The Cross Subordinated to the Constitution: A Traditionalist Critique
The cited article from the National Catholic Register, authored by Father Raymond J. de Souza, presents meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, framing them within the context of America’s semiquincentennial. It invokes the memory of Archbishop Fulton Sheen (beatified by the antipope Francis in 2019) and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, celebrates a cathedral stained-glass window that explicitly links the “Render unto Caesar” passage to American historical milestones like the Declaration of Independence and the Maryland Toleration Act, and promotes the concept of America as a “covenantal nation.” The author’s thesis is that salvation history and political history should illuminate each other, culminating in the assertion that one need not choose between the flag and the cross, but if forced, the cross must be chosen. This narrative, while superficially devout, represents a profound and dangerous synthesis of Catholic piety with Americanist ideology, a synthesis explicitly condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. It is a prime example of how even “conservative” post-conciliar commentary reduces the supernatural reign of Christ the King to a mere inspirational motif for naturalistic patriotism, thereby perpetuating the errors of Modernism and the Americanist heresy.
Naturalistic Reduction of Salvation History
The article’s central methodological error is its attempt to “shed the light of the Gospel upon our countries,” treating national history as a legitimate parallel to salvation history. This is a radical departure from the Catholic principle that the Church is the sole ark of salvation and that the nations are to be brought into the fold of Christ, not treated as co-equal covenants. The author writes: “We shed the light of the Gospel upon our countries, not the other way around.” This inverts the proper order. The Gospel is not a light to illuminate pre-existing national myths; it is the sovereign truth to which all nations, their laws, and their histories must submit. The pre-conciliar Church, following St. Pius X’s condemnation of the “synthesis of all heresies” (Modernism), taught that history is to be understood sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity), not through the lens of national self-determination. The article’s focus on the Declaration of Independence as a “covenant” is particularly pernicious. It applies a biblical term—berith, a sacred oath between God and His people—to a document of political rebellion authored by a deist (Jefferson) and implicitly justified by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” This is the very “natural religion” and “natural inner impulse” condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Error #5: “Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason”). The “covenantal nation” concept is a humanistic reinterpretation of sacred history, making the American founding an almost-sacramental event, thereby committing the sin of idolatry by placing a human political construct on a level reserved for God’s dealings with His Church.
The Omission of Christ the King’s Exclusive and Universal Sovereignty
The article’s most glaring omission is any reference to the doctrine of the Social Kingship of Christ, defined with absolute clarity by Pope Pius XI in the encyclical Quas Primas, which the author’s own context (the Feast of Christ the King) should have demanded. Pius XI taught that the Kingdom of Christ “encompasses all men” and that “no power in us is exempt from this reign.” He declared that rulers and governments have the “duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” and that the state must order “all relations… on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles.” The article mentions “Render unto Caesar” but strips it of its full theological import. In Quas Primas, Pius XI explicitly refutes the notion that one can compartmentalize allegiance: “If rulers and legitimate superiors will have the conviction that they exercise authority not so much by their own right as by the command and in the place of the Divine King… peace will flourish.” The author, however, presents a dichotomy where political and religious loyalties can coexist without the former being necessarily subordinate to the latter. This is a direct repudiation of the papal teaching that Christ’s reign is “not bounded by any limits” and that His authority extends to “all that is created.” By celebrating the American founding without demanding its explicit submission to the lex Christi, the article implicitly endorses the secular state, which Pius XI called “the plague… so-called laicism.” The silence on the requirement for states to recognize the Catholic Church as the sole true religion (condemned in Syllabus Error #21: “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion”) is a damning abdication of Catholic duty.
The Veneration of Modernist Icons: Sheen and Dolan
The article’s dedication to Cardinal Timothy Dolan and its invocation of Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s intercession are not neutral gestures; they are acts of allegiance to the conciliar sect’s hierarchy and its manufactured saints. Fulton Sheen was beatified by “Pope” Francis (Jorge Bergoglio) in 2019. According to the unchanging principles of Catholic canonization, a person cannot be beatified unless they lived and died in the state of grace and in obedience to the true Church. Bergoglio, as the head of the post-conciliar structure, is a manifest heretic (as proven by his numerous apostasies, from Amoris Laetitia to his Pachamama idolatry) and thus an antipope. His “canonizations” and “beatifications” are null and void, acts of a false pontiff promoting a synthetic, modernist sanctity. Sheen, while a brilliant communicator, was a conciliar cardinal who embraced the “new evangelization” of the post-Vatican II era, a project rooted in the ecumenism and religious liberty condemned by Pius IX and Pius X. To seek his intercession is to seek the intercession of a man whose public life was spent in communion with the revolution. Similarly, Cardinal Timothy Dolan is a prime architect of the “Church of the New Advent.” As Archbishop of New York, he has consistently promoted sacrilegious “Eucharistic” celebrations, embraced LGBTQ+ ideology in practice, and defended the post-conciliar novelties. The author’s personal gratitude to Dolan for his “long service to the Church” is a supreme irony: Dolan has served not the Catholic Church, but the conciliar sect that occupies its buildings. The article thus becomes a piece of propaganda for the very hierarchy that has orchestrated the apostasy, praising a “rector” who formed priests in the spirit of Vatican II’s destructive reforms.
The “Covenantal Nation” as Americanist Heresy
The article’s reliance on Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s analysis of America as a “covenantal nation” is a catastrophic theological surrender. This concept is a repackaging of the “Americanist” heresy condemned by Pope Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae (1899). Leo XIII warned against the error that “the Church should show an excessive indulgence to… the new opinions which are in vogue… especially in matters called ‘liberal.’” He specifically condemned the notion that “the Church ought to show an excessive indulgence to… the civil power” and that “the liberty which is so much extolled is the greatest of all natural endowments.” The article celebrates the American founding documents as a quasi-sacred covenant, directly contradicting Leo XIII’s teaching that the state must recognize the “duty of public and social worship” toward Christ the King. The “covenantal nation” idea makes the Constitution a parallel revelation, a “word” as binding as the Gospel. This is the naturalistic, rationalist error condemned in the Syllabus (Error #3: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood”). It transforms the political order into an end in itself, rather than a tool to be used for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, as defined in Quas Primas. The stained-glass window linking “Render unto Caesar” to the Maryland Toleration Act (a Protestant statute granting freedom to Trinitarian Christians) and the Declaration (a deist document) is a visual catechism of error. It suggests that the American experiment is a legitimate, even providential, expression of Christian principle. In truth, the United States was founded on the Enlightenment principles of religious indifferentism and the separation of church and state—precisely the errors listed in the Syllabus (Errors #15, #16, #55). The article’s failure to critique these foundations is a betrayal of the Faith.
The Silence on the Supernatural and the Sacramental
The article’s language is relentlessly historical, political, and naturalistic. It speaks of “liberty,” “covenants,” “founding principles,” and “national history.” It is utterly silent on the supernatural economy: the state of original sin, the necessity of sanctifying grace, the sacrificial nature of the Mass, the reality of hell, the particular judgment. This silence is the gravest accusation. The Seven Last Words are not political slogans; they are the final utterances of the God-Man effecting the redemption of the world. The first word, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” is a plea for mercy for the souls of the executioners. The fourth, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” is the cry of the Redeemer taking upon Himself the abandonment of the damned. The fifth, “I thirst,” is the thirst for the salvation of souls. The seventh, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” is the consummation of the sacrifice. The article reduces this cosmic drama to a metaphor for “sacrificial love” in politics. There is no mention of the Mass as the unbloody re-presentation of Calvary, no call for the public profession of the Catholic Faith as the sole means of salvation, no warning that the “liberty” extolled by Jefferson is the liberty that leads to perdition if not subordinated to the law of Christ. This omission is not accidental; it is the logical outcome of the conciliar religion’s obsession with the temporal order at the expense of the eternal. The author, like the entire conciliar hierarchy, has drunk deeply from the poisoned well of Modernism, which, as St. Pius X taught in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, seeks to “renew the Church in herself” by making religion a matter of sentiment and social utility rather than objective truth and supernatural grace.
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy
This article is not an anomaly; it is a perfect symptom of the systemic apostasy of the post-1958 “Church.” It accepts the premises of the Second Vatican Council’s “pastoral” approach, which prioritizes dialogue with the world over the dogmatic proclamation of the exclusive reign of Christ. It uses the language of “covenant” and “freedom” in a way that would be unrecognizable to Pius IX or Pius X. It venerates figures (Sheen, Dolan) who are products of the conciliar revolution. It treats the United States as a normative, even providential, entity, thereby embracing the “erring liberty” and “indifferentism” condemned in the Syllabus. Most critically, it operates entirely within the framework of the “abomination of desolation” occupying the Vatican, treating its “beatifications” and “cardinals” as legitimate. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is not a “conservative” position; it is a capitulation. The true Catholic response to America’s 250th anniversary is not to find biblical typologies for its founding, but to preach the necessity of the Social Reign of Christ the King as defined by Pius XI, to denounce the errors of the Declaration and Constitution as expressions of naturalism and indifferentism, and to call for the public conversion of the nation to the one true Church—outside of which there is no salvation (Pius IX, Quanto conficiamur). The article’s failure to do this is not a mere oversight; it is a betrayal of the Faith, a participation in the great apostasy foretold by St. Paul and warned against by St. Pius X. It is a polished, pious-looking veneer over the rot of Modernism, making the conciliar sect’s surrender to the world appear as a legitimate Catholic engagement with culture.
Conclusion: The Cross vs. the Flag
The author concludes with the rhetorical question: “if we must choose, the teaching of the Church — and the saints of every time and place — makes it clear that we choose the Cross, every time.” This is a hollow statement. The article’s entire framework demonstrates that the choice has already been made—in favor of a Cross subordinated to the flag. By sacralizing the American founding, by omitting the exclusive and universal sovereignty of Christ the King over nations, by honoring modernist “saints” and “cardinals,” and by employing the rationalist “covenantal” model, the author has already chosen the flag. He has chosen the naturalistic, Americanist “covenant” over the supernatural, hierarchical, and exclusive berith of God with His Catholic Church. The true Catholic, adhering to the unchanging Faith before the conciliar revolution, must reject this article as a dangerous piece of apostasy. The only legitimate “covenant” for nations is their public submission to the Mysterium Fidei and the law of Christ the King, as taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas. Anything less is idolatry. The Seven Last Words demand the conversion of every nation, not its self-congratulation. The article, in its poignant silences and its naturalistic premises, preaches a different gospel—the gospel of Americanism, which is none other than Modernism in a patriotic guise.
Source:
The Seven Last Words and America’s 250th (ncregister.com)
Date: 30.03.2026