Category: Ad Populum

“To the people” the Archbishop’s pastoral epistles, articles and conferences for the faithful

From Heaven’s Yes to Rome’s Caution: Mary Between Doctrine and Diplomacy

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By the Titular Archbishop of Selsey

From Co-Redemptrix to Mater Populi Fidelis: Pius XII and the New DDF Note
When Pope Pius XII wrote Mediator Dei in 1947, his purpose was to safeguard the integrity of Christian worship by reaffirming that all liturgical and devotional life flows from Christ the one Redeemer. Yet in that same encyclical, and later in Mystici Corporis and Ad Caeli Reginam, he articulated a luminous vision of Mary’s participation in redemption. She is the New Eve who offers her Son to the Father, uniting her maternal compassion to His sacrifice, and who continues to distribute the graces of that sacrifice to humanity. The Church therefore honoured her under the titles Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix Omnium Gratiarum — not as rivals to Christ, but as signs of her unique cooperation with Him in the order of grace.⁶

The new doctrinal note of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mater Populi Fidelis (4 November 2025), revisits these titles with a markedly different emphasis. It affirms Mary’s singular role in salvation history but declares the titles Corredentrice and Mediatrice di tutte le grazie “inopportune,” lest they “obscure the unique mediation of Christ.”⁷ Instead, it invites the faithful to contemplate her primarily as Mother of the Faithful People — a maternal symbol of accompaniment rather than a formal participant in redemption.

Doctrinal Continuity and the Change of Accent
Pius XII taught:

Ipsa cum Filio suo patienti doluit, ac pro nobis se obtulit, ac pro salute humani generis sua materna iura ac maternum amorem immolavit. — Mystici Corporis Christi, §106
“She suffered with her Son, offering Him for us and immolating her maternal rights and love for the salvation of mankind.”¹

In this conception, Mary’s cooperation is real, causal, and meritorious by divine association: she cooperates in the act of redemption, though wholly dependent on the Redeemer. Likewise, Mediator Dei insists that “Christ is the one and only Mediator between God and men,” yet acknowledges that “Mary’s mediation shares in His and draws all its efficacy from it.”²

By contrast, Mater Populi Fidelis states:

L’uso del titolo di Corredentrice è teologicamente improprio, poiché rischia di oscurare la singolare mediazione del Redentore.
“The use of the title Co-Redemptrix is theologically inappropriate, as it risks obscuring the unique mediation of the Redeemer.”³

The Note does not deny Mary’s cooperation but recasts it as discipleship and maternal empathy — a “participation of faith and love” rather than of redemptive causality. Its emphasis is relational, not metaphysical; experiential, not ontological.

From Participation to Accompaniment: A Disincarnate Shift
Here the issue runs deeper than terminology. The Incarnation itself is the divine charter of participation: Deus homo factus est ut homo fieret Deus — God became man that man might become God.⁸ By assuming our nature, the Son did not merely draw near to humanity; He redeemed through humanity. Every act of grace therefore presupposes human cooperation elevated by grace — not human passivity.

Mary’s role in the Incarnation reveals this mystery in its fullness. By freely giving her consent for God’s Son to take flesh in her womb, she became the living bridge between heaven and earth. Through her “yes,” the Word truly became man, and by sharing in His suffering and love, the human nature He took from her became the very instrument of our salvation.⁹ God chose not to save us apart from humanity, but through it — and Mary’s cooperation shows how human freedom, united with divine grace, becomes the means by which redemption enters the world.

Mary’s fiat and her suffering at Calvary embody this incarnational realism. Through her consent, the humanity the Word assumed is offered back to the Father. Pius XII’s vocabulary of Co-Redemptrix safeguarded that truth: God’s redemptive will operates through a human will perfectly conformed to His own.

Mater Populi Fidelis, by reducing cooperation to empathy, risks turning that mystery inside out. If Mary’s role is merely affective, then the human instrumentality of redemption is blurred. Grace becomes a gesture of divine proximity rather than a transformation of human nature. In place of metaphysical participation stands psychological association — Mary as companion, not co-operator. This subtle disincarnation endangers not only Mariology but Christology itself, for the whole meaning of the Incarnation is that the divine and human truly act together in one salvific economy.

St Leo the Great expressed the principle: Agit enim utraque forma cum alterius communione quod proprium est.⁴ “Each nature performs what is proper to it, in communion with the other.” The Incarnation therefore enshrines cooperation as the structure of salvation itself. To diminish Mary’s participation is to obscure how God’s work continues through His creatures — and how the Church herself is the prolongation of the Word made flesh.

Tradition and the Risk of Reduction
The Note rightly warns against confusion or exaggeration, yet it risks overcorrection. The faithful have long understood that Co-Redemptrix implies dependence, not equality — the cooperation of the New Eve with the New Adam. To silence that language is to weaken the incarnational principle: that divine grace truly employs human freedom as its instrument. The faithful cease to see that their sufferings and prayers can be united to Christ’s redemptive act; the Marian model becomes sentiment rather than sacrament.

The Church’s lex orandi has always proclaimed otherwise: Stabat Mater dolorosa, iuxta crucem lacrimosa, dum pendebat Filius. Devotion to Mary as Co-Redemptrix does not rival the Cross — it magnifies its fruit in the human heart.

Mary Between Doctrine and Diplomacy
The title Mater Populi Fidelis is pastorally tender but diplomatically safe. It mirrors the modern preference for inclusive imagery over metaphysical definition. Yet the Church cannot live by diplomacy alone. Doctrinal language is not a barrier to charity but its guardian. As Pius XII reminded the faithful, “The truths of faith are not obstacles to unity but its foundation.”⁵

To obscure Mary’s co-redemptive office is, indirectly, to weaken the Church’s understanding of her own share in Christ’s saving work. For as the Fathers taught, quod Maria cooperata est in carne, Ecclesia cooperatur in Spiritu — what Mary accomplished in the flesh, the Church continues in the Spirit.¹² The Dicastery’s caution is understandable; its pastoral intent is genuine. Yet beneath every pastoral formula lies a doctrinal reality. The Mother of the Faithful People remains, in the deeper order of grace, the Co-Redemptrix of mankind — not because she redeems with Christ as equal, but because she uniquely, surrendering her body and will – cooperated and allowed His redemption to materialise and be affected through her.

¹ Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, §106 (29 June 1943).
² Pius XII, Mediator Dei, §84 (20 November 1947).
³ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mater Populi Fidelis (4 Nov 2025), §15 (Ital.).
⁴ Leo I, Sermo 28 De Nativitate Domini, §3.
⁵ Pius XII, Address to the Ecumenical Congress of Assisi (1955).
⁶ Pius XII, Ad Caeli Reginam, §§34–39 (11 October 1954).
⁷ Vatican Press Office, “Nota Dottrinale Mater Populi Fidelis,” (4 November 2025), press.vatican.va.
⁸ Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, §54.
⁹ Luke 1:38; cf. Lumen Gentium, §§56–57.
¹⁰ Pius XII, Allocution to the Marian Congress of Buenos Aires (1954).
¹¹ Sequence Stabat Mater, Missale Romanum (1570).
¹² Augustine, Sermo 25 de Sanctis, PL 46, 937.

The Forgotten Confessor: Bishop Jia Zhiguo and the Silence of Rome over China’s Underground Church

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Fidelitas in Tenebris — Faithfulness in the Darkness

When a confessor of the Faith departs this life, the Church traditionally lifts her voice in gratitude. The names of those who suffered for Christ were once read aloud in the sacred liturgy, placed in the diptychs of memory, and inscribed in stone. But now, as Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo of Zhengding is laid to rest, the silence of Rome falls heavier than any bell.

This man, who bore imprisonment, torture, and solitude for loyalty to the See of Peter, died on 29 October 2025 at the age of ninety-one. Yet the Vatican has offered no tribute, no acknowledgment, not even a prayer of public record. The world barely noticed, but Heaven has already received a saintly soul. The question remains: why does the Church on earth act as if such faithfulness were an embarrassment?

The confessor of Zhengding
Bishop Jia was born in 1934 in Hebei, a region where Catholic faith has endured wave upon wave of persecution. From his youth he learned that the Cross was not an ornament but a destiny. He entered seminary amid the tightening coils of Maoist repression, and in 1963 he was arrested for refusing to break communion with Rome. Fifteen years he spent in prison, enduring brutal interrogations and isolation. His cell was once deliberately flooded, leaving him crippled with pain — yet he would not deny the Pope.¹

Released in 1978, he was ordained a priest two years later, and clandestinely consecrated a bishop in 1981 by the heroic Bishop Joseph Fan Xueyan of Baoding — who would himself die under house arrest.² For more than four decades, Bishop Jia shepherded the faithful of Zhengding without recognition, without protection, and often without even freedom of movement. His people, numbering more than a million and a half, looked to him as a father who shared their chains.³

He founded an orphanage for abandoned children — one of many quiet works of mercy performed by underground clergy. When the authorities demolished it in 2020 for lacking state approval, he answered with prayer, not protest. He knew that persecution, borne with patience, preaches more eloquently than speeches. His flock loved him for that serenity. When he was last arrested in 2020, on the eve of the Assumption, they gathered to pray the Rosary in secret, confident that their shepherd would again emerge unbroken.

The underground Church
To understand his witness, one must grasp the nature of the underground Church in China. These are Catholics who refused to join the state-controlled Patriotic Association, which since 1957 has claimed to be the “Chinese Catholic Church” independent of Rome. They are loyal to the Successor of Peter and to the universal Magisterium, yet their loyalty costs them their liberty. They celebrate the sacraments in hidden chapels, move from house to house to avoid surveillance, and raise their children knowing that Baptism might one day demand blood.

Pius XII foresaw their plight. In Ad Sinarum Gentem (1954) he warned that “no one can serve two masters: Christ and the state cannot both claim the allegiance of the same heart.”⁴ He urged Chinese Catholics to resist all attempts to build a national church apart from Rome, promising them that fidelity would one day be vindicated. That vindication has yet to come.

When the Holy See entered its secret “provisional agreement” with Beijing in 2018, many hoped it would secure the recognition of faithful bishops and end the long agony of division. Instead, the opposite occurred. The government continued to appoint bishops without papal approval, the faithful underground continued to suffer harassment, and Rome, bound by its own diplomacy, uttered few protests.⁵

The diplomacy of silence
Why has the Vatican not spoken of Bishop Jia? The answer, we are told, lies in diplomacy. Rome, anxious to maintain its fragile accord with the Chinese state, avoids words that might offend. But this policy of silence betrays a profound theological amnesia. The Church is not a political actor negotiating coexistence between powers; she is the mystical Body of Christ, called to bear witness to truth even when inconvenient.

Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi, declared that “there is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom, and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth are not proclaimed.”⁶ By the same measure, there is no true diplomacy that obscures the martyrs’ confession. When bishops and priests are imprisoned for fidelity to the Pope, the successor of Peter cannot remain mute without obscuring his own office.

Silence toward tyrants becomes complicity. Pius XII spoke plainly during earlier persecutions: “The Church has no desire to dominate, but neither will she be silent when the rights of conscience are violated.”⁷ To honour Bishop Jia publicly would be to declare that conscience still matters. To ignore him is to suggest that communion is negotiable.

A Church divided within herself
There is a deeper tragedy in this silence. The very allegiance for which the underground bishops suffered has become the pretext for their abandonment. They resisted the regime because they would not renounce Rome. Now Rome, in its pursuit of compromise, turns its gaze elsewhere. They are too Roman for Beijing and too Chinese for the Curia — witnesses without patrons.

Many of them live under house arrest or in hiding. Priests who refuse to register with the Patriotic Association are stripped of their churches, fined, or imprisoned. Yet they continue to celebrate the Mass in secret, reciting the Canon that unites them to Peter. They pray for the Pope even when he forgets them. Their fidelity has outlasted every persecution, but it has not been met with gratitude.

When Rome speaks of “inculturation” or “synodality,” it often forgets that true communion is forged in suffering, not in bureaucratic consensus. The underground Church of China is not a relic of the Cold War but a living reminder that faith has enemies, both open and subtle. They do not seek political privilege — only to be recognised as Catholic.

Faith stronger than the State
The authorities may imprison bishops, but they cannot imprison the faith. Tertullian, addressing the pagan Empire, wrote: “The more you mow us down, the more we grow; the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.”⁸ In China that paradox remains visible. Every raid on a house-church drives the faithful deeper into conviction; every arrest exposes the fragility of an atheistic state that fears prayer more than protest.

Bishop Jia’s diocese of Zhengding stands as a symbol of that indestructible faith. Decades of harassment have not destroyed it. Young men still discern priestly vocations; families still catechise their children by candlelight; the Eucharist is still adored in makeshift tabernacles hidden from state eyes. This endurance refutes the illusion that faith can be negotiated.

The shadow of modern indifference
Yet persecution alone cannot wound the Church as deeply as indifference can. In former centuries, martyrs faced the fury of pagan emperors; now confessors face the apathy of their own brethren. Western Catholics, preoccupied with ideological fashions and ecclesial politics, scarcely glance toward Asia. The suffering Church is no longer fashionable.

In the halls of the Vatican, words like “dialogue” and “mutual understanding” are spoken with reverence. But dialogue without truth becomes the language of surrender. To negotiate with a regime that imprisons bishops while silencing those who defend them is to trade the Cross for comfort. It was not for such an accommodation that Bishop Jia endured his chains.

When he was ordained, he promised to “preach the Gospel in season and out of season.”⁹ That promise included the risk of death. His fidelity reveals how far much of the modern Church has drifted from the radicalism of its own vows. The Cross is no longer preached as the price of discipleship but as a metaphor for difficulty.

The forgotten testimony
The faithful of Zhengding issued a statement upon his death: “Your heart as a pastor never changed. Even when arrested and imprisoned, you continued to care for the flock, preserving the flame of hope in the darkest nights.”¹⁰ That simple tribute contains more theology than a dozen curial statements. It recalls the image of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep — not the hireling who flees when the wolves approach.

In ancient Rome, confessors who survived persecution were revered almost as martyrs. Their names were commemorated, their tombs visited. Bishop Jia belongs to that lineage of confessors: not slain, yet wholly consumed in the offering of fidelity. To forget him is to forget what the priesthood means.

The underground Church of China is not an embarrassment but a mirror. In its humility we see what the Church universal has lost — courage, clarity, and the readiness to suffer for truth. Its priests know that every Mass might be their last. Its faithful understand that the price of Communion may be a prison cell. That is what it means to believe in the Incarnate Word when words are forbidden.

Lament for a silent Rome
It would have been a simple act — a telegram, a brief note, a prayer from the window of the Apostolic Palace. Instead, the Vatican remained still. Perhaps officials feared that even the name of Bishop Jia would irritate Beijing. But what does it profit a Church to gain the favour of princes and lose her confessors?

Saint Ambrose once said, “The Church’s glory is the suffering of her bishops.”¹¹ By that measure, China’s underground Church is glorious indeed. But that glory shames the worldly prudence that now governs Rome. In neglecting her confessors, the Church risks exchanging her birthright for a bowl of political lentils.

The lament is not only for Bishop Jia but for what his silence reveals: a Church hesitant to speak when truth costs. The Lord promised that the gates of hell would not prevail, but He did not promise that cowardice would not wound. Fidelity remains, shining in the darkness — but from Rome, only silence.

¹ Cardinal Kung Foundation, Biographical Note on Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo (2025).
² AsiaNews, “Bishop Joseph Fan Xueyan and the Bishops of the Underground Church,” 2011.
³ UCANews, “Bishop Jia of Zhengding dies at 91,” 30 Oct 2025.
⁴ Pius XII, Ad Sinarum Gentem, n. 17 (7 Oct 1954).
⁵ Holy See Press Office, “Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China on the Appointment of Bishops,” 22 Sep 2018; see also Cardinal Joseph Zen, For Love of My People I Will Not Remain Silent (Ignatius Press, 2019).
⁶ Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 22 (8 Dec 1975).
⁷ Pius XII, Allocution to the Sacred College, 24 Dec 1949.
⁸ Tertullian, Apologeticum, c. 50.
⁹ 2 Timothy 4:2.
¹⁰ Statement of the Catholic community of Zhengding, quoted in AsiaNews, 30 Oct 2025.
¹¹ St Ambrose, Epistula extra collectionem 11, PL 16: 1154.

From Revelation to Conversation: The New Ecclesiology of Leo XIV

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By the Titular Archbishop of Selsey

When the Church trades doctrine for dialogue,
she risks mistaking noise for the Holy Ghost.

During his Jubilee of Hope, Pope Leo XIV has sought to cast a universal vision of renewal: a Church of accompaniment, dialogue, and missionary openness. Yet what should have been an anthem of divine certainty has become an ode to uncertainty. The tone of his address to the Jubilee of Synodal Teams and Participatory Bodies was not apostolic but anthropological—not the voice of Peter confirming his brethren but that of a moderator convening a forum.

Rome once sent missionaries to convert the nations; now it sends facilitators to listen to them. Once the Church proclaimed that she alone possessed the fullness of revelation, today she hesitates even to say that truth can be known. Under Leo XIV, the “Church of listening” risks becoming a Church of forgetting—forgetting her own authority, her divine commission, and her supernatural identity.

This is the paradox of the modern pontificate. While the Vatican adorns itself with banners proclaiming “Hope,” it offers a hope emptied of content—a hope whose object is no longer salvation through truth but coexistence through conversation. The Apostle’s command, “Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season,” has been replaced by the bureaucrat’s dictum: “Let us listen together.”

The present crisis is not one of governance alone but of essence. What kind of Church believes it must seek the truth when her Founder declared, “I am the Truth”? The danger is no longer external persecution but internal dissolution—the slow surrender of doctrine to dialogue.

A New Gospel of Synodality
On 24 October 2025, Pope Leo XIV stood before more than two thousand delegates in the Paul VI Hall and announced that the Church “is not looking for a uniform model.” He explained that “synodality will not come with a template where everybody and every country will say, ‘This is how you do it.’ It is rather a conversion to a spirit of being Church, of being missionary, and of building up the family of God.”² Later that evening, within St Peter’s itself, he made his most startling declaration: “No one possesses the whole truth; we must all humbly seek it and seek it together.”³

Those who applauded heard humility; those who wept heard apostasy. For if the Church no longer claims to possess the truth, she ceases to be its guardian. Leo’s words dissolve the very distinction that defines Catholic identity—the difference between the Church that teaches and the world that must be taught. “No one possesses the whole truth” may sound pastoral, but it negates the promise of Christ that His Spirit would lead the Church “into all truth.”⁴

A Church that must seek truth alongside the world has ceased to be the world’s light. She no longer teaches but consults, no longer judges but surveys, no longer baptises the nations but immerses herself in their confusion. Her new commandment seems to be: “Go into all the world and hold dialogue with every creature.”

From Revelation to Conversation
According to the Synod Office, the purpose of this Jubilee was to “translate the orientations of the Synod’s Final Document into pastoral and structural choices consistent with the synodal nature of the Church.”⁵ Leo described synodality as “a way of being Church… not a campaign but an attitude, beginning with learning to listen.”⁶ He urged patience with those “not yet capable to understand,” encouraged “formation at every educational level,” and praised the “growth of regional groupings of churches as expressions of communion.”⁷

Even the question of women’s participation was reframed not in terms of revealed order but cultural adaptation, as the Pope spoke of promoting “a culture of co-participation” in societies where women “are considered second-class citizens.”⁸ In every line the theological foundation gives way to sociological language. The Church’s identity, once defined by her relation to God, is now described by her relation to culture.

This is the new ecclesiology: revelation replaced by process, doctrine by discernment, faith by feedback. The Church no longer speaks from authority but seeks validation from experience. Her image shifts from the Bride of Christ to a human family endlessly negotiating its terms of cohabitation.

The Warning Voices
Among the hierarchy, the most urgent warnings come from those who remember that the Church’s authority descends from heaven, not consensus. Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, writing with the clarity of a confessor, warned that “two opposing visions” now compete within the Church: one hierarchical and apostolic, founded by Christ upon the apostles and their successors; the other democratic and undefined, a “people’s Church” inventing its own mission. “If the latter prevails,” he cautioned, “even the doctrine of faith and the discipline of moral life may change.”⁹

Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, who once headed the very congregation charged with guarding doctrine, went further, describing the synodal process as “a hostile takeover of the Church of Jesus Christ,” designed to prepare Catholics to accept false teaching under the guise of reform.¹⁰ Theologian Larry Chapp, though less severe, noted that a truly synodal Church “would require the rediscovery of the Cross as the only guarantee of unity”—a rediscovery conspicuously absent from synodal language.¹¹

These voices are not reactionary; they are prophetic. They remind the faithful that communion without truth is not unity but illusion. A Church that listens without teaching soon forgets what she was sent to proclaim.

The Voice of Tradition
The perennial magisterium has already spoken against these illusions. In 1906, Pope St Pius X taught in Vehementer Nos that “the Church is essentially an unequal society, comprising two orders of persons, the Pastors and the flock. The duty of the multitude is to allow themselves to be led and, like a docile flock, to follow the Pastors.”¹² This was not arrogance but humility: the obedience of faith before divine order. The Church’s hierarchy is not a human invention but a reflection of heaven’s own structure, where authority serves truth and truth sanctifies authority.

Leo XIV’s language inverts that divine hierarchy. His “participatory Church” imagines authority that rises from below rather than descending from above. Bishops become moderators, priests become facilitators, and the Pope becomes the chairman of an ecclesial roundtable. The magisterium ceases to be a voice and becomes an echo. The Church that once converted the world now asks the world to help her discern what she believes.

A Crisis of Definition
In former ages the Church resolved tension by defining doctrine. The Councils of Nicaea, Trent, and Vatican I all brought peace through clarity. Today’s Church prolongs tension as a sign of vitality, mistaking unresolved contradiction for the breath of the Spirit. The Church Life Journal at Notre Dame noted the danger: “Critics of the synodal project fear that doctrinal decision-making may become obscure and unaccountable, blurring distinctions between ordained and lay authority.”¹³

It is precisely such obscurity that corrodes faith. If synodality is merely a “way of being,” then truth becomes elastic and unity accidental. Catholic Culture observed that the organisers of the Synod “could not answer basic questions—what exactly will change, or must change—betraying the danger of a Church walking without knowing the way.”¹⁴ The image is apt: a pilgrim people wandering in circles, congratulating themselves on their sense of motion.

Modernism Revisited
The ghosts of Modernism have returned, speaking the language of synodality. Pius X condemned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis the idea that truth evolves through human experience, calling it “the synthesis of all heresies.” Leo XIV’s claim that “no one possesses the whole truth” is that same heresy with a smile. It cloaks skepticism in the garments of humility.

Even Commonweal, sympathetic to synodal ideals, admitted that critics of the process are “not entirely wrong to fear that, if the magisterium ceases to claim possession of truth, Catholic identity itself is imperilled.”¹⁵ When even the progressive press recognises that the Church risks forgetting who she is, the warning has become universal.

The Lay Reaction
Among the faithful, reaction has been both articulate and anguished. Many sense instinctively that something essential is being lost. American journalist and traditional Catholic commentator Chris Jackson, writing in Hiraeth in Exile, described the Jubilee liturgy as “a Church that no longer teaches but takes minutes,” a powerful metaphor for the paralysis of authority.¹⁸

At Catholic Vote, Joshua Mercer warned that “synodality, if detached from revelation, becomes a process of perpetual self-reference, a Church listening to herself rather than to God.”¹⁹ Meanwhile, Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture observed that “a Church that listens to everyone will soon obey the loudest,” while Eric Sammons of Crisis Magazine remarked that “the rhetoric of dialogue too easily replaces the duty to proclaim.”²⁰

These lay critics do not speak from bitterness but from love of the faith handed down to them. They long for shepherds who will lead, not facilitators who will facilitate. Their collective anxiety stems from fidelity, not rebellion. They fear that, as one English layman put it after reading the papal text, “the shepherds have traded the crozier for the microphone.”

The Church That Listens to Herself
Synodality has made the Church introspective. Having ceased to listen to the Word of God, she listens now to her own echo. The act of listening—once the path to obedience—has become a substitute for belief. Certainty is portrayed as pride, while doubt is called humility. Dogma is dismissed as rigidity; confusion is rebranded as compassion. Under this logic, the shepherd who refuses to speak is praised as pastoral.

Cardinal Müller’s warning resounds: “Pastoral relativism leads to theological collapse.”¹⁶ When truth becomes pastoral preference, the Church’s moral authority disintegrates. The salt loses its savour. What began as the “walking together” of synodality risks becoming a march into the wilderness, where every voice is equal and none is divine.

A Call to Clarity
If Leo XIV’s words are to bear fruit, it will be only by forcing a return to fundamentals. The Church is not an experiment in religious coexistence but the divine institution of salvation. She does not assemble truth by consensus but receives it by revelation. She does not evolve through dialogue but is purified through conversion.

Pius XI declared in Mortalium Animos that “the unity of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return of the dissidents to the one true Church of Christ.”¹⁷ That unity presupposes truth possessed, not sought. The Church that seeks truth as though she did not have it has already lost her faith in the promises of Christ.

Conclusion: Beyond the Babel
We stand again at Babel’s threshold, where the multiplication of voices masquerades as vitality. A synodal Church, ever talking and never teaching, risks becoming a Church “ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” The true reform the Church requires is not methodological but moral: repentance, not process; sanctity, not strategy; conversion, not conversation.

If Pope Leo XIV would truly renew the Church, let him begin where all true renewal begins—on his knees before the crucifix. Let him set aside the microphones of dialogue and take up the keys of Peter. The world does not need another symposium; it needs salvation. The faithful do not hunger for a new model of synodality; they hunger for the living Bread of doctrine, the unchanging truth that sanctifies and saves.

Only when the Church rediscovers her voice as the Bride of Christ will the confusion end. Only when she proclaims again that she possesses the truth, because she belongs to Him who is the Truth, will the world once more hear the Word of God in her preaching. The Church must again be the pillar and ground of truth—or she will be buried beneath the ruins of her own synodal Babel.

¹ 1 Timothy 3:15
² CNA, Pope Leo XIV: There’s No Template for Synodality Across All Countries (25 Oct 2025)
³ Vatican News, Jubilee of Synodal Teams: Pope Calls for Humble Search for Truth (24 Oct 2025)
⁴ John 16:13
⁵ Synod Office communiqué, 25 Oct 2025
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ ACI Africa, Pope Leo XIV on Women and Synodality (25 Oct 2025)
⁹ Cardinal Joseph Zen, How Will the Synod Continue and End? (2024)
¹⁰ Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, interview in Die Tagespost (Oct 2022)
¹¹ Larry Chapp, The Pillar (Oct 2025)
¹² Pope St Pius X, Vehementer Nos (1906)
¹³ Church Life Journal, “Should We Be Skeptical About Synodality?” (Mar 2023)
¹⁴ Catholic Culture, “The Dangerous Spirit of Synodality” (Nov 2024)
¹⁵ Commonweal, “Synodality and Catholic Amnesia” (Apr 2024)
¹⁶ Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, interview with Catholic World Report (2023)
¹⁷ Pope Pius XI, Mortalium Animos (1928)
¹⁸ Chris Jackson, Hiraeth in Exile, “The Synodal Séance” (28 Oct 2025)
¹⁹ Joshua Mercer, Catholic Vote editorial on synodality (Nov 2024)
²⁰ Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture commentary (Nov 2024); Eric Sammons, Crisis Magazine analysis (Feb 2025)

“Thy kingdom come”: France, Britain, and the need of Christ’s Sovereignty

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By the Archbishop of Selsey

When Our Lord told the sons of Zebedee, “You know not what you ask,”¹ He revealed that kingship in His Kingdom bears no likeness to the ambitions of men. For He reigns not by command but by sacrifice; not through armies, but through love. The throne of Christ is the Cross, and His crown is of thorns. Every other throne, every other crown, is legitimate only insofar as it reflects that mystery.

This is the heart of the doctrine proclaimed by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas: that Christ’s kingship is not confined to the sanctuary or the soul, but extends over nations, laws, and rulers—that “He must reign,” not merely in private hearts, but in social and political order.² The Social Reign of Christ the King is no abstraction; it is the blueprint of reality restored to grace. Without it, every state eventually becomes its own idol.

The Bourbon Appeal and the Crisis of France
It is striking that, a century after Quas Primas, these truths should echo once again through the words of a French prince. Earlier this month, Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Anjou and head of the historic House of Bourbon, declared: “The situation has never been so serious; the Fifth Republic is on the verge of collapse. My family has served France for centuries, and if France calls upon me, I will be at its service. The indispensable condition is that France desires the return of the monarchy—a monarchy above parties, unifying.”³

His words were not anachronistic but prophetic. They arose from a nation whose political structures have lost moral direction, whose secularism has bled into cynicism, and whose people hunger for meaning. The Fifth Republic endures in form but not in faith. The prince’s offer of service—“above parties, unifying”—speaks to the deeper truth that sovereignty without sanctity cannot save a nation.

France was once the Eldest Daughter of the Church, baptised with the tears of St. Remigius and consecrated by Clovis. Her kings, for all their failings, were anointed as lieutenants of Christ the King—vicars of divine order within the temporal realm. The glory of St. Louis IX, who built Sainte-Chapelle to enshrine the Crown of Thorns, was not that he ruled, but that he ruled in obedience to Christ. When Louis XVI forgave his executioners, he did so as one who knew that true kingship is cruciform. In them both, we see the image of Christ’s reign—authority purified by sacrifice.

From Christendom to the Republic of Man
When France severed the bond between altar and throne in 1789, she inaugurated not liberty, but a new servitude: the worship of man in the place of God. As Joseph de Maistre warned, “Every nation has the government it deserves, for it has the religion it confesses.”⁴ Having expelled God from public life, modern states have enthroned the will of man as absolute. The result is instability, fragmentation, and despair. The secular republic has produced not unity but emptiness, not enlightenment but exhaustion.

Louis de Bourbon’s appeal is not nostalgia—it is a reminder that the Social Kingship of Christ is the only true foundation of freedom. The monarchy he envisions, “above parties,” is one that points beyond politics to Providence, one that restores the vertical order between heaven and earth. Such a vision is not antiquated; it is urgently prophetic.

The Hollow Crown of Britain
Across the Channel, the same truth confronts us in inverse form. The British monarchy endures, but without the faith that once gave it meaning. The Coronation of King Charles III in 2023 was grand but spiritually impoverished. The words “defender of the Faith” have been replaced with “defender of faiths.”⁵ In striving to honour all, the Crown affirms none. What was once a covenant between monarch and God has become a contract between monarch and media.

The Coronation’s sacred oil still flowed, yet the divine Kingship it symbolised was no longer confessed. A Crown that once promised fidelity to the “laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel” now guards a civil creed of inclusivity—a religion of tolerance without truth. Britain’s monarchy, in so far as it mirrors the world rather than Christ, has ceased to image kingship; it has become merely decorative. The “Defender of Faith” has become custodian of relativism.

Here lies the tragedy: a Crown wedded to politics loses its soul, while a Crown consecrated to Christ becomes the conscience of the nation. When rulers cease to kneel before the altar, they eventually kneel before opinion.

The Social Reign and the Restoration of Order
The kingship of Christ is no private devotion. As Pius XI wrote, “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.”⁶ The Church’s mission, therefore, is not to retreat from the world but to reclaim it for its rightful King.

Louis de Bourbon’s words remind us that temporal authority, when rightly ordered, can serve as a visible sacrament of that greater Kingdom. The monarch anointed under God serves as father to his people precisely because he himself is subject to the Father of all. This is the model of hierarchy redeemed by humility—the antithesis of modern power politics.

The world calls this reactionary; the Church calls it reality. The throne, like the altar, must once again become a place of offering.

Britain, France, and the Two Temptations
Both nations illustrate opposite temptations: France’s rejection of monarchy in the name of liberty, and Britain’s retention of monarchy at the cost of truth. The first killed the king; the second forgets the King of Kings. Yet both demonstrate that without the social reign of Christ, human authority collapses into either revolution or ritualism.

The renewal of monarchy, if it is to come, must therefore be Eucharistic—a renewal of sacrifice, not spectacle. To restore the crown is not to revive aristocracy, but to restore sanctity. The ruler must once again be a servant of Christ’s law, not of public mood. The same is true of every priest, politician, and parent. For all authority shares one source: “All power in heaven and on earth is given unto Me.”⁷

The Kingdom and Its Prayer
When we pray Adveniat regnum tuum—“Thy Kingdom come”—we invoke not only the Second Coming but the sanctification of our present age. This prayer is the charter of Christendom. It proclaims that the laws of nations must conform to the moral law; that peace without justice is false; that liberty without truth is slavery. The reign of Christ is social because His redemption is universal.

The call for “Monarchy and God Again” is, in essence, a call for the restoration of the Social Kingship of Christ—for the re-evangelisation of culture through the conversion of rulers and the sanctification of law. France, once baptised by saints, and England, once consecrated as Our Lady’s dowry, must both rediscover that their national vocation lies in serving the divine.

The kingdoms of this world will pass away. The republics of men will crumble. But the Kingdom of Christ endures, because it is built not upon compromise but upon the Cross. The world awaits not the return of kings, but the return of Christ the King in public life, in conscience, in culture, and in law. Only then will liberty be true, and order be just.

Let every sceptre, every crown, and every constitution confess what the Church still dares to sing:
Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

¹ Gospel according to St. Mark 10:38.
² Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas (Encyclical on the Kingship of Christ), 11 December 1925, §§18–19.
³ “Louis de Bourbon prêt à servir la France si elle veut le retour de la monarchie,” Le Figaro, 10 October 2025.
⁴ Joseph de Maistre, Considérations sur la France (1797), ch. II.
⁵ The Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla, Official Liturgy (London: Church House Publishing, 2023), pp. 10–14.
⁶ Quas Primas, §19.
⁷ Gospel according to St. Matthew 28:18.

The Empty Chair: A Reflection on the Royal Visit to Rome

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By the Archbishop of Selsey

A gesture without conversion
Tomorrow, in the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, His Majesty King Charles III — Supreme Governor of the Church of England — will kneel beside the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He will be received as Royal Confrater of that venerable Benedictine basilica, where the Apostle to the Gentiles lies beneath the ancient words Ut unum sint — “that they may be one.”

A chair has been made for the occasion, carved in English oak and adorned with the royal arms. Its purpose, we are told, is to symbolise the friendship between Canterbury and Rome. Yet this is not friendship born of faith, nor unity grounded in truth. It is a gesture of diplomacy, not a sign of conversion — a symbol of goodwill without repentance, and of courtesy without confession.

The denial of the Sacrifice
For the monarch being honoured is not returning to the faith of his forebears, but stands as the constitutional head of a communion that long ago repudiated the Apostolic See, denied the Sacrifice of the Mass, and enthroned Parliament above the altar of God. The Church of England’s own doctrinal formularies remain explicit: “The sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.”¹ In one sentence, the very heart of Catholic worship is rejected — the doctrine of the Holy Sacrifice that unites heaven and earth.

An irregular honour
Even more disquieting is the personal irregularity that accompanies this royal recognition. The King is twice married, having for years lived in public adultery with his present consort — who herself was married in a Catholic ceremony to Andrew Parker Bowles, a union that, as public record confirms, was never annulled by the Church.² Thus, while her first marriage remains sacramentally binding, she is now styled Queen and received in papal circles with honour. The incongruity speaks for itself: an ecumenical gesture extended to those whose very marriage contradicts the indissolubility of the Sacrament.

The end of dialogue
Meanwhile, the Church of England, over which the King presides, has confirmed the appointment of a woman to the See of Canterbury — a decisive act of apostasy that seals the final rupture with apostolic tradition and renders null any serious hope of reunion.³

Whatever promise once flickered in the ARCIC process — the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission, established jointly by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey in 1967 to seek doctrinal convergence — has now been extinguished.⁴ The ARCIC I Final Report (1981) expressed cautious optimism, affirming that “the Eucharist is a sacrifice because it is the memorial of Christ’s one sacrifice” and that “ordained ministry is a gift of God to his people.”⁵ Later ARCIC statements — The Gift of Authority (1999), Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ (2005), and Walking Together on the Way (2017) — attempted to sustain this tone of progress, yet none restored doctrinal unity.⁶

Rome’s official responses, though courteous, have been clear: substantial agreement has not been achieved, and full communion remains impossible while the Anglican Communion persists in errors regarding Orders, moral theology, and sacramental discipline.⁷ Thus, by placing a woman in Augustine’s chair, Canterbury has extinguished any remaining theological credibility for reunion. The door, long narrowing through innovation, has now been slammed shut from within.

The creedless humanitarianism of our age
But the greater tragedy lies not merely in the hollowness of this gesture, but in the ideological spirit that animates it. For both monarch and pontiff are shaped by the same pluralist creed — the modern superstition that truth must bow to inclusivity. The King, long an advocate of “faiths” in the plural, publicly stated that he wished to be known as “Defender of Faith” rather than “Defender of the Faith,” to signify his belief in the equal validity of all religions.⁸ Pope Leo XIV, for his part, has continued the post-conciliar trajectory of pluralist diplomacy: emphasising fraternity among religions and global harmony above the conversion of souls. His addresses on “the unity of humanity,” his renewal of the Document on Human Fraternity signed by his predecessor, and his insistence that the Church must “learn to listen to other paths of truth”⁹ reveal a conception of unity far removed from the missionary mandate of Christ.

What unites them is not creed, but a creedless humanitarianism — the gospel of coexistence, where religion is reduced to symbol and morality to sentiment. The meeting of King and Pope thus becomes the liturgy of modernity itself: a ceremony for a world that believes in everything and therefore in nothing.

The betrayal of witness
Yet what does this spectacle mean for the faithful — for the descendants of England’s recusants, and for Catholics who still revere the martyrs who shed their blood for the Mass now dismissed as a “blasphemous fable”? What are they to make of such an “act of charity” emptied of the charity of truth? Those who hid priests in their homes, who whispered the Rosary under threat of death, who saw their families ruined for refusing the Oath of Supremacy — they did not endure so that popes might flatter kings or trade the Cross for concord. The men who died on Tyburn Tree, the women who perished in prison for harbouring a priest, did so out of love for the very faith now diluted into diplomacy.

To those English Catholics who still hold that faith, this event can only appear as betrayal — not of politics, but of the Gospel itself. For charity divorced from truth is not love but indulgence, and unity without conversion is not reconciliation but surrender. The Church’s mission is not to make all faiths comfortable, but to make all souls holy. When Peter’s successor forgets that, he ceases to confirm his brethren and begins to confuse them.

A call to prayer and witness
This “empty chair” in St Paul’s, carved and gilded for a monarch who does not believe as the Church believes, stands as a parable of modern ecumenism itself: beautifully made, ceremoniously placed, and spiritually hollow. It asks to be filled — not with a king, nor with applause, but with truth, repentance, and the fire of faith.

If this gesture stirs anything, may it be the conscience of England. For unity cannot be staged; it must be sanctified. The only path to reunion remains the same now as in the days of Campion and More: conversion to the truth of Christ in His one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

Let every faithful Catholic, then, take this moment not as cause for despair but as a summons to renewal. The collapse of visible unity is not the end of the Church’s mission but a reminder of it. We must become witnesses of authentic charity — rooted in truth, animated by prayer, and expressed through holiness of life. If false unity is made through ceremony, true unity will come only through sanctity.

Pray, then, for our nation — for her King, her people, and her clergy. Pray for the conversion of hearts, for courage in the face of compromise, and for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary over indifference and unbelief. Let every home become again a small chapel of fidelity; let every Catholic life be a quiet act of reparation for the betrayal of truth.

For the unity Our Lord prayed for — that they may be one — will not be achieved through diplomacy or synodality, but through the Cross. The path to unity is the path of Calvary: truth preached, grace embraced, and love purified in sacrifice. Until that day dawns, the empty chair in the basilica of St Paul Outside the Wall’s will stand as both a rebuke and a promise — that unity without Christ is void, but unity in Christ will one day restore all things.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, cuius Unigenitus Filius, Iesus Christus Pastor Bonus, dixit: “Et alias oves habeo, quae non sunt ex hoc ovili; et illas oportet me adducere, et vocem meam audient, et fiet unum ovile et unus pastor”; effunde, quaesumus, divitias benedictionum tuarum super Apostolatum Vetus Romanum, ut ad hoc serviat consilio tuo, oves perditas et errantes colligendo. Illumina, sanctifica, et vivifica illud per inhabitationem Spiritus Sancti, ut suspiciones et praeiudicia tollantur, ac reliquae oves, vocem veri Pastoris audientes et agnoscentes, ad unam ovilis tui unitatem perficiendam adducantur, in una sancta Ecclesia Catholica tua, sub sapienti ac amanti custodia Vicarii tui.
Per eundem Iesum Christum, Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate eiusdem Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Almighty and everlasting God, Whose only begotten Son, Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd, has said, “Other sheep I have that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd”; let Thy rich and abundant blessing rest upon the Old Roman Apostolate, to the end that it may serve Thy purpose by gathering in the lost and straying sheep. Enlighten, sanctify, and quicken it by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, that suspicions and prejudices may be disarmed, and the other sheep being brought to hear and to know the voice of their true Shepherd thereby, all may be brought into full and perfect unity in the one fold of Thy Holy Catholic Church, under the wise and loving keeping of Thy Vicar, through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who with Thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth God, world without end. Amen.

More background information and analysis at Nuntiatoria

Footnotes
¹ Articles of Religion, Article XXXI, The Book of Common Prayer (1662): “Of the one Oblation of Christ finished upon the Cross.”
² Aleteia, “Is Camilla Parker Bowles a Catholic?” 12 Feb 2022; Catholic Herald archives, “Camilla’s Marriage and Canon Law: Why No Annulment Was Granted,” 9 Apr 2005.
³ Associated Press, “Sarah Mullally Appointed First Woman Archbishop of Canterbury in Historic Move,” 18 Oct 2025.
⁴ Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, “Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC): Background,” http://www.christianunity.va.
⁵ ARCIC I Final Report (1981), §§ 5, 13–17, “Eucharistic Doctrine” and “Ministry and Ordination.”
⁶ ARCIC II documents: The Gift of Authority (1999), Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ (2005); ARCIC III: Walking Together on the Way (2017); see anglicancommunion.org.
⁷ Official Response of the Holy See to ARCIC I Final Report (1991); Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Press Statement on ARCIC III (2017).
⁸ Charles, Prince of Wales, interview with BBC Panorama, “Defender of Faith,” 29 June 1994; Time Magazine, “Charles and the Faiths,” 3 Nov 2008.
⁹ Pope Leo XIV, “Address to the Ambassadors of the World Faith Forum,” 5 March 2025; L’Osservatore Romano, “Pope Leo Renews Commitment to the Abu Dhabi Human Fraternity Charter,” 7 March 2025.

Reflection: “On the Fickleness of Authority and the Fidelity of Tradition”

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By the Titular Archbishop of Selsey

It is a curious thing, that the Church which once converted the world now seems intent on converting herself—away from what she once proclaimed, away from what she once adored. The recent episode in Cleveland, where the Holy See graciously “permits” two parishes to continue the traditional Latin Mass for two more years, is but the latest act in a long and weary play.

The faithful who have endured fifty years of exile—praying in borrowed chapels, basements, barns, and makeshift sanctuaries—are once again treated as troublesome guests at their own family table. They are fed with permissions, not sacraments; appeased with temporary “indults,” not fatherly assurances. When the shepherd’s staff becomes a bureaucratic pen, mercy turns to management, and the faithful are made to feel as tenants in their Father’s house.

The Fickleness of Policy and the Constancy of Faith

Since Traditionis Custodes, the Church has witnessed a remarkable inversion of pastoral principle. Where once shepherds strove to preserve unity in diversity, we now find diversity enforced in the name of a counterfeit unity. What is presented as “walking together” has too often become walking in circles—bishops issuing contradictory decrees, permissions granted then rescinded, tolerance followed by reprisal.

The faithful who love the ancient Mass are told one day that they are “custodians of division,” and the next that their devotion is a “gift to the Church.” They are praised for their reverence, then punished for their fidelity. It is a cycle of baiting and gaslighting—confusing, exhausting, and profoundly uncharitable. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and yet the very walls of tradition are being deliberately shaken by those who claim to protect it.

The Nature of True Obedience

Obedience in the Catholic sense has never meant servile compliance with novelty. It means docility to the truth, to the perennial faith once delivered to the saints. It was not obedience to error that sanctified Athanasius or preserved the Church in the Arian crisis, but obedience to God over men. So too today, the faithful who cling to the Mass of Ages do so not from rebellion but from fidelity—to Christ, to His Sacrifice, and to the unbroken voice of the Church through the centuries.

We obey the living Magisterium insofar as it is in harmony with the Deposit of Faith. When it departs from that harmony—when it demands acceptance of ambiguity as doctrine or novelty as norm—then silence and steadfastness become the truest form of obedience. To “recognise and resist” is not to abandon Peter, but to uphold the faith he was commanded to guard.

Why We Keep Our Distance

For this reason, the Old Roman Apostolate and the Priestly Society of St Pius X maintain a cautious distance from those structures which have allowed the faith and liturgy to be compromised. This is not separation born of pride, but of prudence. We cannot build upon shifting sand, nor pledge fidelity to documents that redefine truth by the fashions of the age.

The Tradition cannot be negotiated, parceled out by diocesan committees, or measured by Roman indulgence. It belongs not to any particular pontificate, but to the Mystical Body itself. The Mass of our forefathers is not an “extraordinary form”; it is the ordinary voice of the Church’s prayer across the centuries. To preserve it is not an act of nostalgia but an act of conscience.

The Light Beyond the Eclipse

What, then, are we to make of these alternating gestures—approval and suppression, concession and chastisement? They are the tremors of an institution in confusion, uncertain whether to embrace its inheritance or erase it. Yet the eclipse of truth is never its extinction.

There will come a time, perhaps sooner than many think, when the young priests who now whisper the Latin Mass in borrowed chapels will be the bishops of a new generation. Then, the Tradition will again be spoken aloud, not as an exception but as the norm. For the truth, once suppressed, has a way of breaking through the cracks of every false peace.

Until then, let us remain faithful—not to policies, but to principles; not to shifting decrees, but to the unchanging Word of God. Let us continue the work of sanctifying souls through the liturgy that formed saints, sustained martyrs, and glorified God for a thousand years before the present confusion began.

The Church may forget Herself for a time, but the Bride of Christ cannot divorce her own Tradition. The shepherds may falter, but the sheep still know the voice of the Shepherd. And we who keep that voice alive—however faintly, however scorned—do so not in defiance of the Church, but in defence of her soul.

Background at Nuntiatoria

The Darlington Nurses and the Defence of Women’s Dignity

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It began, as many moral crises do, with something small — a room, a rule, and a refusal to be silent. At Darlington Memorial Hospital in County Durham, a group of women working in one of Britain’s most trusted public institutions found that the ordinary expectation of modesty and safety could no longer be taken for granted. When a male colleague identifying as female began to use the women’s changing room — despite confirming that he was not taking hormones and was trying to conceive a child with his girlfriend — the women raised concerns. They did not call for punishment, only for privacy. But management’s response was to order them to undergo “re-education,” to expand their “mindset” and become more “inclusive.”¹

When twenty-six nurses signed a collective letter to human resources, they were removed from their own changing area and assigned to a converted office that opened directly onto a public corridor. The new space, they said, was degrading, exposed, and humiliating. One of the nurses, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, later described suffering panic attacks at the thought of changing in front of a biological male.² What began as a question of policy soon became a question of conscience.

The women sought help from the Christian Legal Centre, which began representing them in what is now an active employment tribunal case alleging harassment, indirect discrimination, and breach of workplace safety regulations.³ Their stand quickly drew public sympathy as ordinary people recognised in their plight something emblematic of a wider unease: the steady dismantling of boundaries once considered self-evident — between man and woman, truth and fiction, reality and ideology.

The nurses’ case inspired a petition launched by CitizenGO under the title Stand with Darlington Nurses for Safe Spaces for Women.⁴ The petition calls for government and NHS leaders to reaffirm women’s legal right to single-sex changing rooms and toilets, grounded in biological sex rather than subjective identity. By the end of 2024, nearly 50,000 people had signed, transforming what began as a local workplace dispute into a national cause.⁵ It stands now as a rallying point for those who refuse to see womanhood reduced to a feeling or belief.

On 28 October 2024, representatives of the nurses met with Health Secretary Wes Streeting in Whitehall to deliver the petition in person. Streeting, though a Labour minister, spoke with unexpected candour. “Sex is biological,” he said, “and single-sex spaces matter.”⁶ It was a rare moment in British politics — an acknowledgment that compassion cannot be divorced from truth. Yet it also highlighted the contradiction now at the heart of public policy: the attempt to uphold women’s rights while redefining what a woman is.

At issue is not mere etiquette but the law itself. Under the Equality Act 2010, “sex” and “gender reassignment” are both protected characteristics. NHS trusts have adopted internal policies allowing employees to use the facilities of their chosen gender identity, claiming to act in compliance with equality duties. Yet the same law allows for single-sex services and spaces “if it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”⁷ Recent judgments — including rulings cited by the Supreme Court and the Scottish appeals process — have reaffirmed that the term “woman” in legislation refers to biological sex, not self-identification.⁸ The contradiction, therefore, lies not in the law but in its misapplication.

For the Darlington nurses, this is not an abstract legal puzzle but a daily moral trial. They have spoken of losing faith in their profession’s leadership, of being mocked as “bigots,” and of finding solace only in the solidarity of their colleagues and the prayers of strangers. Their testimony cuts through the euphemisms of officialdom: they are not asking for privilege, only for the restoration of common sense — that women should not be compelled to undress beside men, however they identify.

The Trust’s “Transitioning in the Workplace” policy, which first allowed the disputed access, remains under review.⁹ The Health and Safety Executive’s 1992 regulations require employers to provide separate facilities for men and women unless private single cubicles are available.¹⁰ Yet such statutory safeguards mean little when administrators, afraid of controversy, interpret every protest as prejudice. In this sense, the Darlington affair reveals more than one institution’s confusion; it exposes the moral cowardice of a nation that no longer believes it may distinguish between truth and error without apology.

The Christian understanding of the body as a revelation of divine order offers an antidote to such confusion. “Male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27) is not a social construct but a statement of ontology. From this truth flow the principles of modesty, privacy, and respect — not as concessions to fragility but as protections of human dignity. A society that denies these foundations cannot long defend the vulnerable, for it loses the very language of protection. When the nurses of Darlington refused to be silent, they acted not merely as employees defending workplace rights, but as witnesses to a deeper reality: that compassion divorced from truth becomes cruelty disguised as care.

To sign the petition in solidarity with these women is not an act of partisanship, but of conscience. It is a declaration that biological truth and moral integrity are not negotiable, that every woman deserves safety and dignity in her workplace, and that society must not sacrifice reality to ideology. The quiet courage of these nurses invites each of us to stand with them — for when truth is silenced in the hospital, it will soon be silenced everywhere.

In every age there are those who stand quietly against the prevailing wind, reminding the world that conscience still breathes beneath the bureaucracy. The Darlington nurses did not seek fame, yet their steadfastness has compelled both politicians and citizens to confront the consequences of ideological conformity. Whether their legal case succeeds or fails, their example has already begun to restore moral clarity. For in defending the meaning of womanhood, they have defended the very notion that truth can still be spoken without fear.

  1. Christian Concern, Safe Spaces for Women: Nurses Meet with Health Secretary, 2024.
  2. Christian Concern, Darlington Nurses Given “Dehumanising” Changing Room, 2024.
  3. Christian Legal Centre, Case File: Darlington Nurses, 2024.
  4. CitizenGO, Stand with Darlington Nurses for Safe Spaces for Women, accessed October 2025.
  5. Christian Concern, Safe Spaces for Women: Nurses Meet with Health Secretary, 2024.
  6. Ibid.
  7. Equality Act 2010, c. 15, Schedule 3, Part 7, s. 26.
  8. For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers [2022] CSIH 4; Re Sex Matters [2023] UKSC 33.
  9. The Times, “NHS Trust Policy Allowed Biological Men to Use Women’s Changing Room,” 2 Nov 2024.
  10. Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992, SI 1992/3004, Reg. 20.

The Orphaned Altar: On the Crisis of Episcopal Fatherhood

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By the Archbishop of Selsey

A Silent Crisis Beneath the Surface
There are moments in the Church’s history when the gravest crises are not those proclaimed in thunder from the pulpits or the decrees of Rome, but those suffered in silence by her sons. Such is the case today, when many priests—those who once came to the altar aflame with the love of God—now minister beneath the shadow of a wounded fatherhood. Their suffering is seldom spoken of; yet it gnaws at the heart of the Church. It is the hidden trial of a generation of priests orphaned not by heresy or persecution, but by the cold neglect of their spiritual fathers.

The crisis of fatherhood—so visible in society, where fathers have abdicated responsibility for their children—has entered the sanctuary. Bishops, once spiritual patriarchs who guided their clergy as sons, have become administrators, functionaries, and managers of decline. Their governance too often resembles the bureaucracy of a corporation rather than the heart of a father. The result is an orphaned presbyterate: weary, mistrustful, and fearful. What begins as administrative efficiency ends as spiritual sterility.

The Fatherhood that Gives Life
The priesthood, by its nature, is relational. Every priest must stand both in persona Christi and sub episcopo, in filial obedience to his bishop as to a father in Christ. The bishop’s ring signifies not only governance but spousal fidelity to the Church and paternal love for his priests. St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “Where the bishop is, there is the Church”¹—yet he also meant that where the bishop is not father, the Church withers into institution.

In the golden age of the Fathers, bishops were shepherds whose charity bound together the presbyterate and flock in a single spirit. St. Gregory the Great described the bishop as “a watchman set upon the walls of Israel”², one who guards both the purity of doctrine and the souls of those under his care. The bishop’s first duty was not strategy but sanctity. He was to pour himself out for his priests, that they might pour themselves out for their people.

But today, that supernatural fatherhood is often eclipsed by managerial pragmatism. Meetings replace mentorship; compliance replaces counsel; fear replaces fraternity. Many priests now dread a summons to the chancery more than the final judgment. They no longer expect paternal concern, only procedural rebuke. In such a climate, holiness becomes private heroism rather than shared pursuit.

The Withering of Fraternal Communion
The health of the Church depends not on policies but on love. When bishops cease to love their priests, when priests no longer feel the warmth of fatherly affection, the supernatural life of the Church begins to bleed away. The priest, deprived of affirmation and guidance, turns inward. Some grow cautious, preaching only what offends no one. Others grow hardened, their zeal dulled by cynicism. Still others, desiring escape, fill their lives with distractions and comforts.

In earlier centuries, the bishop’s household was a school of holiness. Priests were formed by the example of their prelate’s prayer, fasting, and simplicity. But in many dioceses today, bishops live in splendid isolation, surrounded not by brothers but by lawyers, secretaries, and consultants. The house of prayer has become an office; the mitre, a badge of status. The faithful look on, bewildered, while the priests beneath such leadership struggle to remember why they first left all to follow Christ.

The Holy Curé of Ars laboured eighteen hours a day, hearing confessions and offering the Holy Sacrifice with tears. His sanctity rebuilt a nation scarred by revolution. Yet he would be dismissed in many modern dioceses as “too pious,” “too rigid,” or “insufficiently pastoral.” His zeal is out of fashion because the supernatural has been eclipsed by the sociological. Bishops speak of accompaniment but rarely of conversion; of mercy but seldom of repentance. They wish to smell like the sheep, yet too often smell only of politics.

Bureaucracy and the Eclipse of the Supernatural
One of the great deceptions of our time is to confuse activity with vitality. Endless consultations, synodal reports, and policy documents give the illusion of motion while the soul of the Church languishes. The very structures designed to support priests have become labyrinths of paperwork. The priest who once found solace in his bishop’s blessing now finds himself mired in compliance forms and risk assessments.

It is not administration that kills, but the substitution of administration for fatherhood. When the shepherd delegates the care of souls to committees, his priests are left to fend for themselves. “Feed my sheep,” said the Lord to Peter³—not “survey them,” nor “appoint a task force.” Yet many priests live as though their father has forgotten those words. The Church cannot be governed as a corporation without ceasing to be a family.

The Psychological and Spiritual Toll
Behind the statistics of declining vocations lies a deeper tragedy. Priests today are among the loneliest men in society. Studies show widespread distrust between clergy and bishops⁴; many confess to isolation, anxiety, and fear of reprisal. The priest who preaches the moral law risks complaint; the one who maintains reverence in the liturgy risks accusation of rigidity. In such conditions, virtue becomes suspect and mediocrity safe.

Some priests respond with stoic endurance; others withdraw into a safe professionalism that avoids controversy but also avoids conversion. A few, deprived of spiritual fatherhood, lose themselves to the very world they were ordained to sanctify. Thus the bishop’s failure to father becomes the devil’s victory twice over—first by silencing truth, then by corrupting its messenger.

A Mirror of the World’s Fatherlessness
The collapse of paternal identity among bishops mirrors the world’s wider loss of fatherhood. The same cultural forces that have made earthly fathers absent, fearful, or effeminate have also weakened spiritual fathers. Many bishops, trained in the post-conciliar decades of experimentation and ambiguity, have never known genuine paternal formation themselves. They were not taught to command with love, nor to love with authority. They are products of a therapeutic age that mistrusts both discipline and sacrifice.

And yet the Church can no more survive without fathers than a family can. When bishops cease to be fathers, priests become orphans, and the faithful—children of those priests—grow rootless. The contagion of fatherlessness spreads from chancery to rectory, from rectory to home, until the very idea of authority is despised. The devil, who hates the name “Father,” rejoices in such a hierarchy.

The Patristic Measure of True Shepherds
The Fathers of the Church would scarcely recognize many of today’s episcopal priorities. St. Cyprian taught that a bishop must be “united in heart with his priests, sharing their labours, their tears, and their dangers”⁵. St. John Chrysostom warned that the bishop who neglects his clergy commits a sin against the Body of Christ. St. Gregory Nazianzen resigned his see rather than become a mere functionary, declaring that “to lead others, one must first be purified oneself.”

This is the pattern of episcopal life the Church once held up as ideal: ascetical, paternal, prophetic. The bishop was not an administrator of budgets but a man of prayer, whose tears could baptize a diocese. When such men led, their priests followed willingly—even unto martyrdom. The vitality of the early Church sprang not from programs but from the living transmission of holiness.

The Roots of Renewal
The renewal of the priesthood will not begin in offices or conferences. It will begin when bishops again become fathers, and priests sons. True fatherhood does not flatter; it corrects, encourages, and forgives. It does not isolate; it draws near. It does not fear holiness in its sons; it rejoices in it. Bishops who imitate Christ the Good Shepherd will attract vocations even in desolate times, because love always begets life.

What can the faithful do in the meantime? First, pray and fast for priests and bishops. The Rosary is no longer optional in this war for souls. Offer reparation for the sins of shepherds, but also for their wounds. Many bishops act as they do because they have forgotten that they, too, were once priests trembling at the altar. Pray that they may recover the simplicity of their first Mass.

Second, give your priests the warmth of genuine friendship. Invite them into your homes. Encourage them when they preach the truth. Write to them when they are maligned. Many have never heard a layman say, “Father, your priesthood has changed my life.” Such words can rekindle hope more powerfully than any policy.

Finally, resist the temptation to despair. The priesthood belongs to Christ, not to bureaucrats. The same Lord who called Peter from his nets can still raise up saints from the ruins of clericalism. When the hierarchy forgets the Cross, God raises prophets from the laity. The Church’s renewal will come not from strategy but from sanctity.

The Model of the Crucified Father
Christ on the Cross is the image of every true bishop: arms outstretched, heart pierced, blood spent for his children. In Him, authority and love are one. The world can imitate compassion, but it cannot imitate Calvary. It is there that spiritual fatherhood finds its meaning—not in power, but in sacrifice. The bishop who forgets this becomes an official; the priest who forgets it becomes a hireling.

When bishops once again weep for their priests, and priests once again lay down their lives for their flocks, the Church will bloom even in the desert. Until then, we live in the long Lent of ecclesial fatherlessness. Yet even now, grace is not absent. Among the ruins, there are still fathers who love and sons who obey, still altars where the Lamb is offered in purity and faith. In that hidden fidelity, the Church endures.

A Call to Courage and Contrition
Every bishop should kneel before his priests and ask himself: “Do they see in me the face of Christ? Do they hear in my words the voice of a father?” If the answer is uncertain, repentance is the only path forward. The episcopal palace must again become a house of prayer. The miter must be exchanged for the towel of the servant. The shepherd must rediscover the smell not only of the sheep but of the Cross.

The world’s night grows darker, and the Church must shine the brighter. Our age does not need bishops who blend into the world’s noise, but men who bear within themselves the stillness of Gethsemane. Priests will find their courage again when they see courage on the cathedra; they will become holy when holiness is enthroned above them.

Conclusion: Hope Through Paternal Renewal
The renewal of the Church will not come from the top down, nor from the bottom up, but from heart to heart—from father to son. When bishops once more speak to their priests as fathers, when priests rediscover in their bishop the image of Christ, the channels of grace will open again. And from that grace will flow the courage to confront the world’s darkness with divine charity.

Let us therefore pray not for new strategies but for new hearts: hearts of fathers, hearts of sons, hearts conformed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who is both Priest and Victim, Shepherd and Lamb. Then the orphaned priests of our time will cease to wander, and the Church will once more be known not for her structures, but for her sanctity.

  1. St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8:1.
  2. St. Gregory the Great, Regula Pastoralis (Book II, ch. 4).
  3. John 21:17.
  4. The Catholic Project, Catholic University of America, Survey of American Catholic Priests (2022).
  5. St. Cyprian of Carthage, De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate, 5.

The Mute Martyrs: Spain, Truth, and the Triumph of Conscience

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By the Archbishop of Selsey

When the Provincial Court of Málaga acquitted two Catholic priests and a journalist accused of “hate speech” for criticising radical Islam, it did more than correct a miscarriage of justice. It restored, if only momentarily, a flicker of sanity to a Europe increasingly afraid of its own Christian conscience.

The Crime of Speaking Clearly
Fr Custodio Ballester and Fr Jesús Calvo were not zealots of intolerance, but witnesses to truth. Their supposed crime was to say aloud what many silently know: that ideologies rooted in coercion and violence cannot be reconciled with divine charity or human freedom.¹ For this they were denounced by the Association of Muslims Against Islamophobia and dragged through the courts for nearly a decade.

The priests were accused of violating Article 510 of the Spanish Penal Code, which criminalises the incitement of hatred.² Yet their statements, though forthright, did not call for violence or discrimination; they called for repentance and discernment. To confuse the two is to make law itself a servant of error.

In his article The Impossible Dialogue with Islam, Ballester did not vilify Muslims; he questioned the ideology that inspires persecution of Christians in the Middle East and suppression of conscience in Europe.³ For this, he was first condemned by a lower court and only later vindicated by a higher one. How telling that in modern Spain, the plea for reasoned dialogue is branded “hate,” while genuine intolerance parades as virtue.

The Dictatorship of Relativism
The court’s ruling on 20 October 2025 rightly concluded that “not even intolerant or offensive speech loses protection if it does not promote hatred or violence.”⁴ This principle—so obvious in the light of natural law—has become controversial in a Europe that prizes sensitivity above truth. The acquittal is therefore not only legal but moral: it re-affirms the right to speak the truth even when the world calls it unkind.

We are witnessing what Pope Benedict XVI called a “dictatorship of relativism”⁵—an order where every conviction must apologise for existing, and every dogma must disguise itself as dialogue. Such relativism disarms the Church, replacing her bold confession with timid sentiment. When the priest is forbidden to name evil, society forgets how to distinguish it.

Freedom Ordered to Truth
True freedom of speech is not the liberty to wound, but the liberty to warn. Christian charity requires clarity; silence in the face of error is not compassion but complicity. The Málaga court, perhaps unwittingly, has upheld a profoundly Catholic truth: that freedom detached from truth is licence, but freedom exercised for truth is holiness.

Fr Ballester, speaking outside the courthouse, declared: “If proclaiming the Gospel in public becomes illegal, Spain will cease to be the land of martyrs and become the land of the mute.”⁶ His words recall the courage of St Vincent Ferrer and St John of Ávila, who also faced powers that feared the light of truth. The question before modern Europe is the same: shall we suffer to speak, or consent to be silent?

A Call to Christian Witness
The outcome in Málaga should strengthen every Christian who dares to defend faith and reason in public life. It proves that truth can still be spoken, even when costly. Yet the length and bitterness of the trial remind us that the battle is not legal but spiritual. What is on trial in our age is not merely expression—it is the Word Himself, “made flesh and dwelling among us.”⁷

When laws of “tolerance” are turned against the Gospel, Christians must respond not with resentment, but with steadfastness. Our answer must be witness. For Christ has told us: “The truth shall make you free.”⁸ But He did not say it would make us safe.

Nuntiatoria article for background

Footnotes
¹ “Freedom of speech and religion in play as Spanish priest prosecuted for denouncing radical Islam,” Catholic World Report, 3 Oct 2025.
² Código Penal de España, art. 510 (Incitación al odio).
³ Fr Custodio Ballester, El diálogo imposible con el Islam, 2017.
⁴ “Spanish court acquits priests and journalist accused of hate crime for criticising radical Islam,” Catholic Herald, 20 Oct 2025.
⁵ Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at the Pro Eligendo Pontifice Mass, 18 April 2005.
⁶ Abogados Cristianos press statement, Málaga, 20 Oct 2025.
⁷ John 1:14.
⁸ John 8:32.

A Primer for Catholic Parents: The Principles of Catholic Teaching on “Sex Education”

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By the Archbishop of Selsey

The Parental Duty in Catholic Education
When Catholic parents entrust their children to schools established by the Church, they rightly expect that the instruction provided will be faithful to Catholic doctrine. This duty extends not only to the moral content of teaching but also to the subjects taught. The Church has always upheld a clear and comprehensive body of doctrine, transmitted from the apostles, against which mere human theories or social trends hold no weight. Yet in many Catholic schools today, especially in the West, civil authorities have pressured educational institutions to adopt programmes of so-called “sex education” that conflict with both divine and natural law.

The Primary Educators of the Child
It is indeed necessary that children, at an appropriate time, be instructed about the realities of human reproduction and the moral obligations that accompany these truths. However, the responsibility for this instruction belongs to parents alone. This duty is given directly by God and cannot be rightfully taken over by the state, by educators, or even by bishops. Parents may, for practical reasons, delegate certain aspects of education—such as mathematics or science—to others who possess the requisite expertise, but this delegation always proceeds from the authority of the parents and remains under their supervision.¹

The Limits of Delegation
The Church teaches that parents, strengthened by the grace of the sacrament of marriage, have the responsibility and privilege of evangelising their children and forming them in virtue.² Teachers, priests, and catechists share in this mission only insofar as parents freely authorise them to assist in what properly belongs to the family. Certain subjects—such as the training in personal virtue, purity, and moral discernment—cannot be delegated. The state may require that citizens be educated for civic duties, but its jurisdiction ends where the intimate and moral formation of the child begins.

The Superiority of the Family over the State
The Church firmly rejects any attempt by governments to replace or control parental authority. Leo XIII warns that when the state “sets aside the parent and sets up a State supervision,” it violates natural justice and destroys the structure of the home.³ The Catechism reminds us that the family is the primary school of solidarity and virtue, and that parents must protect their children from “compromising and degrading influences.”⁴ Indeed, Leo XIII affirms that the family is “a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State.”⁵

This principle is also recognised in civil law. The European Convention on Human Rights explicitly protects the rights of parents to educate their children in conformity with their religious and philosophical convictions (Article 2, Protocol 1) and recognises family life as a sphere of privacy and protection against state interference (Article 8). These provisions reflect what the Church has always taught—that the family possesses rights anterior to the State, grounded in natural law and divine order.

Moral and Practical Formation
Parents naturally instruct their children in language, manners, modesty, and virtue. To neglect these areas or to surrender them to institutions is to abdicate a sacred trust. Among these responsibilities lies the duty to educate children about human reproduction and sexuality—matters that require both moral maturity and personal sensitivity. No classroom teacher can judge with precision the appropriate time or method for every child, since these depend upon individual development, temperament, and grace.

Cautions on Implementation and Parental Vigilance
In recent years, Catholic-approved Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) programmes—such as Life to the Full by Ten Ten Resources—have been widely adopted, reportedly by the majority of Catholic schools in England and Wales.⁶ While the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW) and the Catholic Education Service (CES) state that RSE should promote chastity, dignity, and respect for life, traditional Catholic commentators have expressed serious concerns about the way such programmes are implemented.

Traditionalists, including the Society of Saint Pius X (UK District), warn that some RSE programmes risk undermining the parental role and present sexuality in an overly naturalistic or psychological manner, divorced from the supernatural virtue of chastity.⁷ They argue that materials sometimes prioritise “risk mitigation” or “self-esteem” over moral formation and fail to acknowledge humanity’s wounded nature and need for grace.⁸ The danger, they note, is that RSE lessons become exercises in information rather than formation—transmitting biological facts without grounding them in moral and theological truth.

Scholars examining traditional Catholic resistance to sex education likewise record the same concern: that Catholic schools, even when guided by Church documents, can inadvertently “supplant rather than supplement” the parental role.⁹ In mixed or collective settings, discussions of sexuality risk becoming occasions of curiosity or embarrassment rather than of virtue. The Church has consistently warned against “collective or public sex education” that ignores the discretion and modesty owed to each child’s stage of development.¹⁰

When RSE Becomes a Contravention of Parental Rights
In principle, Relationships and Sex Education can be delivered within Catholic schools without violating parental rights. However, in practice, such rights are frequently compromised or constrained by state mandates and the secular assumptions underlying modern educational frameworks.

RSE contravenes parental rights when it:

  • introduces sexual or moral content without parental knowledge or consent;
  • normalises behaviours contrary to Catholic moral teaching, such as contraception, cohabitation, or same-sex acts;
  • pre-empts parental judgment about a child’s readiness for such instruction;
  • or discourages withdrawal through social pressure or institutional policy.

These practices directly violate both the natural-law right of parents to form their children in moral truth and the legal right protected under Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees education in conformity with parental convictions.¹³ They also conflict with the Church’s explicit teaching that “it is incumbent on parents to strain every nerve to ward off such an outrage, and to hold exclusive authority to direct the education of their offspring.”¹²

The Poison of Naturalism
The recurring fault identified by traditional Catholic critics is the persistence of naturalism—the belief that moral formation can be achieved through reason or social conditioning alone, without recourse to divine grace. As Pius XI explains, such approaches “refuse to recognize the inborn weakness of human nature” and disregard “the means of grace” by which purity is preserved.¹¹ The Church teaches that because fallen man bears the wounds of original sin—ignorance, malice, weakness, and concupiscence—mere human instruction cannot preserve chastity without spiritual formation and sacramental life.

Parental Vigilance and Partnership
For this reason, parents must be vigilant regarding what is taught in the name of “Catholic education.” They should review all RSE materials used by their children’s schools, exercise their right to consultation and, if necessary, withdraw their children from any lessons inconsistent with Catholic doctrine. True partnership between home and school means not merely compliance or trust, but collaboration under parental authority. The right to know, to approve, and to object is not only a civil entitlement but a duty arising from the parental vocation.

A Call to Restore Catholic Integrity
Catholic schools must remember that they exist not to reflect the prevailing culture but to redeem it. To comply with statutory RSE obligations while neglecting the Catholic vision of purity and grace is to betray their mission. The teaching of human sexuality must always be presented as part of the call to holiness—never as a technical or social matter detached from faith. Where government policy or secular expectations conflict with divine law, Catholic schools must stand firm in fidelity to Christ and to the Magisterium.

As Pius XI urged, parents must “strain every nerve to ward off such an outrage” as the corruption of family life by worldly influences and to “hold exclusive authority to direct the education of their offspring.”¹² In our time, this vigilance is not merely prudent; it is indispensable to preserving innocence, virtue, and faith in the hearts of children.

¹ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2225–2226.
² Ibid.
³ Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 14.
⁴ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2224.
⁵ Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 12.
⁶ Catholic Education Service, “Relationships and Sex Education,” catholiceducation.org.uk.
⁷ Society of Saint Pius X (UK District), “Sex-Ed in Catholic Schools,” fsspx.uk.
⁸ B.R. Taylorian, The Opposition of Traditionalist Catholics to Sex Education (University of Central Lancashire, 2024).
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Society of Saint Pius X, “The Catholic Attitude to Sex Education,” fsspx.uk.
¹¹ Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri (1929), 65–67, citing Silvio Antoniano, On the Christian Education of Children (“The Golden Treatise”).
¹² Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, 42.
¹³ European Convention on Human Rights, Article 2 of Protocol 1; Article 8.