The EWTN News article from March 26, 2026, reports that Catholic bishops in Pakistan, led by Archbishop Joseph Arshad of Islamabad-Rawalpindi and Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad (president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan), expressed solidarity with the Pakistani military amid cross-border clashes with Afghanistan. The bishops praised the army’s sacrifices, called for a ceasefire and dialogue, and stated their loyalty lies with the “progress of the country and the safety of our borders.” They also referenced “Pope Leo XIV” in urging peace. A local activist, Luke Victor, endorsed the call for unity but demanded a “balanced approach” condemning military overreach and enforced disappearances. The article notes the bishops’ silence on the plight of Afghan Christian refugees facing deportation to the Taliban.
Theological Bankruptcy of a Naturalistic Statement
The statement from the Pakistani bishops is a quintessential product of the post-conciliar apostasy, revealing a complete abandonment of the sensus Catholicus that must govern all Catholic thought and action. It reduces the Church’s mission to a mere adjunct of secular national security, utterly divorcing the temporal from the supernatural and betraying the unequivocal doctrine of Quas Primas. Pope Pius XI, in his 1925 encyclical instituting the feast of Christ the King, taught that the primary duty of rulers and states is to publicly honor and obey Christ the King: “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 bishops’ statement contains not a whisper of this fundamental truth. Their praise for the military is framed entirely in naturalistic, patriotic terms (“defending the country’s borders,” “live in freedom,” “progress of the country”), with no reference to the soldiers’ supernatural end, the salvation of their souls, or the obligation of the state to recognize the regnum Christi. This is the precise error condemned by the Syllabus of Errors: the separation of Church and State, and the denial that the civil authority must be subject to the Church in matters of law and governance (Errors 19, 55, 77). The bishops, by aligning themselves with the state’s military power without subordinating it to the law of Christ, implicitly endorse the secularist principle that the state can act independently of the divine law—a direct repudiation of the teaching that “all power in heaven and on earth is given to Christ the Lord.”
Omission of the Supernatural: The Gravest Sin
The most damning aspect of the bishops’ communiqué is its total silence on the supernatural order. There is no mention of:
- The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the true source of peace and the propitiation for sin.
- The necessity of grace and the state of sanctifying grace for individual soldiers and the nation.
- The final judgment and the eternal salvation of all souls involved in the conflict.
- The duty of the Church to evangelize and convert all nations, including Afghanistan, to the one true faith.
- The sacraments as the ordinary means of salvation, which are impossible for non-Catholics and gravely endangered in conflict zones.
This silence is not neutrality; it is a positive denial of the Church’s mission. As St. Pius X taught in Lamentabili sane exitu (condemning Modernist proposition 59), “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.” The bishops have internalized this Modernist error, treating “peace” and “progress” as evolving, naturalistic concepts divorced from the immutable truths of faith. Their “dialogue” is the dialogue of the conciliar sect, which seeks merely human solutions to problems that have their root in original sin and require supernatural remedies. The Syllabus explicitly condemns the idea that “the civil government, even when in the hands of an infidel sovereign, has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41), yet the bishops defer to the state’s definition of security without asserting the Church’s right to guide it according to divine law.
Critique of the “Balanced Approach” and Human Rights Idolatry
The activist Luke Victor’s call for a “balanced approach” that prioritizes “truth, justice, and human rights” is equally bankrupt from an integral Catholic perspective. The phrase “human rights” is a product of the Enlightenment and Freemasonry, utterly alien to Catholic doctrine which subordinates all human law to the lex aeterna. Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus condemns the notion that “moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction” (Error 56) and that “all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches” (Error 58). The modern concept of “human rights” is a naturalistic, individualistic construct that often contradicts the rights of God and the supernatural common good. The true “balance” for a Catholic is the harmony between the natural and supernatural orders, with the latter absolutely primacy. The bishops should have been condemning the state’s failure to protect Afghan Christians—not merely as a “human rights” issue, but as a failure to fulfill its duty to protect the members of the Corpus Mysticum Christi and to allow the Church free scope for evangelization. Their silence on the forced deportation of Afghan converts to the Taliban—a de facto death sentence for souls—is a scandalous dereliction of duty. As the Syllabus states (Error 64), the Church “is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress.” The bishops, by not defending the evangelical duty to protect the faithful and seek the conversion of all, prove themselves captive to “modern progress.”
The False “Pope” and the Conciliar Sect’s Complicity
The bishops’ reference to “Pope Leo XIV” (Robert Prevost) is a monumental act of implicit apostasy. To recognize a manifest heretic—as demonstrated in the file on sedevacantism, citing St. Robert Bellarmine—as the Vicar of Christ is to deny the Catholic faith. Bellarmine is unequivocal: a “manifest heretic… by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head.” The “Pope” they invoke is the head of the conciliar sect, an entity that promotes the errors of Vatican II—religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality—all condemned by St. Pius X as Modernist syntheses. By appealing to this antipope, the bishops align themselves with the very structure that has dismantled the Social Reign of Christ the King. Their call for “dialogue” mirrors the conciliar obsession with “dialogue” (e.g., Nostra Aetate, Dignitatis Humanae), which reduces truth to a matter of consensus and erodes the Church’s exclusive claim to be the sole ark of salvation. The Syllabus (Error 16) anathematizes the idea that “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation.” Yet the bishops’ entire framework—supporting a Muslim-majority state’s military, calling for generic “peace”—implicitly accepts the legitimacy of non-Catholic religions and states, thereby contradicting the Syllabus and the teaching of Pius XI that Christ’s reign “encompasses all men” and that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
The Duty of Catholic Rulers and the Bishops’ Dereliction
From the integral Catholic perspective, the bishops have a grave obligation to instruct both the faithful and the state authorities on the true source of peace. Pius XI in Quas Primas declares that peace is impossible without the recognition of Christ’s kingship: “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” The bishops invert this teaching. They urge “dialogue” between two Muslim states (Pakistan and Afghanistan) without a single word about the necessity of converting these nations to the Catholic faith. This is a direct betrayal of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) and the teaching of the Council of Florence (Cantate Domino) that “no one… can be saved unless he has entered into the Catholic Church.” Their statement is a masterpiece of political naturalism, treating the conflict as a mere geopolitical dispute to be settled by human diplomacy, ignoring the spiritual warfare underlying it and the eternal destinies of millions of souls. They act as chaplains to the state, not as pastors of souls with a duty to guide the state toward Christ.
Conclusion: Apostasy Cloaked in Patriotism
The Pakistani bishops’ message is a stark manifestation of the post-conciliar Church’s apostasy. It is a document of the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place: it uses the language of peace and unity while emptying it of all supernatural content. It prioritizes national solidarity and “progress” over the exclusive reign of Christ the King. It appeals to a false “pope” and operates within the framework of the conciliar sect, which has exchanged the doctrine of the Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus for the Modernist heresy of religious pluralism. Their silence on the Afghan Christian refugees is a damning indictment: they are willing to praise a military that collaborates in deporting fellow Christians to mortal danger, proving that their loyalty is to the naturalistic “nation” and not to the Corpus Christi. This is the logical fruit of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, which Pius X’s Lamentabili would have condemned as a “deplorable… abandonment of all restraint” in “the investigation of the foundations of things.” The bishops have become functionaries of a naturalistic humanism, utterly incapable of speaking the words of eternal life. Their statement is not a Catholic document; it is a testament to the spiritual ruin wrought by the Modernist revolution.
Source:
Pakistan bishops back army amid Afghanistan tensions (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 26.03.2026