The Desecration of Calvary: When Psalm 22 Becomes a Political Manifesto
The cited article, published in the *National Catholic Register* on March 31, 2026, presents a commentary by “Father” Raymond J. de Souza on the Fourth Word from the Cross. It interprets Jesus’ cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” primarily through the lens of American racial history, framing it as a divine commentary on the sin of slavery and its political redemption through the bloodshed of the Civil War and the moral leadership of Abraham Lincoln. The article culminates in a direct comparison of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address to a Good Friday sermon, presenting the president’s words as a theological exposition on national sin and vicarious atonement. The thesis is clear: the deepest meaning of Christ’s dereliction is to be found in the historical struggle for social justice, with political figures serving as the primary agents of interpreting and applying this sacred mystery.
1. Factual & Exegetical Distortion: The Psalm That Was Not a Political Protest
The article’s foundational error is its exegesis of Psalm 22. It acknowledges that Jesus prays the opening line but immediately detaches it from its Davidic and messianic context, reducing it to a generic “cry of dereliction” that “generations of slaves surely prayed.” This is a classic Modernist technique, condemned by St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* (Propositions 13, 14, 16): treating Scripture not as a divinely inspired text with a supernatural sense, but as a collection of human religious feelings and historical documents to be reinterpreted through contemporary political categories.
The article states: “Jesus is not forsaken by the Father. And Jesus does not think that he has been forsaken. He is praying the opening lines of Psalm 22…” This is a deliberate minimization. The Incarnate Word, in His human intellect, truly experienced the horror of sin and the abandonment concomitant with bearing the infinite weight of God’s justice. To say “He does not think that he has been forsaken” is to drain the Passion of its objective, vicarious character. As St. Paul teaches, God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). This is not a subjective feeling but an ontological reality: Christ became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). The article’s interpretation flattens this into a mere empathetic solidarity with oppressed peoples, forgetting that the primary object of this dereliction was the offense of *all* human sin against the infinite majesty of God. The Psalm’s conclusion (“I will declare thy name to my brethren”) points to the Resurrection and the founding of the Church, not to a political movement.
2. Theological Bankruptcy: The Omission of the Supernatural Order
The most grave accusation against the article is its complete silence on the *supernatural* causes and ends of the Redemption. It operates entirely within the naturalistic, historical-political sphere. This is the hallmark of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place: the replacement of the cultus of the true religion with a secularized morality.
* **On Sin:** The article identifies sin as “slavery,” “original sin” of the nation, and “offenses” that require “bloodshed.” It never defines sin as a *supernatural* offense against God, a violation of His eternal law, which merits *eternal* punishment. Sin is presented as a social pathology, not a rupture in the order of grace. This aligns perfectly with the errors condemned in the *Syllabus of Errors* (No. 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 repackaged as social justice. It also echoes the Modernist proposition condemned by Pius X: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him” (*Lamentabili*, 58).
* **On Redemption:** Redemption is presented as “bloodshed of war” paying for “unrequited toil” and “blood drawn with the lash.” This is a crude, naturalistic notion of vicarious satisfaction. Catholic theology, defined at Trent and reiterated by Leo XIII, teaches that Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary was a *supernatural*, *propitiatory* sacrifice offered to the Eternal Father, satisfying divine justice and meriting grace for souls. The article’s framework reduces the Cross to a historical symbol of political struggle, making Lincoln’s speech a “sermon” that rivals or explains Good Friday. This is blasphemous equivalence. The blood of Christ, offered in the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass, alone redeems the world. The blood of soldiers in a political war, however tragic, has no supernatural expiatory value. The article’s silence on the Mass, on the Priesthood, on the Sacraments as the *ordinary* means of applying the Redemption, is deafening and damning. It reveals the “conciliar sect’s” abandonment of *salus animarum*—the salvation of souls—as the primary law of the Church (Canon 1752, 1917 Code).
* **On the Church:** The “Black church” is praised as an institution preserving “dignity, agency, identity, culture.” This implicitly sets up a rival ecclesial entity to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. The article never mentions the Catholic Church as the sole ark of salvation, the sole dispenser of the grace merited by Christ. It promotes a “national” or “racial” church concept, condemned by Pius IX in the *Syllabus* (Errors 37, 38: “National churches, withdrawn from the authority of the Roman Pontiff… can be established”). The true Church, as taught by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*, is the “Kingdom of Christ on earth, intended for all people of the whole world,” not a sociological support group for an ethnic group.
3. Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy: The Hermeneutics of Continuity in Action
The article is a perfect specimen of the “hermeneutics of continuity” or “development of doctrine” condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. It takes a Catholic truth (the redemptive value of Christ’s sacrifice, the reality of sin) and “develops” it into a naturalistic, immanentist ideology.
* **The State as Savior:** By elevating Lincoln’s political speech to the level of a Good Friday sermon, the article effectively transfers the redemptive function from the Church to the State. This is the precise error of the “abominable” separation of Church and State condemned by Pius IX (*Syllabus*, Error 55) and the error that the State can be a source of salvation, which Pius XI refuted in *Quas Primas*: “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” (citing St. Augustine). The article suggests the State, through just laws and wars, can effect a national redemption, a notion utterly foreign to Catholic theology.
* **The Democratization of Revelation:** The article implies that a 19th-century politician, through his own reasoning and oratory, can provide a definitive, quasi-sacramental interpretation of the Cross. This is the Modernist error that revelation is a “permanent” and “vital” phenomenon, to which every generation adds its own understanding (*Lamentabili*, 21, 64). The *Sensus fidelium* is here replaced by the “sense” of the historical-political progressivist.
* **Silence on the True Enemy:** Like the Fatima deception analyzed in the provided file, which diverts attention from “modernist apostasy within the Church” to external communism, this article diverts from the *spiritual* battle against sin and for the reign of Christ to a *temporal* battle against a specific historical evil (slavery). It ignores the far more pervasive and damning sin of apostasy, heresy, and the sacrilege of the post-conciliar “reforms.” The “plague” Pius XI identified in *Quas Primas* was “secularism… its errors and wicked endeavors.” The article fights a 19th-century battle while the modern Church is in ruins, having embraced the very secularism Pius XI lamented.
4. The Radical Incompatibility with Integral Catholic Faith
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith—the faith of the Fathers, the Councils, and the Popes before the death of Pius XII—the article is a thoroughgoing apostasy.
* It **denies the unique, superlative, and exclusive dignity of the Sacrifice of Calvary** by placing a political speech on the same plane.
* It **denies the Catholic Church as the sole instrument of redemption** by pointing to the “Black church” and political processes as loci of divine action and preservation.
* It **denies the supernatural end of man** (the Beatific Vision) by making national social justice the ultimate “redemption.”
* It **denies the necessity of grace and the sacraments** by never mentioning them as the means by which sin is forgiven and souls are saved. The article’s god is a generic “Almighty” of Lincoln’s speech, not the Triune God of Catholic revelation.
* It **promotes a false ecumenism** (Error 18 of the *Syllabus*: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion”) by treating the “Black church” (a Protestant-dominated institution in the US context) as a true preserver of Christian dignity alongside the (invalid) post-conciliar “Catholic” structures.
Pius XI in *Quas Primas* taught that Christ’s kingdom “encompasses all men” and that “there is no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” Therefore, Christ must reign “in the mind… in the will… in the heart… in the body.” The article, by focusing almost exclusively on the political and social “reign” as interpreted through a specific historical event, commits the error of reducing the Kingship of Christ to a mere moral influence or a symbol for political activism, stripping it of its demands for personal sanctity, submission to the Church’s teaching authority, and the reception of the sacraments.
Conclusion: The Gospel According to the World
The commentary by “Father” de Souza is not a meditation on the Sacred Heart of Jesus pierced for our sins. It is a sermon on the sacred heart of the nation, pierced by civil war. It replaces the *theology of the Cross* with a *sociology of liberation*. The Fourth Word, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is not an invitation to analyze political histories of oppression. It is the cry of the God-Man bearing the infinite weight of human sin, a sin that includes the apostasy of the very men who now preach this diluted, naturalistic gospel. The article’s silence on the Mass, on confession, on the Papacy, on the necessity of the Church for salvation, is not an oversight; it is the necessary omission of a system that has exchanged the supernatural for the natural, the eternal for the temporal, and the Cross of Christ for the crosses of history. It is a perfect illustration of the “Church of the New Advent” preaching a “gospel” that is, in the words of St. Paul, “another gospel” (Gal. 1:8-9), destined for anathema.
Source:
Fourth Word from the Cross: ‘My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 01.04.2026