Today’s meditation once again isn’t on a specific prayer or passage. It again takes the form of reflection, this time in a positive light. Bishop Athanasius Schneider has recently given an interview in which he outlines the current crisis, and disseminates the solution. I hope that reading it gives you a glimpse of the truth and allows you to have peace of mind regarding the Church.
The following is an excerpt and links to the full text from The Remnant:
“As long as supermarkets are open and accessible, and as long as people have access to public transportation, one cannot see a plausible reason for banning people from assisting at Holy Mass in a church,” Bishop Schneider said. “One can guarantee in churches the same and even better hygienic protective measures.”
He said the Church’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic has revealed a “loss of supernatural vision” particularly among the hierarchy — some of whom, he noted, despite their vigilance to combat COVID-19, have “tranquilly allowed the poison virus of heretical teachings and practices to spread among their flock.”
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Recalling the heroic example of the sixteenth-century cardinal archbishop of Milan, St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), who braved a plague undaunted in order to serve the spiritual needs of its victims, Bishop Schneider said “a true priest will do everything he can to visit a dying person.”
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Asked if he believes the coronavirus pandemic is a form of divine retribution for the Pachamama events held inside the Vatican during the October 2019 Amazon Synod, the bishop said that while he does not have “certainty” that these events are related, the idea is “not far-fetched.”
“The cultic veneration of the pagan idol of Pachamama inside the Vatican, with the approval of the Pope, was to be sure a great sin of infidelity to the First Commandment of the Decalogue, it was an abomination,” he said. But he added that “such acts of idolatry were the culmination of a series of other acts of infidelity to the safeguarding of the divine deposit of Faith by many high-ranking members of the Church’s hierarchy in past decades.”
For more than fifty years, he observed, the Eucharistic presence of Jesus Christ has been “trivialized” and even “desecrated” through the practice of Communion in the hand and the introduction of “protestantizing elements” in the Roman liturgy. “Now,” he said, “the Lord has intervened and deprived almost all the faithful of assisting at Holy Mass and sacramentally receiving Holy Communion. The innocent and the guilty are enduring this tribulation together, since in the mystery of the Church all are mutually united as members.”
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To make restitution to God, he said the Pope and bishops ought urgently to carry out a public act of reparation in Rome “for sins against the Holy Eucharist” once the coronavirus pandemic is brought under control. He also said the Pope should issue concrete norms inviting the entire Church to “turn toward the Lord” in the liturgy and “forbid the practice of Communion in the hand.”
The rest of the article and the full interview can be found at the above link, but this is more than enough to consider, and more than enough to begin enacting at least personal change in our response to Covid19 and the greater pandemic in the Church.
