EXCLUSIVE: Strickland sacking signals ‘internal persecution of faithful Catholics by the Pope’

An outspoken bishop has accused the Pope of orchestrating an “internal persecution” of faithful Catholics.

Simon Caldwell November 27, 2023

Bishop Athanasius Schneider said the sacking of the Rt Rev. Joseph Strickland as Bishop of Tyler, Texas, represented a particularly unjust exercise of papal power against a faithful and conscientious Church leader.

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

“Now it is silenced, this voice,” the bishop said. “That was the evident, clear intention.”

Bishop Schneider continued: “I consider this a huge, blatant injustice which was committed. I know him (Bishop Strickland) personally. I have visited his diocese. He is a man of God. Evidently in his diocese were growing new families with children, seminarians – the true spiritual life of the Catholic faith was growing.

“His public statements in favour of the Catholic faith – the truth – which he felt in his conscience to speak out (on) in order to strengthen the faithful, this was basically the cause of his removal, this voice which spoke clearly the truth.

“He did not do much polemics – you can check his words. They simply state, sometimes in a very clear way, the truth. He was a kind of prophetic voice, but he was for many in the Church an obstacle and they wanted to remove this unpleasant voice from them. This is the cause. We have to be very honest.”

Bishop Schneider added: “At the same time he (the Pope) is not removing, and in some cases is promoting, cardinals and bishops who are publicly distorting or undermining the faith … those bishops who openly promote LGBT ideology, he is not touching them.

“It is an evident sign and demonstration that he has another intention – an intention to silence and to stop those communities and bishops in the Church who are still faithful and attached to the faith and the tradition of the Church and her liturgy.

“It is a kind of internal persecution of faithful bishops and priests in the Church by the Pope. We have to state this. We cannot be silent about this. It would be dishonest. We have to be honest.”

The comments of the Auxiliary Bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, followed a visit to Cambridge University where he gave an address on the right exercise of conscience in public and political life.

They follow the decision by the Pope to sack Bishop Strickland earlier this month and to place his diocese under the administration of Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin until a new bishop is named.

Bishop Strickland was subjected along with his diocese to a Vatican apostolic visitation during the summer.

Through his social media accounts, as well as a radio programme on Virgin Most Powerful Radio and his website – bishopstrickland.com – Bishop Strickland had repeatedly criticised the controversial Synod of Bishops on Synodality, as well as various other aspects of Francis’s pontificate.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he also frequently condemned the use of vaccines derived from aborted foetuses as unethical in spite the Vatican enthusiastically encouraging their use among Catholics.

Bishop Strickland later told Lifesitenews that he could not explain his removal “except I’ve threatened some of the powers that be with the truth of the Gospel”.

“The only answer I have to that is because forces in the Church right now don’t want the truth of the Gospel,” said Bishop Strickland. “They want it changed.”

Bishop Strickland did not directly accuse Pope Francis of undermining Church teaching but said, however, that “many forces are working at him and influencing him to make these kinds of decisions”.

In his interview with the Catholic Herald, Bishop Schneider, who is of German heritage, said Pope Francis had demonstrated throughout his papacy that he had the strength of character to make his own decisions.

Bishop Schneider said the actions of the Holy Father have repeatedly shown that he “is not fearing his entourage”.

“He is sometimes deciding by himself so many cases we have had. He could be influenced but it was his decision because it’s not his style,” he said.

At the time of the apostolic visitation, the Diocese of Tyler had 21 seminarians training to be priests from just 120,000 Catholics.

The full Catholic Herald interview with Bishop Schneider, in which he also discusses his new catechism, the Marko Rupnik scandal, Traditionis Custodes and the “crisis of the Magisterium”, among other subjects, will appear shortly.

(Photo of Bishop Schneider in Cambridge by Simon Caldwell)

https://catholicherald.co.uk/exclusive-strickland-sacking-signals-internal-persecution-of-faithful-catholics-by-the-pope/