(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Athanasius Schneider has said that the next pope must clarify Church doctrine on marriage, sexuality, and the solely male priesthood to combat confusion on these dogmatic issues within the Church.
In an interview conducted in German with LifeSiteNews journalist Andreas Wailzer, Bishop Schneider explained what he believes are the main issues the next pope should address.
The bishop from Kazakhstan said that the pope’s main task is “to strengthen the brethren in the faith.”
“This is a divine mandate, one of the first tasks of a pope, and he must carry it out with clarity, not ambiguity,” he stated, stressing that the pope must unambiguously declare the doctrine in “those aspects that have caused the most confusion in recent decades and above all in our time.”
One of these key issues is “the relativism of faith,” i.e., “that supposedly dogmas and faith evolve according to the scheme of Hegel, i.e., evolutionism, which is completely against the spirit of Christ and the Gospel and the 2000-year tradition of the Church.”
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Furthermore, the pope should “clearly remind us of the principles of morality with regard to the order of sexuality established by God, which is not at our disposal, nor at the disposal of a synod or a pope.”
This order of sexuality and the sexes is “ordained by God,” Schneider stressed.
“The admission of divorced persons to Communion, of course, undermines the indispensability of marriage and undermines the sanctity of the Eucharist,” he stated.
The next pope must also clearly affirm the teaching that homosexuality and “the acts and lifestyles associated with homosexuality” are “against the divine order” as well as “reason and natural law.” This also includes so-called “blessings” for homosexual “couples,” Bishop Schneider said.
The pope furthermore needs to reaffirm “the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of mankind, that Jesus Christ and the Church founded by him are the only path to salvation intended by God.”
“And that other religions do not lead to salvation and redemption. This must be clearly stated, doctrinally, by a new pope.”
Moreover, “the subject of the sacrament of ordination must also be taught with the greatest authority, that the sacrament of ordination in its three stages – the diaconate, the presbyterate, and the episcopate, i.e., deacons, priests, and bishops – that this one sacrament in its three stages is ordained by God, i.e., divinely ordained, and that only believers of the male sex can receive it.”
He said the “theological feminism which is against the Gospel and the 2000-year-old tradition of the Church” must be unambiguously condemned.
“So, I have only mentioned a few points that most distort divine revelation today, and that is what I think a [new] pope should do first,” Schneider concluded.
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