Who Is Fr. Matthew P. Schneider, LC

Jesus loves us. I love Jesus. My name is Fr Matthew P. Schneider, LC SThD. I’m a priest with the Legionaries of Christ and Regnum Christi. I try to fulfill our mission of helping people know and experience Jesus, be transformed by him, and become his apostles.

In 2022, I finished my doctoral thesis in Moral Theology through Regina Apostolorum in Rome, while living in the Legionary community in the diocese of Arlington (Northern Virginia) and as Assistant Chaplain at Divine Mercy University. For the 2022-2024 school years, I teach theology and bioethics at Belmont Abbey College. I occasionally give talks on subjects I discuss here (use the contact form if you want this).

Pauline Press published my book, God Loves the Autistic Mind: Prayer Guide for Those on the Spectrum and Those Who Love Us, in June 2022. You can get it here.

I am one of the few openly autistic priests. I was diagnosed with autism after my first year of ministry when I failed to read the emotions on kids’ faces as a school chaplain. I gave a longer testimony (with video) if you are interested.

Slowly I’ve become one of the biggest Catholic voices on Twitter, with over 68,000 followers, and 100,000 across all social media combined.

I’m originally from Calgary, Canada, and have done ministry in various parts of Canada and the USA. My current base community is in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, but I live at Belmont Abbey during the school year.

I began working in youth ministry as a religious brother and wrote some of the material for the Conquest and Challenge Clubs, but in recent years I have moved away from that. Concerning youth ministry, I wrote the only book on doing 1-on-1 spiritual mentoring with teenagers called Spiritually Mentoring Teenage Boys based on my experience (90%+ of it probably applies to teen girls too, but I don’t have much experience there).

I started with this personal blog, then joined ProjectYM, then Catholic Stand, then Patheos, with a few individual articles for other pages, then eventually moved here to my personal site. If you want my article to appear in your publication, please contact me and offer me your normal going rate for freelance journalists.

My Community relies on donations, and I’d love it if you became a monthly patron on Patreon or donated on my Acceptiva page. I have chosen not to run ads here except for links to Patreon.

Along with my writing here, I have written for or appeared in over 375 other media outlets. I have another page with a more complete list, but here are some highlights:

If you want to know what I look like, there isn’t much to see. Even though I’m not that photogenic, here are a few photos.

The primary photo I use right now (April 2022).
The secondary photo I use right now
A photo from 2021 I used for a bit
The main photo I use to identify myself online
The previous photo I used to identify myself online (2014).
A professional shot
An earlier photo from when I was a brother (~2012).
The day I was ordained a deacon.
The day I was ordained a deacon
The best photo from my priestly ordination in St. John Latern on December 14, 2013.
Celebrating Mass on Calvary (April 2017).
Miracle of sienna
A picture of me before the Eucharistic miracle of Sienna – these hosts were consecrated 200 years ago, & they’re fresh (~2012, just before ordination).
I'm fun-loving. Here's just one example
I’m fun-loving. Here’s just one example (2006 photo)
Share:

Add your voice to the discussion