go of their privileges" they said.

Disappointment stemmed from the absence of progress on critical issues like women's ordination, LGBTIQ rights, celibacy and clerical abuse.

Bishop Strickland's removal 'internal persecution'

Bishop Athanasius Schneider has decried the dismissal of Bishop Joseph Strickland as an act of unjust authority, signalling an "internal persecution" against faithful Catholics.

"This will go down in history as a great injustice against a bishop who only did his task in a time of confusion" said Bishop Schneider in an interview with the Catholic Herald.

Schneider described Strickland as a defender of Catholic faith and truth, citing his stance against distortions and his commitment to spiritual growth within the Church.

He criticised the trend of punishing faithful bishops while ignoring those undermining the faith, seeing it as an attempt to silence and dismantle communities adhering to tradition.

Potential for schism

Continued pressure on Pope Francis originates from both the conservative right and liberal left, risking a potential schism.

The right's resistance poses a threat as they are unlikely to be asked to depart.

At the same time, the left's dissatisfaction stems from the Church's apparent inability to tap into its democratic core.

Sources

Catholic News Agency

AP News

The Irish Times

The Catholic Herald

Pope Francis announced last week that he is adding an extra year to the Synod on Synodality.

Pope Francis has described it as a "journey" of discernment about the future of the Church that entails lengthy "dialogue" with the laity and dioceses across the world.

So far, the synodal "listening sessions" in countries such as Germany have occasioned little more than subversion of the Catholic faith.

Müller's fears are entirely justified.

The cardinal Pope Francis has chosen to run the Synod on Synodality speaks volumes about its direction.

He chose Jesuit Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the archbishop of Luxembourg, who is on record rejecting the Church's perennial teaching on the sinfulness of homosexual acts.

"I think it is time for a fundamental revision of the doctrine," he has said.

Hollerich is openly hostile to traditionalists within the Church and sees the Synod on Synodality as an opportunity for the Church to adapt to the "changing mindsets" of the modern world.

For Müller, such talk smacks of the heresy of modernism, the idea that the truth comes not from above, in the form of divine revelation, but from below through man's "individual experience" and "self-revelation."

Pope Francis has credited the late Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini for influencing his thoughts on a "synodal" Church.

Martini favoured "democratising" the Church and called it "200 years out of date."

Martini is "very dear to me and also to you," the pope told Eugenio Scalfari, the atheistic Italian journalist.

The pope praised Martini for saying that the Church should have not just a vertical dimension but a "horizontal" one as well: "When Cardinal Martini talked about this, putting the emphasis on the councils and the synods, he knew very well how long and difficult it would be to travel the road in that direction. With prudence, but with firmness and tenacity."

(In fact, the pope's council of cardinals, among whom are numbered open critics of Church teaching, is an idea that came directly from Martini.)

As Müller and other bishops such as Athanasius Schneider (pictured,) note, this "listening" Church is only really interested in the feedback of liberal Catholics who clamour for changes to Church teaching.

Martini's dream of a "permanently synodal" Church is a nightmare for faithful Catholics.

It is a Church that gradually dilutes the faith.

Like the pope's previous synod on the family, which subverted canon law's prohibition on Communion for the divorced and remarried, the Synod on Synodality will simply undermine Church teachings.

Its loudest participants want the Church to change her teachings on everything from marriage to the male priesthood.

The self-consciously "synodal" Flemish bishops recently endorsed blessing ceremonies for homosexual couples; an outlandish move Pope Francis still hasn't condemned.

The progressives in the Church cast the Synod on Synodality as a kind of de facto Vatican III that should consolidate and augment the liberalism of Vatican II.

Hollerich recently made the ludicrous claim that without Vatican II, the "Church would be a small sect, unknown to most people."

The truth is the exact reverse: Since Vatican II, the Church has grown steadily weaker and less significant.

European bishops like Hollerich preside over empty pews.

Whatever its flaws, the pre-Vatican II Church had much more clout and influence than its successor. Continue reading

• George Neumayr is a senior editor at The American Spectator

Bishop Athanasius Schneider (pictured), a longtime public critic of the pontiff, said he sees it as both his duty and an act of fraternal love to speak out when he believes the faithful are in "danger" of confusion.

Speaking to journalists at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Nur Sultan ahead of Pope Francis's meeting with bishops, clergy and religious in the country, Schneider said it is "normal" to have differences with the pontiff, because "we're not employees of the pope — the bishops, we are brothers.

"If we cannot do this, what will be the Catholic Church? And no bishop is there to say something to the pope? This is collegiality. This is fraternity," he argued, saying he personally has always tried to raise concerns "with respect".

"This for me is through love, true brotherly love, not to make adulations and incense, and behave yourself like an employee to a boss. No, we are brothers. We have to say with respect when we recognise something is a danger for the entire church. I consider this a true help for the pope — it should be," he said.

Pope Francis attended the congress's opening session on Wednesday, where he gave a lengthy speech on the role of religious leaders in promoting peace. The pontiff is set to deliver another address to the closing session and reading of the final declaration.

Schneider raised concerns over the congress on its final day. It drew participation from nearly 100 faith leaders from 50 countries.

While praising the congress' ability to "promote mutual respect in the world," Schneider, 61, said he believed it risked the "danger" of putting Catholicism on the same plane as other religions.

"It (the congress) could give the impression of a supermarket of religions, and that is not correct because there is only one true religion which is the Catholic Church founded by God himself," Schneider told reporters at the cathedral.

Francis met with clergy, religious and other pastoral workers at the cathedral in Nur-Sultan, where the small Catholic community of Kazakhstan gathered on Thursday.

With the Kazakh bishops sitting before him in the front pews, Francis called for the country's Catholic Church always to "go forth to encounter the world" while issuing several warnings.

"I would say a special word to bishops, priests and seminarians: our mission is not to be administrators of the sacred or enforcers of religious rules," he cautioned.

Instead, the pope urged them to be "pastors close to our people.

"There is a hidden grace in being a small Church, a little flock," he said.

There are fewer than 200,000 Catholics in Kazakhstan, a country of 19 million inhabitants, and the pope urged the clergy to "make room for the laity".

"This is a good thing, lest our communities become rigid or clerical," insisted Francis.

"Christian communities and seminaries, in particular, should be 'schools of sincerity', not places of rigidity and formality," the pope also said.

Sources

Reuters

Crux Now

La Croix International