Bishop Schneider: Amoris Laetitia ‘must be corrected’
Bishop Athanasius Schneider urged Pope Leo XIV to correct Amoris Laetitia, affirming it violates divine law with regard to the sanctity of marriage and the Holy Eucharist.
Bishop Athanasius
Schneider, speaking at a conference in Rome, October 2023Michael Haynes
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Thu Oct 8, 2026 - 2:11 pm EDT
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(LifeSiteNews) — As Pope Leo XIV gathers the presidents of the world’s episcopal conferences in Rome to mark 10 years of Amoris Laetitia, Bishop Athanasius Schneider warned that the 2016 apostolic exhortation amounts to a practical “denial of the divine truth of the indissolubility of marriage” and “a direct attack on the ineffable sanctity of the Holy Eucharist.”
The auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, made the remarks in an exclusive interviewwith Michael Haynes of The Catholic Herald published October 8 as the Vatican meeting entered its second day.
Schneider said the text is “against divine law” and must be “explicitly corrected.” He questioned how the Vatican could discuss the family without resolving the “confusion” that Amoris Laetitia has spread and argued that the Rome gathering “should, with all honesty, address it with the Pope saying that it cannot continue as it has done.”
Schneider asked how the meeting could discuss the family without resolving the “confusion” the document has spread.
“How can we delve deeper into what marriage and the family is, when there is confusion? We will simply delve in a deeper confusion still,” he observed.
How can we continue to promote marriage as God established it – teaching the indissolubility of marriage and the family which is the domestic church in reality – in an environment of obvious confusion regarding the indissolubility of marriage, because Amoris Laetitia opened the door for communion for divorced people.
Schneider pointed to the norms of the Buenos Aires bishops that Pope Francis approved and called the only correct interpretation of the exhortation. Those norms, he said, state that if it is “not feasible” for a divorced and remarried couple to live in continence, they may nevertheless receive Holy Communion and other sacraments as well.
“But for whom is it not feasible to live chastely?” Schneider admonished. “We all have the obligation from God to live chastely with the help of the grace of God of course. And with the grace of God, it is feasible. This norm says basically if it’s not feasible to live chastely then you are enabled to receive Communion.”
“And so, these norms say that if they cannot live in continence, then the door for all sacraments is open,” the bishop lamented.
Amoris Latitia and official interpretation are ‘undermining divine truth’
He noted that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, then Secretary of State, declared the norms and Francis’s approval as an expression of the authentic Magisterium, and that the approval “is still valid,” emphasizing “this cannot be accepted and continue, this must be explicitly corrected, because this is against divine law.”
“It is in practice a denial of the divine truth of the indissolubility of marriage and at the same time it’s a direct attack on the ineffable sanctity of the Holy Eucharist, when people living in an objective state of sin against the commandment of God are allowed to receive the Holy Eucharist which is the Holy of Holies,” the bishop affirmed. “By this action they are committing at least an objective material desecration, a sacrilege of what is most holy and eating for themselves their judgment as St. Paul warned.”
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“These are serious issues which cannot be silent and downplayed. Therefore this meeting in Rome should, with all honesty address it with the Pope saying that it cannot continue as it has done,” he implored.
Francis’s document and official interpretation, he added, are “undermining divine truth,” “damaging the marriage itself,” and “damaging our families.”
Meetings on the family “will not have fruit and meaning” unless Amoris Laetitia and the Buenos Aires norms are corrected, the bishop concluded.
New document on Nostra Aetate ‘a betrayal of Christ’
The conference Schneider was addressing runs from October 7 to 14 and was announced by Leo XIV in March as a consultation with bishops’ conference presidents “on the theme of the family in the light of” Amoris Laetitia, organized with the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life. Vatican officials have said the gathering is meantto “learn from the experience gained since its publication,” and “not to evaluate or judge” the text.
In the same interview, Schneider also criticized a new document marking sixty years of Nostra Aetate for treating all religions as “fraternal expressions of God’s will” without calling for conversion.
“This is a pure expression of relativism,” he said, “a very cunning form of denial of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the uniqueness of the Catholic faith… This is a betrayal of Christ.”
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