(LifeSiteNews) — On the most recent episode of The Bishop Strickland Show, Bishop Joseph Strickland said that bishops who fall short in their unique responsibility to speak the truth and “govern in Christ” are failing to uphold their spiritual authority.
“The only authority I have is spiritual, and that reminds me humbly [that] to exercise that authority [means] vicariously exercising the authority of Jesus Christ,” he said. “And if I veer from that, I don’t have any authority at all.”
Strickland also spoke about the Vatican’s silence on COVID vaccine mandates and other restrictive measures, noting that Church leaders have a duty to point out the limits of the state’s temporal power when it encroaches upon individual conscience.
“The limits of temporal power ends at freedom of conscience,” he said. “We’re obligated to seek to have a well-formed conscience, to know the truth. And it’s hard to have a well-formed conscience when you can’t get the truth … and it’s all politicized and propagandized.”
Bishop Strickland added that what helps him proclaim the truth in the present age is to remember that he will stand alone before God at the Last Judgment, just like everyone else.
“I have to look into my own life and ask myself, ‘Am I being as faithful to Christ as I can?’” he said. “And the answer is always, to some extent, no, I need to do better. But we see too many [bishops] that — not judging another’s actions, but we can judge the product, we can judge what’s happening — and it certainly appears that they’re not paying much attention to the Gospel, to the deposit of faith.”
To watch all previous episodes of The Bishop Strickland Show, click here to visit LifeSite’s Rumble page dedicated to The Bishop Strickland Show.