Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez Domingo, 19 de Noviembre del 2023
This story traces how Strickland went from bishop of a rural diocese in Eastern Texas to the visible figure of the opposition to Pope Francis.
Deacon Keith Fournier, a figure in the American Catholic far-right, played a key role shaping Strickland emergence as challenger to Pope Francis’s leadership in the United States.
By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez
Over the last week or so, the dismissal of bishop Joseph Strickland from his position at the Texan diocese of Tyler has been the “talk of the town” in Catholic media in the English, Spanish, French, and Italian-speaking Catholic worlds.
In some cases, the dismissal has been linked to other discrepancies between the dismissed bishop and the Pope. That was the reason for the dismissal of William Martin Morris, the Australian bishop of Toowoomba, who was willing to entertain the idea of ordaining females for Catholic priesthood.
That was enough for Pope Benedict XVI to force him out of office. No questions asked. In Strickland’s case, the situation has been far more complex. Although he has been for the last four years or so a voice of the Catholic conservatives in the United States, before that he was an average Catholic bishop from rural Texas.
Not that dismissing a bishop is so unusual. Quite the opposite. One of the consequences of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church has been an increase in the number of bishops who have been forced out of office before reaching the 75-year-old canonical age of retirement.
Not all dismissals have been related to the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, but the dismissal has been a tool used by the Holy See to get rid of bishops unwilling to address issues in their dioceses.
What follows is an attempt to explain what happened with bishop Strickland.
Born October 31st, 1958, in Fredericksburg, Texas, Strickland was ordained deacon on December 8th, 1984. Less than six months later, he was ordained a priest on June 1st, 1985. Two years later, he was incardinated in the then new Diocese of Tyler, in the Northeastern corner of Texas.
Strickland was appointed as bishop of Tyler, Texas, by Pope Benedict XVI in the last months of his tenure as acting Pope. Strickland got the letter letting him know he had been chosen as bishop of his own diocese on September 29th, 2012.
When Strickland was consecrated bishop, two months later, Benedict was less than three months from resigning, on February 28th, 2013. Pope Francis would be elected two weeks later, on March 13th.
He would remain unnoticed by the Catholic media for the most part until August 22nd, 2018, when Carlo Maria Viganó, former nuncio in the United States issues an eleven-page letter on then Cardinal Theodore McCarrick blaming Pope Francis for allegedly dismissing warnings provided by Viganò himself to Pope Bergoglio.
Viganò’s claims were not supported by evidence, but he used them to launch a new phase of his career as an influencer of sorts in the Catholic far-right in the U.S. and Europe. Since then, Viganò has been issuing “warnings” on Pope Francis’s statements and decisions, based for the most part on unsupported conspiracy theories.
Viganò´s claims regarding the alleged punishment imposed on McCarrick have been dismissed by evidence of how he was willing to participate in public activities with McCarrick, as U.S. nuncio. Had there been any kind of penalties on McCarrick, it was Viganò’s duty to enforce them or, at least, to avoid participating in such activities and to immediately inform his superior in Rome. He did nothing like that. He attended the public functions McCarrick and him were invited to.
Must be noted that one of Benedict XVI’s first public statements on the sexual abuse crisis was when he issued a very public condemnation of Marcial Maciel, a few weeks after his election, back in May 2005. So, we know he was not shy about imposing such penalties, more so since McCarrick’s was a case involving homosexual abuse fitting Ratzinger’s narrative about the crisis.
One of the bishops and cardinals who was forced to address the issue was Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, since he was appointed to his then current charge by Benedict XVI as prefect for the Congregation of Bishops in 2010 and had been a member of the Roman curia since 2001, when he was appointed as Secretary for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity by John Paul II.
Almost two months after Viganò’s first letter, Ouellet, then head of the Office dealing with the Catholic bishops globally, issued on October 7th, 2018 an open letter addressing Viganò's claims calling the former U.S. nuncio’s attitude regarding McCarrick “incomprehensible and extremely troubling”.
Almost two weeks after Ouellet’s letter, on October 19th, 2018 Viganó admitted there were no official sanctions on McCarrick during Benedict XVI’s pontificate (in Spanish, available here).
As nuncio, Viganò dealt with Strickland’s appointment as bishop of Tyler, but he was not the key player in that decision, so it is not clear if somehow Strickland considered it was somehow his duty to support Viganò’s claims.
In any case, Strickland was not the alone in his reaction to Viganó’s attack on Pope Francis. Catholic and civil media were full of all types of reactions to Viganò’s accusations.
However, unlike most of the bishops in the United States and elsewhere, Strickland decided to issue a public statement that he asked his priests to read during masses, as to emphasize the relevance of the issue.
Viganò’s attitude towards McCarrick is a perfect example of how sexual abuse for members of the hierarchy is an issue they only use as a tool to attack each other’s sexual preferences or choices, but not as an issue of its own because of the effects on the lives of the victims of this practice or on the long-term life of the Church as an institution.
January 14th, 2019 Viganò calls McCarrick to “publicly repent for his crimes”, but never to address the lives McCarrick or other predators destroyed, or to pay reparations to said victims. For top clerics as Viganò, the sexual abuse crisis is only relevant because it allows them to exchange accusations and public anathemas.
A key development in the radicalization of bishop Strickland happened, at least publicly a year or so after Viganò’s scandal. On October 2nd, 2019, Strickland announced deacon Keith Fournier was joining his curia in Tyler as the diocese’s general counsel, and with varied duties on education, formation, and communication in the diocese.
Fournier deserves a feature of his own. It is not possible to go into details about the extent of his power, but one can assume that he played a key role in shaping bishop Strickland’s tenure at Tyler.
The announcement was made through a video still available as of Sunday November 19th, 2023, over at YouTube.
Fournier would also play from then on, a public role as Strickland master of ceremonies. He is relevant for way too many reasons to be listed here. Suffice to say at this point that Fournier is an alumnus of the conservative Franciscan University of Steubenville, a hotbed for the opposition to Pope Francis and some of the most vocal proponents of the politicization of the US Catholic bishops.
One of the many résumés of his available online can be found at the Children of God website. Self-described as a Constitutional lawyer, and a “religious liberty” expert, Fournier talks in the video where bishop Strickland introduces him as a key player in the diocese, and the Church as being under “severe pressure”.
He also renders Tyler as a project for the renewal of an “orthodox” Catholic Church, implying as it is often the case in the many messages issued by U.S. far-right Catholics nowadays, that there is something unorthodox, heretic, in Pope Francis’s understanding of doctrine that makes him a threat for their understanding of Catholic theology and practice.
Fournier goes on to render the Church as an entity under coercion regarding abortion and marriage. For him, there is an agenda to “coerce the Church” into accepting changes that he sees unfit and unacceptable.
After Strickland’s appointment, Fournier will use his social media accounts, both at what was formerly Twitter and Facebook to go once again into using McCarrick as a shortcut to attack Pope Francis.
Moreover, December 13th, 2019, marks the very last time the Diocese of Tyler social media accounts would publish any thing positive or at least neutral regarding Pope Francis.
That day, the Facebook account of the diocese published the message appearing next to this paragraph. After that, no pictures of the reigning Pope ever appeared again and all references to him have been presented assuming something is missing in his pontificate, either because of his very election, after Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation or because of the choices he makes.
From January 19 through 25, 2020, a few weeks before the pandemic, bishop Strickland traveled with the bishops of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, the so-called region X of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, to Rome. It was a ritual of sorts that happens every five years or so.
The picture that appears right after, comes from the Ad Limina visit that him and the other bishops did on, a few weeks before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Bishop Strickland’s appears highlighted with a red circle, in both the full picture and the cut-out of the picture. There was nothing special or unusual in the visit as such. Pope Francis has similar meetings with the bishops going to Rome for these Ad Limina visits.
Ad Limina means literally “at the doors” or “at the threshold” as the Roman Catholic bishop of Dallas, Edward Burns, explains in the video he produced for his diocese’s website.
Strickland seems to be interested to appear in the picture with the Pope, unlike some of the other bishops on his side of the group, who are not doing any effort to appear in the picture with the Pope in Rome.
The Facebook page of the diocese of Tyler goes even further. There are pictures of Bishop Strickland with priests and seminarians from his diocese at Saint Peter’s Basilica as to prove not only their close relation with each other, since it is assumed that the bishop becomes some sort of spiritual father for both priests and seminarians, but also their mutual relationship with the Pope, Saint Peter’s successor.
What happened that a man who is so interested in showing off he is in Rome, with Peter’s successor and in communion with the rest of the bishops of neighboring cities and states in his country ends up being dismissed by the Pope?
Weaponizing abuse
On February 23, 2020, Fournier publishes a post at Facebook regarding McCarrick asking:
Please, where is the promised full report on Former cleric Theodore McCarrick? It all needs to be exposed, including who knew, or should have known, for the full healing and true reform of the clergy of the Catholic Church to occur.
The same day, he publishes a different message praising Benedict XVI, who was in charge either as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith or as Pope when victims of McCarrick started to talk about their experiences.
As it is usually the case with the U.S. Catholic far-right Fournier renders Benedict XVI as having all the merits Francis lacks. His second message of that day says:
“Co-responsibility requires a change in mentality, particularly with regard to the role of the laity in the Church, who should be considered not as "collaborators" with the clergy, but as persons truly "co-responsible" for the being and activity of the Church.”
Pope Benedict XVI, Aug. 10, 2012, to a Catholic Action Gathering in Rome
Fournier will publish over the rest of 2020 another six messages with pictures of McCarrick hugged by Pope Francis, as to imply they had a very close relation when there is no evidence of such.
In the meantime, on July 20th, 2020, the Napa Institute gives Strickland an award for “the defense of moral truth”.
Napa Institute has gained public notoriety among many other reasons for his willingness to hire as independent contractor and legitimize a bishop involved in large-scale cover up of sexual abuse in his diocese.
Back in 2015, John Clayton Nienstedt was forced to resign as archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, after local and U.S. national media published stories about the mishandling of sexual abuse accusations against priests under his care. A few months later, Napa Institute hired him nominally as “independent contractor” but he was performing duties as some sort of chaplain of the Institute, until 2018, when he resigned under pressure.
Fournier published on November 9th, 2020, his last message regarding McCarrick at Facebook:
Tomorrow, the long awaited report in the investigation of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick will be released. 2 PM Rome Time. That is 7 AM Central, 8 AM Eastern, 6 AM Mountain, 5 AM Pacific. May it be THOROUGH! “Whatever is hidden will be revealed...” Luke 8:17. Repentance, prosecution, reparation, restoration...is the only path forward.
As far as I was able to search in his social media, Fournier lost any interest in McCarrick’s case after Rome published the report (available here). The report made clear that Pope Francis was not in charge when McCarrick amassed the power and influence that allowed him to become the serial predator that we now know he is.
Moreover, the report points out how McCarrick was a close ally of Carlos María Buela, the founder and leader of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, an Argentine religious order that then Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio unsuccessfully tried to suppress with the support of all but one of the members of the Argentine episcopate, then archbishop of La Plata and member of the Opus Dei, Héctor Rubén Aguer.
McCarrick brought Buela’s order to the archdiocese of Washington, DC. He had at least three seminarians of that organization serving him. McCarrick flew to Argentina to ordain at least one member of that order, and he was willing to promote them in the United States, as can be seen in this picture, already deleted from their Facebook page.
The 2020 election
On November 22nd, 2020, once the U.S. presidential election was over and it was known that Donald Trump had been defeated, Fournier reposted a statement from the Trump-Pence reelection campaign saying “Sorry to pass this along…”
The message he was “sorry to pass” was one of many about the alleged fraud in that election.
Although bishop Strickland kept himself away from the election fraud allegations, on December 12th, 2020, the very day Catholics of Mexican and Latin American origin celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe all over the world, Strickland was willing to remotely address the so-called Jericho March or Jericho Rally.
One of the many speakers at the Jericho March was retired Gen. Michael Flynn. His speech is one of many examples of the conspiracy allegations spread by the Trump campaign about a monstruous fraud as the explanation for his defeat.
That the faction controlling the Republican party nowadays is interested in bringing support from conservative Christians, Catholic or not, should not come as a surprise, since they have been among the most loyal supporters of the allegations of a vast conspiracy to prevent Trump from winning the 2020 election.
The very issue of the Jericho label is part of that attempt at mobilizing the base of many Christian churches. Some of the websites celebrating the March render their participants as “Joshuas”, after the Biblical figure aiming at “bringing down the walls of the Swamp”, of Washington, DC.
For a detailed explanation of who were the organizers of the so called “Let the Church ROAR” segment of the Jericho March and some of their links with the U.S religious right, see this piece from The Center for Democracy and Media. As they explain, some of the participants in the March were members of the so-called Proud Boys, a known far-right, hate group, and “numerous Black Lives Matter banners had been ripped down from historically black churches.”
As Rod Dreher, a favorite of the U.S. far-right, stated in his American Conservative piece even if “nothing in this prayer was inflammatory or partisan, but the fact that he chose to join this particular march in this way makes it clear which side he’s on”.
Nothing of note happened in the orbit of the Tyler diocese until, by the end of February 2021, some news of the so called Veritatis Splendor Real Estate Development emerged.
The name of the development is the same as one of Pope John Paul II's encyclical, a writing from 1993, which is available here.
Curiously enough, the first news came in the form of what it could be seen as some sort of promotional piece published by National Catholic Register on February 27th, 2021. The Register was at some point part of the empire built by Marcial Maciel. The Legionary of Christ religious order was forced to sell the masthead of that media for one U.S. dollar to EWTN when the façade of Maciel’s legacy came down, as the walls of Jericho.
A few days after that piece saw the light, bishop Strickland had to distance from the development. On March 1st, 2021, he states that Veritatis Splendor “It is not part of or financially connected to the Diocese of Tyler but is located in the territory of the diocese near Winona, Texas”.
On March 3rd, 2021, independent journalist Simcha Fischer published a detailed account of the relation between bishop Strickland, the Tyler Diocese, and the Veritatis Splendor Real Estate development.
Ten months after Strickland’s statement distancing himself and the Tyler Diocese of the Veritatis Splendor Real Estate development, on November 15th, 2021, news emerge about a major financial and sexual scandal involving Jim Graham and Kari Beckman, two key players of that project.
Both Graham and Beckman would be purged out of Veritatis Splendor and other U.S. far-right Catholic organizations, some of them suspect of spiritually and financially abusing their members.
Riding high on the support of the U.S. and global Catholic far-right, most probably through the labor of deacon Fournier, bishop Strickland appears by the end of April of that year, as second to Australian Cardinal George Pell as headliner in the Catholic Family Conference (see also here).
The Register offers a very favorable view of Strickland’s participation in that event. More so since it was one of the first Church global activities happening as an in-person event, at a time when the future of the pandemic was still unclear.
Rebel priests and the Latin mass
On July 16th, 2021, Pope Francis issues his Motu Proprio, a decree of sorts inside the Catholic church, Traditiones Custode or Custodians of tradition that brings back the restrictions originally placed by Pope Paul VI on the use of the old ritual in Latin when he decided to change the way Mass was celebrated in the early days of the 1970s.
In doing so, Francis changed what Benedict XVI had decided in his 2007 Motu Proprio, called Summorum Pontificum or The supreme pontiffs, that lifted many of the restrictions placed by Paul VI.
On January 18th, 2022, Strickland endorses a rebel priest from Chicago. He was unwilling to accept Pope Francis’s new restrictions on the celebration of the Mass with the rite that existed up until 1970, when Pope Paul VI issued the new Roman ritual of the Mass.
The main difference does not lay, however, on the use of Latin or any other language. Paul VI’s mass can be said in any language, including Latin. It lays on the orientation with which the mass is celebrated. In Radical Traditionalist parlance, Ad Orientem, Facing East in Latin, is superior since it was the fashion sanctioned by the Council of Trent, a meeting of Roman Catholic bishops in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation that set the way Mass was to be celebrated. Before that meeting of bishops, the Church in the European West used to celebrate mass in many different languages and following different rites,
The way mass is celebrated has been a source of conflict in the Catholic Church since French bishop Marcel Lefebvre decided to attack the authority of Pope Paul VI to do the changes he did to the Roman ritual of the mass.
Lefebvre founded a religious order of sorts, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, SSPX for short, that has had a contentious relation with Rome, despite Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI willingness to concede exemptions as to allow the use of the old rituals.
Pope Francis's reimposed the restrictions originally set by Paul VI and added new ones. His decision came after Rome acknowledged that many promoters of the old rite of the mass and the other sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders, and so forth) were doing so by spreading ideas that render the Vatican Council II’s and Pope Paul VI’s as either misguided or openly heretic for introducing actual changes in the way the rites are celebrated.
Bishop Strickland jumped in support of Anthony Bus, a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago who is unwilling to accept Pope Francis's and archbishop Blaise Cupich’s authority to restrict the use of Latin Mass and the Ad Orientem way to perform the rite.
The then tweet published by bishop Strickland was some kind of inauguration of a more open display of his unwillingness to accept Pope Francis’s authority on several issues. More so since he was linking to a entry published by Complicit Clergy, a website promoting all kinds of conspiratorial ideas that follow, for the most part, the template inaugurated by Carlo Maria Viganò’s letters regarding Theodore McCarrick.
Two weeks later, on February 1st, 2022, Strickland’s decision to support a priest challenging the authority of the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Cupich, was noticed by National Catholic Reporter, the preeminent Catholic news outlet in the United States. NCR took notice of how disruptive Strickland’s behavior was since it is customary for bishops of other dioceses to not support challenges to other bishops’ authority.
Early next month, on March 2022 Mother Jones magazine featured Strickland as part of a broader far-right coalition of Christians and Catholics attacking Pope Francis, with Mother Jones identifying Steve Bannon as a leading figure of said coalition.
Three months later, in July 2022, bishop Strickland received a female order headed by a convert from Judaism expelled from the neighboring diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The head of the female order called the Daughters of Mary (see here the same page at the Internet Archive), hosts a livestream show where she promotes conspiracy theories and misinformation about Pope Francis.
As with Father Bus from Chicago, Strickland’s decision to welcome this female order opened all kinds of questions regarding the future of the relationships between the then bishop of Tyler and other bishops in the United States.
Crossing the Rubicon
Strickland was among the early signatories, on September 16th, 2022, of a letter decrying the Apostolic Letter issued by Pope Francis on June 22nd of that year regarding the conditions to access communion. For the signatories, that can be read under this paragraph, Francis was facilitating access to communion.
The collective letter decrying Pope Francis leadership in the Catholic Church.
To my mind, this was Strickland’s Rubicon. There was not way to go back after endorsing a letter that, ultimately, labels the sitting Pope as heretic.
Five months later, on February 10th, 2023, Strickland gains notoriety again when he decided to amplify the video of Jason Charron, a priest from the diocese of Pittsburgh who challenges Pope Francis’s call to decriminalize homosexuality.
Although Pope Francis repeatedly calls his flock to pray for him, Strickland’s post implies Francis is lost, and he is driving the Church in the wrong path.
This idea would be in full display on a post published on May 13th, 2023, in which he implies Pope Francis is undermining the “deposit of the faith”, that is Catholic jargon for talking about the very core of the religion.
Some believe that this was the social media post that broke the camel’s back. To my mind it certainly stressed the need for some kind of intervention, but the conditions for said intervention existed at least since December 2020, when Strickland joined, even though remotely, through a video, the Jericho March.
Even if this was not the “tweet that broke the camel’s back” what is clear now is that far-right Catholic media as Church Militant is using the idea of Pope Francis undermining the “deposit of the faith” as some sort of dog-whistle to attack the U.S. bishops siding with Pope Francis.
At the Church Militant website there are banners of a “Deposit of the Faith coalition” asking for the people to negate funding to the bishops. Their “argument” goes like this:
«Those pushing the anti-God and anti-family climate agenda need to be called out and exposed.
«The Religious Left has become an invaluable ally to the global cabal, to the World Economic Forum, the United Nations and the World Health Organization, in pushing the man-made climate change narrative.
«But now, the cabal — which includes many leaders of the Catholic Church — is being challenged».
Globalist Pope
Blaming Pope Francis for allegedly siding with the United Nations “globalist agenda” is a common theme in the far-right media in the English-speaking world. As the previous quotation from Church Militant shows, they only imply that. What has changed is that they are now asking people to “defund the bishops” while giving their money to far-right media as Church Militant.
LifeSite News, offers one more of many possible examples. Back on September 19th, 2023, the published a piece decrying the way Pope Francis addressed a forum hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative. What they lament the most is the fact that the Pope avoided a confrontation with the hosts of the activity by not stressing the opposition of the Church to abortion, while accepting that climate change and global warming are happening.
Four weeks after the “deposit of the faith” post, Strickland moved one more inch to the right when he decided to repost a message from the so-called Lepanto Institute, one of many labels used by the global Catholic far-right to pretend they are at the forefront of a vast, planetary movement.
Lepanto refers to a major battle between the Spanish and the Ottoman Empire for control of the routes in the Mediterranean Sea. The battle involved around 500 ships and it was fought on October 7th, 1571. Many Radical Traditionalist Catholics see said battle as a turning point and a “sign of the times”.
A few days after reposting the message from the Lepanto Institute, Strickland joined forces with the far-right of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to rally against the Los Ángeles Dodgers for allowing the so-called Drag Nuns, a group performing in extremely colorful drag costumes, some of which resemble the most traditional habits of some female religious orders at the Dodgers Stadium.
One week later, on June 21st, 2023, Strickland endorsed a viewing of Eduardo Verástegui’s film The Sound of Freedom at his diocese. Los Ángeles Press published a detailed account of Verástegui links with the Mexican and U.S. Catholic far right. You can see the last piece of that series in the link appearing next to this paragraph.
Three days later, the first news of the apostolic visitation sent to Tyler appear in far-right media outlets, so far right that the Archdiocese of Detroit, where that outlet is located, has distanced itself from Church Militant for the racist commentaries regarding the appointment of the current archbishop of Washington, DC, Cardinal Wilton Daniel Gregory.
The stories about the visitation decry Rome’s decision to do it despite the fact that both Church Militant and Catholic News Agency provide several examples of some of the apostolic visitation done in recent years, although they lament the fact that no apostolic visitation was performed when Theodore McCarrick was ousted from the priesthood.
It is true that there was no apostolic visitation as such in that case, but at least two probes were done. One in the dioceses where McCarrick served as either priest or bishop (New York City, Metuchen, Newark, and Washington, DC) and one more in the archives of the Holy See for the 2020 report. CNA and other Catholic media decrying the apostolic visitation to Tyler, never explained why there was no apostolic visitation in McCarrick’s case: he was no longer in charge of any diocese, and he resigned as expected in 2006 when he reached 75 years old.
The implication—following Viganò’s approach—is that there is some sort of conspiracy headed by Pope Francis to protect McCarrick, when in fact it was Francis who laicized him.
Over the next four months, until forced out of the Tyler Diocese on November 11th, 2023, Strickland’s timeline over the social network formerly known as Twitter published many veiled criticisms of Pope Francis handling of his case and the direction he has been giving to the Church.
On July 2nd, he quotes Opus Dei’s founder Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, on the 17 signs of lack of humility.
Nine days later, on July 11th, he uses Cardinal Robert Sarah, one of the leaders of the anti-Francis faction in the College of Cardinals, to imply that Pope Francis is mistaken in calling a Synod to hear what the faithful think about the Church. Sarah’s message, straight from the 1950s is that the Church exists to teach, not to listen.
On August 15th, once again uses his social media accounts to imply criticism of Pope Francis and his way of leading the Church. In this case he uses a quote from Cardinal Raymond Burke where he criticizes the idea of receiving “every declaration of the Holy Father as an expression of papal teaching or magisterium”.
Paradoxically, the Catholic far-right does precisely that with many quotes from both Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger before being elected as John Paul II and Benedict XVI. In Wojtyla’s case one of the most popular pre-papacy statements that the Catholic far-right uses as teaching of the Church is something he said when traveling to the United States in the 1970s.
One of the most recent reincarnations of that very apocalyptic statement from then Cardinal Wojtyla was published in 2018 by the National Catholic Register, reprinted as early as 1978 by The Wall Street Journal where the then Polish Cardinal says:
«We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine Providence; it is trial which the whole Church, and the Polish Church in particular, must take up. It is a trial of not only our nation and the Church, but, in a sense, a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization with all of its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations».
That paragraph appears over and over in many Radical Traditionalist Catholic webpages, blogs, vlogs, social media interactions, and YouTube and Vimeo videos, as a stern warning of the kind of perils the Catholic far-right assume we are facing as of today, regardless of how the Cold War ended and despite the fact that John Paul II never used that paragraph from Karol Wojtyla in any known statement from his papacy.
A few days after quoting Cardinal Burke, Strickland goes further and publishes a pastoral letter on August 23rd, 2023. The letter has been removed from the diocese’s website. Originally, it was hosted at this URL: https://www.dioceseoftyler.org/2023/08/23/pastoral-letter-from-bishop-strickland-august-2023/. After Strickland’s removal, the only way to read it is through the Internet Archive, here.
The Camel's Back
For me that was the utterance that broke the camel’s back. Strickland is unwilling to even accept a change in the way Rome affirms the Doctrine of the Church, he sees himself as leading a faction of the Church and he seems to be aware that he will be called out for rallying the faithful the way he did it on that “pastoral letter”.
«Regrettably, it may be that some will label as schismatics those who disagree with the changes being proposed. Be assured, however, that no one who remains firmly upon the plumb line of our Catholic faith is a schismatic. We must remain unabashedly and truly Catholic, regardless of what may be brought forth».
To my mind, he was desperately looking for a sword to fall in, and he found it in his own calling to resist the Synod.
Finally, on November 11th, Strickland is removed as bishop of Tyler . I do not think this is the end of the line. On the one hand, even if Pope Francis was able to gather support from the archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Cardinal Daniel Nicholas DiNardo, who immediately published a note on his website supporting Francis’s decision, there are way too many far-right rebel clerics in the United States spreading all sorts of conspiracy theories.
As Viganò does, they use the sexual abuse crisis for their own purposes. They do not care about the victims, more so when the victims of abuse are females abused by predator priests. However, the very inability of Rome to advance in the solution to that issue, at a real, global scale, facilitates the political use of the crisis to attack Pope Francis.
Also, the nearness of the presidential election and the inability of the Democratic Party to highlight the many weaknesses of Donald Trump, make these far-right rebel clerics natural allies Trump.
The decision of the USCCB to insist on making abortion the “preeminent priority” and, for the most part, sole issue of their official political involvement in the 2024 election makes it almost impossible for the U.S. bishops to even accept any kind of dialogue with people like Joe Biden, even though Biden sees himself as a devout Catholic.
For the USCCB, the 2024 election will be only about abortion and that puts them neatly in the Republican camp of the election with only the odd bishop in heavily Democratic areas, like San Diego’s Cardinal Robert McElroy, being able to dialogue with Biden or any other leader of the Democratic party.
Oddly enough, abortion allowed one of Strickland’s mentors, Michael Jarboe Sheehan, rector of the seminary of Dallas when Strickland studied there, to take a leadership position within the US Conference of Catholic Bishops back in 2009.
When Notre Dame, the preeminent Catholic university in the United States awarded then President Barack Obama with an honorary degree, Sheehan, already the archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, gained public notoriety because he supported that decision.
At the time, Catholic media described how “a storm of sorts” engulfed the Conference of Catholic Bishops. In that storm, Sheehan sided with those who supported Notre Dame’s decision, while warning about the risks of Catholicism turning into a cult. That warning is much relevant now.