The auxiliary bishop of Astana (Kazakhstan), Bishop Athanasius
Schneider, was among the organizers of the CISP (International Coordination Summorum Pontifcum) pilgrimage that
brought a thousand traditional-minded Catholics from around the world to Rome the
weekend of October 24-27, 2013.
Bishop Schneider was the
celebrant of one of the three pontifical Masses that were celebrated in the
extraordinary form (he did so in the traditional parish church of Santissima
TrinitÀ dei Pellegrini, while the other two took place in St. Peter’s Basilica
and in the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, with the former being graced by
a message of the pope through his secretary of state).
He also presented his
latest book at the Centro Russia
Ecumenica, few steps away from the Vatican.
The book is titled Corpus Christi, la Santa Comunione e il
rinnovamento della Chiesa (“Body of Christ: Holy Communion and the Renewal
of the Church”), and is focused on the need—indeed, the obligation—for every
faithful Catholic to have a special devotion and proper respect and reverence
for the Holy Eucharist.
It was precisely thanks to this devotion, Bishop Schneider said during his
presentation, that his family survived amid unimaginably harsh conditions,
fostering and preserving their Catholic Faith in the then-Soviet republic of
Kazakhstan in central Asia, where they had been deported by Stalin due to their
German origin.
Bishop Schneider described
his family’s shock when they were allowed to move back to West Germany exactly 40
years ago and became aware that in the West there were Catholics who received
the holy host in their hand and standing. All the more shocking, for him, was
having a priest tell him (he was 15-16 years old at that time) that it was the
system used in the early Church and if he really wanted to be a traditionalist,
he ought to comply with it.
But he felt in his heart that this could not have
been so, and found support for his intuition years later in his studies of
ancient and patristic-era liturgies.
Bishop Schneider refutes
this notion in his most recent book, as well as in his previous one, titled Dominus Est, riflessioni di un vescovo
dell’Asia Centrale sulla sacra comunione (“It’s the Lord: Reflections of a Bishop
of Central Asia on Holy Communion”).
It was the manuscript of this earlier book
that he managed to deliver to Benedict XVI, with an accompanying letter
imploring, “In the name of Jesus Christ…see to it that when you administer
Communion, all the faithful should receive It from your hands only on their
knees and in their mouth. This would set an example for all.”
To Bishop Schneider’s great surprise, five
weeks later the nuncio in Kazakhstan gave him a sealed and confidential letter
from the Vatican: it was the pope’s answer, which included this statement, in
German: “Ihre Argumente
sind überzeugend” (“Your arguments are convincing”).
The author interpreted
this reply as a green-light for the publication of his book, which was
subsequently released by the LEV (Libreria
Editrice Vaticana, the Vatican publishing house).
Pope Benedict XVI started to administer the Body of Our Lord directly on the tongue of the faithful on their knees with the celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi in Rome on May 25, 2008.