Exclusive interview with Alexander Tschugguel

Catholic lay people ALWAYS HAVE THE DUTY TO FIGHT FOR THE TRUTH

an interview with Alexander Tschugguel

Calx Mariae recently had the pleasure of meeting Alexander Tschugguel, the young Austrian who, during the October synod on the pan-Amazon region, removed the Pachamama idols from the Church of Santa Maria Traspontina in Rome and threw them into the River Tiber. He later explained, “I saw in those statues and in those idols a break [with] the First Commandment”.

Since then Tschugguel has established the St. Boniface Institute, an organisation of Catholic laymen dedicated to defending and promoting the Church’s traditional teachings. St. Boniface, an 8th-century monk, famously chopped down a sacred oak tree worshipped by German pagans. In recent months, Alexander has given numerous talks and interviews encouraging lay Catholics to take a more active approach to their faith in order to protect the Church from the secular and globalist tendencies which are increasingly being presented as compatible with Catholic teaching.

Alexander was visiting Rome last month, just ahead of the publication of Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Amazon region. We sat down with him to discuss the direction of the Catholic Church in Europe and his current activities.

CALX MARIAE: You entered the Catholic Church when you were 15, an age when many cradle Catholics begin to drift away. At a time when many in the leadership of the Church are sounding more and more Protestant, why should young Protestants today consider converting to the Catholic faith?

ALEXANDER TSCHUGGUEL: I’m not 15 anymore, so I argue as a 26-yearold Catholic now. However, when we consider the differences between Christianity in general and the one true Catholic Church, the big difference is that the Catholic Church has maintained every part of Christ’s teaching and every part of His Gospel. We did not focus on one part because we thought that was more important than another. We tried to see that when Christ came to earth, nothing he said was unimportant. Yes, of course, there are some things which might not seem so important at first glance. For example, the wedding in Cana was not as important as Christ’s death on the Cross, but the wedding in Cana was part of His whole life preparing for the death on the Cross. So we as Catholics always accepted that every part of Christ’s teaching is important.

I was a Lutheran before I was Catholic. As Lutherans, we only had two sacraments, Baptism and Confirmation. We did not have Confession, the Holy Eucharist, Holy Orders, Extreme Unction. What is interesting about this, is that Luther, or those who followed Luther, chose only these two [sacraments], because they seemed fitting for their purposes. They wanted to found the national, German-ruled religion which was not dependent on the Roman pope. They wanted to do their own thing. And they managed to do so by just kicking out everything which would connect them to the old Mother Church. Let’s take ordinations as an example. As Catholics, we know that there is a line of succession. Every bishop, every priest knows who ordained him. Their ordination is something which connects every priest to the twelve apostles and to Christ Himself.

Everyone had always understood that there was a cast of priests. So how come this was good for fifteen centuries and then suddenly in the 16th century it was decided that it was no good anymore? There was a political reason behind it – the first reason was to cut the people off from Rome.

I urge all Protestants to see that if they really want to understand the Christian faith, they need to look at things, which Luther forbade them to look at. We have to look at everything that Christ told us. For example, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ told the people that divorce is not possible. He said it. You cannot just ignore this. Lutherans, or let's say, Evangelicals now, consider Catholics to be anti-Bible. I can prove the opposite. We are pro-Bible. We just understand that we should follow every part of biblical tradition, and tradition in general, of what Christ said on earth, and not just the parts which seem to fit our modern world.

There is also another aspect of non-Catholic Christianity which is interesting. The Catholic Church is the church of unity and even though the Orthodox, the Lutherans, etc. separated, the Church's teaching did not change. The Catholic way is like the trunk of a tree. It always grows in the same direction. The branches may go somewhere else, but you know what happens to the branch in the end if it is separated from the trunk – it dies. But the tree itself does not die.

It's very interesting to see how the Protestants have a kind of revolutionary thinking that they know better than everyone before them. Luther knew the Bible better than fifteen centuries of saints and teachers – the Augustines, Ambroses, Aquinases and people like them. So I think, this is rather a matter of pride than a matter of really following the commandments given to us by God.

We see this also when we take a look at another branch of Protestantism, which will be especially relevant for you in England. When Henry VIII separated from the Church, what were his reasons? We know a few of them and they all had female names. He just could not accept that he had given a promise in marriage that he should keep, he did not want to accept it. And because of this, for centuries now, people have not had the possibility of unity with the Church - only because of one man who before that was even known as Defensor Fidei. This was not defending the faith. And as you know, the British Queen is still called the Defensor Fidei. I think it is an irony of history. It is an injustice.

CM: As Catholics, why do you think it is important to be active in the public square? What are our responsibilities as lay Catholics, particularly today, to defend the faith?

AT: First of all, it’s not only today [we need to be active], but always since Adam and Eve, since, let’s say, the apple moment. Our Lord and Saviour said in the Gospel that if we want to follow Him, we have to deny ourselves and take up our cross. This means the following: we have to, first of all, accept our fallen nature and see that we need God’s help. That’s the reason we pray in the Our Father – that His will would be done and not that our will should be done; we have to deny ourselves and then we should take up our own cross. Many Catholics I know sometimes think: “Oh what terrible times we live in! Wouldn’t it be nice for me if I had been born in another time!” Well, you were not, because God wants you to live now. So it is important to accept that you should live right now and that God gives you the duties and your own cross to carry. What you need for carrying your cross are the virtues. Nowadays one of the virtues most lacking is courage.

People nowadays are afraid. And why are they afraid? To be afraid is a very normal thing but what we really should be afraid of is ending up in Hell.

The Church has always told us that if being afraid of Hell is the only reason we do good, it's a good enough reason for us to go to Heaven, because it is right to be afraid of Hell. But if we see that the only thing we really should be afraid of is Hell and everything which pushes us towards Hell – sin, the devil and so on – then we see that we should not be afraid of things like the zeitgeist, the fashion or other people’s opinions.

We have many battlefields right now. There’s the pro-life battlefield, which is actually a very good and rewarding battlefield, because if only one woman who had the idea to abort and after talking to you, after seeing you, without you even knowing it, she decides not to abort – if you save only one child, the whole fight was worth it. That’s wonderful. So the pro-life fight is actually one of the most beautiful fights, even though it's terrible to see if you do not succeed, or if the truth does not succeed. However, the people who want to abort will go ahead and do it if you're not there, but they might change their mind if you are there. So this is a fight we can only win. If people tell you that because of pro-lifers they aborted [their children] it’s a lie. Nobody aborts because of the prolife movement.

Secondly, we have the pro-family fight. If you are pro-life it is very easy to understand that you should protect the child not only before birth, but also after he is born, so we should protect the family. The family is the main cell which holds our society together. Everything comes out of the family. The family gives you stability, the family gives you education, the family gives you a place where you can hide if something happens to you. The family is really where you are from. Nowadays, of course, many families are broken. And this should not be a sign of hopelessness for the people who now have to suffer because of it. On the contrary, it should be a sign that they should fight in their own families that this does not happen. So the pro-family fight is very important, especially because homosexual “marriage” is just a parody of real marriage. This has nothing to do with marriage. Marriage is not the result of two people wanting to go to bed with each other. That’s not the reason. If it was, then every prostitute would be married to her client. Well, it’s not like this. Love is not your sexual relationship. Love is giving yourself completely for someone else, sacrificing your own life for someone else, it is following Christ’s example and His divine love. This is love. And then God may give you, in addition to that, a marital union that gives joy.

Thirdly, of course, there is a very big fight going on with regard to patriotism. We as Catholics believe that in order to maintain a good Catholic life, there needs to be a state, which cares for the common good. So, there needs to be a system where you live, where you can follow a vocation. For example, if someone is a doctor or another a handyman, and another a thinker in the university – this is only possible if they can rely

ALEXANDER TSCHUGGUEL SPEAKING AT THE MARCH FOR LIFE IN VIENNA, AUSTRIA, OCTOBER 2019.

on the others to do their work and that something is holding [the society] together. If not, then everyone would have to be the doctor and the farmer and the cook and the carpenter, all together. This is not possible. So, we see that for humans the society, the state is important. But it’s not within the remit of a good state to take away the rights of the people who live in that state. So right now we see exactly this happening. Instead of sovereign states, we find multilateral organisations, like the EU – and the United Nations which does this across the whole world. You will find this multilateral approach in many party programmes today. For example, the new Austrian coalition programme says that Austria is too small to solve our problems on our own, which is, of course, a big lie. I know countries which are much smaller than Austria and they tend to manage their country quite well. So this is just a lie. What we see here is the typical result of forgetting

“The only thing that can be universal on earth is the reign of the devil or the reign of Christ the King. The devil could rule the whole world, but we know that he would not win, he would lose. And of course, the reign of Christ Himself could be universal. So the only organisation on earth, if we talk about it as an organisation, which can be universal is the Catholic Church.”

your faith and especially the Catholic faith. The only thing that can be universal on earth is the reign of the devil or the reign of Christ the King. The devil could rule the whole world, but we know that he would not win, he would lose. And of course, the reign of Christ Himself could be universal. So the only organisation on earth, if we talk about it as an organisation, which can be universal is the Catholic Church. I would like to recall the words of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary that the only universal organisation is the Catholic Church and out of her universality, she grants that every sovereign country has its sovereign rights. The Church knows how people are, how God created human beings. I think this is very important to understand.

And so we have these three fights, primarily. Of course, there are others. But first, the pro-life fight, then the pro-family fight – I would like to bring them together more because, actually, they are not separate – and then the loss of sovereignty.

There is another problem: the loss of freedom of speech from a Catholic perspective. As Catholics, we have always understood that freedom of speech is not absolute. So for example, if someone wants to speak about how to kill everyone, we can say at a certain point that we are not going to allow him to go on speaking in the marketplace about how to kill everyone else, this is not possible. There is a limit to freedom of speech, and this is for the common good. But it is only the common good and the faith that limits freedom of speech. Right now we see exactly the opposite. Everything is allowed which is against the common good and religion. So for example, you can criticise the Catholic Church in every possible way. But if you try to do the same with other religions, then you may face high fines. In Austria, we know many

CHRIST GLORIFIED IN THE COURT OF HEAVEN, (DETAIL), PROBABLY BY FRA ANGELICO ( C.1395 - 1455), THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON. people who have been fined thousands of Euros, even pensioners who have hardly any money left.

CM: You have spoken about the globalist agenda with open borders in the Church and that the Church must never become an NGO promoting and dealing with these phenomena. What do you mean by this?

AT: “The Church must never become an NGO. Churches and parishes must go out into the public square if we are not to end up as an NGO.” These are the words of Pope Francis on World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro in 2013 - part of the famous speech in which he also exhorted young Catholics to “create a stir”.

The strategy to prevent the Church from becoming an NGO appears to include the projects discussed during last year’s Amazon Synod. NGOs are generally large, internationally active, mostly left-wing

associations like Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Open Society, Gaia-Amazonas Foundation or other organisations that advocate a leftist-liberal interpretation of human rights – no barriers to mass migration or the struggle against “man-made climate change”.

From today’s perspective, it is difficult to say whether there was actually, back in 2013, any threat that could have made the Church indistinguishable from the aforementioned organisations. However, looking at the current strong political engagement of the Holy See, especially since the encyclical Laudato Si, it seems obvious that the Church has moved closer to, rather than distanced itself from, the left-leaning NGOs. Ever since the Amazon Synod, we are hearing more and more about a “New Church” with an “Amazonian face”.

On a superficial level, this Amazonian face is manifesting itself through actual or potential changes in the rites and in many aspects of practical church life. According to Bishop Kräutler, for example, pagan elements should be integrated into the lives of Catholics in this region. According to media reports, an NGO known as the Gaia-Amazonas Foundation, headed by a German-Colombian, Martin von Hildebrandt, appears to have played a rather prominent role before and during the Amazon Synod.

Von Hildebrandt advocates an idea that has actually existed for decades: that the Amazon region should be removed from Brazilian sovereignty and placed under international administration. Among those promoting this idea were Francois Mitterand, Mikhail Gorbachev, John Major and Al Gore. According to British journalist Edward Pentin, it was feared, in the run-up to the Amazon Synod, that the Church might openly support this political project. Only after meeting with high-ranking representatives of the Brazilian government did Cardinal Claudio Hummes give the assurance that the Synod would make no statement on this matter.

Regarding the question of immigration from Africa and Asia, Pope Francis has adopted positions much closer to those of the NGOs (and the Merkel government and the German Bishops’ Conference) than to those of his predecessors.

This begs the question, what the Pope could actually have meant by his statement that the Church should not become an NGO. The Church with the “Amazonian face” apparently focuses on propagating leftist “green” climate policy and glorifying pagan practices from South America, while frowning upon missionary activity.

The Pope recently confirmed this, telling Italian schoolchildren that the faith should not be proclaimed in words. But what is a church that no longer preaches, no longer obeys Christ’s command to bring the gospel to all peoples? A church that limits itself to the political and social activities already mentioned? It is, to all intents and purposes, an NGO.

The greatest proponents of this “Church with an Amazonian face”, which is increasingly taking on the characteristics of an NGO, seem to be the German bishops. Above all, the deputy chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Franz-Josef Bode, has repeatedly made it clear that the decisions taken at the Amazon Synod should also be implemented in Germany. The introduction of the synodal path will probably mean that this process will proceed very quickly in Germany. The German church is trying to take on a kind of pioneering role here. A closer look at these developments will make it pretty obvious that the alleged problems in the Amazon region are only a pretext. The demands for abolishing celibacy and for the consecration of women have been heard in Germany for many decades, much more so than in the Amazon region itself, where – as local surveys, there have shown – most people actually find them incomprehensible.

Catholics represent a minority among Christians in the Amazon region – approximately 80% of Christians there are evangelical Protestants, not least because the Catholic Church there has essentially behaved like an NGO for decades and has neglected the Church’s mission mandate. Also, 80% of those Catholics live in cities with parish structures and an orderly church life. Additionally, several thousand priests from Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, etc. are working in North America. In other words, there would be alternative ways of solving the problem of a possible lack of priests in the few remote Catholic communities.

It seems the Amazon region is meant to serve as an experimental laboratory for liberal-modernist Catholics in the West, especially in Germany. We might well ask ourselves whether the new smile of the church with

the “Amazonian” face is not simply a mask hiding the old face of the German Bishops’ Conference.

The solution to the Church’s crisis in Germany, South America and worldwide is much easier in theory, but much more difficult in practice, than the abolition of celibacy and the ordination of female priests. Much easier because all we need to do is to be faithful to the mission of Christ and the tradition of the Church; much more difficult because it requires every single Catholic to make personal sacrifices and to resist the errors of the current zeitgeist.

Throughout its two-thousand-year history, the Church has faced many challenges and has had to deal with many crises and deviations from the right path. It has only ever been able to renew itself by returning to the true teaching, and this time will be no different. It is for us to decide now how many wrong paths the Church must still go down, how much more must be destroyed before we can find our way back to the truth, to doctrine and tradition.

CM: German bishops have always been revolutionary in the eyes of the rest of the world. You come from Austria but you can speak with an understanding of what is going on there. German-speaking bishops and theologians – like Karl Rahner, Hans Kung and Joseph Ratzinger - were a driving force for radical upheaval during Vatican II and the 1960s. Today, the German bishops seem to be leading the next stage of the revolution within the Church, why do you think this is the case? Why Germany?

AT: First of all, we have to see that whenever something or someone in certain countries is particularly attacked by the devil, they normally play a very important role or should play a very good role. So we should first have to put Germany in a little bit of a better light. It was Germany who managed to defend for several hundred years or more the Catholic Church and the faith. There were different problems, but the Holy Roman Empire was led by the Franks and then the Habsburgs and so on and the Habsburgs stayed Catholic even after the Reformation. So, I have to defend the German-speaking area for raising up many great heroes of Catholic history.

In Germany, we always had two tendencies. One tendency was this universal knightly defence of the faith. This is a tendency that, for example, blessed Cardinal Clemens August von Galen had, whom we call the Lion of Munster because he really defended the faith during the National Socialist regime in an enormously courageous way. We have many more heroic Catholics – Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, the Schoell siblings and so on. Also in Austria, considering the German-speaking area in general, we had wonderful heroes of their time, like Pater Petrus Pavlicek who was the main fighter against communism in Austria. He organised big Rosary rallies on the main street of Vienna, joined by 10,000 people, including members of the government.

So even though today, Germany and the Germans are considered leftist, they have a great history of fantastic men and women who defended the faith wherever they could.

Regarding the others, it is very interesting to see that many of the problems come from either Lutheran ideas on the one hand or the 19th-century ideas on the other. We have those who think that being ruled by Rome is okay, just as long as Rome does not say too much. Right now, of course, the situation is a little bit difficult because Pope Francis pushes synodal thinking. So the current bishops can say when they adopt the so-called synodal path, well Pope Francis asked us to be synodal, so we are. But for example, under Pope Benedict, even though he was a German, the German bishops were sometimes very opposed to him. As well as German professors, especially at Tübingen and Freiburg. They really attacked him whenever they could. This side came from the Protestant thinking – just wanting to be the master of my own house, which is of course completely against the universal approach of the Catholic Church.

Then we have the 19th century Germans, those who desire German idealism, or a little bit [of] German nationalism too. You could say this is similar to Luther back then, but it is different because it’s already influenced by the French Revolution and everything that happened in France at the end of the 18th [and the] beginning of the 19th century. These Germans think that the Christian values are nice if we talk about them as values, but they consider the universal approach of the Catholic Church wrong because different people have different approaches. So, there are Catholics – not so many left now, but especially

“The solution to the Church’s crisis in Germany, South America and worldwide is much easier in theory, but much more difficult in practice, than the abolition of celibacy and the ordination of female priests. Much easier because all we need to do is to be faithful to the mission of Christ and the tradition of the Church; much more difficult because it requires every single Catholic to make personal sacrifices and to resist the errors of the current zeitgeist.”

during the time of the Second World War – who said that German Catholicism must be different because Germany is different. And then there is this socialist-communist approach like liberation theologians in South America, which was very much accepted in Germany, especially during the Second Vatican Council and also a little earlier. Karl Rahner and people like him had a zeitgeist approach to the faith and they said we have to adapt everything to the [current] fashion. So it’s interesting to see that all the great sins of the last five hundred years are especially present in Germany. But why are they present? Because everyone is looking at Germany all the time. Right now they are paying. They are a very rich church. So whatever happens there is usually very well produced with lots of publicity, while in other countries, nobody watches [the Church] that closely.

For example, if we talk about Italy, we normally talk about the Vatican. But the Italian Bishops Conference does terrible things. They created the Pachamama prayer. Now, they are the first ones to change the Our Father. Unfortunately, I really think that they are worse in Italy than in Germany, because in Germany at least, they follow a modernist order, it is not good, but it is a kind of order. In Italy, they don’t follow any order, but no one cares about the Italian Bishops Conference, because people just watch what Rome is doing. Germany, on the other hand, was always known for being the centre of, let’s say, Western Europe. I know the French people and maybe the English people won’t like it. However, the English consider themselves somewhat outside of Europe. They are talking about Europeans and us. And the French people consider themselves mainly

BLESSED CARDINAL CLEMENS AUGUST VON GALEN

as French. Whereas the Germans up until now, still consider themselves to be at the heart of Europe. So if you talk to Germans, they normally try to act like they have the burden of carrying Europe. This is the reason why everything happening in Germany always has a bigger impact than other countries.

There are good faithful Catholics in Germany. The problem is that nobody is connecting them. Well, we are doing that now and it’s a wonderful thing to see that Germans are waking up and tell us: we are here too, we are traditional, we want to be Catholic. So don’t let yourself get distracted by professional German state leftism which is also working in the Church.

CM: Where will it end?

AT: There are different possibilities of how to stop it. Either each one of them has a vision and comes back to Catholic teaching and to the truth – that would be a

“Our army is one. So to have an army - and we have a vocation to be ecclesia militans - is also part of the fight, to unite the people, that is what makes us Catholic. We do not fight on our own, we fight together.”

very good solution. Or there will be a schism. We don't know what [will happen]. There are many people now talking about the German path. Many of them ask for more than just female ordination. They ask for contraception and divorce, they ask for homosexual “marriages” and so on within the Catholic Church. Clearly, this will never happen in the Church because the teaching cannot be changed. So yes, there could be a schism. Or what could also happen is that if there was a pope with a different approach, he would call Germany to reason and that will work. Unfortunately, we really cannot say that this would be easy. Right now Germany is like a big barrel of black powder. If the flame comes, it will explode.

But it is our duty to speak the truth so that the bishops might see that the faithful are still faithful and that gives them the possibility to change. This [duty] is really something a layman always has.

So we can try to stay in touch with all the wonderful German Catholics who exist. The FSSP has a seminary in [Wigratzbad] Germany, don’t forget that. Don’t forget that there are even traditional schools in Germany. I know that not as many as in France, but they exist. There are Cardinal Müllers and Brandmüllers who come from Germany. Pope Benedict comes from Germany. Many of our friends come from Germany. We have a great pro-family movement there. The problem is that the Germans don’t engage in revolution the way the French do. The French people go on the streets [and] just burn cars. No German would do that. They normally make their revolution through the law and documents and through having synodal meetings in churches in Frankfurt, which happened in the 19th century too. There were also meetings in churches in Frankfurt. It was a political thing back then. It is a German tradition and

it is a very bad tradition. However, there are many Germans who understand the situation and are willing to fight. Our only goal is to show them that they are not alone and back them up so that they manage to get through that fight.

CM: Like at the Acies Ordinata1 at which you participated as well and now we see a real resistance with Rosary rallies on the ground, while the synodal path is being discussed?

AT: Exactly. There are two Germanys.

CM: You became famous with a “Catholic action”, by removing an idol from a church and throwing it into the river. Could you just tell us very briefly what are you planning to do next and how do you decide which initiatives and actions to pursue?

AT: Our next big project is a conference on 13 May. On our homepage, there will be a programme as soon as the official registration for the conference starts. At this conference, we will be mainly focusing on the cooperation between the United Nations and the current Catholic leaders – the Holy Father and the Cardinals in charge in the Vatican. We will talk, of course, about this whole mix of green ideology and the Church but our main topic will be the new education meeting, which will be held on 14 May in Rome. So I think we will manage to get people to take a very close look at what’s happening by bringing this whole topic up on 13 May. It is a very good day – it’s the feast of Our Lady of Fatima. We are going to have a wonderful Rosary possession in the end like we had last year when I was not famous for the Pachamama action.

Other plans at the moment involve travelling around Europe mainly and the Western world. I would love to go to other countries as well, but first, we have to start with creating a network in our own areas, like with Germans as I have just described. Our army is one. So to have an army – and we have a vocation to be ecclesia militans – is also part of the fight, to unite the people, that is what makes us Catholic. We do not fight on our own, we fight together. And this is something that is working around the world pretty well now. I think it’s our duty to fight in Europe, which is always a battlefield for those ideologies and there are many people who are ready to fight for this. When the Turks came to Vienna, they wanted to destroy western civilisation – it was the Ottoman Empire back then. When they came to Vienna, it took a long time before the Christian powers had the possibility to really fight back. But when we fought back, we destroyed them. So I think this is just another fight and as always it takes the orthodox people a little bit longer than the leftists because we want to fight for one particular order. The leftist don’t care. They just want to destroy. Building a house takes more time than destroying it, but as soon as it’s built-up, you can defend it better. So, that’s what we are doing.

You can find out more about the work of St. Boniface Institute by going to www.boniface-institute.com

ENDNOTES:

1. Acies Ordinata has taken place three times, most recently in Munich, Germany – in the city of the episcopal see of Reinhard Cardinal Marx. The international coalition derives its name from a title reserved for Our Lady who assembles an army of the faithful to defeat her enemies. The Latin phrase “terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata” is applied to Mary in battle and is taken from the Song of Songs canticle (6:3, 6:10). The faithful stood in an orderly manner on the famous Odeonsplatz, like an army, with rosaries in their hands to peacefully but firmly protest against the “synodal path”, initiated by Cardinal Marx and set up to transform the Church from within with regard to the natural law and meaning of the Sacraments. A Rosary rally followed two weeks later, as the inaugural “synodal way” session opened.

A group of lay Catholics, some of whom had been at the Acies Ordinata, held a spontaneous prayer assembly in front of the Frankfurt Cathedral in opposition to the proposed reform agenda of the German “synodal path”.