Christus Vincit: Conclusion of review

This is the final post in the series reviewing Bishop Schneiders 2019 book, Christus Vincit.

We have seen how the opening chapters provide a moving insight into the author's family background and his life-story up until his consecration as a bishop in 2006.

<<<<<<  Here is a snapshot of the table of contents showing the chapters following the autobiographical introduction.

These are summarised on the Angelico website as follows:

''Bishop Athanasius Schneider offers a candid, incisive examination of controversies raging in the Church and the most pressing issues of our times, providing clarity and hope for beleaguered Catholics. He addresses such topics as widespread doctrinal confusion, the limits of papal authority, the documents of Vatican II, the Society of St. Pius X, anti-Christian ideologies and political threats, the third secret of Fatima, the traditional Roman rite, and the Amazon Synod, among many others. 

Like his fourth-century patron, St. Athanasius the Great, Bishop Schneider says things that others won’t, fearlessly following St. Paul’s advice: “Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Tim 4:2). His insights into the challenges facing Christ’s flock today are essential reading for those who are, or wish to be, alert to the signs of the times.'' [From the Angelico Press website]

Christus Vincit is available from Angelico Press or for Kindle from Amazon.

The End of Quantum Reality: Must watch interview

For those of our readers who have been following the amazing work of Dr Wolfgang Smith, do not miss the opportunity to watch his latest interview with Rick Delano.


The interview premiered on November 14, 2019, some 18 months after the last interview.

Here is a link to the interview: The End of Quantum Reality.

We reviewed his 2019 book earlier this year:

Physics & Vertical Causation, the End of Quantum Reality.

For those new to the subject, please have a look at the Philo Sophia Initiative website.

There you will discover his ground-breaking work on huge, cosmological issues such as evolution, geocentrism,  Galileo, Newton, Mach, Michelson & Morley, Einstein, quantum theory, scientism, real metaphysics, Aristotle, Aquinas and oriental philosophy.

Oh, and vertical causality and the Godhead...

Christus Vincit: Athanasius

This is the third in our series of posts reviewing Christus Vincit (2019) by Bishop Athanasius Schneider. The future bishop began his novitiate with the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross (Austria). He was ordained on the 25th of March 1990 and he notes that his first Holy Mass was in Latin. At the time of his profession, he was given the name Athanasius and he was sent to Brazil. His order gave material help to the poor but also taught them the catechism and the Rosary, which they loved. Sometimes he had to take the Blessed Sacrament to the sick on horseback, because of the difficult terrain. He later completed his studies with Patrology and a dissertation on the Shepherd of Hermas (Ecclesiology and Penance). He met Pope John Paul II twice and was sent to Karaganda.. In 2006, he was consecrated a bishop in Rome, taking as his motto: Kyrie Eleison. At this moment he recalled a prayer his parents wrote as a memorial for his priestly ordination in 1990:

“Lord Jesus, give me love, a strong and ardent love for you and, for your sake, for all men and for all that is good. Give me fortitude, so that I may consider the whole world insignificant, if it will seek to separate me from you. Give me joy in my priesthood, for which you have chosen me. May I faithfully observe your commandments and give me the grace to do great things in my priesthood with deep humility and a pure intention.”

Mother of All Nations, Karaganda. Gugigug. CC BY-SA 3.0 

As auxiliary bishop in Karaganda, he played a key role in building Our Lady of Fatima, the largest Catholic Church in central Asia. Its second title is ''Mother of All Nations.'' He tells a charming story about this Cathedral:

''Two local ladies from Muslim families passed by the cathedral, and the one woman asked her companion, 'What is this building here?' Her friend answered, “This is a Catholic mosque.” Our Lady of Fatima has already attracted many people through this beautiful church, including non-Christians. And that is one of the main goals of a Catholic church building, to bring people to Christ.'' 

He has written about the Holy Eucharist in Dominus Est, a copy of which was sent to all the bishops in North America.

He prepared a decree which applies to the whole of Kazakhstan:

''The decree contained norms stipulating that in the entire territory of Kazakhstan in all Catholic churches, chapels, and religious communities, Holy Communion has to be received by the faithful while kneeling (except of course for health reasons) and on the tongue; that receiving Communion in the hand is prohibited even for Catholics from abroad.''

The last question in this chapter concerned his reaction to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. His response is quitre striking:

''I could not have imagined that the breakdown of this atheistic system would usher in a worse situation in Europe, which is now before us: the dictatorship of gender ideology. This is really a dictatorship. It is actually the same method as in Communist times.''

His sobering reflection concludes this third post. In the next post, we shall conclude the review by giving you a flavour of what is covered in the remaining chapters of this remarkable book.

Christus Vincit is available from Angelico Press or for Kindle from Amazon.

Christus Vincit: God calls

This is our second post on Bishop Athanasius Schneider's 2019 book, Christus Vincit. In his second chapter, the author gives us a glimpse of life for a devout Catholic family under a ferociously anti-Christian tyranny in the Soviet Union. The author reveals how pious his grandparents were and how devoted his parents were to the Eucharist. One of his fondest memories concerns family prayers on the Lord's day:

''On Sundays, we closed all the doors, drew the curtains, and knelt down—my parents with the four children—and we sanctified the day of the Lord because there was no priest, no Mass. We had to sanctify the day of the Lord, so in the morning we prayed the Rosary, a litany, prayers, and then we made our Spiritual Communion...''

It is a salutary reminder to many Catholics in the West to be deeply grateful for their opportunity to assist at Mass, even if in many places the old Mass may be difficult to find.  It is a warning but also an inspirational example of what to do if (or when) the current liberal and secular war in the west against Christ and His Church becomes more extensive and intrusive.

Bishop Schneider explains that in his boyhood, a priest might come every six months, sometimes once a year. There were even some years when his family had to go without Mass and Communion. Their faith burned brightly despite the enemy's attempts to snuff it out. He illustrates the determination of the faithful and the joy he felt with a reference to Christmas:

''On Christmas Eve all the Germans came to our house. I remember as a child, our house was full—some were even standing outside—and we were singing all the beautiful Christmas songs, all in German. The one which I most loved as a seven or eight-year-old child, and sang the next day, was Adeste fideles in German—'Kommt, lasset uns anbeten' ('O Come, All Ye Faithful').''

A significant milestone in his life-story came when in 1969 the family moved to Valga in Estonia when he was eight years old. This was to facilitate their hope of emigrating to Germany. They established that the nearest Catholic church was 100 kilometers away in Tartu. Going to Mass involved a train journey starting at six o'clock in the morning, returning that evening. His parents were delighted with this opportunity:

'' 'Oh, children, we are so happy! We have a church so close to us. Only 100 kilometers!' I remember this. 'So close to us. Only 100 kilometers!' We were all so happy.''

Bishop Schneider writes that this is one of the most beautiful memories of his life, these Sunday Mass trips.

At this point in the interview, his interlocutor referred to Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and asked about the Karaganda gulag. Here is a summary of Bishop Schneider's response. The Karaganda gulag was known as the “Karlag”. The word “Gulag,” is an abbreviation for “Glávnoye Upravléniye Ispravítelno-trudovykh Lageréy” which is Russian for: “Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps”). The system reached its peak during Stalin’s rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. The Karlagcovered an area roughly equivalent to today’s France. Over one million people passed through the Karlag. The first were priests, religious ministers, intellectuals, nobility, officers, and peasants, labelled “enemies of the people” or “public enemies”. They were transported in cattle trucks from all over the Soviet Union to Kazakhstan.

Silver-thread embroidered antimensium 1540-60. Benaki Museum [Public domain]

Several hundred priests and religious died in the Karlag. Today, in the village of Dolinka, near the city of Karaganda, stands the Museum of the Memory of Victims of Political Repression.
The older people who experienced and still remember the terrible times of repression say that the soil around Karaganda is soaked with the tears and blood of countless innocent persons. Once the late Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow, Alexij, when visiting Karaganda, said that the area of Karaganda can symbolically be described as an “antimension”—a kind of “corporal” in the Byzantine Rite, in which are sewn the relics of martyrs.

Celebrating Traditional Latin Mass in Tallinn, Estonia. 2010

Bishop Schneider concludes this second chapter with a story. He had recently made his First Holy Communion and he was making his way with his mother after Mass one day towards the priest's house. Out of curiosity, he asked his mother how one could become a priest. He was ten years old.  His mother stopped and sad to him: ''In order to become a priest, it is necessary that God calls.''

Two years later, the family emigrated to Germany. Before their departure, their priest blessed them and explained there were some churches where Communion was given in the hand. He asked them not to go to those churches. They did indeed find this practice was widespread:

''It was horrible for us: almost all of the people received Communion in the hand. And it was given quickly, with people standing in a line, like in a cafeteria.''

Marko Tervaportti [CC BY 3.0] 

Bishop Schneider completed his education in Germany, gaining fluency in literary German (he speaks six languages fluently). He attended Mass daily and frequently went to exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for silent adoration. He recalls that as a child he simply loved Our Lady.

At the end of his studies in the Gymnasium, he entered the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross in Austria. It was in 1982 that he began his novitiate, a step on the road to answering God's call. He was to be ordained on the feast of the Annunciation in 1990, in Brazil.


Christus Vincit is available from Angelico Press or for Kindle from Amazon.

Christus Vincit: ''The Tribulation of those Days - Good Soil''

Our two sister blog-sites are still busy on a daily basis with ongoing projects: Deo Gratias.

You may wish to have a brief look. Here are their links:


The Life of Christ Our Lord will incorporate J-J Tissot's incredible art-work to illustrate the Gospel accounts.

Detailed notes make extensive use of the Great Commentary by Cornelius A Lapide. Maps, diagrams and other notes are also included.

Here is the home-page of the site.

New posts are published daily on the blog.

A second, older site was developed as a showcase for a remarkable Rosary dating back to pre-Reformation, Catholic England, celebrated throughout Christendom as Mary's Dowry. Apart from the superb  verse and art-work, materials are posted to the blog on a daily basis.

Here is a link to the home-page where you can access the blog.





As time permits, I aim to include a series of posts here by way of reviewing an outstanding book I finished reading a couple of weeks ago and which is supremely suited for the calamitous times in which we find ourselves.

Angelico Press, 2019 

''In this absorbing interview, Bishop Athanasius Schneider offers a candid, incisive examination of controversies raging in the Church and the most pressing issues of our times, providing clarity and hope for beleaguered Catholics. He addresses such topics as widespread doctrinal confusion, the limits of papal authority, the documents of Vatican II, the Society of St. Pius X, anti-Christian ideologies and political threats, the third secret of Fatima, the traditional Roman rite, and the Amazon Synod, among many others. Like his fourth-century patron, St. Athanasius the Great, Bishop Schneider says things that others won’t, fearlessly following St. Paul’s advice: “Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Tim 4:2). His insights into the challenges facing Christ’s flock today are essential reading for those who are, or wish to be, alert to the signs of the times.'' [From the Angelico Press website]



Christus Vincit is a book-length interview based upon a series of question and answer sessions conducted by Diana Montagna, a journalist who is currently Rome correspondent for Lifesite News. She provides a summary of Bishop Schneider's life in her Introduction:

 Black Sea, R. Volga,  Astana & Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan. [Wikicommons, Public Domain]

''Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of St. Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan: Born Antonius Schneider on April 7, 1961, in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan (USSR), Bishop Schneider’s early years were spent in the Soviet underground church, before emigrating with his family to Germany. 

In 1982, he entered in Austria the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross, originally founded in Coimbra. He was ordained to the priesthood on March 25, 1990. 


Appointed to the episcopate by Pope Benedict XVI, in June 2006, at the age of 45, he was consecrated a bishop in St. Peter’s Basilica.''

Divided into twenty chapters, with an Appendix, the book immediately seizes the reader's attention in the opening pages with an account of his family ancestry amongst the Black Sea Germans from Alsace-Lorraine. They were devout Catholics and suffered dreadful tribulations under the Communist tyranny which spread like a dreadful plague across Holy Mother Russia. In the diocese created for Germans in South Ukraine:

''there were over two hundred German priests from this diocese. What’s beautiful is that no one apostatized. Not one. Almost all of the two hundred priests from the diocese, with the exception of a few priests, were killed or imprisoned.''

As the Second World War drew nearer, the atrocities increased:

''The horrible years were in Stalin’s time from 1936 to 1938, which are called the Dark Years, the terror years, though Stalin cynically called these years the time of purification. It was a purgation, a 'cleansing,' Stalin said. The Communists killed primarily priests, wealthy people, and intellectuals, all of whom were seen as potential enemies. There was a genocide, and what’s incredible is that history is almost silent about this. In these two years, Stalin killed millions upon millions of innocent people—his own people, not foreigners. It is a proven historical fact.''

Bishop Schneider's paternal grandfather was taken away and murdered, leaving his grandmother as a widow aged twenty-five with two sons aged seven and two. His grandmother lived seventy-four years as a widow, dying aged ninety-nine. Her prayer life was altogether remarkable:

''She would pray at least three hours in the morning. Then she did her work, and then she stopped and prayed an hour. Then in the afternoon, and in the evening, she prayed three hours.''

His grandfather on his mother's side was also killed, by a stray Luftwaffe bomb,  leaving his grandmother as a widow with seven children. The Germans occupied this part of Ukraine and evacuated the Russian Germans to East Germany as they retreated before the Red Army. There were around 300,000 of them and they were all later rounded up by the Communists and taken back to Soviet territory in cattle trucks. His mother and father, yet to meet, were exiled to a work camp in the Ural Mountains. Thousands died in the sub-zero temperatures. Even girls had to do a full day's work once they turned sixteen.

How did these Catholics retain their faith?

''Unfortunately, they had to go ten years, more or less, with no priests. But the families transmitted the faith, and every day they prayed. For example, in Lent, on Fridays in the evening after this hard work, neighboring families came together and prayed the Stations of the Cross in a room. Even after an exhausting day, they prayed the Stations of the Cross in Lent.''

Bishop Schneider describes a concentration camp in the Kazakhstan gulag, reputed to be one of the very worst. A holy priest, Fr Oleksiy, made quite superhuman efforts to bring the sacraments to poor souls scattered in this and other camps.

''At night he heard confessions, because they were ten years without a priest. He would celebrate Mass and give Holy Communion and so on. Sometimes he would go two days without eating, because people came continuously—thousands of Germans who were Catholics. They came secretly to confess.''

Even in the 1960s, the anti-Christian oppression was still in force. When Fr Oleksiy came to Kyrgystan to say Mass for Bishop Schneider's parents, he had to do so in total secrecy. Little Antonius was only one year old when he made this, his début as an altar-boy!

In the next post, we shall be looking at Bishop Schneider's boyhood and God's call to him.


Christus Vincit is available from Angelico Press or for Kindle from Amazon.

Quick update

Most of our energy is currently taken by two big projects under way on our sister blogs. Pop over to check on our progress:

The Life of Christ Our Lord will incorporate J-J Tissot's incredible art-work to illustrate the Gospel accounts.

Detailed notes make extensive use of the Great Commentary by Cornelius A Lapide. Maps, diagrams and other notes are also included.

Here is the home-page of the site.

New posts are published daily on the blog.

A second, older site was developed as a showcase for a remarkable Rosary dating back to pre-Reformation, Catholic England, celebrated throughout Christendom as Mary's Dowry. Apart from the superb  verse and art-work, materials are posted to the blog on a daily basis.

Here is a link to the home-page where you can access the blog.










Finally, here are some screen-shots of books I have read in recent weeks. I recommend all of them but I don't currently have time to write reviews.

First published in 2011, this has been a massive best-seller in Russia. I have now read it twice, including some of the stories to my family. Highly recommended for its powerful insights and its humour. The stories are narrated in a highly engaging manner.

First published in 2019, this book approaches history free from the usual constraints that seek to censor certain lines of enquiry.

Living Machines & Desperate Moderns. E Michael Jones reveals the impact on art and living of those big names who decided to shape truth to their desires instead of subordinating their desires to the truth.

I started reading this in an attempt to discover if Campion could conceivably have been the real author of ''Shakespeare''.  It turned out to be a superbly written, concise life of the scholar, missionary and martyr; impossible to put down.

Waugh's grandson turns out to be a world-authority on the ''Shakespeare Authorship Question,'' his preferred candidate being the 17th Earl of Oxford. He has a delightful style with both the written and the spoken word. You can discover the latter on the De Vere Society website, where he has uploaded a wealth of video- and pod-casts displaying a bewildering mastery of detail and a finely tuned sense of humour.