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This week’s Nuntiatoria w/c 09.08.26

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09.08.26 Nuntiatoria CXVIII: Veritas Domini manet in aeternum


This edition of Nuntiatoria is framed by the motto Veritas Domini manet in aeternum — “The truth of the Lord endureth for ever.” It examines how enduring Catholic truth is challenged by modern attempts to redefine reality through sentiment, ideology, ecclesiastical ambiguity, political pressure and linguistic manipulation. From the SSPX, China, Cardinal Sarah, Lorenzo Milani and the decline of Latin, to sexual identity politics, emotionalism, academia and public discourse, the edition insists that truth cannot be altered by fashion or consensus. The Immaculate Heart of Mary, Saint John Vianney and the Gospel Ephpheta offer the Catholic response: to receive truth, obey it, speak it clearly and live by it.

This week’s Nuntiatoria w/c 02.08.26

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02.08.26 Nuntiatoria CXVII: Res Sunt Quod Sunt

Nuntiatoria CXVII examines a series of disputes united by the tension between institutional narratives and observable reality: Cardinal Roche and the traditional Roman Mass; Rome’s handling of the SSPX crisis; Cardinal Hollerich and women’s ordination; the continuing institutionalisation of synodality; secrecy surrounding the Rupnik proceedings; Amnesty International’s apology following its controversial briefing; the publicly funded “Queer Milk” project; the recovery of vocational education; and the Old Roman response to ecclesial disorder. Under the theme Res Sunt Quod Sunt — “Things Are What They Are” — the edition argues for distinctions which neither ecclesiastical nor secular fashion can safely abolish.

A Convergence of Dissonance: An Unconscionable Confusion

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When the guardians of doctrine behave as though doctrine does not bind them, the scandal is not external—it is within.

What took place at the installation of Dame Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury, was not an exercise in ecumenical sensitivity, but a public contradiction: the Roman Catholic hierarchy participating in a liturgical act whose central claims it formally denies.

The facts are not contested. Archbishop Richard Moth, newly of Westminster proclaimed a lesson within the rite.¹ Kurt, Cardinal Koch, acting as envoy of the Holy See, joined in common prayer and then delivered a message from the Pope offering congratulations and invoking divine blessing upon Mullally’s ministry.² These actions occurred within a formal liturgical and ecumenical context, not in private diplomacy.³

These are not incidental courtesies. They are liturgical acts. And liturgical acts signify.

Set beside this, the teaching of the Church is neither obscure nor negotiable. In Apostolicae Curae, Anglican orders are declared “absolutely null and utterly void.”⁴ In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, it is taught definitively that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women, a judgment confirmed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.⁵ The Council of Trent affirms Holy Orders as a true sacrament conferring an indelible character.⁶ Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis Christi teaches that the hierarchical structure of the Church is divinely instituted and essential.⁷ Pope Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum insists that unity must rest upon full agreement in faith and sacramental life.⁸ Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos rejects forms of ecumenism that proceed by bracketing doctrinal truth.⁹ Even Unitatis Redintegratio insists that ecumenism must proceed “in fidelity to the truth.”¹⁰ Dominus Iesus reaffirms that communities lacking valid episcopate and Eucharist do not possess the Church in the proper sense.¹¹

This is the doctrinal framework. It is clear, consistent, and repeatedly reaffirmed.

What occurred at Canterbury stands in direct opposition to it.

A Catholic bishop reads Scripture within a rite that presumes a priesthood the Church says does not exist. A Cardinal prays within that same rite and then delivers papal congratulations to the one installed into an office the Church insists cannot be sacramentally real. A papal message is received within a ceremony whose central claim—the conferral of episcopal authority—is, in Catholic doctrine, a nullity.

This is not nuance. It is contradiction.

And it is presented as though it were edifying.

The faithful are not confused because the teaching is unclear. They are confused because the teaching is clear—and contradicted. They are told one thing and shown another, and then expected to reconcile the two without questioning either. They are instructed that apostolic succession is real, that Holy Orders are ontological, that the Church cannot alter their substance—and then shown, unmistakably, that these truths may be treated as negotiable in practice when circumstances demand it.

This is not pastoral care. It is institutional double-speak.

The modern term is gaslighting, and here it applies with precision. Reality is affirmed in one register and contradicted in another, and those who observe the contradiction are expected to question their perception rather than the coherence of what they are witnessing.

The symbolism compounds the problem. The ring given by Pope Paul VI to Michael Ramsey, once a carefully delimited gesture of goodwill, now appears in a context where it inevitably suggests continuity and recognition. Yet this is precisely what Catholic doctrine denies. The symbol affirms what the theology rejects.

And in such circumstances, the symbol prevails—because it is what is seen.

What renders the episode not merely incoherent but scandalous is the contrast it exposes. The same Catholic hierarchy willing to extend liturgical participation and public courtesy in this setting will not extend comparable recognition to the world’s traditional Catholic bishops—men who profess precisely the sacramental theology articulated at Trent and reaffirmed throughout the magisterium. They are not invited to proclaim Scripture, not welcomed to robe in choir, not incorporated into public rites. They are held at a distance.

Those who hold the Church’s doctrine without compromise are excluded. Those who reject it are received.

This is not inconsistency. It is inversion.

It is precisely this inversion that Pope Pius X identified in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: a system in which doctrine remains formally intact while its practical force is dissolved; where contradictions are not resolved but managed; where clarity is preserved in text and abandoned in action.

There was a time when such contradictions would have been resolved by clarity. Now they are managed by choreography.

One might have expected the work of Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission to prevent precisely this outcome. It assumed that unity required truth and that disagreements concerning ministry and authority were decisive. Yet developments—explicitly acknowledged even in contemporary Vatican commentary—have introduced irreconcilable divergence.¹² And yet the gestures continue, as though nothing definitive has occurred.

This is not ecumenism ordered to truth. It is ecumenism ordered to appearance.

The cost is borne by the faithful. They are required to hold together what cannot be reconciled: to affirm what they are taught while disregarding what they are shown; to accept that participation does not imply recognition even as it visibly does.

They are asked to ignore the evidence of their own eyes.

A more honest course would have required nothing extraordinary. Not denunciation, but coherence. A refusal to participate in what one does not recognise. A willingness to let absence speak where presence confuses. A recognition that charity without truth is not charity at all.

If doctrine binds, it must bind in action. If it does not bind in action, it will not bind in belief. And if it does not bind in belief, it will not bind at all.

If the Church believes what she teaches, she must act accordingly.

If she does not, then the problem is no longer ecumenical.

It is internal.

And it is grave.

¹ Order of Service / eyewitness reporting of Bishop Richard Moth proclaiming a lesson at the installation liturgy.
² Vatican News, “Pope Leo XIV sends message to Archbishop of Canterbury,” March 2026.
³ Archbishop of Canterbury / Lambeth Palace official report on installation and ecumenical participation.
⁴ Apostolicae Curae §36.
⁵ Ordinatio Sacerdotalis; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Responsum ad dubium (1995).
⁶ Council of Trent, Session XXIII.
⁷ Mystici Corporis Christi.
⁸ Satis Cognitum.
⁹ Mortalium Animos.
¹⁰ Unitatis Redintegratio §11.
¹¹ Dominus Iesus §17.
¹² Vatican News, reporting on ongoing Anglican–Catholic dialogue acknowledging “new differences,” March 2026.

Can You Build a Future on Borrowed Faith? Civilisational Exhaustion and the Moral Credit of Britain

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Tradition or Accommodation: Why the Church Cannot Heal the World While Sharing Its Assumptions

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By the Archbishop of Selsey

Modernist structures, liturgical compromise, and coalition politics cannot restore what they presuppose as negotiable. Only Tradition—received, binding, and lived—can confront the age.

There is no serious challenge to the contemporary culture that does not first confront the modernist culture entrenched within the Church herself. The Church is not merely a passive victim of the radical secularisation that accelerated in the 1960s; she absorbed its assumptions, vocabulary, and methods, and in doing so forfeited much of her capacity to act as a genuine counter-culture. A Church shaped by the categories of late modernity cannot credibly oppose the consequences of late modernity.¹ ² ³

The secular revolution of the post-war decades was philosophical before it was political. It enthroned autonomy over truth, experience over doctrine, process over form, and subjectivity over metaphysics. When these principles entered ecclesial life—through theological experimentation, pastoral pragmatism, and a systematic aversion to dogmatic clarity—the Church’s prophetic voice was dulled. A Church uncertain about God, man, sin, grace, judgment, and authority cannot meaningfully confront a culture that denies them outright.² ³ ⁴

This internal contradiction explains the failure of so many ecclesial strategies aimed at “engagement,” “dialogue,” and “accompaniment.” Detached from doctrinal precision and moral authority, such approaches merely accept the grammar of the age and attempt to baptise it. What results is not evangelisation but accommodation: the Church becomes a chaplain to the zeitgeist rather than its judge. Having internalised the logic of secularism—relativism, historicism, and therapeutic moralism—she finds herself incapable of resisting it externally.² ³ ⁴

It is precisely here that the incoherence of certain contemporary “traditionalist” projects becomes evident. Many claim to advocate for Tradition from within the structures of the post-conciliar Church while simultaneously defending the Novus Ordo Missae and Pope Benedict XVI’s twin strategies of a liturgical “reform of the reform” and a doctrinal “hermeneutic of continuity.” This position attempts to resolve a real rupture through interpretive and aesthetic means, without addressing its underlying causes.⁵ ⁶

The Novus Ordo Missae is not a neutral vessel awaiting more reverent implementation. It is the liturgical expression of a reconfigured ecclesiology and anthropology: dialogical rather than sacrificial, horizontal rather than vertical, didactic rather than propitiatory. Its architecture of options, its pastoral logic, and its underlying principles presuppose precisely those modern assumptions—adaptability, accessibility, and relevance—that mirror the broader secular project. To defend this rite while claiming to mount a serious resistance to modernity is to underestimate the formative power of liturgy itself. The law of prayer does not merely reflect belief; it generates it.⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹

A recent intervention by Fr Matthew Solomon brings this fault line into sharper focus. Responding to appeals that reduce the question of liturgy to reverence or subjective impact, Solomon insists that such arguments collapse Tradition into preference unless they are grounded in the prior and more fundamental question of obligation: what must be handed on. Reverence, he argues, is neither an impression nor a sensibility, but the fruit of obedience to what the Church has received and is duty-bound to transmit. Where the Novus Ordo Missae is treated as a neutral form capable of redemption through improved execution, Solomon’s analysis implicitly rejects the premise altogether. If the Church’s mission is fidelity to what has been handed down, then the liturgy itself becomes a matter of judgment rather than accommodation.¹

The same unresolved contradiction reappears in broader attempts to build a “traditional coalition” without first resolving the theological questions that divide it. Calls to “unite the clans,” most notably associated with Michael Matt, proceed from a strategic rather than doctrinal diagnosis of the crisis. They assume that the problem is fragmentation among conservatives, rather than disagreement about authority, continuity, and the legitimacy of the post-conciliar settlement. Unity is thus pursued as an end in itself, rather than as the fruit of shared first principles.¹⁰

The same pattern is visible in projects such as the Catholic Identity Conference and LifeSite’s Roman Forum. These platforms often gather speakers who are rightly critical of secular modernity, moral collapse, and episcopal failure, yet who remain fundamentally divided on the causes of the crisis and the status of the reforms that followed the Council. The price of maintaining the coalition is silence—or studied ambiguity—on the very questions that determine whether Tradition is merely preserved as a theme or restored as a governing principle.¹¹ ¹²

This logic also explains the limited and ultimately compromising role played by institutes such as the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest and the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. There is no denying that these communities have helped many souls. They have preserved elements of traditional liturgy, fostered vocations, and offered refuge from the most egregious abuses of the reformed rites. In that narrow sense, they have helped. But they have not furthered the cause of Tradition as such, because their continued existence depends upon accepting the post-conciliar framework as normative and beyond adjudication.¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷

By design, these institutes bracket the central question—what must be handed on—and replace it with a pastoral workaround. Tradition may be preserved here, by permission, as an exception within a reformed system. The cost of that permission is silence: silence about the principles of the liturgical reform, silence about rupture, silence about the authority that displaced the Roman Rite and reserves the right to suppress it again. In exchange for recognition and stability, Tradition is rendered conditional, provisional, and structurally fragile.¹³ ¹⁴

This is precisely why the efforts of bodies such as the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, the Old Roman Apostolate, the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, and the Servants of the Holy Family, together with similar societies, are not merely helpful but vital to the continuance of Tradition in any meaningful sense.¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹ ²² ²³ ²⁴

What unites these bodies is not a shared temperament or tactical posture, but a shared refusal to accept the post-conciliar settlement as the unquestionable norm within which Tradition must survive by tolerance. They begin instead from the conviction that Tradition is the Church’s rule of faith and worship, not an optional charism, and that extraordinary measures are justified when that inheritance is displaced, marginalised, or rendered conditional.¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²²

The SSPX, whatever disputes surround its canonical situation, has consistently refused to collapse Tradition into preference or aesthetics. Its founding rationale was not to create a “traditional option” within a pluralist Church, but to preserve intact the Church’s doctrinal, liturgical, and sacerdotal formation at a moment of acute rupture. It named the crisis as doctrinal before it was pastoral, and liturgical as the privileged site where that doctrinal rupture was embodied. In doing so, it preserved not merely external forms, but the internal logic of Tradition as something binding, objective, and transmissible.¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²²

The Old Roman Apostolate proceeds from a similar principle, though by a distinct historical and canonical path. By maintaining sacramental life, priestly formation, and episcopal governance rooted in pre-conciliar theology and liturgy—while explicitly orienting itself toward reconciliation on the basis of doctrinal continuity rather than accommodation—it demonstrates a truth sanctioned institutes cannot: that Tradition does not survive by permission. It survives by fidelity exercised under necessity.²¹ ²²

The same logic is evident in the witness of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer and the Servants of the Holy Family. These communities have resisted the reduction of religious life to pastoral utility or ideological alignment, and instead preserved a monastic and familial vision grounded in authority, asceticism, sacrificial priesthood, and the integral transmission of the Faith. Their importance lies not in numbers, but in coherence. Where Tradition is treated as obligatory, it becomes resilient; where it is treated as negotiable, it becomes fragile.²³ ²⁴

Taken together, these bodies function as living repositories of memory, practice, and formation. They ensure that the Roman Rite is not merely archived, aestheticised, or nostalgically admired, but lived. They preserve a priestly identity that is sacrificial rather than managerial, doctrinal rather than therapeutic. They keep alive an ecclesial worldview in which authority is real, doctrine determinate, and worship received rather than constructed.⁸ ⁹ ²⁵

By contrast, projects that seek unity without adjudication, or preservation without judgment, may delay decline but cannot reverse it. They depend upon goodwill, episcopal tolerance, and institutional stability—each of which can be withdrawn. The efforts of the SSPX, the Old Roman Apostolate, the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, the Servants of the Holy Family, and similar societies rest instead on clarity of principle: on knowing what must be handed on, and accepting the cost of handing it on.¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²²

In this sense, they are not obstacles to unity but witnesses to its proper foundation. Unity in the Church has never arisen from negotiated compromise or managed diversity, but from shared submission to what has been received. Until the wider Church is prepared to face honestly the question these bodies force into the open—what, precisely, must be handed on—their existence will remain not only justified, but indispensable.¹⁸ ²²

Only Tradition—understood not as nostalgia, aesthetic preference, or selective retrieval, but as the living transmission of revealed truth—breaks this paralysis. Tradition is fixed in doctrine, objective in sacramental form, authoritative in moral teaching, and supernatural in horizon. It alone provides a metaphysical account of reality that contradicts modern secular assumptions at their root. It restores the Church’s capacity to say no—to error, to sin, and to false notions of freedom—because it is grounded in something prior to and higher than the modern world.²⁵ ²⁶ ²⁷

The Church will not renew society by mirroring it, moderating it, or managing its decline. She can only renew society by standing outside the ideological framework of the age and calling it to conversion. That stance is impossible so long as modernist assumptions remain unchallenged within ecclesial structures themselves. A Church formed by the categories of the 1960s cannot meaningfully oppose the consequences of the 1960s.²³ ⁴

The recovery of Tradition, therefore, is not an internal preference dispute, a stylistic quarrel, or a matter of coalition politics; it is a civilisational necessity. To advocate for Tradition while defending the structures that displaced it is to fight the disease with its own symptoms. Until the Church reclaims her own inheritance—her theology, her liturgy, her moral clarity, and her supernatural orientation—she will remain unable to challenge the culture she helped to form. Only a full retrieval of Tradition, received rather than reconstructed, allows the Church once again to become a sign of contradiction to the age rather than a reflection of it.²⁵ ²⁶ ²⁷

  1. Fr Matthew Solomon, A Disagreement with Phil Lawler, 19 December 2025. frsolomon.substack.com
  2. Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1998).
  3. Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004 [1968]).
  4. Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995).
  5. Joseph Ratzinger, Address to the Roman Curia, 22 December 2005. vatican.va
  6. Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1990).
  7. Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy (San Juan Capistrano: Una Voce Press, 1993).
  8. Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000).
  9. Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005).
  10. Michael Matt, “Unite the Clans,” The Remnant. remnantnewspaper.com
  11. Catholic Identity Conference, official materials. catholicidentityconference.org
  12. LifeSiteNews, Roman Forum event series. lifesitenews.com
  13. Benedict XVI, Summorum Pontificum (2007). vatican.va
  14. Francis, Traditionis Custodes (2021). vatican.va
  15. Diane Montagna, reporting on the 2020 CDF survey on Summorum Pontificum. lifesitenews.com
  16. Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, statutes. institute-christ-king.org
  17. Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, canonical documentation. fssp.com
  18. Marcel Lefebvre, “Declaration of 21 November 1974.”
  19. Marcel Lefebvre, They Have Uncrowned Him (Angelus Press).
  20. Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, doctrinal statements. sspx.org
  21. Old Roman Apostolate, doctrinal and canonical materials. selsey.org
  22. Canonical principles of necessity: 1917 CIC; 1983 CIC, canon 1323.
  23. Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, constitutions. transalpine-redemptorists.org
  24. Servants of the Holy Family, constitutions. servantsoftheholyfamily.org
  25. Pius XII, Mediator Dei (1947). vatican.va
  26. Louis Bouyer, The Decomposition of Catholicism (Ignatius Press).
  27. Joseph Ratzinger, A New Song for the Lord (Crossroad).

Put Christ back into Christmas: When naming the Saviour is called extremism

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By the Archbishop of Selsey

For more than a decade, I have preached the words “Put Christ back into Christmas” from the pulpit. I have printed it on Advent notices, spoken it to families preparing for the Nativity, and used it to remind the faithful that Christmas is not sentiment but the Incarnation—God made man for our salvation. The phrase has appeared on parish notice boards, Catholic mission posters, evangelical banners, diocesan Advent reflections, and catechetical materials across Britain. It has never before been called extremist. It has been catechesis, not controversy.

That is why, when Tommy Robinson announced a public carol service in London using the same phrase, I did not expect the nation’s press to declare it a threat. The phrase did not change. Only the presumption of motive changed. When a minister says it, it is evangelical zeal. When Robinson says it, it is “Christian nationalism.” Here lies the strange crisis of our time: naming the Saviour at His own feast is safe or dangerous depending on who speaks His name.

The accusation is not theological; it is sociological. It does not claim the doctrine is wrong; it claims the speaker is unacceptable. The question has become not “Is Jesus Christ Lord?” but “Who has permission to say so in public?”

The accusation precedes the evidence
The accusation did not arise from what Robinson said. It arose from what might be imagined if the same words were spoken by the wrong person. Newspapers warned of an “extremist event dressed up as a carol service,” of “Christian imagery at protests raising fears of racial nationalism,” and advised readers “not to be fooled by hymns,” as if the Gloria could conceal a programme for civil unrest.¹–⁴ Imagination became evidence. A possibility was declared a certainty. This could be so became this is so.

One national broadsheet framed Robinson’s call to “put the Christ back into Christmas” as “exploiting the Christian message for populist politics,” linking the phrase directly to “anti-migrant rhetoric” and calling his carol service a “political use of Christmas.”⁵

The logic was not: “he said something racist.”
The logic was: “someone like him could say something racist.”
This is not evidence. It is fiction used as accusation, a verdict delivered in advance of any offence.

The manufacture of racism
The racism charge rests on a simple falsehood: that criticism of an ideological current within Islam is a form of racial hatred. But Islam is not a race. To treat theological disagreement as racism is to evacuate the word of moral meaning in order to silence the speaker. It is not a perspective on racial justice; it is a tactic of erasure, turning a debate about belief into a crime against identity.

The accusation also collapses when confronted with Robinson’s actual record. There is no public evidence of him preaching racial superiority or describing any ethnic group as inferior. His record shows the opposite. In the early years of the English Defence League he expelled neo-Nazis and racial supremacists, issued statements denouncing them, and clashed with those who attempted to turn the movement into a racial platform.⁶ He ultimately stepped down because he feared infiltration by racist elements.⁷ He has repeatedly stated that his opposition is to an ideology, not ethnicity, and his collaborators have included ex-Muslims, British Sikhs, and others who reject Islamist extremism.⁸

This is incompatible with the label “racist.” But the accusation is not made because of a record; it is made because the label is useful. When a curate says “Christ is King”, it is evangelical. When Robinson says it, it is “white nationalism.” The content does not change—only the assumption of motive changes.

Importing America into Britain
The second falsehood is the claim of “Christian nationalism.” The phrase is borrowed from American politics, where it refers to a distinct sociological phenomenon: the fusion of Evangelical identity with Republican ideology, a restorative narrative of lost Christian nationhood, and a history marked by civil conflict. There are distinctive features—“Seven Mountains” rhetoric, Confederate symbolism, megachurch populism, and a political bloc shaped by Evangelical voting patterns.⁹ It is a real, debated current in American political religion.

Britain has none of these conditions. There is no Evangelical political constituency, no myth of a lost Christian republic, no Confederate memory, no party shaped by theology, no restorationist nationalism with ecclesial energy behind it. The Church of England is established as heritage, not conviction. Denominations are post-Christian, shaped more by contemporary ethics than apostolic doctrine. The English crisis is not Christian nationalism; it is Christian amnesia. The danger is not that Christianity will govern the nation, but that it no longer governs the conscience of it.

Why then is the American phrase used here? Because it functions as ready-made condemnation. It does not describe what exists; it prevents what might exist. It says, in effect: “You may not speak Christ in public unless authorised.” It is a means of policing proclamation, not analysing reality.

The paradox: the denominations politicised Christmas, not the layman
Here the heart of the matter is revealed.

The denominations did not reject the phrase “Put Christ back into Christmas.” They affirmed its meaning and reproduced its theology. But they condemned the layman who spoke it publicly—not for doctrinal fault, but for identity. It was not Robinson who politicised Christmas, but the denominations who imagined politics into his proclamation. They heard nationalism where there was creed, and then used their rebuttal to preach asylum policy in the name of the Christ they were reluctant to name. Christmas itself was not defended by proclaiming the Incarnation; it was reframed as a message about immigration. The Child was not announced; the visa was. Thus the paradox: a layman proclaimed Christ, and was accused of ideology; the denominations preached ideology, and called it Christ.

This is the inversion: the accusation does not describe Robinson—it describes the response to Robinson.

Denominational adoption of the secular accusation
The Church of England adopted the same framing. According to national coverage, bishops urged Christians to “resist the capture of Christian language and symbols by populist forces” and launched a campaign of bus-stop posters reading “Christ has always been in Christmas” and “Outsiders welcome.”¹⁰ The Independent reported this as a confrontation with the “exploitation of the Christian message for populist politics,” and described Robinson’s call to “put the Christ back into Christmas” as an attempt to “drive an anti-migrant agenda.”¹¹

The Bishop of Kirkstall declared that Robinson’s conversion “did not give him the right to subvert the faith so that it serves his purposes,” and urged believers to resist “populist forces seeking to exploit the faith for their own political ends.”¹¹ No doctrinal error was identified. The issue, again, was not the truth of the Incarnation but the identity of the man proclaiming it.

Coverage in The Telegraph likewise presented the initiative as a “pushback against the rise of Christian nationalism” and the “appropriation of Christian symbols by far-Right protesters,” quoting an open letter from seven Church of England bishops condemning “the co-opting of the cross” at Robinson’s rally.¹² The symbolism of Christianity—the cross, biblical citation, public carol singing—was treated as ideological when carried by laity, though identical when used by denominations.

This is the central paradox made visible: the denominations politicised Christmas in order to accuse someone else of politicising Christmas.

A feast without faith
This controversy is possible only in a culture that remembers Christmas but no longer believes it. Britain still keeps the feast: markets fill the squares; schools sing about angels they do not believe in; “goodwill to all” is quoted without the One who gives peace. The nation loves the warmth of Christmas while fearing the fire that gives it meaning. The census records a fall from 59.3% identifying as Christian in 2011 to 46.2% in 2021.¹³ Among the young, Christianity is not rejected—it is forgotten.

The BBC documented the other side of this crisis: individuals “who do not necessarily believe in God, but have started going to church” after attending Robinson’s rallies, motivated by a sense that Christianity itself “could be replaced” in Britain.¹⁴ They carry wooden crosses and biblical texts not as political symbols, but because they recognise that what once was Christian has become secularised, and seek a return to what gave Britain its moral architecture. The institution’s response has been uncertainty: not doctrine, but discomfort. According to the same report, the Church of England is “grappling with fundamental questions” because this return comes from outside its authorised structures, without catechesis, yet with conviction.¹⁴

The BBC described clergy speaking of a “difficult road” as they attempt to welcome those whose return is motivated by cultural memory rather than doctrinal formation.¹⁴ They do not reject Christ—they do not yet know Him. Yet the institutional response has been to lead with condemnation, describing the presence of crosses as “co-opting” and “excluding others.”¹² The crisis revealed is not a movement of extremism against the Church, but a Church unable to welcome those who come seeking the Christ it no longer proclaims with conviction.

The constitutional duty of the Church of England, and the moral duty of all denominations
It must be stated plainly: the silence—or rather, the mis-speech—of the Church of England is not merely a pastoral failure; it is a constitutional breach. The Church of England is established not as a chaplaincy to private sentiment, but as the public guardian of the nation’s Christian identity. Its bishops sit in Parliament to proclaim the Gospel, not to echo secular narratives. The Coronation oath binds the monarch to defend the faith; those who anoint him are charged to uphold that oath in public life.¹⁵ Establishment is not ornament; it is obligation. When public proclamation of Christ is denounced as extremism, the established church must be the first to correct the error—not the first to affirm it.

Yet the same pattern of abdication was seen among other denominations. A duty rooted in history obliges the Church of England; a duty rooted in baptism obliges every community that bears the name of Christ. The Methodist Church, the Baptist Union, the United Reformed tradition, and other signatories of the Joint Public Issues Team were not compelled by any Crown, oath, or statute to speak—but their speech still bore the weight of Christian witness. They might have defended the Incarnation by proclaiming the Saviour’s birth. They might have used their public voice to call a restless people to faith. Instead, they accepted the same framing handed to them by secular media: that proclaiming Christ at His own feast could be extremist, and that the proper Christian answer to the Nativity was the language of immigration policy.

When they affirmed “Christ has always been in Christmas,” they affirmed the doctrine. When they followed it with campaign posters about “outsiders welcome,” they displaced the doctrine into political messaging. None of these denominations corrected the impossible idea that a carol service could cloak a programme of hate. None challenged the bizarre suggestion that a wooden cross held by a layman is a symbol of exclusion while a wooden cross held by clergy is a symbol of inclusion. None confronted the underlying falsehood: that the birth of Christ is dangerous when proclaimed by the wrong person.

Their failure is not constitutional, but evangelical. By adopting the same secular accusation—and echoing it with ecclesial authority—they participated in the same politicisation of Christmas they claimed to resist. It was not Robinson who turned Christmas into a referendum on migration: it was the denominations who imagined that message into his proclamation and then preached the world’s politics under the banner of Bethlehem.

Establishment gives the Church of England a unique responsibility. But every denomination has a spiritual one: to proclaim the Gospel without fear or favour. If the Church of England must speak to the nation as its established church, the other denominations must speak to the nation as its un-established conscience. In this hour, neither fulfilled the true vocation of Christmas. The Child born of Mary was not announced in the name of salvation, but invoked in the name of policy. The Nativity became a billboard. The shepherds were replaced by slogans.

Establishment demands clear speech: Jesus Christ is Lord.
Evangelical fidelity demands the same.

Until both are recovered, we will continue to witness this strange moment: the proclamation of the Saviour at His own feast treated as extremism—not because it is dangerous, but because Britain has forgotten what Christmas means.

The only restoration worthy of the feast begins where Christmas always begins—not in politics, but in worship. The shepherds did not negotiate asylum clauses; they knelt. The Magi did not issue rapid-response resources; they adored. The world was changed not by a campaign but by a revelation: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Renewal will not come from rallies or counter-posters, but from conversion, catechesis, sacrament, and the fearless proclamation of Christ as truth—not metaphor.

Christmas is not a symbol for a social programme. It is the birth of the Saviour.
If Britain would have Christ in Christmas, it must hear His name again.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour.

Read this and more at Selsey Substack and check out this week’s Nuntiatoria

  1. Daily Record, commentary warning of “an extremist event dressed up as a carol service”, December 2025.
  2. The Mirror, advising readers “not to be fooled by hymns”, December 2025.
  3. iNews, analysis referring to “Christian imagery at protests raising fears of racial nationalism”, December 2025.
  4. The Independent, opinion framing carol events as a “front” for far-Right mobilisation, December 2025.
  5. Eleanor Burleigh, “Church of England hits out at Tommy Robinson for ‘exploiting’ Christmas message”, Daily Express, 7 December 2025.
  6. Interviews and official statements on expelling neo-Nazis from the EDL, 2009–2011.
  7. Robinson resignation citing infiltration concerns, Channel 4 News, October 2013.
  8. Record of public collaborations with ex-Muslim and Sikh activists in multiple interviews (TalkTV, LBC), 2017–2024.
  9. Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, Taking America Back for God, Oxford University Press, 2020.
  10. Press reporting on Church of England poster campaign, December 2025.
  11. Holly Bancroft, “Don’t exploit the Christian message for your populist politics”, The Independent, 7 December 2025.
  12. Poppy Wood, “Churches using pro-migrant posters to challenge Tommy Robinson”, The Telegraph, 8 December 2025.
  13. Office for National Statistics, Religion in England and Wales: Census 2021.
  14. Aleem Maqbool and Catherine Wyatt, “Tommy Robinson supporters are turning to Christianity, leaving the Church in a dilemma”, BBC News, 23 November 2025.
  15. Coronation Oath Act, 1688.

The Cross and the Flag: Christian Nationalism, Anglican Confusion, and the Kingship of Christ

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By the Archbishop of Selsey

A warning misunderstood
As Britain prepares to mark Remembrance Sunday, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has once again stepped into the public square with an appeal that is at once sincere and symptomatic. Together with several Anglican bishops, he issued a statement condemning what he called the rise of “Christian nationalism” in the United Kingdom.¹

The clergy’s declaration, published in The Catholic Herald, denounced the alleged “misuse of Christian symbols to exclude or stigmatise others.” Bishop Anderson Jeremiah of Edmonton insisted that such actions “betray the heart of the Gospel,” while Bishop Rosemary Mallett of Southwark added that “we must reject any narrative that says the Cross is a symbol of exclusion.”²

Williams himself declared: “It is more than time to challenge the story that every migrant approaching our shores is an unfriendly alien with unintelligible and hostile values. Christian culture, rightly understood, is based simply on the recognition that we share common human needs and that we are given strength and generosity in Christ’s Spirit.”³

The language is eloquent, the tone charitable, yet beneath it lies the enduring confusion that has haunted Anglicanism since its birth — a confusion between revelation and sentiment, between the Church as divinely constituted society and as social conscience for the modern state.

The liberal inversion of the Cross
Williams’ appeal is not without truth: the Cross must never become an emblem of hatred or a tribal totem. But he proceeds as though these are the only two possibilities — either the Cross is sentimental philanthropy, or it is political idolatry. He cannot imagine the third and only true alternative: the Cross as the throne of the world’s Redeemer, before whom all nations must bow.

The danger of false universalism lies in severing compassion from conversion. For the Incarnation does not merely affirm humanity’s shared needs; it redeems humanity from sin. The Christian does not embrace the stranger because all religions teach kindness, but because Christ commands us to love as He has loved — a love that presupposes truth. Without truth, compassion becomes indulgence, and mercy without justice is mere sentimentality.

Thus the Cross ceases to be the key to salvation and becomes an empty metaphor of moral approval. A Christ who demands nothing, who never judges nor calls to repentance, cannot save. He becomes the patron of progressive causes, not the Redeemer of souls.

Christendom and the nation under God
This misreading of the Gospel’s universality manifests most clearly in how modern churchmen misunderstand the concept of Christian nationhood. The Catholic tradition does not equate the faith with nationalism — indeed, it is the only religion that transcends ethnicity and language by divine constitution — yet it insists that the political order itself must acknowledge the moral authority of Christ.

This principle, solemnly reaffirmed by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, established the Feast of Christ the King as a counter-revolutionary act against the secularisation of nations.⁴ The Pontiff warned that when states deny Christ’s sovereignty, “discord and enmities arise, because they have cast away the yoke of our Lord.”⁵

To be patriotic, therefore, is not to idolise one’s nation, but to seek its sanctification. The Catholic loves his homeland as part of the created order, subject to divine law, not as an end in itself. This is why St. Thomas Aquinas classed patriotism under the virtue of piety — it is honour paid to those through whom we receive temporal goods, second only to those through whom we receive eternal ones.⁶

By contrast, the Anglican position, oscillating between civic religion and moral philosophy, lacks any coherent theology of nationhood. Its ecclesial imagination is tied to the English state, yet its moral sympathies belong to cosmopolitan liberalism. Hence it condemns “Christian nationalism” without offering a vision of Christian order.

A wide view of a cemetery with rows of white gravestones marked by crosses, set against a clear blue sky and distant landscape.

A Remembrance emptied of remembrance
It is particularly revealing that this denunciation was timed for Remembrance Sunday — the day Britain recalls her war dead, whose graves bear not political slogans but the Cross. Those young men did not die for an ideology of universal tolerance; they died for a civilisation shaped by the Cross and for the moral inheritance that Williams now calls oppressive.

Their sacrifice, sanctified by chaplains and priests in muddy fields, was not rooted in a hatred of the foreigner, but in a love of home, faith, and justice. The very “common humanity” Williams invokes was defended by those who knew that civilisation without Christ collapses into barbarism. To forget that is to forget why the Cross stands upon our cenotaphs.

The modern misuse of ‘Christian nationalism’
The term itself has become a rhetorical weapon. Like “far-right” or “extremist,” it is deployed less to clarify than to condemn. Any attempt to restore Christian moral order, to defend natural law, or to preserve the family and national identity shaped by the Gospel is caricatured as “Christian nationalism.”

In truth, what many decry under that label is not nationalism but Christendom — the social embodiment of faith in public life. The Church’s mission is not confined to the sacristy; it extends to every aspect of human order. “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me,” says the Lord (Matthew 28:18). To exclude Him from governance, education, or culture is to enthrone chaos.

Two errors to reject
The Catholic must therefore avoid two opposing heresies. The first is the neo-pagan nationalism that substitutes blood and soil for baptism and creed. The second is the liberal humanitarianism that reduces faith to empathy and the Church to an NGO.

Against both, the Cross proclaims that every nation finds its dignity in submission to Christ. “He must reign,” wrote St. Paul, “until He has put all His enemies under His feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25). This reign is not merely spiritual but moral, social, and visible in the institutions and laws that reflect divine order.

The call to restoration
In our day, to proclaim the Kingship of Christ is to invite misunderstanding. It is to affirm that governments, schools, parliaments, and even churches must conform to the law of God. Yet this is precisely the task of Christians who love their nation rightly. Only a people that honours Christ as Lord can preserve liberty without licence and unity without tyranny.

Let us, therefore, resist both the politicisation of faith and its privatisation. The flag must never replace the Cross — but neither must the Cross be hidden out of fear of offending the world. The true synthesis is found not in nationalism but in sanctification: a people, culture, and law transformed by grace.

That is the meaning of Remembrance Sunday for Christians: not nostalgia for empire, nor guilt over history, but thanksgiving for those who died that Christian civilisation might live — and a renewal of the vow that Christ, not Caesar, shall reign.

¹ The Catholic Herald, “Rowan Williams and Anglican clergy speak out against Christian nationalism ahead of Remembrance Sunday,” 7 Nov 2025.
² Ibid., statements by Bp Anderson Jeremiah and Bp Rosemary Mallett.
³ Ibid., Rowan Williams quoted in full.
⁴ Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas (1925), nn. 11–12.
⁵ Ibid., n. 24.
⁶ St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q.101, a.1.

Today’s homily: Understanding “Coredemptrix”, the Incarnation and our salvation 

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MASS: Gaudeámus
LESSON: Revelation 7:2-12
GOSPEL: St Matthew 5:1-12

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Homily for the Sixth Day in the Octave of All Saints

From Old Roman TV — Understanding “Coredemptrix”, the Incarnation and our salvation

Beloved in Christ, welcome to this broadcast Mass on this, the sixth day in the Octave of All Saints. Within this blessed octave, the Church invites us to linger in contemplation of the mystery of sanctity¹—not as a remote ideal, but as the destiny of every soul redeemed by Christ.

Yesterday’s feast of the Holy Relics taught us that grace is not an invisible abstraction. It touches, it transfigures, and even lingers in matter². Today, in the light of that truth, we turn to the supreme mystery by which grace first entered creation: the Incarnation of the Word through the Virgin Mary³.

No Mary, no Jesus. These few words contain the hinge of salvation history. God, who could have redeemed the world by a mere act of His will, chose instead the way of cooperation⁴. He awaited the consent of a creature—a young woman of Nazareth—whose free fiat opened the gate of Heaven: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”⁵ At that moment, eternity entered time; the Infinite took flesh; Divinity clothed itself in our humanity⁶.

The Incarnation was not magic—it was covenantal. It required the yes of faith. Hence the Church rightly calls Mary Theotokos, the God-Bearer⁷, for the One she bore is truly God. She is rightly honoured as Co-Redemptrix, for she participated uniquely and subordinately in His saving work—not as a rival, but as the most perfect image of redeemed humanity⁸. At Bethlehem she gave Him flesh; on Calvary she gave Him back to the Father. Her participation in His suffering was not symbolic but real⁹. The sword that pierced her heart was the price of her union with the Redeemer¹⁰.

To deny that participation, as some now attempt, is to deny the very logic of the Incarnation¹¹. For if God truly became man, then human cooperation truly matters. Grace does not override nature—it perfects it¹². The mystery of the Word made flesh is not an episode of divine disguise, but the permanent union of God and man in the one Person of Christ¹³.

To separate the spiritual from the material, as the Arian heretics and later (Protestant) reformers did in differing ways, is to fall back into the old dualism that Christianity once overthrew¹⁴—the notion that matter is too lowly to bear divinity, that God can act only upon the world, not within it. Yet the whole of our faith rests upon the opposite conviction: that the Creator entered His creation and sanctified it from within¹⁵.

The Incarnation is the definitive rejection of all spiritualism that despises the flesh and of all rationalism that reduces grace to moral inspiration¹⁶. In Mary, divine grace and human freedom meet without confusion or separation¹⁷. What began in her womb continues in the Church and in every soul reborn by baptism¹⁸, where the divine life takes root in human weakness and transforms it from within.

Dear faithful, what God wrought in Mary in a singular way, He wills to accomplish in us according to our measure. In baptism, the divine life first entered our souls—the Word took flesh again in us, not in substance but in sanctifying grace¹⁹. Our cooperation with that grace through prayer, obedience, and sacrifice is the continuation of Mary’s fiat in the life of each believer²⁰. Her example shows that holiness is not achieved by effort alone, but by docility, submission, and surrender to the will of God²¹.

As she conceived Christ by the Holy Ghost, so we the baptized bear Him spiritually when we yield to that same Spirit in faith and charity²². This, dear faithful, is the Communion of Saints—the extension of the Incarnation through time²³. The saints are those in whom Christ has been fully formed, and their relics, those sacred fragments of transfigured flesh, bear witness that the Divine has truly entered the human²⁴. When we venerate them, we are not looking backward but forward, for what they are, we are called to become: sanctified, saintly saints in an age that denies the sacredness of the body and the permanence of the soul²⁵.

The Incarnation and the saints proclaim the opposite: that God sanctifies flesh, redeems suffering, and raises the lowly to glory²⁶. To live as Christians is to let this mystery unfold within us—to say fiat, “Let it be done unto me according to Thy will,” as Mary did, until Christ is perfectly formed in us, until we are fully conformed to Him—from within to without, spiritually and physically²⁷.

Mary is Co-Redemptrix because of her unique collaboration with God in making possible the Incarnation of the Word made flesh²⁸. In that singular aspect—because she literally gave birth to Him—she stands apart from the rest of us. Through her fiat, the Redeemer Himself entered into the world²⁹. This is an important point, my brothers and sisters, that heretics are so keen to reject. They are uncomfortable with the notion that God desired to cooperate with the free will of Mary³⁰. And in so doing, she became a unique dimension to the redemption of the world³¹.

If she had said no, who knows what would have happened? There are those who like to speculate about that—philosophize and theologize about that. “If Mary had said no, God would have found another way.” Perhaps—but He didn’t. He chose Mary, and Mary said yes³². And at that moment, eternity broke into history³³.

Our faith is not about what ifs; it is about the actual revelation of the Divine Himself to us in His creation. That is how our redemption works—with Him, through Him, by Him—in tangible reality³⁴.

Mary also stands before us as model and mother. For while she cooperated once and perfectly in the coming of Christ, we are called to cooperate continually with His grace, allowing the Word to take flesh within our lives through faith, obedience, and charity³⁵. What was accomplished bodily in her is to be accomplished spiritually in us, so that through His grace the restoration of flesh and spirit may be perfected in us, and the whole person—soul and body—may be made a living temple of God in this life and united with Him in the next³⁶.

That is the Gospel. That is the Catholic Faith. That is what it means to be a Christian. That is the significance of Baptism. That is why the need for personal holiness³⁷. The world constantly strives to drive a wedge between the soul and the flesh. Christ, through His Incarnation, restores what God had created and intended—the harmony and union of flesh and spirit³⁸.

In this time of crisis, not only in the world and our societies, but within the Church, let us not be discouraged when we hear supposedly educated men seek to silence and suppress the title Co-Redemptrix³⁹. It is the world’s way to despise what humbles it—the cooperation of grace and nature, the elevation of womanhood, the mystery of obedience stronger than rebellion⁴⁰. Let us rather imitate what they misunderstand.

Let our hearts echo Mary’s yes. Let our lives bear the fruit of that consent. Then we too shall become living relics—vessels of grace, visible signs that God still sanctifies flesh and makes His dwelling among men⁴¹.

And so, as we continue this Octave, may we renew our baptismal fidelity, persevere in holiness, and trust that the same grace that made Mary “full of grace” will one day make us full of His glory⁴².

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

¹ Apoc. 7:9–17; Rom. 8:29–30.
² 4 Reg. 13:21; Act. 19:11–12.
³ Luc. 1:26–38.
⁴ Phil. 2:7–8.
⁵ Luc. 1:38.
⁶ Ioan. 1:14.
⁷ Conc. Ephesinum (A.D. 431), Formula Unionis: “Confitemur sanctam Mariam Deiparam, quia Deum Verbum carne factum ex ea genuit.”
⁸ Pius X, Ad Diem Illum Laetissimum (2 Feb 1904), §14.
⁹ Ioan. 19:25–27.
¹⁰ Luc. 2:35.
¹¹ Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi (29 June 1943), §110.
¹² S. Th. I–II, q.109, a.7.
¹³ Conc. Chalcedonense (A.D. 451), Definitio Fidei: “Unum eundemque Christum… perfectum in Deitate et perfectum in humanitate.”
¹⁴ Athanasius, Contra Arianos I, 41.
¹⁵ Ioan. 1:10–11.
¹⁶ Leo XIII, Divinum Illud Munus (9 May 1897), §2.
¹⁷ S. Th. III, q.30, a.1.
¹⁸ Tit. 3:5–7.
¹⁹ Rom. 6:3–4.
²⁰ Luc. 1:38; Matt. 7:21.
²¹ Phil. 2:13; 1 Pet. 5:6.
²² Gal. 4:19.
²³ Heb. 12:1; 1 Cor. 12:12–27.
²⁴ Act. 19:12; Conc. Tridentinum, Sessio XXV.
²⁵ Rom. 8:30.
²⁶ 1 Cor. 15:42–49.
²⁷ Rom. 8:29; Gal. 2:20.
²⁸ Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, §§110–111.
²⁹ Luc. 1:31.
³⁰ Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses III, 22, 4.
³¹ Ioannes Paulus II, Redemptoris Mater (25 Mar 1987), §39.
³² Luc. 1:38.
³³ Gal. 4:4.
³⁴ Col. 1:16–20.
³⁵ Ioan. 14:23–24.
³⁶ 1 Cor. 6:19–20; 2 Pet. 1:4.
³⁷ Matt. 5:48.
³⁸ Rom. 8:23.
³⁹ Leo XIII, Adiutricem Populi (5 Sept 1895), §2.
⁴⁰ Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus (1 Nov 1950), §38.
⁴¹ 2 Cor. 4:10–11.
⁴² Luc. 1:28; Rom. 8:18

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.