The prelate considers that the guidelines approved during the pontificate of Francis contradict divine law, weaken the doctrine on the indissolubility of marriage, and undermine the sanctity of the Eucharist.
In an exclusive interview granted to journalist Michael Haynes for Catholic Herald, published this Thursday, October 8, Schneider questioned the Vatican’s intention to deepen family pastoral care without first resolving the doctrinal controversies that have accompanied the apostolic exhortation since its publication in 2016.
“How can we deepen what marriage and the family are when confusion exists? We will simply deepen that confusion even further,” he warned.
His statements coincide with the meeting taking place in Rome from October 7 to 14, in which presidents of episcopal conferences and heads of Eastern Catholic Churches are participating to examine the reception of Amoris laetitia and the current challenges of matrimonial pastoral care.
“This must be explicitly corrected because it is contrary to divine law”
Schneider located the origin of the controversy in the guidelines published in September 2016 by the bishops of the Buenos Aires region to implement chapter VIII of Amoris laetitia.
The criteria allowed that, under certain circumstances and after a process of discernment, divorced persons in a new union could access the sacraments even if they had not assumed the commitment to live in continence.
Pope Francis expressly endorsed this interpretation through a letter dated September 5, 2016, in which he stated that the Argentine bishops’ criteria adequately explained the meaning of chapter VIII and added: “There are no other interpretations.”
Subsequently, both documents were published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis with the indication that they should be considered authentic magisterium.
For Schneider, this approval constitutes precisely the core of the problem, since he considers that the guidelines contradict the Church’s constant teaching on marriage and the conditions for worthily receiving the Eucharist.
“This cannot be accepted or continued; it must be explicitly corrected, because it is contrary to divine law,” he declared.
The bishop rejected the idea that the difficulty of living in chastity could become a justification for receiving Communion while maintaining a relationship contrary to the sacramental matrimonial bond.
“We all have the obligation before God to live chastely, with the help of His grace, of course. And with the grace of God it is possible,” he recalled.
In his view, admitting to Communion persons who objectively remain in a situation contrary to the commandments amounts, in practice, to “a denial of the divine truth of the indissolubility of marriage” and “a direct attack on the ineffable sanctity of the Holy Eucharist.”
Schneider went so far as to describe this practice as a material objective profanation of the Eucharist and recalled St. Paul’s warning about those who eat and drink the Body and Blood of the Lord unworthily.
A doctrinal controversy that remains open ten years later
The criticism from the bishop of Astana revives one of the most debated issues of Francis’s pontificate: the relationship between Amoris laetitia and the sacramental discipline reaffirmed by St. John Paul II.
In number 84 of Familiaris consortio, the Polish Pontiff had recalled that divorced and civilly remarried persons could not be admitted to Communion as long as an objectively contrary situation to the indissolubility of marriage persisted.
When there were serious reasons preventing separation, such as the education of children, access to the sacraments required assuming the commitment to live in complete continence.
The interpretation of Amoris laetitia endorsed by Francis introduced the possibility of a pastoral discernment that, in certain cases, could lead to access to the sacraments without that commitment.
This difference prompted the well-known dubia presented in 2016 by Cardinals Raymond Burke, Walter Brandmüller, Carlo Caffarra, and Joachim Meisner, who requested clarifications on the continuity of the Church’s moral and sacramental teaching.
The issue has returned to the forefront on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the exhortation, in a debate that is not limited to a matter of pastoral discipline but affects the relationship between the doctrine on marriage, objective morality, and access to the Eucharist.
Schneider considers that the solution cannot consist in continuing to postpone a clarification. According to the prelate, the interpretation approved by Francis remains in force and requires an explicit correction.
Schneider questions the silence of the meeting convened by Leo XIV
The statements take on special relevance because the meeting currently being held in Rome has been presented by its organizers as an opportunity to deepen the reality of families and evaluate the pastoral experiences developed over the last decade, but not as a doctrinal review of Amoris laetitia.
The proceedings follow a synodal methodology based on listening and the exchange of experiences, with closed-door sessions and without the publication of a new magisterial document being planned.
However, the first days have once again left aside the controversy that caused the most divisions after the publication of the exhortation.
This Thursday, the second day of the meeting avoided addressing footnote 351 and the question of Communion for divorced and civilly remarried persons. The interventions that were made public focused on the contemporary challenges of the family, listening, and the need for new pastoral responses, without directly addressing the doctrinal objections raised over these ten years.
For Schneider, a meeting dedicated to marriage cannot ignore precisely what he considers a threat to its indissolubility and to the dignity of the sacraments.
“These meetings on the family will have no fruit or meaning unless Amoris laetitia and the document of Pope Francis regarding the norms of the bishops of the Buenos Aires region are corrected,” he stated.
The bishop called on the participants to address the matter with honesty and for the Pope to recognize the need to resolve an interpretation that, in his judgment, is harming matrimonial doctrine and the life of families.
Schneider also denounces relativism in interreligious dialogue
During the interview, the auxiliary bishop of Astana also addressed a recent document published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Nostra aetate, the declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the Church’s relations with non-Christian religions.
Schneider questioned a formulation that presents the various religions as called to transform society to become fraternal expressions of God’s will.
In his view, this expression risks placing the Catholic faith on the same level as other religions and reducing the Church’s mission to the promotion of a merely human fraternity, without reference to the need for conversion to Jesus Christ.
The prelate described this approach as “a pure expression of relativism” and maintained that God’s salvific will cannot be separated from the recognition of Christ as the sole Savior.
His words extend the reservations he had already expressed regarding the Document on Human Fraternity signed in Abu Dhabi in 2019, whose formulation on the diversity of religions he had also questioned before Francis.
Ten years after Amoris laetitia, and while Leo XIV gathers representatives of the worldwide episcopate in Rome to examine its application, Schneider calls for not evading what he considers the fundamental problem of the exhortation: the interpretation that allows access to the Eucharist for divorced and civilly remarried persons without the commitment to continence and which, in his judgment, must be explicitly corrected to safeguard the doctrine on marriage and the sanctity of the sacrament.