EWTN News reports on ChosenCon 2026, a fan convention held in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the television series “The Chosen” and its spin-offs, drawing approximately 5,000 attendees. The event featured actors such as Jonathan Roumie, Michael Iskander, and Adam Hashmi, with Iskander describing it as “the Comic-Con of the Bible.” Participants discussed the personal impact of portraying biblical characters, with actors sharing experiences of faith strengthening and emotional healing. Monsignor Patrick J. Winslow of the Diocese of Charlotte praised the event as “inspiring” and highlighted the series as a “beautiful new art form” that presents the Gospel in a resonant way. The article emphasizes the series’ role in evangelization through entertainment, omitting any reference to sacramental grace, Church authority, or doctrinal integrity.
The Profanation of Divine Revelation into Pop Culture Spectacle
Factual Deconstruction: The Illusion of “Faithful” Rendition
The ARTICLE presents ChosenCon as a triumphant gathering of fans and clergy celebrating “The Chosen” series, but it obscures critical realities. The series is produced by 5&2 Studios, founded by Dallas Jenkins, an evangelical filmmaker, and is distributed through platforms like Amazon Prime, not under the auspices of the Catholic Church. The portrayal of biblical narratives is subject to creative liberties that violate the principle of sacra doctrina—sacred doctrine—which demands that Scripture be taught with reverence and without adulteration. The actors’ testimonies of personal healing and faith growth are framed in subjective, psychological terms, devoid of reference to the sacraments as necessary channels of grace. For instance, Giavani Cairo describes healing through playing Thaddeus as making him feel “worthy of love,” reducing sanctification to emotional self-discovery rather than through ex opere operato grace administered by the Church. Monsignor Winslow’s endorsement of the series as a “faithful rendition” is a modernist euphemism; faithfulness to Scripture requires adherence to the authentic Magisterium’s interpretation, not the sentimental approximations of Hollywood.
Linguistic Analysis: The Language of Secularization
The ARTICLE’s rhetoric is steeped in the lexicon of entertainment and consumerism, revealing a naturalistic mentality. Phrases like “Comic-Con of the Bible” equate sacred texts with comic books, trivializing divina revelatio—divine revelation—as mere pop culture fodder. The term “faith-based entertainment” reduces the supernatural deposit of faith to a marketable genre, echoing the errors of Moderate Rationalism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 8): theology treated as a human science subject to “progress.” The description of the event as “inspiring to the faithful” focuses on emotional resonance (“striking chords”) rather than doctrinal formation, aligning with Modernist subjectivism. The tone is cautiously celebratory, avoiding any language of judgment, sin, or the need for conversion—a silence that betrays the post-conciliar Church’s abandonment of supernatural goals for temporal satisfaction.
Theological Confrontation: The Eclipse of Supernatural Truth
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, the ARTICLE’s omissions are as damning as its content. It fails to mention:
- The sacrificial nature of the Mass: The series focuses on the human drama of biblical figures, neglecting the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary as the central act of worship. As Pope Pius XI teaches in Quas Primas, Christ’s kingdom is not merely spiritual but demands public recognition of His laws, yet the ARTICLE reduces faith to private emotional experience.
- The authority of the Church: No reference is made to the Magisterium as the sole interpreter of Scripture. This aligns with Modernist errors condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu, particularly Proposition 4: “The Magisterium of the Church cannot, even by dogmatic definitions, determine the proper sense of Holy Scripture.” By allowing dramatizations without ecclesiastical oversight, the series promotes private interpretation, a Protestant error.
- The necessity of grace and sacraments: Actors speak of “renewing faith” and “healing” through acting, bypassing the sacraments of Baptism, Confession, and Eucharist. This echoes the Syllabus error (Proposition 16): “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation,” here manifested as a Pelagian trust in human effort over divine grace.
Jonathan Roumie’s comment on portraying Christ’s passion—”I just get weepy… it’s left an indelible impression on me”—exemplifies the reduction of the Redemption to sentimentality. The Lamentabili condemns such an approach in Proposition 36: “The Resurrection of the Savior is not properly a historical fact, but belongs to the purely supernatural order,” implying that emotional engagement suffices without doctrinal assent to the objective, historical reality of the Resurrection.
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy
ChosenCon is a symptom of the neo-church’s transformation of sacred mysteries into entertainment. The event’s scale and clerical approval (via EWTN and Monsignor Winslow) demonstrate the systemic embrace of aggiornamento—updating—which Pius X identified as Modernism in Pascendi Dominici gregis. The focus on “resonating” with audiences and “striking chords” prioritizes human psychology over the propagation of immutable truth. This aligns with the Syllabus error (Proposition 57): “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences,” here inverted as the Church endorses a “progress” that dilutes dogma. The omission of any call to public penance, conversion, or the social reign of Christ the King—central to Quas Primas—reveals a complete surrender to secular humanism. The series, by humanizing biblical characters without emphasizing their role in salvation history, fosters a cult of man condemned by Pius IX (Syllabus, Proposition 58): “All the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches… and the gratification of pleasure,” here applied to spiritual gratification.
The Radical Critique: A Church Without Sacraments or Authority
The ARTICLE’s silence on the hierarchical structure of the Church and the sacramental system is deafening. In the true Catholic Church, grace flows through valid sacraments administered by bishops and priests in communion with the Roman Pontiff. Since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, the conciliar sect has usurped the Vatican, with antipopes from John XXIII to the current “Pope” Leo XIV promoting ecumenism and religious liberty—errors condemned in the Syllabus (Propositions 15-18). The approval of “The Chosen” by conciliar authorities like EWTN and Monsignor Winslow places it within the abomination of desolation (Matthew 24:15), where sacred things are profaned. The actors, though perhaps well-intentioned, participate in a Masonic-style operation to make Scripture palatable to modern sensibilities, reminiscent of the disinformation strategy outlined in the False Fatima Apparitions file, where spectacle replaces substance. The series’ emphasis on “relatability” and “emotional impact” mirrors the Modernist heresy that doctrine evolves with human consciousness, as condemned in Lamentabili Proposition 58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him.”
Conclusion: A Call to Reject the Spectacle and Return to Tradition
ChosenCon 2026 is not a celebration of faith but a manifestation of apostasy. It reduces the inerrant Word of God to a commodity for mass consumption, devoid of the supernatural horizon that defines Catholicism. The true Church, as defined by the Council of Trent and the pre-conciliar Magisterium, teaches that Scripture must be read within the living Tradition and under the guidance of the hierarchical priesthood. The absence of these elements in the ARTICLE and the event it describes exposes the theological and spiritual bankruptcy of the post-conciliar era. Catholics must reject such naturalistic entertainments and return to the immutable faith of their fathers, where the Sacred Scriptures are venerated, not vulgarized, and where the Mass is the central act of worship, not a backdrop for emotional storytelling.
Source:
ChosenCon 2026: ‘This is the Comic-Con of the Bible’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 02.03.2026