National Catholic Register portal (April 10, 2026) presents a commentary by Andrea Picciotti-Bayer on the Easter Octave, focusing on the concept of divine filiation — the truth that through baptism, we become adopted children of God. The article draws on Scripture, the writings of John Paul II, and St. Josemaría Escrivá to explain this foundational Christian reality. While the article correctly identifies divine filiation as a supernatural fact rooted in the Cross and Resurrection, its reliance on a manifest heretic and apostate as a theological authority, coupled with its deafening silence on the state of the Church and the crisis of faith, renders it a hollow echo of a truth that the conciliar sect has systematically undermined.
The Truth of Divine Filiation: Stolen Property
The article begins with a correct and beautiful assertion: “We are sons and daughters of God.” This is indeed a foundational truth of the Catholic faith, rooted in Scripture and Tradition. St. John the Apostle writes, “Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, and should be the sons of God” (1 John 3:1). The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that through baptism, we are “regenerated in Christ,” becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) and truly adopted as God’s children. This is not a metaphor, as the article correctly states, but a supernatural reality — a participation in the very life of God, what the Fathers call divinization (theosis).
The article’s reflection on the scene at the Foot of the Cross (John 19:25-27) is also theologically sound. When Christ says to Mary, “Woman, behold thy son,” and to John, “Behold thy mother,” He is indeed establishing a new family — the Church. Mary becomes the spiritual mother of all the faithful, and we, in becoming her children, are drawn into the very life of the Trinity. This is the Stabat Mater — Mary standing at the Cross, not fleeing, but remaining in love and sorrow, already acting as our mother. This is a truth that the pre-conciliar Church proclaimed with clarity and conviction.
However, the article’s presentation of this truth is fatally compromised by its sources and its omissions. It cites “Pope John Paul II” — a man who, by his own public acts and teachings, fell into manifest heresy and apostasy, thereby losing any claim to the Chair of Peter. As the sedevacantist position, supported by St. Robert Bellarmine and the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 188.4), holds: a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church. To cite such a figure as a theological authority is to build a house on sand — or rather, on the ruins of the Church he helped to destroy.
The Silence of the Abomination: No Mention of the Crisis
The most damning aspect of this article is not what it says, but what it does not say. It speaks of divine filiation, of our identity as children of God, of the Cross and Resurrection — but it says nothing about the state of the Church in which this truth is supposed to be lived. It is as if the author is describing the beauty of a mansion while ignoring the fact that it is on fire.
Where is the warning that the sacraments — the very means by which divine filiation is conferred and nourished — have been systematically corrupted by the conciliar sect? The New Mass of Paul VI, promulgated in 1969, is a Protestantized assembly that obscures the propitiatory nature of the Sacrifice of the Mass and reduces the Real Presence to a mere “memorial.” As the Ottaviani Intervention (1969) warned, the New Mass represents “a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent.” To speak of divine filiation without warning that the primary means of sustaining it — the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — has been gutted, is to offer a lifeline made of paper.
Where is the mention of the crisis of faith? The conciliar sect, under the guidance of its usurpers — from John XXIII to Leo XIV — has embraced the very errors condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864) and by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). The “hermeneutic of continuity” is a lie; the reality is a hermeneutic of rupture, a systematic dismantling of Catholic doctrine in the name of “progress,” “dialogue,” and “ecumenism.” The article’s silence on this apostasy is not neutrality — it is complicity.
The False Foundation: John Paul II and the Cult of Man
The article cites John Paul II’s General Audience of May 1997, in which he reflects on Mary’s motherhood. But this is the same John Paul II who, at the World Youth Day in Paris (1997), told the youth: “Do not be afraid to be the saints of the new millennium!” — a call to sanctity divorced from the traditional means of grace, rooted in the New Mass and the new ecclesiology. This is the same John Paul II who, at the Assisi gathering of 1986, prayed with representatives of false religions, thereby implicitly denying the uniqueness of Christ and His Church. As Pope Pius XI warned in Mortalium Animos (1928), such ecumenism is a betrayal of the faith: “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.”
The article also cites St. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, who wrote that divine filiation is “the very foundation of the Christian life.” While Escrivá’s personal sanctity is a matter of debate — his canonization by John Paul II, a manifest heretic, is null and void — the point remains: the truth of divine filiation is being used to prop up a system that has abandoned the very means by which it is lived. Opus Dei, whatever its merits, operates within the structures of the conciar sect, participates in the New Mass, and recognizes the authority of usurpers. To cite Escrivá without this context is to whitewash the corruption.
The Cross Without the Crown: A Naturalistic Spirituality
The article’s spirituality is, at its core, naturalistic. It speaks of identity, belonging, love — but it does not speak of the supernatural order as the pre-conciliar Church understood it. There is no mention of the necessity of the state of grace, of the reality of mortal sin, of the need for confession and penance, of the urgency of evangelization and conversion. There is no mention of the social reign of Christ the King, as proclaimed by Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925): “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.”
The article’s tone is warm, inviting, consoling — but it is the warmth of a house with no foundation. It offers the consolation of divine filiation without the demands of divine law. It speaks of being “remade as daughters and sons” but does not speak of the cost: the renunciation of sin, the embrace of the Cross, the submission to the authority of the true Church. As St. James writes, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). A divine filiation that does not lead to a life of obedience to God’s commandments and the teachings of His Church is a fiction — a comfortable lie for a comfortable age.
The Price of Divine Filiation: Everything
The article ends with a powerful line: “Our divine filiation was not voted on, argued for, or negotiated. It was purchased. And the price was everything.” This is true — but the article does not draw the necessary conclusion. The price was the Blood of Christ, shed on the Cross for the remission of sins. And that Blood is offered in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — the true Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass, which the conciliar sect has suppressed in favor of a Protestantized assembly.
To speak of divine filiation without speaking of the true Mass is to speak of a gift without speaking of the Giver. To speak of the Cross without speaking of the Church that Christ founded — the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, not the conciliar sect — is to speak of a love without speaking of the Bridegroom. To speak of Easter without speaking of the apostasy that has emptied it of its meaning is to speak of a resurrection that has not yet occurred.
The truth of divine filiation is a jewel — but it has been stolen by thieves and placed in a counterfeit setting. The task of the faithful is not to admire the setting, but to recover the jewel and restore it to its rightful place: the Church of Christ, the true Church, which endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments and validly ordained priests. Only there — in the true Mass, in the true sacraments, in the true doctrine — can we truly cry out, “Abba! Father!” and know that we are, indeed, sons and daughters of God.
Source:
Easter Reveals Who We Are: Sons and Daughters of God (ncregister.com)
Date: 11.04.2026