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The Secularization of Grief: Loyola University’s Response to Murder

The cited article from the National Catholic Register’s Catholic News Agency (CNA) reports the tragic murder of Sheridan Gorman, a freshman at Loyola University Chicago, a Jesuit institution. The university’s response, as detailed, is a cascade of naturalistic, sentimental, and theologically vacant expressions of grief. Campus ministry groups describe the victim with terms like “compassionate, selfless, kind” and “a beautiful person and a genuine soul,” while leadership urges prayer to St. Joseph and speaks of “the light of Christ’s love” overshadowing “the darkness of this world.” Cardinal Blase Cupich is noted as having consoled the parents. The entire narrative is framed entirely within the categories of human emotion, personal virtue, and communal loss, with zero reference to the supernatural order: the state of the victim’s soul, the sin of murder, the necessity of the sacraments for salvation, the judgment of God, or the Social Kingship of Christ over the very laws and order that failed to protect her. This omission is not accidental; it is the definitive symptom of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. The response is a perfect microcosm of the post-conciliar Church’s apostasy: a Catholicism reduced to a “feel-good” humanitarianism, utterly evacuated of its divine and hierarchical content.

Level 1: Factual Deconstruction – The Omission of Sin and Judgment

The article presents a factual event—a murder—but interprets it through a lens that deliberately excludes the most fundamental Catholic explanations. The facts reported are:

• A young woman was murdered by an illegal immigrant.
• The university community expresses profound grief using psychological and emotional descriptors.
• Prayer is directed to St. Joseph, and vague references to “Christ’s love” are made.
• Cardinal Cupich, a notorious modernist, is involved in the pastoral response.

What is conspicuously absent from this factual framework is any mention of:

• The mortal sin of the perpetrator and the violation of the Fifth Commandment.
• The temporal and eternal consequences of that sin, including the danger of the perpetrator’s damnation.
• The need for the sacrament of Penance for the salvation of the sinner (which requires contrition, confession, and absolution from a validly ordained priest with jurisdiction).
• The role of divine Providence in allowing this tragedy as a chastisement for collective sin, particularly the apostasy of the age.
• The Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, whose absence from public law and order is the direct cause of such societal breakdown.

This is not a neutral report; it is an act of interpretive violence against the Catholic faith. By stripping the event of its supernatural dimensions, the article’s sources (the university, the cardinal, the student ministry) reveal themselves as agents of the conciliar sect, which has systematically replaced the doctrine of sin and grace with the psychology of trauma and the ideology of inclusion.

Level 2: Linguistic Analysis – The Vocabulary of Naturalism and Sentimentality

The language employed is a diagnostic tool. Key phrases include:

• “Heavy with grief” – A purely emotional, psychological state. The Catholic response to tragedy is compunction (contrition for sin) and resignation to God’s will, not merely “grief” held in “tension.”
• “Compassionate, selfless, kind, generous, joyful, willing, and so much fun” – A list of humanistic virtues, indistinguishable from secular eulogizing. Where is the Catholic virtue of religion, the first and foundational virtue? Where is the mention of her state of grace, her last rites, her reliance on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?
• “The darkness of this world does not overshadow the light of Christ’s love” – This is a modernist slogan, a vague, deistic sentiment that empties “Christ’s love” of its specific, sacramental, and juridical content. It is the language of “spirituality” divorced from the Church. True Catholic theology teaches that the darkness of the world is the kingdom of Satan, and Christ’s light is found in HisSacraments, His law, and His hierarchical Church. This phrase is an insult to the intellect.
• “Making everyone feel special, seen, and loved” – This is the language of therapeutic self-esteem, a direct import from Protestant and New Age thought. The Catholic mission is not to make people “feel” loved, but to bring souls to the knowledge and love of God through the means He instituted.
• “Petition St. Joseph to intercede” – While devotion to St. Joseph is good, it is presented as a generic “intercessor” in a crisis, not as the foster-father of the God-Man whose intercession is part of the Communion of Saints, a doctrine tied to the visible, hierarchical Church. The prayer is abstracted from its doctrinal context.

The tone is consistently pastoral, gentle, and bereft of prophetic condemnation. There is not a whisper of “sinners in the hands of an angry God”, no call to do penance, no reminder that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). This is the language of the Church of Nice, the “mercy” without justice that defines the post-conciliar apostasy.

Level 3: Theological Confrontation – The Erasure of Christ the King

The article’s entire universe is one where Christ is not King. This is the core error. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas, from which the feast of Christ the King was instituted, provides the exact doctrinal antidote to the sentimentality of the Loyola response. Pius XI teaches that the “plague” of secularism (laicism) began precisely with “the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.” He states unequivocally:

“When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.”

The murder of Sheridan Gorman is a direct fruit of this very removal. The illegal alien who shot her existed in a legal and social order that has formally rejected the “reign of our Savior” in public life. The state, having abandoned the “law of Christ”, cannot protect its citizens. The university, a “Catholic” institution that has fully embraced the principles of the Syllabus of Errors (especially errors #77-80 on religious liberty and the separation of Church and State), is complicit in this disorder by its very existence as a “Jesuit” university that operates within the secular paradigm.

Pius XI further declares that Christ’s kingdom “encompasses all men” and that “no power in us is exempt from this reign.” Therefore, every law, every border policy, every act of governance must be subject to the authority of Christ the King. The article’s silence on this is a denial of the Faith. It treats the crime as a random act of violence within a neutral, secular framework, when in truth it is a consequence of the “public apostasy” Pius XI laments. The “light of Christ’s love” does not “overshadow” such darkness; the darkness proves the absence of His public reign.

Level 4: Symptomatic Analysis – The Conciliar Roots of the Void

The response at Loyola University is not an anomaly; it is the logical outcome of the Second Vatican Council, which St. Pius X, in his condemnation of Modernism in Lamentabili sane exitu, would have recognized as the “synthesis of all errors.” The council’s documents, particularly Gaudium et Spes, substituted the “Church of Christ” (a perfect society with rights from God) with a “Church of the people of God” dialoguing with the world. This produced the exact mentality on display:

• Hermeneutics of Continuity in Action: The university uses Catholic symbols (St. Joseph, “Christ’s love”) while operating on the naturalistic, humanistic principles of the modern world. This is the “two souls” of the conciliar church: one for traditional language, one for modern content.
• Religious Liberty as Dogma: The implicit acceptance of an “illegal immigrant” as a category of person with “rights” that supersede the common good of the political community is a direct fruit of Dignitatis Humanae. The Syllabus of Errors (#15, #16, #77) condemns this error: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which… he shall consider true.” This error leads to the dissolution of the “one nation under God” concept and makes the state powerless to defend its citizens from those who do not share its Catholic identity.
• Democratization of the Church: The focus on the victim’s personal qualities (“making everyone feel special”) mirrors the council’s shift from a hierarchical, sacramental Church to a “people of God” where individual experience and dignity are elevated above objective truth and authority.
• Silence on Sacramental Life: No mention is made of whether Sheridan Gorman was a practicing Catholic in good standing, whether she received the sacraments regularly, or whether prayers are being offered for the repose of her soul (a non-negotiable Catholic duty). This silence is damning. It indicates a belief that salvation is a matter of “being a good person” rather than “being in the state of grace” through the sacraments.

Cardinal Cupich’s involvement is the final seal of condemnation. He is a prime architect of the “Church of the New Advent”, having openly promoted “synodality” (a democratic, Protestant-style governance), “ecumenism” (which the “False Fatima” file exposes as a tool for religious relativism), and the “evolution of doctrine”. His pastoral letter would be indistinguishable from a Unitarian Universalist response. His presence confirms that Loyola University is a “paramasonic structure” occupying Catholic real estate.

The Only Catholic Response: Christ the King or Chaos

The unchanging, integral Catholic faith, as defined before the apostasy of the 1958 conclave, provides one and only one coherent response to this tragedy:

1. Condemnation of the Sin: The murder is a crimen that cries out to heaven for vengeance. The perpetrator, if a Catholic, is automatically excommunicated for violating the Fifth Commandment. If he is not Catholic, he is in mortal sin and in danger of eternal damnation. No “mental health” or “socioeconomic” explanations are acceptable; the root is original sin and personal culpability.
2. Call for Justice: The state, as the “minister of God” (Rom. 13:4), has the duty to execute the criminal (the death penalty) to protect the common good, expiate the crime, and restore the order violated. The current refusal to do so is a direct consequence of the “errors” condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (#63: “It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel against them”).
3. Prayer for the Victim: The primary prayer must be for the repose of Sheridan Gorman’s soul, that she died in the state of grace, and that any temporal punishment due to her sins may be purified. This requires the sacrifice of the Holy Mass and the prayers of the faithful, not vague “thoughts and prayers.”
4. Reaffirmation of the Social Kingship of Christ: The only remedy for such societal decay is the public recognition of Jesus Christ as King of individuals, families, and nations. This means laws based on the “divine and eternal law”, the exclusive rights of the Catholic Church, the suppression of false religions, and the subordination of the state to the “City of God.” As Pius XI states: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… [and] rulers… have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.”
5. Exposure of the False Church: The response from Loyola and its “cardinal” exposes the “neo-church” as a “synagogue of Satan” (Apoc. 2:9, 3:9). It offers the consolations of the world (“you are a good person”) while denying the “hard sayings” of the Gospel (John 6:60). It is a “cult of man” (Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno) replacing the “cult of God.”

The tragedy of Sheridan Gorman is twofold: the loss of a young life, and the spiritual bankruptcy of the institution that claims to mourn her. That institution, having embraced the errors of Modernism, has no vocabulary for true grief, no framework for true justice, and no hope that extends beyond the grave. Its “grief” is a “sorrow of the world” (2 Cor. 7:10) that works unto death. The only Catholic response is to “preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23), to demand His reign in all things, and to separate oneself from the “abomination of desolation” that occupies the Vatican and its appendages.

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand, because they are spiritually examined.” (1 Cor. 2:14)

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Source:
Loyola University Mourns Student Killed in Chicago Shooting: ‘We Are Heavy With Grief’   (ncregister.com)
Date: 24.03.2026