Dated on the feast of St. Athanasius, Bishop Athanasius Schneider has issued a formally canonical catechism as a part of his participation in the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. The Rome release was today.
“This work was not my idea. I was compelled to write it by the Catholic faithful.” –@BishopAthanas1 pic.twitter.com/ZIiTISQmmV
— OnePeterFive (@OnePeterFive) October 26, 2023
This action is unprecedented for many decades since Vatican II. Yet bishops have the power, authority and also the duty to teach in participation with the Magisterium. As Lumen Gentium teaches:
Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held (25).
This is not merely a bishop talking and commenting. This is a formal participation in the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. Whispers explains:
Credo relitigates every doctrinal deviation of Vatican II, and about every other error taught by clerics since then. This means that a Roman prelate has affirmed the traditional apostolic doctrine in a public, canonical, authoritative mode — indeed, in the very face of AntiChurch forces everywhere — and with episcopal support (emphasis in the original).
The local bishop governing the publisher Sophia, Bishop Peter Libasci, has issued his imprimatur to the Catechism.
As the work of Tradivox shows, it was common for individual bishops to issue their own catechisms for centuries – with their brother bishops in turn issuing their own imprimaturs. But due to the false spirit of Vatican I, this practice has been greatly curtailed. The last time it was done was Bishop Morrow’s My Catholic Faith, originally published in the 1950s. Nowadays Catholics refer in common vernacular to “the Catechism” (meaning the 1992 Catechism issued under John Paul II) as if there is only one universal Catechism, or only one catechism in general. Now due to the change by Pope Francis, this Catechism has now become the “New New New Catechism” (after the two editions under John Paul II).
Following the false spirit of Vatican I, the United States Bishops ordered a new edition of their own American catechism to reflect Pope Francis’s change, but they admitted that they did not understand what Pope Francis meant.
This is the perfect example of this false spirit, since it is literally a voluntarism without logos: it is papal positivism at its ugliest – the bishops, charged with promoting doctrine, promote a doctrine that has no meaning, at their own admission, solely because the Roman Pontiff willed it.
This is what Bishop Schneider calls “Magisterial Positivism.”
