The Texas Catholic bishop whom Pope Francis dismissed from his leadership of the Tyler Diocese told RedState he and other Catholics must resist the last-gasp efforts of the generation of Catholic clerics who brought radical change to the Church.

“We need to speak up in the truth, but the people that have the power right now are ignoring that and plowing ahead with this agenda of tremendous change, global and in the world, in the nation and the Church,” said Bishop Joseph E. Strickland, whose notice of removal as the bishop of Tyler, Texas, was posted by the Vatican Nov. 11.   

Strickland, now the bishop emeritus of Tyler, said his removal has freed him in a sense to be more forthright about the challenges he sees for the Church.

"I feel, in some ways, liberated to speak up even more," he said. "The powers that be may not like that because it messes up their agenda, but my only agenda is the truth that God has revealed to us, which is incarnate in Jesus Christ.”

The power is in the truth, said the graduate of Dallas' Holy Trinity Seminary, who was ordained in 1985.

“We have to do everything we can to stop what I would call insanity, but how much power do I have?" he asked. "How much power do you have? We do have the power of the truth, and we've got to speak up the best we can—that’s all I can."

The bishop said senior leaders in the Catholic Church are bringing about radical changes. 

"Up there is an agenda that is gradually pulling all those people away from a life of faith and pulling them into communism," he explained

The Fredericksburg, Texas, native said he has never been to China, but he understands the state's control over what people can say, and he feels that same dynamic is at play in the Church.

"There've been a lot of priests that have been canceled because they're speaking about things that the bishop's not comfortable with them speaking about,” he said. 

“That's a problem,” he added. “We're not in communist China, but there is pressure, especially in some dioceses, the priests get canceled if they're talking too much about the orthodox teachings of the Church, things like the sanctity of life and being against abortion.”

Strickland said he is concerned. “We're not as far away from that kind of oppression as we might hope we were.”

Strickland: God’s revealed truth an everlasting foundation

Now, the bishop is no longer attached to a diocese; he told RedState he has the freedom to speak more freely, and his vocation for the priesthood remains strong despite the attacks thrown his way. 

“It’s grown deeper, I'd have to say that, but it really hasn't changed," Strickland said. "I guess you could say there are attempts to change it."

“I think we just need to go more deeply into what being a priest means, and it's not being a social worker; it's being a man of God, a man of the altar of Christ, primarily,” he said. 

Strickland was named a prelate of honor, or monsignor, by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1995 and consecrated a bishop in 2012 during Benedict XVI's pontificate.

The bishop said he appreciated that John Paul II put the brakes on the changes that flowed from the Vatican II Council that closed in 1965, but now he feels like the innovations have begun again.

“I was a newly ordained priest, and honestly, I was busy learning how to be a priest and a parish priest, so I can't say that I was, as we were living that I wasn't that close to it,” he said. “I was certainly trying to be faithful and trying to live the truth, but I appreciated what John Paul II was doing and really kind of settling things, all the experimentation that had happened in the late 60s and 70s."

In 1993, John Paul II published his encyclical “Veritas Splendor," which defended the teachings of the Church as not just ideals that could never be attained but practical and achievable—and not in conflict with human freedom because sin is the real slavery.

Strickland said John Paul II’s encyclical had a profound effect on him. 

“I think what he was saying in ‘Veritas Splendor' was this is the truth,” he said. “This is what we're founded on, and all these different ideas need to settle back down into what God has revealed to us.”

The bishop said that the changes in the Church now do not reflect the revealed truth.

“I think the experimentation seems to be opened up all over again,” he said.

He said part of this push is from the Vatican II generation, which is working to restart what John Paul II stopped before their death. 

“It's like the generation of priests, and when I was a kid, in the '60s and '70s, they're all back as their lives are ending to really push that same agenda once again,” the bishop said.

“The truth is an ancient, everlasting foundation for us as human beings,” he said. 

“It comes from God revealed to us, and I think when we try to tinker with it, acting as if we're God, it gets off track, and we're in a time of that once again,” he said. 

The Truth has not changed & will not change because the Truth is not an invention of human beings, the Truth is reality created by God & revealed to us by Jesus Christ His Son. Jesus Christ is Truth Incarnate, get to know Him as your Lord, know Jesus & no power can defeat you. pic.twitter.com/8pxifBc1IU

— Bishop J. Strickland (@BishStrickland) February 10, 2024

“It will settle back down because the truth is what lasts,” he said. 

“All these experiments, all these lifestyles that have nothing to do with the family and nothing to do with these basic foundations, they have no future, but they've seized the moment in a sense, at least to some extent,” Strickland said. 

“We’ve got to stay strong for all of us who know the truth and guide the people of God into the future. That is God's plan and not some invention of humanity.”

Strickland: I was surprised other bishops did not defend me

The bishop told RedState he trusts in God's plan for the Church and mankind, yet he was surprised his brother bishops did not stand up for him when the Vatican made its moves against him.

“It mystifies me why they — I've said that publicly in many different ways — Where are they? Where are their voices,” he asked. “Where is the line for them that is crossed and say: ‘I've got to speak up?’ We crossed that line a long time ago."

Strickland said some bishops told him they supported him, but "they won't say it publicly.”

Ten days after Strickland led a June 16 Eucharistic Procession at Dodgers Stadium to protest the team’s honoring the fetish cosplay group The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, which mocks Catholicism and Catholic women in consecrated life, it was revealed that the Vatican had sent a three-bishop team to conduct a visitation of the Tyler Diocese.

A visitation is the Catholic version of an inspector general’s report.

Then, according to the statement from the Metropolitan Archbishop of Galveston-Houston Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who is the senior bishop in Texas and Strickland's principal consecrator, posted the visitation’s Nov. 9 report, which recommended Strickland’s removal. 

So Strickland was asked to resign. Two days later, after Strickland refused to resign, the pope declared his seat vacant.

Media reports suggested that Strickland’s removal was based on his maladministration of the Tyler Diocese, but the bishop forcefully rebuked that narrative in his Nov. 27 blog post: 

In the reasons that were read to me, no mention was made of administrative problems or mismanagement of the diocese as the reasons for my removal. The reasons given seemed to be related, for the most part, to my speaking the truth of our Catholic faith and to my warnings against anything that threatened that truth (including things that were being brought up at the Synod on Synodality).  

Strickland also said the Vatican was upset he had not acted to suppress the Traditional Latin Mass: 

Also, mention was made of my not walking alongside my brother bishops as I defended the Church and her unchangeable teachings, and of my not implementing the motu propoio Traditionis custodes, which were I to have implemented, would have required me to leave part of my flock unfed and untended. As a shepherd and protector of my Diocese, I could not take actions which I knew with certainty would injure part of my flock and deprive them of the spiritual goods which Christ entrusted to His Church. I stand by my actions as they were necessary to protect my flock and to defend the Sacred Deposit of Faith.

In 2018, Strickland criticized how Francis rehabilitated a cardinal who was one of the most notorious sexual predators:

This is the time for everything now covered to be uncovered, and everything now hidden to be made clear. In fact, it was in a time when things were being hidden regarding disgraced now-former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Church sex abuse scandal that it seems I first entered the Vatican's radar. My main crime, then as now, seems to always have been about bringing to light that which others wanted to remain hidden. Sadly, it now seems that it is Truth Himself, Our Lord Jesus Christ, that many desire to be hidden.

The timing of Strickland’s firing is also interesting. The bishop was removed two weeks before the Feast of Christ the King, which marks the end of the liturgical calendar — and meant the prelate would not lead his diocese in Advent and Christmas.

Also, the USCCB was holding its fall business meetings in Baltimore from Nov. 13 through Nov. 16, a conference Strickland did not attend.

Instead, he observed from outside, leading supporters in prayer on the sidewalk.

Check out these other articles about Bishop Joseph E. Strickland:

You're Fired: Pope Francis Pulls Chair Out From Under Conservative Texas Bishop Strickland

Bishop Strickland: Forces Fighting Me 'Want to Totally Restructure the Church'

Editor's Note: This article was edited post-publication to note that Bishop Strickland is no longer attached to a diocese rather than a parish, and to correct the title of Pope Saint John Paul II.