by Dr. Rafael Xavier Gonzalez
I had the privilege of interviewing Bishop Athanasius Schneider on my channel (see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4SUAPTY8BM). We talked about his recent published book, Salve Regina, A Rosary Crusade to Plead for Holy Popes. We were actually scheduled to have the interview before the election of Pope Leo XIV, but we had to postpone it as Divine Providence decided.
The book contains insightful meditations rooted in Scripture, the Magisterium and the Saints on the traditional fifteen decades of the Holy Rosary. These meditations are for the purpose of deepening and intensifying our Rosary prayer for the sake of Holy Popes. At the end of each mystery, Bishop Schneider writes a prayer for future Popes. So for example at the end of the fifth Glorious Mystery it reads: “Lord, by the mystery of the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth, grant us holy popes! Grant us many holy popes! Amen”.
In our interview he aptly brings forth the question that if we pray for holy priests and bishops, we also need to pray for holy popes. This seems obvious. If we pray for the lesser in the hierarchy, how can we not pray for the greater, the greatest actually? The Church is monarchical so we must pray for our current and future leaders, the Vicars of Christ.
There are many signs of God’s (medicinal) wrath. There are two unmistakable and therapeutic Divine abandonment of men, in order that they repent of course: the proliferation of the homosexual lifestyle and the other is bad shepherds leading the Church. Our Lord allows men to roll in the filth of their sin and become deeply corrupted if He is not recognized. These men further go on corrupting, all according to God’s Providence though (God is the first cause of all being, even that is which is sinful, but not being qua sinful).
The plan of God is amazing though, as with Joseph from the book of Genesis, the evil done to him by his brothers is transformed by God into good:
“And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt”.[1]
Our Lord is truly awesome and we must acknowledge this, which is precisely following the First Commandment which is first for a reason:
“[The]…precept is affirmative and prescribes acts of the virtue of religion; it is also negative and forbids acts contrary to the virtue. The virtue of religion, in its strict sense and as employed here is a moral virtue, inclining one to give due worship both internal and external, to God, as the Creator and Sovereign Lord of all things”.[2]
The virtue of religion stems from the cardinal virtue of justice: “Justice is the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor. Justice toward God is called the ‘virtue of religion’”.[3]
Satan knows that such a virtue, the most important of the moral virtues, if it was not practiced, would bring down the wrath of God on man. So the demons do all they can to thwart man from practicing it. And what is religion’s foundational act? Devotion! This is the prompt will of offering oneself to the service of God. Fr. Davis explains it beautifully:
“The chief effect of devotion is spiritual joy of the mind which results from the surrender of onself to God; the secondary effect is sorrow from the consideration of one’s failings and the absence of the vision of God. Tears also issue from the sentiment of devotion, just as men are wont to shed tears through the sentiment of love, when they receive their children of dear friends, whom they thought they had lost”.[4]
Similar to devotion is reverence, a way to exteriorize out inner devotion. I recently interviewed Greg Schleuter on reverence (see video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fqGzGSUGJo&t=12s). Reverence is showing honor, which always denotes something corporeal, though St. Thomas makes a fine distinction between reverence and honor:
“Reverence is not the same as honor: but on the one hand it is the primary motive for showing honor, in so far as one man honors another out of the reverence he has for him; and on the other hand, it is the end of honor, in so far as a person is honored in order that he may be held in reverence by others”.[5]
Regarding God, St. Thomas further explains reverence:
“To pay reverence to God is an act of the gift of fear. Now it belongs to religion to do certain things through reverence for God. Hence it follows, not that religion is the same as the gift of fear, but that it is referred thereto as to something more excellent; for the gifts are more excellent than the moral virtues”.[6]
The Fear of Lord, the gift of the Holy Spirit is not only lacking, but outright despised by man today. Sadly, relativism has caused man to worship himself and not recognize God, at least in praxis. For that reason, Pope Leo XIV spoke about a prevalent practical atheism. One need not simply believe that God exists, but not live according to such a belief: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter”.[7] Hypocrisy cannot be maintained for long anyway, either belief will change or the actions will.
So as a purifying chastisement, God turned man over to the devil, something St. Paul imitates: “…deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord Jesus”.[8]And even something similar happened to King Saul as a consequence of his envy towards David: “…the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him”.[9] Of course this was ultimately to bring Saul back to God, as all chastisements on this earth aim at.
Certain sins diffuse throughout society and culture. Are we not seeing this in our day with the so-called LGBT movement? More than 20% of GenZ adults identify LGBTQ+.[10] But let us hear from the Apostle himself: Romans 1 clearly teaches us how God punishes us (out of love of course, as a good father does). Because man has not recognized God and shown this through reverence…
“God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error”.
“Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them”.[11]
Let us read the signs of our times! Calamity from God always (physical and moral!) is an effect of sin as Scripture constantly points to. Check out the wise counsel of Achior to Holofernes, an invading Assyrian general in the Book of Judith. In his caution, Achior maintains that the Assyrian army should not go up against the Israelites:
“As long as they didn’t sin against their God, they prospered, because the God who hates wrongdoing was with them. But when they neglected the way God had laid out for them, they were greatly defeated in many battles and taken as prisoners to a foreign land. The temple of their God was burned to the ground, and their enemies took possession of their cities. But now they have turned back to their God, having returned from the place where they were scattered”.[12]
Let us turn back to the God’s punishment of sending bad shepherds to the flock. This may be less obvious than the punishment of war for example, but nevertheless, it is a chastisement. Sin is never a private matter. It affects us all, the entire society and even the world. Sin is cosmic so we suffer due to the sins of others and others suffer because of our sins (how do Libertarians define “harm” anyway? This is true harm!), and of course one of these sufferings is to have bad leaders or shepherds.
Check out this passage from the prophet Zachariah, which clearly states what we have deserved for our sins, especially in our contemporary times:
“Then the Lord said to me, ‘Take once more the equipment of a foolish shepherd. For behold, I am raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for those being destroyed…’”[13]
The reason having bad shepherds is such a chastisement is that the sheep are doctrinally confused and hence their eternal salvation is jeopardized, for morality cannot be separated from what is Divinely revealed, about man and his goal in God’s love. What’s scary is that having bad shepherds may not feel, if you will, as a chastisement since it insensibly changes our minds, from having the “mens Christi”[14] to “thinking as man does”,[15] which is having an anti-Christ mentality, according to Christ himself.
It is only by properly living the positive element of the First Commandment, namely practicing the virtue of religion, worshipping God basically, that we can counteract the evils of the world and appease our loving (and just!) God, so much offended by the ingratitude of man.
Let us continue to pray for ourselves and for our Pope and future Popes, that God may grant them the grace to truly guide us, that they may be strengthened by Our Lord as He strengthened Peter: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren”.[16]
[1] Gen 45:5-8.
[2] Henry Davis, S.J., Moral and Pastoral Theology, vol. II (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1943), 2.
[3] CCC 1807.
[4] Moral and Pastoral Theology, 3.
[5] Summa Theologiae, II-II:81:2 ad 1.
[6] Summa Theologiae, II-II:103:1 ad 1.
[7] Mat. 7:21.
[8] 1 Cor. 5:5.
[9] 1 Sam. 16:14.
[10] https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx
[11] Rom. 1:26-32.
[12] Judith 5:17-21
[13] Zech 11:15–16
[14] 1 Cor. 2:16
[15] Matt. 16: 23.
[16] Luke 22: 31-32.
