EWTN News portal reports (April 19, 2026) that the children’s book series “Chime Travelers” by Lisa Hendey has been adapted into an animated television series by Family Theater Productions and Herald Entertainment, featuring episodes on St. Patrick, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare of Assisi, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, and the Holy Family. The article presents enthusiastic statements from author Lisa Hendey and “Father” David Guffey, who speak of the need for “faith-based media” for children, the importance of “putting faith into practice,” and the desire to show children they can “make change in their world.” What is presented as a wholesome Catholic initiative is, upon closer inspection, yet another product of the post-conciliar ecosystem that reduces the supernatural reality of sanctity to moralistic therapeutic deism, omits any mention of the true purpose of Christian life — the salvation of souls and eternal union with God — and serves as a tool for forming children in the religion of humanitarianism rather than in the integral Catholic faith.
The Saints Reduced to Role Models for Self-Empowerment
The central premise of “Chime Travelers” — that twins Patrick and Katie travel through time via “magical church bells” to “learn valuable life lessons from the saints” — immediately reveals the fundamental distortion at the heart of this project. The saints are not presented as intercessors before the Throne of God, as souls in Heaven who by their prayers obtain graces for the faithful on earth. They are not presented as models of heroic virtue perfected through suffering, mortification, and total self-abnegation for the love of God. Instead, they are reduced to **moralistic life coaches** whose primary function is to teach children “valuable life lessons” so they can “be a force for good in our world.”
Lisa Hendey states: “I hope that the kids who watch this, in particular, understand the agency that they have in their own lives to learn valuable lessons from the community of saints and to be a force for good in our world.” This statement encapsulates the entire modernist project: the human person as an autonomous agent, the saints as a “community” of inspirational figures, and the goal — “to be a force for good in our world.” Where is the mention of eternal salvation? Where is the reality of sin, of the necessity of sanctifying grace, of the sacraments as the indispensable means of salvation? Where is the Cross?
The Catholic Church has always taught that the saints are venerated not merely as moral examples but as friends of God whose intercession is powerful and necessary. As the Council of Trent solemnly declared, the saints “reign together with Christ” and “offer up their own prayers to God for men,” and it is “good and useful suppliantly to invoke them, and to have recourse to their prayers, aid, and help for obtaining benefits from God, through His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is our alone Redeemer and Savior” (Session XXV). The “Chime Travelers” series, by contrast, presents the saints in a framework indistinguishable from secular self-help philosophy — a framework that would have been unrecognizable to any Catholic child formed before the conciliar revolution.
The Omission of Supernatural Reality: A Programmatic Silence
Perhaps the most damning feature of both the article and the series it promotes is what is systematically omitted. There is no mention of the sacraments — not a word about Baptism, Confession, or the Most Holy Eucharist as the true Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no mention of the necessity of being in the state of sanctifying grace. There is no mention of mortal sin and its eternal consequences. There is no mention of Hell, of Heaven, of the Particular Judgment, of the reality of the devil and his snares.
“Father” Guffey states: “When you’re a kid, you think the problem you’re going through, you’re the only one that ever had it and you think you can be a very lonely place. I hope the series shows that first of all, Katie and Patrick go through some of the things they go through at school or at home, but also that the saints and the people who’ve gone before us have gone through the same thing.” This is the language of therapeutic modernism — the saints as companions in emotional difficulty, not as glorified intercessors who can obtain from God the graces necessary for salvation. The problems children face are reduced to social and emotional challenges “at school or at home,” and the solution offered is the “wisdom and experience” of those who have gone before — a formulation that could just easily appear in a secular children’s program.
St. Pius X, in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907), warned that the Modernists reduce religion to “religious experience” and “sentiment,” stripping it of its supernatural, dogmatic, and sacramental content. The “Chime Travelers” series is a textbook example of this reduction. The supernatural order — which is the very reason for the Church’s existence — is entirely absent. What remains is a naturalistic, humanitarian framework dressed in Catholic imagery.
The “Magical Church Bells”: Syncretism and Superstition
The article describes the premise of the series: the twins travel through time “thanks to some magical church bells.” This detail, seemingly innocuous, is theologically problematic. The Catholic Church has always distinguished sharply between the sacramentals — which derive their efficacy from the prayer of the Church and operate ex opere operantis Ecclesiae — and magic or superstition, which attributes power to objects or rituals independent of God’s will and the Church’s authority.
The use of “magical” bells as a mechanism for time travel introduces children to a worldview in which sacred objects function as instruments of personal power — a concept far closer to pagan animism and New Age spirituality than to Catholic theology. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that sacramentals “do not confer grace, but they excite devotion, and obtain for us many and great favors, both spiritual and temporal, through the merits of Christ and the prayers of the Church.” They are never described as “magical,” and their use is always ordered toward the worship of God and the salvation of souls, not toward personal adventure and self-discovery.
This trivialization of sacred objects is symptomatic of the post-conciliar mentality, which, having lost the sense of the sacred, treats Catholic symbols and objects as mere aesthetic or narrative devices. It is the same mentality that produced the Novus Ordo Missae, in which the sacrificial character of the Mass was obscured in favor of a communal meal, and in which the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was effectively denied by the manner of its distribution and reception.
The Post-Conciliar Ecosystem: EWTN, Family Theater Productions, and the Religion of “Faith in Practice”
The institutional context of this project is itself revealing. EWTN — the Eternal Word Television Network — is a flagship institution of the post-conciliar establishment, consistently promoting the narrative of the “hermeneutic of continuity,” the legitimacy of the Novus Ordo, and the authority of the conciliar usurpers in Rome. Family Theater Productions, described as “a Catholic production studio in Hollywood,” operates within the same ecosystem. “Father” David Guffey, identified as the national director of Family Theater Productions and a “biblical consultant” on the hit series “The Chosen,” is a product of and contributor to this post-conciliar media landscape.
“The Chosen” itself has been widely criticized for its historical inaccuracies, its sentimental portrayal of Our Lord, and its ecumenical framing — presenting a Jesus who is accessible and relatable at the expense of His divine majesty and the fullness of revealed truth. That Guffey serves as a consultant on this project and as executive producer of “Chime Travelers” is not incidental; it is indicative of a consistent theological vision that prioritizes emotional engagement and broad appeal over doctrinal precision and supernatural faith.
Guffey states: “The lives of the saints are the lives of the Gospel in action. And I think it’s important that children see how faith is put into practice.” This formulation — “faith put into practice” — is the hallmark of the post-conciliar religion of humanitarianism. It reduces the Gospel to a program of social action and personal improvement, stripping it of its supernatural content: the Incarnation, the Redemption, the Real Presence, the necessity of the sacraments, the reality of eternal life. The saints did not merely “put faith into practice” in the sense of living morally upright lives; they were vessels of sanctifying grace, temples of the Holy Ghost, who merited eternal glory through the Blood of Christ and who now intercede for the Church Militant. To reduce their lives to “the Gospel in action” is to reduce the Gospel itself to a moral code — precisely the error condemned by the Church in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 58: “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure”).
The Absence of the True Church and the Sacramental Life
Nowhere in the article is there any mention of the true Church — the Catholic Church as it existed before the conciliar revolution, with its unchanging doctrine, its sacramental life, its hierarchical structure, and its mission of saving souls. The “Church” referenced in the article is the post-conciliar conciliar sect — the structures occupying the Vatican, the neo-church of the New Advent, which has systematically undermined the faith through false ecumenism, religious liberty, the democratization of the Church, and the replacement of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with the Novus Ordo memorial meal.
The children who watch “Chime Travelers” will not learn that the Catholic Church is the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ, outside of which there is no salvation (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus). They will not learn that the sacraments are the indispensable means of sanctifying grace. They will not learn that the Mass is the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, not a communal meal. They will not learn that the saints are intercessors whose prayers are necessary and powerful, not merely inspirational figures. They will not learn that the purpose of human life is the glory of God and the salvation of one’s soul, not “making change in the world.”
Instead, they will be formed in the religion of the conciliar sect — a religion of naturalism, humanitarianism, and emotional sentimentality that is Catholic in name only. They will be taught to “seek out content that suits their families and their faith,” as Guffey puts it, without ever being told what that faith truly is. They will be given the appearance of Catholic formation while being deprived of its substance.
The Cult of “Agency” and the Denial of Grace
Hendey’s emphasis on children understanding “the agency that they have in their own lives” is particularly revealing. While Catholic teaching affirms the reality of free will, it also teaches — with absolute clarity — that without sanctifying grace, the human person is incapable of any supernatural merit. As the Council of Trent declared: “If any one saith, that man’s free will, moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of justification; that it cannot refuse its assent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema” (Session VI, Canon 4). And conversely: “If any one saith, that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise, that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven can be opened (to him); let him be anathema” (Session XIV, Canon 12).
The language of “agency” — of children understanding their power to “make change in their world” — is the language of the cult of man, condemned by St. Pius X as the very essence of Modernism. It places the human person at the center of the religious project, with the saints as helpers and the Church as a resource. This is the inversion of the Catholic order, in which God is the center, the Church is the ark of salvation, and the human person is a creature utterly dependent on divine grace for every good work and for eternal life.
Conclusion: Formation in Apostasy, Not in the Faith
The “Chime Travelers” animated series, as presented in the EWTN News article, is not a Catholic children’s program in any meaningful sense. It is a product of the post-conciliar conciliar sect, designed to form children in the religion of humanitarian naturalism while using the aesthetic trappings of Catholicism. It omits every essential element of the Catholic faith — the sacraments, sanctifying grace, the reality of sin and eternal judgment, the necessity of the true Church, the intercessory power of the saints, the sacrificial character of the Mass — and replaces them with a moralistic, therapeutic, and self-empowering narrative that is indistinguishable from secular humanism dressed in Catholic costume.
Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), warned that the rejection of Christ the King’s reign over individuals, families, and states leads to “seeds of discord sown everywhere, flames of envy and hostility,” “unbridled desires,” “domestic peace completely shattered,” and “the whole society profoundly shaken and heading towards destruction.” The “Chime Travelers” series, by omitting the reign of Christ the King and replacing it with the reign of human agency, contributes precisely to this destruction — not by attacking the faith directly, but by hollowing it out from within, leaving children with the shell of Catholic imagery and none of its supernatural substance.
Parents who wish to form their children in the integral Catholic faith must reject such productions utterly and seek out the unchanging heritage of Catholic catechesis, the lives of the saints as told by authentic Catholic authors, and the sacramental life of the true Church — the Church that endures in the faithful who profess the ancient faith and are led by priests with valid orders and true jurisdiction. The salvation of their children’s souls depends upon it.
Source:
Beloved Catholic kids book series ‘Chime Travelers’ becomes animated TV show (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 19.04.2026