To the clergy, religious, and faithful of the Old Roman Apostolate, and to all those who seek to preserve the Catholic faith in its integrity and fullness:
grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Carissimi
Concerning the obedience of truth — that golden chain which binds intellect and will to God — the faithful are once more unsettled by a voice from Rome claiming to defend devotion while, in fact, diminishing it. The newly issued Mater Populi Fidelis of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved by Pope Leo XIV on 3 November 2025, declares that the ancient and venerable Marian titles Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix omnium gratiarum are “theologically and pastorally inappropriate.”¹ It exhorts pastors to avoid them, proposing instead that Our Lady be invoked in more general terms as Mother of the Faithful or Mother of the People of God.
At first glance, such language might appear modest and uncontroversial. Yet beneath its mild tone there breathes the spirit of the age — that cautious, calculating moderation which hides its unbelief behind diplomacy. To the modern ear, “pastoral sensitivity” has become the velvet phrase by which the bold truths of revelation are softened, reshaped, or quietly withdrawn. But divine truth cannot be domesticated. The mysteries of the faith are not ours to edit or abbreviate for fear of offending men. To forbid the ancient titles of the Mother of God in the name of prudence is to repeat the perennial temptation: that the Church should make herself more acceptable to those who do not believe.
This new prohibition therefore touches not only Marian devotion but the heart of the Church’s obedience to divine revelation. When the voice of authority ceases to echo the voice of Tradition, the faithful rightly ask: to whom, and to what, must our obedience be given? For obedience in the Church is not servile submission to the variable opinions of men, but the joyful adherence of the mind to what God has revealed once for all. It is the obedience of faith — oboedientia fidei — by which the soul bows before truth, not before expediency. When obedience is detached from truth, it becomes mere conformity; when truth is detached from obedience, it becomes pride. Only when both are united in charity does the Church remain whole.
Mater Populi Fidelis is presented as a refinement of devotion, an act of “pastoral clarity.” Yet what appears merciful to men may in fact wound heaven’s truth. The Church has never feared to proclaim the glories of the Mother of God; she has only feared to neglect them. From the Apostolic age to our own, it has been a mark of orthodoxy to magnify her privileges, for in magnifying her, the Church magnifies the Lord who chose her. Every age that has diminished Mary has soon diminished Christ. Her titles — Theotokos, Mediatrix, Co-Redemptrix — are not the adornments of sentiment but the necessary expressions of doctrine. Each title protects a mystery of faith; remove one, and the whole balance of truth begins to collapse.
To silence the Mother’s titles is, therefore, to muffle the voice of the Incarnation itself. For no Mary, no Jesus. The flesh by which the Word redeems us is the flesh she gave Him; her consent is the hinge upon which the world’s salvation turned. Grace does not abolish nature — it perfects it — and in Mary that perfection is complete. Her fiat was not merely a passive permission but an active cooperation with the divine will. In her, grace and freedom met in perfect harmony: the human will so united to the divine that her very “Be it done unto me” became the first note in the hymn of redemption. The Word became flesh not by divine decree alone, but through her living obedience.
Her compassion beneath the Cross was the consummation of that obedience. She stood, as St John records, when the apostles had fled — standing not merely in body but in faith. She stood beneath the storm of blasphemy, beneath the sword of Simeon’s prophecy, beneath the weight of every human sin. There, as Christ offered Himself for the life of the world, she offered the Son of her womb and the love of her heart. Her maternal anguish became an oblation united to His, so that in the single sacrifice of Calvary both Priest and Mother gave what was dearest to them: He, His life; she, her Son. And from that hour she received all men as her children.
To diminish this truth under pretext of “ecumenism” is to misunderstand both charity and unity. True charity does not flatter error; it redeems it. True unity is not achieved by negotiation but by conversion. The world was not saved by compromise between light and darkness, but by the blood of the Cross. Every time the Church hesitates to proclaim what is true for fear of division, she repeats the cowardice of Pilate: “What is truth?” Every time she trims the Gospel to suit the tastes of the age, she forgets that she was born from a Crucified God.
When, therefore, ecclesiastical authority speaks as though Mary’s co-operation were an embarrassment to the modern world, the faithful must remember that the obedience owed to men is measured by the obedience owed to God. The Church does not exist to please her critics; she exists to sanctify them. The shepherd’s staff is crooked indeed when it bends toward convenience rather than Calvary. To stand beneath the Cross with Mary is to stand in the truth — and in every age, it is truth, not diplomacy, that saves souls.
Ecumenism and the Temptation to Compromise
The Dicastery itself admitted that this prohibition was motivated partly by the wish to foster “greater ecumenical understanding” among Christians separated from the Catholic Church, for whom such titles were deemed “obstacles to unity.”² Yet here lies the gravest irony: to veil revealed truth in the name of unity is not to heal division but to multiply it. Unity without truth is not communion but confusion. True peace is not purchased by the silence of faith but by the harmony of souls in the same confession of Christ.
The only authentic ecumenism is conversion — the return of all who are separated to the one Fold under the one Shepherd (John 10:16)³. It cannot consist in trimming doctrine to avoid offence, nor in re-phrasing dogma to placate unbelief. To change the Church’s speech so that error may feel comfortable is not charity but deceit. The desire for unity is noble, but it must be unity in the truth that makes us free. When that truth is obscured, all we achieve is the illusion of agreement and the death of conviction.
Modern man prizes dialogue, but he fears definition. Dialogue, in its proper sense, is the exchange that leads souls to the truth; yet when dialogue becomes an end in itself, it degenerates into the polite coexistence of contradictions. The Church cannot be content to sit at round tables while souls drift toward perdition. The charity that once sent missionaries across oceans now seems afraid to cross the street. What began as the call of Christ — “Go, and teach all nations” — has been diluted into the empty courtesy of “listen and learn.”
True charity speaks the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15)⁴; false charity whispers half-truths and hides the Cross. The martyrs were not slain for ambiguity. They died not for “dialogue,” but for doctrine. St. Stephen did not win the crown of glory by avoiding offence, but by speaking the truth to those who gnashed their teeth against it. St. Polycarp, St. Thomas More, the English martyrs — none of them sought compromise with error; they bore witness to the reality that love without truth is not love at all.
The Church of our time risks forgetting that unity must be built upon conversion, not concession. “If I yet pleased men,” warns the Apostle, “I should not be the servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10)⁵. Yet many shepherds, anxious to be praised by the world, have begun to measure success by applause rather than by sanctity. They confuse the noise of consensus with the voice of the Spirit. But the Holy Ghost is not the author of confusion; He is the Spirit of truth, whose unity is wrought through baptismal faith and sacramental grace, not through the erasure of doctrine.
Consider the bitter fruit of false ecumenism: when the Church dilutes her witness, the world is not converted — it simply ceases to take her seriously. When she hides the Cross behind vague affirmations of goodwill, she ceases to be the light of the world and becomes merely one lamp among many, flickering in the fog. The scandal of the Cross cannot be removed without removing the Cross itself. The only way to make Christianity inoffensive is to make it meaningless.
The faithful must understand this clearly: to love our separated brethren is a command of Christ; to withhold the truth from them is a betrayal of Christ. We cannot invite men to the fullness of faith by pretending that fullness does not matter. We cannot heal division by amputating dogma. To suppress the Marian titles affirmed by the Magisterium, lest they offend those who reject the Mother, is to betray the Son. The Church was not founded to negotiate truth but to proclaim it; not to conform to the world, but to convert it.
The ecumenism of the saints was not a diplomacy of accommodation but a passion for conversion. It was the zeal of St. Peter preaching to the Jews and Gentiles alike, of St. Paul confronting idolatry at Athens, of St. Francis Xavier baptizing pagans on distant shores. Their unity was not a truce with error but the triumph of grace over division. To imitate them, the Church must rediscover her missionary heart. She must cease apologising for her dogmas and begin again to proclaim them. Her unity will not be restored by hiding the Mother of God, but by exalting her — for wherever Mary is honoured, Christ is known, and wherever she is silenced, the Gospel fades.
The Church’s task is not to make peace with the world but to win the world to peace in Christ. It is not the business of the Bride of Christ to apologise for her purity in the company of adulterous creeds. When she blushes for her motherhood, she ceases to be a mother and becomes a widow. When she forgets her Marian heart, she forgets how to bring souls to birth in grace. The more she hides the Virgin’s glory, the more she hides the glory of her own identity.
Therefore, let us reject this false ecumenism which disguises compromise as compassion. Let us cling to that true ecumenism which the saints practiced: the unity of all men in the one faith, the one baptism, the one Church, the one truth. For unity divorced from truth is treason to both.
The Faith Once Delivered and the Continuity of Catholic Tradition
Holy Scripture and the constant witness of the Church bear unanimous testimony to the Virgin’s singular participation in the Redemption wrought by Christ. She conceived the Redeemer by the power of the Holy Ghost (Luke 1:35)⁶, stood steadfast beneath the Cross (John 19:25–27)⁷, and was foretold from the beginning as the Woman whose seed would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15)⁸. As Eve once cooperated in man’s ruin, so Mary freely cooperated in his restoration. The whole rhythm of salvation turns upon that contrast: through the disobedience of one woman came death; through the obedience of another came life. St. Irenaeus, at the close of the second century, called her causa salutis nostrae — the cause of our salvation — for “as Eve by her disobedience became the cause of death, so Mary by her obedience became the cause of salvation.”⁹ St. Augustine echoed the same truth: “The woman who merited to bring forth Life merited thereby that life should return through her.” In her womb, obedience undid the knot of pride, and from her fiat flowed the stream of grace that has never ceased to water the Church.
This faith, born in Scripture and confirmed by the Fathers, matured through the centuries into the Church’s constant tradition. In the early centuries, the faithful instinctively perceived that Mary’s role was not marginal but central in God’s plan. She was the Ark of the New Covenant, the living tabernacle in which the Word took flesh; the new Eve, standing beside the new Adam in the drama of redemption. Her image adorned the catacombs; her name was invoked in the earliest prayers. When heresy threatened to divide the Church, it was her title Theotokos — “God-bearer” — that preserved the truth of the Incarnation against Nestorius and his followers. To defend her was to defend her Son’s divinity; to deny her was to dissolve the mystery of the Word made flesh.
By the tenth century, liturgical hymns and sermons were already venerating her as Redemptrix, and by the fifteenth century the faithful invoked her as Co-Redemptrix in public devotion.¹⁰ The Church did not invent these expressions; she recognised in them the faithful echo of her own heart. What was first the intuition of the saints became the prayer of the people, and in time, the teaching of the Popes. For as theology matures, it does not abandon what is old but makes explicit what has always been believed. The oak of doctrine grows from the acorn of revelation; and just as Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary was the flowering of the divine will revealed at Bethlehem, so the titles of Mary are the unfolding of the truths implicit in her motherhood.
Thus, Leo XIII (1885) approved prayers calling her corredentrice del mondo, “the Co-Redemptrix of the world.”¹¹ Pius X, that pope of orthodoxy and reform, confirmed the title in three separate decrees of the Holy Office between 1908 and 1914, recognising in it nothing contrary to the faith but rather a profound affirmation of the mystery of the Incarnation.¹² Benedict XV, in Inter Sodalicia (1918), gave the matter its most explicit formulation: “We may rightly say that she redeemed the human race together with Christ.”¹³ These are not the words of poetic enthusiasm but of papal theology. Pius XI, addressing pilgrims in 1933, declared: “By necessity, the Redeemer could not but associate His Mother in His work; for this reason we invoke her as Co-Redemptrix.”¹⁴ And Pius XII, who crowned the Marian century with a clarity worthy of the Fathers, affirmed in Mystici Corporis Christi that she “offered her Son to the Eternal Father on Calvary, together with the holocaust of her maternal rights and love,” adding in Mediator Dei that she is “Mediatrix of all graces.”¹⁵
The Second Vatican Council, far from abandoning this tradition, restated it with serenity and precision. “In suffering with Him as He died on the Cross,” the Council Fathers taught, “she cooperated in the work of the Saviour in an altogether singular way.” (Lumen Gentium §§56–61)¹⁶ Here we find the same faith clothed in conciliar formality: the doctrine remains, though phrased for a restless age. The Council did not invent Marian cooperation, nor did it demote her; it simply assumed what every previous century had confessed — that the Mother of God’s participation in the Redemption is unique, subordinate, and yet indispensable to the divine plan.
St. John Paul II, reading the Council in continuity, used the title Co-Redemptrix repeatedly between 1985 and 2000. In his address at the Shrine of Our Lady of Bonaria, he proclaimed: “Mary was spiritually crucified with her crucified Son; her role as Co-Redemptrix did not cease with the glorification of her Son.”¹⁷ His theology of the body extended also to the Body of the Church, showing how Mary’s maternal participation exemplifies the cooperation of every Christian soul with grace. In her, the Church contemplates her own vocation — to suffer with Christ, to bring forth souls into new life, to become, in a mystical sense, co-redeemers under the one Redeemer.
Thus the Church, from the catacombs to the Council, from the Fathers to the modern Popes, has spoken with one mind and one heart. The title Co-Redemptrix does not place Mary on equality with her divine Son; it proclaims that she cooperated with and under Him — that the Almighty, in His mercy, willed to redeem mankind not by bypassing human freedom but by ennobling it in one sinless Woman. In her, grace reached its human summit; in her, creation consented to its Creator. She is not the fountain of grace but the channel; not the source of redemption but its maternal instrument. Through her, the divine condescension touched the human race not abstractly but personally, not as a decree from heaven but as the embrace of a Mother.
To deny or suppress this truth, therefore, is not pastoral sensitivity but pastoral blindness. It ruptures the continuity of faith and introduces ambiguity where the saints and Popes have spoken with luminous simplicity. It deprives the faithful of the language by which the mysteries of salvation are most beautifully expressed. To take from the Church the title Co-Redemptrix is to take from her lips the word by which she has long confessed the depth of her gratitude to God. The Church may change her vesture, but she cannot change her voice.
As Professor Miravalle observes, “a public denial of the title Co-Redemptrix would gravely and negatively impact authentic Christian unity, since it would oppose the revealed truth of Scripture, the consistent voice of Tradition, and the sensus fidelium.”¹⁸ The faithful instinctively recognise that to honour the Mother is to honour the Son; to obscure her prerogatives is to diminish His glory. To obscure Mary’s office is to obscure the Incarnation itself. If the Church forgets the Mother, she will soon forget the Son who took flesh from her. Therefore, let us speak boldly what the ages have confessed humbly: that the Mother of God cooperated uniquely in the work of salvation, and that in honouring her, we safeguard the truth of Christ’s humanity and the splendour of divine mercy.
For as St. Louis de Montfort wrote, “Never was there, and never will there be, a creature who gives more glory to God than the Blessed Virgin Mary.” Her very being proclaims the logic of the Incarnation: that God’s grace does not destroy the natural order but elevates it; that He redeems not by rejecting the world He made, but by entering it through a woman. In her, heaven and earth meet; and through her, man learns how to say fiat again.
The Nature of True Obedience
Authentic obedience is never servility; it is the intelligent and loving submission of the will to divine truth. The Church does not command blind surrender, but enlightened assent to what God has revealed and entrusted to her keeping. Pastor Aeternus of the First Vatican Council teaches that the Holy Spirit was given to Peter’s successors “not to make known new doctrine, but to guard and faithfully expound the revelation handed down through the Apostles.”¹⁹ The Pope is the guardian of Tradition, not its author; his authority is ministerial, not creative. When he speaks rightly, he echoes the Word; when he deviates, he must himself be recalled to that same Word which he is bound to serve.
True obedience is therefore a participation in truth, not a suspension of conscience. It is the free act of a soul enlightened by faith, not the servile reflex of fear. The saints obeyed not because they were credulous, but because they believed in a God who cannot deceive. Their obedience was luminous, not blind — an obedience illuminated by understanding and inflamed by love. They obeyed authority precisely because they discerned in it the echo of Christ’s voice. When that echo fell silent, they clung to Christ Himself. For obedience is not primarily to men, but to the divine truth entrusted to men.
The Church has always taught that conscience is not an autonomous tribunal, but the application of divine law within the human heart. To obey God rather than men is not rebellion but fidelity when human commands contradict the divine order. Thus St. Peter, standing before the Sanhedrin, declared without hesitation: “We must obey God rather than men.” The same principle applies within the Church herself, for no human authority, not even the Supreme Pontiff, possesses power over the deposit of faith. He is its steward, not its master.
Therefore, when a papal or curial act appears to contradict or obscure what the Church has always taught, it loses its moral force. Authority is binding only when it is truthful; when it ceases to serve truth, it ceases to oblige conscience. The document Mater Populi Fidelis, being inconsistent with the prior Magisterium, cannot bind the faithful. It is disciplinary, not doctrinal — it attempts to regulate language, but it cannot erase the truths those titles enshrine. The divine constitution of the Church admits of no rupture between one era and another, for truth is one, and Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. To demand assent to a novelty that contradicts Tradition is to ask obedience to falsehood — an impossibility for any Catholic conscience.
The Council of Trent declared that all ecclesiastical discipline must be “wholesome and in conformity with sound doctrine.”²⁰ The Church’s laws exist to protect her dogmas, not to replace them. Likewise, Donum Veritatis permits theologians, when confronted by non-definitive statements that appear contrary to earlier teaching, to withhold assent — provided this is done with reverence, fidelity, and charity.²¹ Even the Code of Canon Law recognises the same principle: subordinates may suspend compliance with an order that is manifestly unlawful or contrary to the Church’s mind.²² Thus the Church, in her own legislation, admits that obedience without discernment is not virtue but weakness. True obedience never abandons reason; it perfects it in faith.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that obedience is a moral virtue, and like every virtue, it is bounded by right reason. It lies between the extremes of pride and servility. He writes, “It is better to obey God than men; and when the superior commands what is contrary to God, then the subject is bound to disobey.”²³ This is not an encouragement to defiance but a reminder of hierarchy: divine law stands above human law, eternal truth above temporal command. Even a pope is not infallible in every utterance; his authority is bounded by the perennial Magisterium. To resist error is therefore not disobedience but fidelity to the higher obedience owed to God.
Throughout history, the Church’s greatest defenders have exemplified this discernment. St. Athanasius resisted the majority of bishops when they faltered into Arianism, yet he was vindicated by time and by God. St. Catherine of Siena admonished popes to return from exile and restore reform, yet she never wavered in filial reverence. St. Paul resisted St. Peter to his face when the first Pope, out of human weakness, obscured the universality of the Gospel. Each of these saints teaches that authentic obedience may sometimes require holy resistance. Such resistance, when born of faith and charity, is not rebellion but purification.
The saints were not obedient to error but to grace. They bowed to authority because it reflected Christ; they resisted when it betrayed Him. So too must we. To refuse novelties that wound the deposit of faith is not schism but fidelity. When a father commands what dishonours the household, the son who disobeys preserves the family’s honour. Likewise, when churchmen attempt to dilute the faith, the faithful who hold fast preserve the Church herself.
This is not a call to insubordination but to integrity. True obedience is measured not by silence but by sanctity. The one who obeys truth obeys Christ Himself, even if this places him at odds with those who misrepresent Christ. The one who confesses what the saints confessed is not outside the Church but at her very heart. For the Church’s unity is the unity of truth, not the uniformity of error. To stand with Tradition is to stand with the living Magisterium in its continuity; to stand with novelty against Tradition is to oppose the very nature of the Church.
In our time, when many appeal to “synodality” or “discernment” as though these were virtues independent of truth, we must remember that discernment without doctrine is delusion, and synodality without faith is merely politics. The path of obedience is narrow, but it leads to freedom; the path of compromise is broad, but it leads to the loss of the soul. Therefore, let the faithful hold fast to the obedience of truth — humble before legitimate authority, but unyielding before error. For fidelity to Christ is the highest form of obedience, and He never contradicts Himself.
The Law of Prayer and the Law of Faith
Our forebears expressed the indissoluble bond between worship and belief in that sacred maxim: ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi — that the law of prayer establishes the law of faith.²⁴ This phrase, attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, was not a mere aphorism but a theological axiom, summarising the Church’s living method of guarding the deposit of faith. The lex orandi and the lex credendi are not two separate realities but two aspects of the same mystery: the faith of the Church finds its purest expression in her prayer, and her prayer, in turn, safeguards the integrity of her faith.
The Church’s liturgy is not an ornament to theology but its living voice. In her prayers, her gestures, her silence, she confesses what she believes and believes what she confesses. The altar, the chant, the incense, the posture of the priest — all are doctrinal statements rendered in sacred sign. To touch the liturgy, therefore, is to touch doctrine; to change the language of prayer is to reshape the content of belief. Every heresy in history has sought, sooner or later, to alter the worship of the Church, because the devil knows that the surest way to change what men believe is to change what they pray.
In the early centuries, before creeds were formalised, the Church’s liturgy was her catechism. The faithful learned the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist by the prayers they heard and the rites they saw. The baptismal formula, the Eucharistic canon, the sign of the Cross — these were the Church’s first theology textbooks. Thus, when Prosper wrote that the law of prayer establishes the law of belief, he was describing a reality already ancient: that orthodoxy breathes through worship. If worship falters, faith soon suffocates.
To alter the lex orandi is therefore never a neutral act. When official prayer no longer names the Virgin as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix, the faithful will slowly cease to believe what those titles signify. The Church’s piety is her memory; to silence her traditional language is to induce amnesia in her children. Suppress the words, and the truths they convey wither from memory. Language, once sanctified, forms the channels of belief; to dam them is to starve the soul. This is why the saints, even amid persecution, preserved the integrity of the sacred liturgy — because they knew that right worship is the guardian of right faith.
Pius XII warned: “The liturgy is a profession of immutable faith.”²⁵ To change that profession without necessity is to endanger the mysteries it proclaims. When the Church ceases to sing what she believes, she begins to forget it. And when she forgets, the world forgets with her. For the Church is the memory of mankind; her liturgy is the heartbeat of salvation history. Every time a sacred word or gesture disappears from her worship, some aspect of the divine truth grows dim in the world’s consciousness.
This is why the suppression of traditional devotions or venerable titles, such as Co-Redemptrix or Mediatrix, carries consequences far beyond vocabulary. To forbid their use in prayer is to diminish their place in theology; to expel them from theology is to impoverish the faith. Once the Church stops praying as she has always prayed, she will soon stop believing as she has always believed. This is not speculation but history. Every age that tampered with the liturgy — from the iconoclasts of the eighth century to the rationalists of the eighteenth — saw a parallel decay in doctrine. Worship and belief rise and fall together, for they share one soul.
The Old Roman liturgy, venerable in its unbroken continuity, has always borne witness to this truth. Its collects, prefaces, and hymns express not only devotion but doctrine: the kingship of Christ, the intercession of the saints, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, the mediation of Mary. When that language is silenced, the faith it embodies begins to erode. The Novus Ordo reforms, though claiming to simplify, in practice impoverished the Church’s spiritual vocabulary. The altar was turned to face man instead of God, the silence of adoration replaced with dialogue, and many prayers of atonement and sacrifice were reduced or omitted. The faithful were told that nothing essential had changed — yet the law of prayer had been rewritten, and with it the perception of belief.
Today, we witness a similar danger in Mater Populi Fidelis. By discouraging the invocation of Mary as Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix, it touches the same nerve as those earlier liturgical innovations: it proposes to refine devotion by diminishing doctrine. But truth cannot be refined by subtraction. To silence the language of the saints is not progress but regression; it is to sever the present from the living stream of faith that flows from the Upper Room to the altars of today.
The faithful must therefore hold fast to the Church’s ancient prayers and titles, not as relics of nostalgia but as vessels of truth. The liturgy, like the Virgin Mary herself, is a mother: she nourishes faith by repetition, by beauty, by the familiar rhythms of sanctity. When we pray the same words that our fathers prayed, we breathe the same faith they breathed. In that continuity lies the Church’s identity. To rupture it is to fracture her memory, and a Church that forgets her past cannot recognise her future.
Let us, then, guard with jealous reverence the law of prayer that our forefathers handed down. Let us invoke Our Lady with the titles she has borne for centuries, confident that to do so is to join the unbroken chorus of believers who have honoured her from the dawn of Christendom. For the lex orandi is the Church’s heartbeat: when it falters, the body weakens; when it is strong, the whole Church lives. To wound the lex orandi is to imperil the lex credendi. But to preserve both, through fidelity to Tradition, is to remain in the full light of truth.
The Peril of Pastoral Innovation
Modern ecclesiastics often appeal to “pastoral necessity” as a cloak for doctrinal revision. The word pastoral — once rich with apostolic meaning — has been stretched until it hides a multitude of evasions. It once described the shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep; now it too often means the bureaucrat who refuses to offend the wolves. But pastoral care, if it is to remain truly Catholic, must always serve truth, never disguise it. Charity divorced from clarity is counterfeit; mercy without truth is sentimentality.
Christ Himself was the Good Shepherd — Pastor bonus — but He was also the Truth. He led His flock not by compromise but by conversion. His mercy was never at the expense of His mission. When He forgave the adulterous woman, He said, “Go, and sin no more.” When He healed the paralytic, He first said, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” Divine mercy never bypasses moral reality. Yet modern pastoralism pretends to do just that: it seeks to heal wounds by denying that they exist. It replaces the Cross with comfort and the call to repentance with reassurance. It baptises compromise as compassion.
The Church’s mission is to convert the world, not to conform to it. Yet under the banner of “renewal,” whole generations have witnessed the retreat of faith beneath the banner of progress. This inversion is the essence of modernism — that ancient heresy reborn as sentimentality — which insists that the Church must adapt her truths to the needs of each age. Pius X warned that modernism “perverts the eternal concept of truth by making it subject to change,” and he foresaw that its most dangerous form would not be open rebellion but “pastoral adaptation.” When pastors prefer the approval of men to the fidelity of God, they cease to shepherd souls and begin to manage decline.
The tragedy of our age is that pastoral has been pitted against doctrinal — as though the care of souls could ever be severed from the truth that saves them. But genuine pastoral wisdom flows from doctrine; it is the application of divine law to human lives. The confessor who absolves without contrition is no healer but an accomplice. The bishop who refuses to preach repentance for fear of losing popularity abandons the souls entrusted to him. The priest who replaces penance with affirmation ceases to be a physician of souls and becomes their undertaker. Every age of decadence in Church history has begun when doctrine was set aside “for pastoral reasons.”
Under the pretext of outreach, the faithful were deprived of their inheritance. The Novus Ordo Missae was presented as a friendly gesture to “modern man,” a bridge toward unity with Protestants — yet it dismantled the very altar on which unity with heaven had been maintained. The sacred language of sacrifice was softened; the altar turned toward the congregation; the priest was reimagined as presider rather than sacrificer. The gestures of adoration faded, and faith in the Real Presence withered with them. The people were told that nothing essential had changed, but they awoke to find that the vocabulary of faith had been rewritten and the supernatural eclipsed by the horizontal.
The architects of this pastoral revolution promised renewal, but the fruits have been decline. Vocations dwindled, faith collapsed, and the faithful were scattered. When worship was made to please man, man ceased to worship. The lex orandi had been altered, and with it the lex credendi. This was not accidental; it was the inevitable consequence of substituting human psychology for divine theology. The liturgy was redefined as assembly rather than sacrifice, participation replaced contemplation, and the transcendent was eclipsed by the therapeutic. In this new climate, the language of salvation was replaced by the language of wellbeing — the shepherd became a facilitator, and the sheep were left without a guide.
The same logic animates Traditionis Custodes (2021), which, under the guise of “pastoral necessity,” sought to restrict the Mass that had nourished the saints for centuries. The faithful who clung to the ancient rite were accused of division — yet it was the decree that divided them from their patrimony. The document claimed to preserve unity by suppressing diversity, but true unity rests on truth, not uniformity in error. It declared the lex orandi of all time to be “abrogated” for the sake of unity — a phrase unknown to the Fathers and unimaginable to the saints. The irony was complete: the Mass that had built the Church was now treated as a threat to her stability.
Now, in Mater Populi Fidelis, the same pastoral sophistry has migrated from the sanctuary to the realm of doctrine. What was once called Co-Redemptrix is branded “theologically inappropriate”; what was once sung in prayer is now forbidden for “ecumenical sensitivity.” As the altar was stripped of its silence and sacrifice, so the Mother of God is stripped of her titles and honour — all in the name of “prudence.” But prudence without fidelity becomes deceit. Authentic prudence is the practical application of wisdom; false prudence is the camouflage of fear. To “protect unity” by suppressing truth is to imitate the chief priests who said, “It is expedient that one man should die for the people.” Such logic crucifies truth anew.
Both Traditionis Custodes and Mater Populi Fidelis spring from the same delusion: that the faith can be made more acceptable by concealing its splendour. Yet the Church’s task is not to please men but to glorify God. To make peace with error by muting truth is not evangelisation but apostasy. St. Paul’s warning rings with renewed power: “If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”²⁷ The Church must choose between popularity and prophecy; she cannot have both. The prophets were never “pastoral” by worldly standards, yet through their fidelity the people of God were saved.
This is the perennial law of renewal: every true reform has been a return to clarity, not a descent into compromise. St. Gregory the Great, reforming the clergy, did not dilute doctrine to win sympathy; he called his priests to penance and sanctity. St. Charles Borromeo, faced with scandal and laxity, restored discipline by fidelity to Trent, not by softening its demands. The saints reformed the Church not by appealing to fashion but by conforming to the Cross. Their “pastoral method” was sanctity; their “strategy” was conversion. And their reward was the salvation of souls.
Therefore, dear brethren, let us recognise the danger of this false pastoralism that dresses accommodation as compassion. Let us expose its poison with the antidote of truth. The true shepherd does not alter doctrine to fit his flock’s desires; he calls his flock to the pasture of holiness. The voice of Christ still speaks: “My sheep hear My voice.” The sheep do not change the Shepherd’s song; they follow it. And that song, echoing through the ages, is the unchanging melody of Tradition. To silence it in the name of pastoral sensitivity is to betray both the Shepherd and His sheep.
Let the Church therefore return to the courage of her saints and the simplicity of her faith. Let her remember that no age was ever converted by compromise, but only by conviction. The blood of martyrs, not the ink of committees, has redeemed the world. The Cross remains the only true pastoral programme, and the Mother who stood beneath it remains the model of all pastoral fidelity. To follow her is to stand unflinchingly at the foot of truth, no matter the cost.
Exhortation to the Faithful
Dear brethren, do not be dismayed by shifting policies or ambiguous decrees. These pass like clouds; the sun of truth remains. Hold fast to what the Church has always believed and prayed. Continue to honour the Blessed Virgin under her rightful titles of Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces. These names are not innovations, but the echoes of centuries of faith. To speak them is to join the chorus of saints and martyrs who confessed that “God became man through her, and through her we are brought to God.” Teach your children these truths; enshrine them in your homes and chapels; let them resound again from your altars and in your Rosaries. For if the faithful fall silent, even the stones will cry out.
You live in an age of noise and confusion, when many voices claim to speak for the Church while contradicting the faith that built her. Do not be troubled. The voice of Christ still speaks clearly to those who love Him. You have received the rule of faith, and you know the sound of the Shepherd’s voice. You need not follow every wind of novelty that blows through the hierarchy. The barque of Peter has weathered greater storms than these, and she will weather this one too — but only if her children cling to the mast of Tradition. Remember that truth does not evolve with fashion, nor holiness with convenience. What sanctified your forefathers will sanctify you; what saved the martyrs will save you still.
True obedience is obedience to truth. To obey those who oppose the faith is not obedience but confusion. To persevere in the ancient faith is not rebellion but fidelity to the Bride of Christ, who cannot deny her own voice. The Church lives by continuity, not novelty. When novelty intrudes, continuity must resist. This resistance is not disloyalty; it is the defence of loyalty itself. As St. Paul withstood St. Peter to his face, not in pride but in faith, so too the faithful may withstand error when it masquerades as authority. To stand with the saints of every age is to stand with the living Church, not against her.
Take courage, therefore, and remember the vocation of the Old Roman Apostolate — to preserve the faith whole and entire, without alteration or diminution; to guard the ancient liturgy; to keep alive the doctrine and devotion that sanctified our forebears. You have not been called to comfort but to witness; not to convenience but to sacrifice. The world demands compromise; God demands fidelity. In every age He raises up those who will not bow to idols, even when those idols wear episcopal robes or synodal slogans. To be faithful in such an age is to share in the Cross; but to bear that Cross is to reign with Christ.
Let your homes be schools of prayer, your chapels be beacons of truth, and your hearts be altars of charity. Teach the young that to honour Mary is to love Jesus more deeply; to defend her titles is to defend His Incarnation. Let your children grow hearing her name pronounced with reverence, and the saints’ names invoked with gratitude. Sing again the old hymns and litanies, for they carry within them the soul of the Church. Keep the feasts, observe the fasts, and frequent the sacraments. The enemy may change his tactics, but the weapons of victory remain the same: faith, prayer, and perseverance.
Above all, hold the Rosary in your hands and the Creed in your hearts. Pray for the Holy Father — not that he may please the world, but that he may once again confirm his brethren in the faith. Pray for priests, that they may preach boldly, offer reverently, and live purely. Pray for the bishops, that they may remember that their mitres are crowns of thorns, not emblems of power. Pray for yourselves, that you may not lose the joy of faith amid the trials of fidelity. The battle for truth is not fought only in Rome; it is fought in every parish, every home, and every heart. Your steadfastness, your prayers, and your sacrifices sustain the Church more than any decree or synod could ever do.
Do not be afraid to stand apart if standing apart means standing with Christ. The saints were always a minority before they became the cloud of witnesses. They were mocked as rigid, condemned as schismatic, and persecuted as obstinate — yet in their fidelity the Church was preserved. What you defend now, future generations will thank you for defending. You are custodians of a holy inheritance; guard it with reverence, transmit it with love, and suffer for it with joy. For fidelity to truth is the truest obedience, and the obedience of truth is the highest act of love.
Therefore, beloved in Christ, lift up your hearts. The darkness of confusion is deep, but dawn always follows Calvary. Let us stand with the Mother of Sorrows beneath the Cross of this age, confident that the Resurrection will vindicate her and all who have remained faithful. The world may sneer, prelates may scold, but the Immaculate Heart will triumph. When it does, may she find in us sons and daughters who never ceased to call her Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of all graces — not because Rome commanded it, but because heaven revealed it.
Haec est via.
I.X.
Brichtelmestunensis
Die VI Octavae Omnium Sanctorum, A.D. MMXXV
Oremus
Deus, fons omnis veritatis et gratiae, qui in Unigenito Filio tuo plenitudinem lucis revelasti, praesta nobis, quaesumus, ut, Spiritu Sancto roborati, in oboedientia veritatis perseveremus, nec umquam seducamur blanditiis erroris. Da Ecclesiae tuae constantiam in fide, et corda pastorum tuorum accende zelo pro veritate. Fac ut, exemplo Beatae Mariae Virginis, quae in humilitate cooperata est Redemptori, nos quoque in caritate et fide quotidie respondeamus gratiae tuae. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
V. Maria, Mater Veritatis,
R. Ora pro nobis, ut veritatem semper confiteamur in caritate.
O God, source of all truth and grace, who hast revealed the fullness of light in Thine Only-Begotten Son, grant us, we beseech Thee, strengthened by the Holy Ghost, to persevere in the obedience of truth, and never be led astray by the allurements of error. Give Thy Church constancy in faith, and enkindle the hearts of her shepherds with zeal for truth. Following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who in humility cooperated with the Redeemer, may we too respond each day to Thy grace in charity and in faith. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
V. Mary, Mother of Truth,
R. Pray for us, that we may ever confess the truth in charity.
¹ DDF, Doctrinal Note: The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Faithful (Mater Populi Fidelis), 3 Nov 2025; cf. Vatican News, “Doctrinal Note: Mother of the Faithful, Not Co-Redemptrix,” 3 Nov 2025.
² Ibid., Prefatory Explanation, §2.
³ John 10:16.
⁴ Ephesians 4:15.
⁵ Galatians 1:10.
⁶ Luke 1:35.
⁷ John 19:25–27.
⁸ Genesis 3:15.
⁹ St Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses III, 22, 4; cf. St Augustine, De Sancta Virginitate §6.
¹⁰ Miravalle, Mary Co-Redemptrix Is Catholic Tradition (2024).
¹¹ ASS 18 (1885), p. 93.
¹² AAS 41 (1908), p. 409; AAS 5 (1913), p. 364; AAS 6 (1914), pp. 108–109.
¹³ AAS 10 (1918), p. 182.
¹⁴ L’Osservatore Romano, 29 Apr 1933, p. 1.
¹⁵ AAS 35 (1943), pp. 247–248; Mediator Dei §90.
¹⁶ Lumen Gentium §§56–61 (1964).
¹⁷ Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II XXIII/1 (2000), p. 630.
¹⁸ Miravalle, Mary Co-Redemptrix Is Catholic Tradition (2024).
¹⁹ Pastor Aeternus, ch. 4 (1870).
²⁰ Council of Trent, Sess. XXII, ch. 4.
²¹ CDF, Donum Veritatis §§30–31 (1990).
²² Code of Canon Law, Canons 33 §1; 41 (1983).
²³ Summa Theologiae II-II, q.104, a.5.
²⁴ Prosper of Aquitaine, Indiculus, ch. 8.
²⁵ Mediator Dei, §46 (1947).
²⁶ Hebrews 13:8.
²⁷ Galatians 1:10.
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