In this special episode of the War Room, we speak with Bishop John Snyder, who has dedicated his life to making sure that here in the modern age, we go back to more traditional times. He has a theory about why this is so important.
00:00:00.000Okay, welcome. I really want to thank Real America's Voice for making this happen. It's
00:00:25.560Sunday, 23 October in the year of our Lord, 2022. And this is a War Room special. We had such a
00:00:31.920prominent and important guest this week. They were able to get some additional time.
00:00:38.120Bishop, thank you so much. Bishop Snyder, thank you so much. Today's also a very special day. What
00:00:42.940is it in the church calendar? Today, it is the feast of Spanish Saint Franciscan. His name is
00:00:51.580Saint Peter of Alcantara. He was a great missionary, priest in the 16th century in Spain. And in the
00:01:01.620traditional calendar of the church, it is feast day today.
00:01:05.580Let's talk about tradition for a second. You've kind of dedicated your life to making sure here
00:01:12.920in the modern age, we go back to these more traditional times. But you have a theory of
00:01:19.980why that is so important and must happen in the modern world. Part of that is communion with the
00:01:25.360saints and connection with not just the great heritage of the church, of all the literature
00:01:30.560and the art and the beauty, but more importantly, the direct lineage of the mass itself and also
00:01:36.500the saints. Why do you believe that that is the most important thing in this modern world with
00:01:42.420transhumanism and global economic insecurity and war and pandemics? Why is that a fight worth fighting?
00:01:53.860Yes, because the main characteristic of the modern world is exactly the rupture with tradition
00:02:02.740and to create something completely new, artificial. But this is contrary to the very nature of the human
00:02:14.020being, the very nature as we were created by God. Because all what we have, we receive, we have received,
00:02:25.060starting with the life. We received a life from our parents. We received a soul from God directly. And all the knowledge
00:02:38.100which we have, we received from our, from those who lived before us, they transmitted us all the treasures of culture,
00:02:47.940of human knowledge. And, and, but in the first place, the faith. And this is the basic truth, because God spoke to humanity
00:03:03.140in the divine revelation. And this is called, God gave us something. So we received his word, his truth.
00:03:13.220We received, we received, we not created this. And therefore, by receiving, it's included the tradition. It is
00:03:21.140inseparable. So we have this, as we transmit the human life, which God gave us this order, when he created
00:03:30.420men and women. So, when he revealed himself supernaturally, in the Old Testament, in the fullness in Jesus Christ,
00:03:39.220he gave us this greatest gift, his truth, the faith. And the task of the church, and of all believers,
00:03:51.140starting with the parents, they have the duty to transmit faithfully what they received. This is the entire mission of the church.
00:04:00.340And included the faith. And, and, and, and, and, and most important eximious expression of the faith, which was handed down, is the liturgy, the prayer, as we express the faith. And therefore, so important is to keep
00:04:19.540keep the traditional way of believing and of praying.
00:04:27.700The church in the 19th century, with the Industrial Revolution, and things that were going on in, in Europe,
00:04:37.460understood that this was going to be a problem. In fact, they came up with this, what the, uh, oath
00:04:43.460against modernity, or the anti, the oath against anti-modernism. Talk about those church leaders, what, what, what was it that they saw
00:04:52.020ahead, that they would actually get, become so adamant, that, because you have on one side,
00:04:58.900in the 19th century, church leaders, who are adamant about, we have to fight at a spiritual level,
00:05:08.100this thing called modernity, that we've seen in the French Revolution, but it's, it's, it's getting deeper now with the Industrial Revolution.
00:05:14.500And you go to 1960, so basically 80 years later, or 100 years later, and you have church leaders that say the exact opposite. In fact, we have to welcome in modernity.
00:05:24.980What did they see, and what transpired in those 100 years, that led to the Second Vatican Council?
00:05:32.500Yes, this is a very good question. So, I think that, uh, partly, these church leaders,
00:05:40.260starting with John XXIII, and those who promoted the Vatican II Council, they're confused. There is a
00:05:49.460technical progress, which helps human beings, to us all, to, to live better materially.
00:05:56.660But it also killed that material, that material, the technological advancement, it also killed 200
00:06:03.140million people. Yes. We just finished the greatest dark age. People of 500 years from now will look
00:06:08.420at the 20th century as, uh, like the dark ages. Yes, and this is the question. So how could they make
00:06:12.580that mistake though? I understand material progress that you have televisions, and you've got cars, and
00:06:17.540the family doesn't have to plow the fields, but you're literally just at the edge of a smoking
00:06:24.180hole that was the Second World War. Exactly. This is what I wanted to say, that the progress of the
00:06:29.860technique can be in some way good, but they welcomed the progress, and they forgot that this progress of
00:06:42.500techniques of the modernity, uh, leads to a great danger, as you mentioned, the wars and the mass weapons
00:06:53.700to destroy humanity. But I want to go back just for our audience. You have people, and let's talk about
00:06:58.580the, the, they actually come up with an oath. The church is not in the business of putting out oaths. I mean,
00:07:05.540this is the importance they had. And every priest, every teacher, every lecturer at a Catholic
00:07:12.180university, you had to buy into this. And it was quite detailed. So they're drawn a line in the sand
00:07:19.780that we understand where this is going to go, and we're going to be a bulwark
00:07:23.860in the Judeo-Christian West against this. You then have what they told you was going to happen,
00:07:31.620even worse, to nuclear chemical weapons in World War I, nuclear weapons in World War II,
00:07:36.900mass starvation. I mean, 200, 250, a quarter of a billion people slaughtered.
00:07:42.500How could people on the other side of that, the people at Second Vatican Council, the people in Rome,
00:07:47.140are some of the most educated people in the world. How could they possibly have missed that? Yes,
00:07:52.820you're materially better off and technology got a lot of positive things, but we were never had this
00:07:57.060slaughter if it hadn't been the convergence of dark forces with technology. How could they possibly have
00:08:02.980missed what was probably the biggest lesson to mankind? They missed the basic error of the modern
00:08:12.180time. Despite of the technical progress, as you mentioned, the humanity became more and more morally
00:08:21.540worth and inhuman. And they forget the reason of why. Because humanity, the modern time, put God aside
00:08:34.340and put themselves in the place of God and started to neglect and despise the commandments of God.
00:08:44.020And therefore, all this, in spite of the technical progress, we had disasters, only disasters in the modern time.
00:08:54.100And this was the error of these church leaders not to appeal to this route to indicate the very cause of this.
00:09:06.020Instead, they were simply impressed, overwhelmed with the material progress of the modern world.
00:09:13.060And this was, to my opinion, a great omission and a deception of these church leaders, or they were probably also
00:09:23.940had a kind of complex of inferiority before the modern world.
00:09:30.980Or they wanted to be approved by the modern world. And this is a weakness.
00:09:37.700What do you mean approved? To be held up by the secular world?
00:09:40.820Yes, the secular world, the unbelieving world, would applaud them, would recognize them.
00:09:46.420But this is an illusion. And this is a weakness. And it is not worthy of those who are called
00:09:56.420the successors of the holy apostles. Jesus Christ and the apostles never were seeking
00:10:03.540the recognition and the applause of the world.
00:10:07.780You have Christ triumphed, Christus Vincent of my altar boy Latin.
00:10:17.700Christ triumphed over the darkness of the age.
00:10:21.940Do you consider Christ triumphant in the 20th century?
00:10:24.980Yes, because Christ already won. In his sacrifice on the cross, he destroyed sin and triumphed over the
00:10:39.700devil. And with his resurrection, he manifested his triumph. And since then, he is and he will remain
00:10:48.580the winner. Nevertheless, in this world, the church will be until the end of the time, Christ said this,
00:10:58.900only a small flock, and always persecuted. Because in the Gospel of St. John, he said,
00:11:07.140Christ the light came to the world, and the world did not accept him, did not receive him. This will be
00:11:17.140until the end of the time. And therefore, the church is called by its nature here on earth,
00:11:25.140the church militant. It means the church, which is fighting, but not materially fighting, of course, but to
00:11:36.100it is doing a spiritual war. So, here, your place here is called the war house. And the church is,
00:11:46.100I would say, the entire Catholic church is a great, a big war house. And always the apostles,
00:11:56.180the fathers of the church, the saints, the popes, during two millennium, they were aware and stressed
00:12:03.940this, we are in the midst of a battle. We have not to be so naive and to be a victim of the illusions
00:12:13.620that the world will accept us. But if people, but Catholics today, and Christians today, look at
00:12:22.500China, and look at the underground church, and look at what was Eastern Europe before the fall of
00:12:27.620the communists, and look at certain parts of sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia, they see a church
00:12:33.060persecuted. There, they see the church in a fight, right? Do you see that in the book, you talk about
00:12:39.220the de-Christianization of Europe, even before this wave of the entry of Islam. But really,
00:12:49.460the secularization that came right after the oath against modernity, the secular nature,
00:12:54.900the de-Christianization of Europe really started whole hog. Do you see that? We've got about a
00:13:01.700minute before we go to break. Do you see the de-Christianization of Europe, that they put up a
00:13:05.780strong enough fight? Are they putting up a fight today? Exactly. The de-Christianization of Europe,
00:13:12.260it was going on since the French Revolution, and ever more. And exactly in the 20th century,
00:13:20.580it was growing. And exactly at this moment, the church should strongly stress our duty,
00:13:27.220of course, with dignity to fight against all these modern dangers, who were a kind of spiritual poison,
00:13:39.700poisoning the humanity, with a life, a completely materialistic life, and a life against the
00:13:48.580commandments of God, which is a disaster for all humanity, which we are now witnessing.
00:13:53.700Let's take a short commercial break. We're going to return with Bishop Schneider, who joins us from
00:13:58.420Kazakhstan here in the United States. I want to thank Real America's Voice for this tremendous
00:14:02.980opportunity for this one-hour special. We'll be back in a moment.
00:15:21.540The team in Denver, I really want to thank Real America's Voice for helping us do this special, hopefully the first of many.
00:15:27.980The cover of your new books about the mass and how to get back to tradition.
00:15:32.040It has a absolutely stunning, if the guys in Denver can pull into this, photograph on the front.
00:15:38.760It is a traditional Catholic mass being said, which looks like a beautiful cathedral once.
00:15:46.100But obviously this is the remnants of World War II.
00:15:48.620So the question gets to be, if Europe is a Christian culture and is the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian West, how do we end up with all that carnage and destruction on the outside?
00:16:06.020They even took down the material part of the church.
00:16:08.060How did we, because that picture is so ironic.
00:16:10.860You have the highest, not ceremony, but offering to God.
00:16:21.620At the same time in a burned out husk with hundreds of millions of people dead.
00:16:26.740How does that happen and what is supposed to be a Christian culture in the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian West?
00:16:35.720Yes, this picture is exactly a demonstration of what happened in the last centuries and a demonstration of what produced Christianity in Europe.
00:16:49.080For all the beauty which the European culture produced since the Middle Ages in art, in music, in architecture.
00:16:59.500Today, all the people around the world visiting Europe, they go to see Notre-Dame de Paris.
00:17:07.480They see the Dome of Cologne or Milan, the Basilica of St. Peter, all these beautiful art.
00:17:16.200They will not visit a supermarket, a modern-style church, which was built today, oftentimes like a supermarket, a hall.
00:17:31.200No one will visit a tourist such a church, but they will visit Notre-Dame de Paris and so on.
00:17:37.180And to look at the beauties of all the famous architects and the music the same.
00:17:45.540The greatest beautiful music produced in history, in humanity are the music produced by the church, by the composers who were believing, let us say, Palestrina, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and so on.
00:18:04.540But all that art, all that beauty, all that music, all that led to that.
00:18:33.560And we will never find our happiness individually and in humanity unless we try to glorify God in our life, even exteriorly with this beauty, because God is beauty.
00:18:48.840And when people and humanity or a time like the modernity puts God aside in the periphery, then the result is ugliness, simple ugliness, spiritual ugliness, morally ugliness, and the arts.
00:19:10.620And so this picture which you showed, it is that the modernity brought this bombing and destroyed the beauty which the Christian faith, the Catholic faith, produced.
00:19:25.080Almost naturally, almost naturally, the Catholic faith, produced this beauty.
00:19:31.920As long as Christians, the church, put God at the center, really at the center, and gave Him the primacy.
00:19:42.420As long as they did this, there was beauty.
00:19:45.680Of course, in the modern life, in the past centuries, even ever since, this is a reality.
00:19:54.820What about the secularist argument that's saying in the early part of the 20th century with Einstein and the discovery of relativity, that you found out that it's, and then the study later of the subatomic quantum mechanics, that it's all random.
00:20:09.460It's relative, and then it's random, that that understanding, man's progress in understanding the universe, and understanding the material universe, made not just the church irrelevant, but made Christ as just a myth of a nice person and a good teacher, but that God is really totally mechanical.
00:20:29.220And modern science shows that, which led to obviously the atomic bomb and the destruction in the 20th century.
00:20:36.480What about the secularist argument that advances in science really led us to understand the universe better, and the rest of it's just myth?
00:20:44.600Yes, this is an error, because God created the reason, and reason and faith are together.
00:20:55.180As Pope John Paul II stated, this beautiful expression, faith and reason are like the two wings of a bird.
00:21:04.880And you cannot fly with one wing, and you cannot fly with one wing.
00:21:12.700And so the modernity only chosen the one wing, the reason, but excluded God, the creator, who revealed himself to us in faith.
00:21:23.780And this rejection of the voice of God in the revelation, in the faith, is leading to a disaster, even with the highest technical progress, as you mentioned, Einstein.
00:21:41.200And there cannot be relativism, because it's against common sense.
00:21:50.040We have to restore, again, the common sense.
00:21:53.680How did someone, tell us a second, how did a little boy from Kazakhstan, one of the most remote places on earth,
00:22:02.660what's the arc of your story of how you became essentially the intellectual, or one of the intellectual leaders,
00:22:08.580and one of the fighters to get back to a more traditional Catholicism, and therefore a more traditional Christianity?
00:23:22.800And the majority are Muslims, and a considerable part Russian Orthodox.
00:23:28.040But I had to tell the story because I belong to the so-called Germans from Russia and to this group of the Black Sea Germans at the Black Sea Shore.
00:23:40.880There were 19th century German villages, completely separated from Russians, and even separated Catholic villages and Lutheran villages.
00:23:51.920And so these were German farmers who came at the invitation of the emperor.
00:23:59.840And they transmitted faithfully the Catholic faith through generations.
00:24:04.800And so my parents, and during the Second World War, well, in the 30s, it was, I have to say, the years called the terror years of Stalin.
00:24:16.580He killed Stalin, 36, 37, the horrible, and he killed Stalin, his own people, not foreigners, his own Soviet citizens, several millions in two years.
00:24:35.540And my grandfather was one of the victims.
00:24:48.740He was a Catholic, really a practicing Catholic man, and he had some land.
00:24:55.900And this was, in these two horrible years, the terror years, already a reason to be killed.
00:25:04.040And so he was on the list to be killed.
00:25:07.080And so he was, and my grandmother was alone with two children, my father and his brother.
00:25:16.300And then the Germans of the Black Sea were, not deported, but evacuated during the Second World War by the German army to Germany, to East Germany, to save them from the Soviet army.
00:25:29.300And then the Soviet army occupied East Germany, and arrested all these people again, and brought them back to Soviet Union as slave workers for forced labor.
00:25:39.420And so my parents came to a labor camp in the Ural Mountains, and there they, by miracle of God, they survived, because a great part of these Germans, they died of frozen and famine.
00:41:00.340Okay, in your new book, The Catholic Mass, and I recommend this not just to Catholics and devout Catholics,
00:41:24.160observing Catholics, but really to all Christians, I think everybody would learn something from this.
00:41:29.240Is Vatican II, with the loss of the Oath of Modernity a couple of years later, and the new Mass that came in in 1969,
00:41:38.840is that heresy, and is your fight to return to a more traditional, even if smaller, Catholic Church?
00:41:46.760Are you saying that it's all heretical, what came out of Vatican II, and that your fight is to basically stand in the breach and say that we must go back?
00:41:56.400For sure, Vatican II is not a heresy, and the new Mass is not a heresy. We have to distinguish. Heresy is a direct contradiction and denial of a divine revealed truth.
00:42:08.000And this, Vatican II did not. And the new Mass also not. But the problem is that—
00:42:14.000So people, Lefebvre and some people, there are people farther to the right than you that say it is. You believe they're wrong because of this—
00:42:21.000The Archbishop Lefebvre did not say this. He did not say that there are heresies. But we have to distinguish between heresy, as I told you, is a direct denial of the divine truth, and ambiguity. So this is—
00:42:35.000The problem with Vatican II, and then the new Mass, is they contain ambiguity. So, awakeness. So you can speak in a vague, ambiguous way about important topics. So you leave the readers, or those who will read this text of the Vatican II,
00:42:57.000the possibility to make the possibility to make an interpretation in one side, or in a true way, or in a wrong way. And this is the problem. The vagueness. All is in gray. It is so—
00:43:14.000Does that lead us to have pagan rituals from the Amazon conducted at the Vatican? Is that where that leads?
00:43:21.340It can lead there. But for the Mass, as you asked me, and therefore the new Mass is a kind of a mirror reflection of what the character of the Vatican II documents—of course, I have to say we have to be just.
00:43:37.160In the Vatican II documents, there are plenty good traditional affirmations, of course, thanks be to God. But sometimes it is sufficient, I would say, a small poison, and which can contaminate with ambiguity the rest.
00:43:54.160And so the new Mass contains, in some parts, a very ambiguous language regarding the sacrificial character of the Mass, because the Holy Mass is substantially the celebration, sacramental celebration of the sacrifice of the cross of Christ, of our redemption, sacrificial.
00:44:19.160And this aspect is in some way undermined and darkened in some texts, in some places of the new Mass, and in the ritual itself. And this is very regrettable.
00:44:36.160And therefore we have to make—and there is a movement started by Archbishop Lefebvre, but not only by him, by other even movements of laypeople after the Council and until to our days.
00:44:51.160And here in the States, in other countries, there are very beautiful and people, good people, laypeople who are very committed to restore again the clearness, the clarity, and the beauty in an ambiguity of the Catholic faith and worship.
00:45:15.160And therefore, we have to promote again the traditional way of the Holy Mass, which is so clear and unambiguous, as a means to eliminate this vagueness, this ambiguity, which then leads, as you mentioned, also to our heresy and to some even pagan worships.
00:45:43.160My parents in our living room were part of that group, Catholics United for the Faith, that eventually brought—helped bring back Tridentian Catholicism, Catholic Mass back in the mid to late 70s.
00:45:54.160How do people—besides getting the book, Sophia Press is a magnificent publisher.
00:45:59.160You go to Sophia, we'll be making sure everybody gets access to the book, the new book on the Mass, but you've got the Vatican II, the springtime that never gave.
00:46:07.160And of course, your journey, but really more importantly, the de-Christianization of the world.
00:46:12.160How do people—is there a website they go to?
00:46:15.160How do people find out more about you in your crusade to return to more traditional faith?
00:46:21.160I have a website with the name GloriaDei.io.
00:46:26.160And in this website are many articles and my videos about Catholic faith, and I have monthly direct broadcasting every thirteenth of the month in the evening, where I am giving a talk about Catholic faith, catechesis, and another month I am answering questions of the audience.
00:46:53.160Well, thank you very much for joining us. We'll make sure that everybody gets access to that.
00:46:58.160Bishop, thank you also, I think, from people in the United States for your journey here, and we look forward to seeing you again when you return.
00:47:06.160Bishop Snyder has joined us. I want to make sure everybody goes to Sophia Press.
00:47:11.160The latest book is The Catholic Mass, that is, The Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy.
00:47:18.160And this is not just for observant Catholics or maybe wayward Catholics, cultural Catholics, but also for all Christians.
00:47:26.160I think you will learn a lot about this.
00:47:28.160And, of course, the other book about the Vatican II, Springtime That Never Came, one of the most controversial events of the 20th century, the Second Vatican Council.
00:47:36.160And, of course, Christ Triumph over Darkness, all from Sophia.
00:47:40.160Oh, this is from Anglico Press, but you can get them up on the site.
00:47:43.160We'll make sure everybody gets access to it.