The Catholic News Agency portal (January 2, 2026) reports on New Year’s Day homily by “Archbishop” Dermot Farrell at Newtownpark Avenue Church in Dublin, where he urged Irish politicians to promote peace through “compassion and respect” while ignoring the Kingship of Christ. The “Mass” attended by government officials and military representatives focused on Ireland’s EU presidency defense agenda, quoting secular peace activist John Hume rather than Catholic sources.
Reduction of Peace to Naturalistic Humanism
Farrell’s declaration that “enduring peace is born of compassion and respect… patience, attention to the other” constitutes apostasy from Catholic doctrine. Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925) dogmatically teaches: “Nations will be reminded by the annual celebration of this feast that not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ” (n.32). The “archbishop’s” silence on Christ’s Social Kingship exposes his adherence to the condemned proposition from Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55).
The blasphemous equation of Hume’s political tactics (“changing the language of others… until I hear the man in the pub saying my words”) with authentic peace-building mocks St. Pius X’s condemnation of Modernist methods in Lamentabili Sane: “The Church listening cooperates… so that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions” (Proposition 6). True Catholic peace requires conversion to the One True Faith, not Hume’s secular consensus-building.
Betrayal of Ireland’s Catholic Heritage
Farrell’s praise for Ireland’s “proud record in international work for peace” deliberately omits that this legacy flowed from its historic status as Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum – the Island of Saints and Scholars. The 1937 Irish Constitution’s preamble invoked “the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority”, recognizing Christ’s reign. The “archbishop’s” neoliberal peace theory (“when we invest in peace everybody wins”) contradicts Pius XI’s condemnation of religious indifferentism: “For there can be no true peace where there is not agreement in the wills” (Quas Primas, 23).
The geopolitical analysis about Russian submarines and transatlantic cables reveals a purely materialistic worldview. St. Augustine’s City of God (XIX.13) teaches that earthly peace without submission to Divine Law is merely “the agreement of men’s wills for the things which pertain to this mortal life”. Farrell’s solution of “new articulation” of neutrality continues Vatican II’s betrayal of Mirari Vos (1832), where Gregory XVI condemned “that absurd and erroneous doctrine which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone”.
The Silence That Condemns
Nowhere does Farrell mention:
- The necessity of nations submitting to Christ’s reign through consecration and public worship
- The Rosary as weapon against war, despite Ireland’s historic devotion to Our Lady of Knock
- The blood of Irish martyrs who died for the Mass now being invalidly celebrated by conciliar “priests”
This homily embodies the Modernist heresy condemned in St. Pius X’s Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “The Modernists make the laity a factor of progress in the Church… The ecclesia discens is to have its share in the government of the Church” (n.25). By quoting politicians rather than popes and saints, Farrell reduces the Church to a NGO – precisely the “cult of man” denounced by Cardinal Ottaviani in his 1973 Critical Study of the New Mass.
The presence of “Apostolic Nuncio” Montemayor at this sacrilege confirms these structures’ apostasy. As Pius XII taught in Mystici Corporis (1943): “For not every offense, although it may be a grave evil, is such as by its nature to sever a man from the Body of the Church, as does schism or heresy or apostasy” (n.23). These men have severed themselves through rejection of Christ’s Social Kingship.
Source:
Dublin archbishop challenges politicians to show leadership in promoting peace (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 02.01.2026