Bishop Strickland Against the World

Mr Flanders looks at Bishop Strickland's recent actions at the USCCB Conference in Baltimore, where he bearded the Bishops in their den.

From One Peter Five

By Timothy Flanders, MA

A few days ago I commented that Bishop Strickland seems to be following the path of Ven. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, in going around preaching the Gospel like a good bishop but not trying to continue his firebrand preaching.

I was wrong.

Bishop Strickland is in Baltimore right now, where the American Bishops are having their annual meeting where they act more like bureacrats than bishops:

• Holding a conference at a hotel, not a monastery
• Wearing name tags, not sackcloth and ashes
• Eating buffets, not fasting
• Talking and talking and talking about talking – less mental prayer

No, too many bishops are doing their best to be bureacrats and vicars of the Roman Pontiff, contrary to Lumen Gentium 27. But Bishop Strickland is different. He takes seriously his consecration as a bishop and wants to “watch over” (Greek: episkopos) the passing down of the deposit of faith.

This has put him at odds with the majority of bishops, who have tried to ignore him or shun him, until the Dictator Pope cut off the head of his diocese without justification, while his brother bishops stood by silent.

He’s no longer welcome at the ballroom in Baltimore.

Last November Bishop Athanasius Schneider came to Bishop Strickland’s defense, condemning Strickland’s unjust and unjustified deposition quoting St. Basil: “The one charge which is now sure to secure severe punishment is the careful keeping of the traditions of the Fathers.”

And as it happily turns out, Bishop Strickland is not going to quietly preach the faith but he’s going to stand like St. Athanasius – like his brother Bishop Athanasius – against the world, if necessary.[1]

This is what we just saw in these United States in the Catholic city of Baltimore. Because while those bishop bureacrats were having their hotel conference buffet – while the food was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them (Ps. lxxii. 30).

A man of God appeared. Bishop Strickland, the Athanasius of the western hemisphere. He stood outside the hotel buffet conference hall and preached the fire of Almighty God:

You gather here today, present-day apostles, as the Church and, therefore, the world stand perched on the edge of a cliff. And yet you who are entrusted with the keeping of souls choose to speak not a word of the spiritual danger which abounds…

I think that St. Jude had men such as many of you in mind when he described men who feast “together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars …” (Jude 1:12-13).

Do you not know that Our Lord will send forth His avenging angels to heap coals of fire upon the heads of those who were called to be His apostles and who have not guarded what He has given unto them?

And yet almost all of you, my brothers, stood by silently watching as the Synod on Synodality took place, an abomination constructed not to guard the Deposit of Faith but to dismantle it, and yet few were the cries heard from you – men who should be willing to die for Christ and His Church.

Strickland then quotes Fulton Sheen:

We now see the prophetic words of Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen unfolding before our eyes: “Because his religion will be brotherhood of Man without the fatherhood of God, he will set up a counter church which will be the ape of the Church, because he, the Devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content, it will be a mystical body of the Antichrist that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ …” (Radio Broadcast; January 26, 1947).

With the push for “synodality” we see that the enemies of Christ are putting before us, as Sheen says: “a new religion without a Cross, a liturgy without a world to come, a religion to destroy a religion, or a politics which is a religion – one that renders unto Caesar even the things that are God’s.”

And I must stress that these words are not at all controversial, as the critics of Trads must face the fact their own hero, Henri de Lubac, said much the same thing in 1967:

It is clear that the Church is facing a grave crisis. Under the name of “the new Church,” “the post-Conciliar Church,” a different Church from that of Jesus Christ is now trying to establish itself: an anthropocentric society threatened with immanentist apostasy which is allowing itself to be swept along in a movement of general abdication under the pretext of renewal, ecumenism or adaptation.[2]

But Bishop Strickland continues the fire, now taking aim at hyperüberultramontanism:

A rudimentary understanding of the papacy leaves us with the reality that Pope Francis has abdicated his responsibility to serve as the primary guardian of the Deposit of Faith. Every bishop makes this solemn promise to guard the Deposit of Faith, but the Petrine office exists primarily to be the guardian of the guardians and the servant of the servants. 

He continues with the well-known litany of the Holy Father’s scandals against the faith, concluding:

Every bishop and cardinal should publicly and unequivocally state that Francis no longer teaches the Catholic faith. Souls are at stake!… Where are the successors of the apostles who have promised to defend the sheep with their lives? They sit a few feet away, patting one another on the back, listening to words that they know beyond a doubt are not the Truth, frolicking with the darkness, and blaspheming the very Truth that the original apostles died to preserve.

The full text of His Excellency’s words are found on his Substack, but he added additional remarks in his words in Baltimore which are included on the LifeSite article:

I would like to thank my collaborators, the Apostles and Evangelists, especially Saints Nathaniel and Jude. Why these two? Because they are not the most well-known or often cited of the Apostles and, therefore, I feel a kinship with them because I was an obscure bishop who should have remained obscure. 

In the ballroom a few feet from here, men are meeting who could be described as a Catholic brain-trust. Many of them are brilliant, talented men who could have been at the top of any profession they chose, but they are bishops, successors of the Apostles. 

Sadly, they are for the most part silent shepherds, unwilling to risk speaking up in the face of evil and destructive forces that threaten the Church. These forces have attempted to silence me, but there was no need to silence these men – they never made a sound.

I ask the faithful to pray fervently that all shepherds find their voices and say with me, “Que viva Cristo Rey – long live Christ the King, Truth Incarnate!”

If the bishops are Catholics, they will respond with humility: rebuke a wiseman and he will love you; rebuke a fool and he will hate you (Prov. ix. 8).

I’ve already seen one critic say that Strickland is now following the path of Viganò to be excommunicated and leave the Church. But we can observe in Strickland’s words none of the dangerous and speculative certainty of Viganò. I discussed the latter at OnePeterFive when he was excommuunicated a few months ago. By all appearances, Viganò attempted to judge what he did not have the authority to judge – whether Pope Francis is the pope or not, (due to the Holy Father’s material heresies which condemn him prima facie), as well as pronouncing far too much in the domain of the laity: temporal and political affairs. I have seen nothing that Strickland has placed himself as a judge in these dubia.

Rather, Strickland does seem to be following the Athanasius of the eastern hemisphere, Bishop Schneider, in faithfully, patiently, but zealously defending the faith against the world and against the Pope if necessary. Viganò did this, but seemed to claim certainty in grey and dark areas which were ultra vires for any individual bishop.  

No, I think we should thank God that He has raised up not one, but two successors to St. Athanasius. St. Athanasius opposed the world’s bishops, and, they say, even the Pope of his day. Yet St. Athanasius never fell into bitterness, despite suffering so much from his brother bishops.

Therefore in all things let us pray for and love the Holy Father, and strenously adhere to commuunion with the Roman See, and all Catholic bishops, even if they are CINO: “Catholic in Name Only.”

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[1] I should say I mean no disrepect to Fulton Sheen. I don’t think he should be blamed for his (in)action after Vatican II. He did his best, by all appearances. But he was not a firebrand, like St. Athanasius was. That’s my only point here.

[2] Henri de Lubac, Témoinage Chrétrien (Paris, 1967) in Dietrich von Hildebrand, Trojan Horse in the City of God (Sophia: 1993), 8.