[VaticanNews] reports on an interview with Brother Tony Choukri, Guardian of the Franciscan Monastery of St. Joseph in Beirut, concerning the Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon. The article presents his humanitarian appeal: “human beings are not an object, and death is neither a path nor a tool to change strategies, demography, or borders,” and his assertion that “the Lord has not given anyone permission to kill people.” The piece frames the conflict as a tragedy for all Lebanese, emphasizing fear, displacement, and the monastery’s role as a refuge. It concludes with a call to live in respect for “the law, for human rights, and for faith.” The underlying message promotes a naturalistic, human-centered plea for peace, utterly divorced from the Catholic Church’s immutable doctrine on the social reign of Christ the King and the just regulation of war. This omission is not accidental but symptomatic of the conciliar sect’s apostasy, which replaces the supernatural order with a false humanism.
The Naturalistic Humanism of the Conciliar Sect
The article from VaticanNews, a mouthpiece of the post-conciliar structure occupying the Vatican, presents a superficially compassionate but theologically bankrupt perspective on the Lebanon war. Brother Choukri’s statements, while expressing genuine human concern, are rooted in the modernist principles condemned by Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors and Pope St. Pius X’s Lamentabili sane exitu. The analysis must proceed on four interlocking levels: the factual omissions, the linguistic naturalism, the theological contradictions, and the systemic apostasy they reveal.
Omission of the Social Reign of Christ the King
The most glaring defect is the total silence on the doctrine defined by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical Quas Primas (provided in the files), which the conciliar sect has deliberately suppressed. Pius XI taught that true peace is impossible without the public and social recognition of Christ’s kingship: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The encyclical states unequivocally that Christ’s reign “encompasses all men” and that rulers have a duty to “publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” Brother Choukri’s appeal to “human rights” and vague “faith” without any reference to the social reign of Christ perpetuates the error of the Syllabus, Proposition 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State.” This is the very secularism Pius XI condemned as the “plague that poisons human society.” The article’s framework accepts the modern separation of Church and state as a given, thereby rejecting the Catholic doctrine that all human authority is derived from and subordinate to the divine authority of Christ the King.
The Error of Autonomous Human Rights
The phrase “human beings are not an object” and the invocation of “human rights” echo the naturalistic philosophy of the Enlightenment, solemnly condemned by the Syllabus. Proposition 56 declares: “Moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction, and it is not at all necessary that human laws should be made conformable to the laws of nature and receive their power of binding from God.” Proposition 59 states: “Right consists in the material fact. All human duties are an empty word.” By grounding his appeal in the autonomous dignity of man apart from God’s law and the supernatural end of man, Brother Choukri subscribes to the very naturalism Pius IX anathematized. Catholic theology holds that human dignity derives from being created in God’s image and redeemed by Christ, and that true rights are corollaries of duties toward God. To speak of rights without this foundation is to preach the “natural religion” of the Syllabus, Proposition 5, which is “subject to a continual and indefinite progress.” This is the language of modernism, not Catholicism.
Pacifism as Modernist Distortion
The assertion “the Lord has not given anyone permission to kill people” is a simplistic, modernist distortion of Catholic moral theology. The Church has always recognized the legitimacy of a just war under strict conditions (see the principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello in the writings of the Fathers and Scholastics). To imply that all killing is forbidden is to embrace the pacifist error condemned in spirit by the Church’s tradition, which acknowledges the state’s right to use force to protect the common good. This error flows from the same source as the previous ones: the denial of the hierarchical order of goods, where the spiritual good of the soul and the defense of a just society can, in extreme cases, necessitate the use of force. The article presents a sentimental, absolute prohibition that aligns with the “evolution of dogmas” condemned by St. Pius X (Lamentabili, Propositions 54, 58), where moral truths are “subject to change” with “the progress of man.”
The Symptomatic Silence on Supernatural Ends
The most damning evidence of apostasy is what the article completely omits. There is not a single mention of:
- The state of grace and the necessity of baptism for salvation.
- The sacraments as the ordinary means of sanctification and the source of true peace.
- The final judgment and the eternal consequences of sin and war.
- The duty of the state to profess the Catholic faith and enact laws in conformity with the Ten Commandments.
- The mortal sin of cooperating formally with evil, which applies to all parties in an unjust war.
- The primacy of the salvation of souls over all temporal concerns.
This silence is not neutral; it is a deliberate choice reflecting the modernist hermeneutic described in Lamentabili, Proposition 59: “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement.” The article treats religion as a vague “faith” that inspires humanitarianism, not as the exclusive, salvific, and socially dominant truth defined by the Syllabus (Propositions 21, 22). It reduces the Church to a charitable NGO, fulfilling the prophecy of Pius X that Modernism seeks to “reform” the Church by stripping her of her supernatural character.
Contrast with Pre-Conciliar Catholic Social Doctrine
Contrast this naturalistic plea with the clear, supernatural doctrine of Pius XI in Quas Primas:
“If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.”
Peace is the fruit of Christ’s reign, not of human rights discourse. The Pope continues:
“Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.”
The article’s call to respect “the law” (presumably international law) and “human rights” (as defined by secular bodies) directly contradicts this. It accepts the secular order as normative, whereas Catholic doctrine demands the conversion of that order to Christ. The monastery’s role as a “point of reference” is presented in purely humanitarian terms. In Catholic doctrine, a monastery is first and foremost a house of prayer, a locus of sacrifice and reparation for sins, a fortress against the powers of darkness. Its primary mission is the salvation of souls, not the provision of shelter—though the latter flows from the former. By inverting this order, the article embodies the “synthesis of all heresies” condemned by St. Pius X.
The Conciliar Sect’s Apostasy in Practice
This article is a perfect specimen of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15). It uses the language of compassion, peace, and hospitality—goods the Church truly cherishes—but empties them of their supernatural content. It speaks of “faith” without defining it, of “God” without the Holy Trinity, of “peace” without justice, and of “human dignity” without original sin and redemption. This is the “broad and liberal Protestantism” foretold by Pius X (Lamentabili, Proposition 65) that the conciliar sect has embraced. The “Franciscan” identity invoked is not the rigorous, penitential, dogmatic order of St. Francis but the modernist, ecumenical, and naturalistic “Franciscans” of the post-conciliar era, who have largely abandoned the Rule and the faith.
The appeal to “human rights” is particularly insidious. The Syllabus condemned the notion that “the civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Proposition 44) and that “the civil power… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Proposition 41). Yet the article implicitly accepts the modern human rights regime, which is predicated on religious indifferentism (Syllabus, Propositions 15-17) and the subordination of divine law to secular consensus. This is the logical outcome of the conciliar documents Dignitatis Humanae and Nostra Aetate, which are themselves repugnant to the immutable Magisterium.
Conclusion: A Call to Integral Catholicism
The VaticanNews article does not represent the Catholic faith. It represents the apostate conciliar sect’s final surrender to the world, the flesh, and the devil. It offers a gospel of sentimental humanism in place of the Evangelium of Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords. The true Catholic response to war is not vague appeals to human rights but:
- The solemn proclamation of the social reign of Christ the King over all nations, as defined by Pius XI.
- The call for conversion and penance, for war is a consequence of sin.
- The insistence that true peace is the peace of Christ in the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ (Pius XI), which requires the subordination of all human law to the eternal law of God.
- The recognition that the Church’s mission is supernatural: to save souls, not to broker humanitarian ceasefires within a godless order.
The faithful must reject this naturalistic drivel and return to the integral Catholic faith as it existed before the revolution of John XXIII. The monastery in Beirut, if it were truly Catholic, would be a fortress of the Faith, offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, preaching the exclusive salvific truth of the Church, and calling all men to obey Christ the King—not merely to respect human rights. The article is a stark reminder that the conciliar sect is an enemy of the supernatural order and a servant of the Masonic principles of naturalism and indifferentism condemned a century and a half ago.
Source:
Franciscan Brother in Lebanon: God does not give permission to kill (vaticannews.va)
Date: 16.03.2026