National Catholic Register reports that “Bishop” Juan Ignacio Liébana of Chascomús, Argentina, issued a “message to young people wishing to enter politics,” describing the ideal politician as a person of “great virtue and integrity” intent on building a “better society.” He calls politics “one of the noblest tasks” and “charity exercised at its highest level,” emphasizing the “common good,” dialogue, humility, austerity, and tenderness. The message, while sounding superficially virtuous, is a textbook example of the post-conciliar Church’s capitulation to naturalistic humanism, reducing the political order to mere social work devoid of the supernatural reign of Christ the King — the very foundation upon which every just society must be built.
The Common Good Without the King: A Contradiction in Terms
The “bishop” speaks of the “common good” as if it were a self-evident, self-sufficient end in itself. He urges politicians to seek “what is just, good, and appropriate while looking out for the most vulnerable.” All of this sounds admirable on the surface — but it is precisely this kind of language, severed from its supernatural moorings, that constitutes the very essence of the post-conciliar revolution. What is the common good? Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei, taught with crystalline clarity that the common good of society is ordered to the ultimate end of man, which is God Himself, and that no political order can be considered truly good which refuses to recognize the sovereignty of Christ over all nations and over every department of human life.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas — the very encyclical quoted in the provided documents — stated with unmistakable authority: “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.” And further: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” The “bishop’s” entire discourse on the common good is constructed as if these words had never been written — as if Christ the King had never claimed dominion over the political order.
The omission is not accidental. It is structural. It is the conciliar method: say nothing false in particular, but omit the one thing necessary.
“Charity at Its Highest Level” — But Whose Charity?
The “bishop” declares that politics is “charity exercised at its highest level.” This phrase, drawn from the conciliar vocabulary, is a subtle but devastating distortion of Catholic teaching. True charity, as defined by the perennial Magisterium, is a theological virtue — a supernatural habit infused by God, ordered toward the love of God above all things and the love of neighbor for the sake of God. Pius XI, again in Quas Primas, taught that Christ reigns in the wills of men “because He inclines our free will and conquers it with His inspiration, so that we are inflamed for the noblest deeds.” The charity that informs political life is not a natural sentiment of goodwill; it is the supernatural virtue flowing from grace, rooted in the recognition of Christ’s kingship.
When a conciliar “bishop” speaks of charity “at its highest level” without once mentioning the obligation of the state to recognize Christ, to submit to His Church, to order legislation according to divine law, and to protect and promote the true religion — he is not speaking of Catholic charity at all. He is speaking of naturalistic humanitarianism dressed in ecclesiastical vestments. This is precisely the “cult of man” condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium — the reduction of the supernatural order to the merely human.
The Language of Virtue Without the Supernatural Order
The “bishop’s” catalogue of recommended virtues — austerity, humility, tenderness, simplicity, sobriety, integrity — reads like a manual for secular humanist self-improvement, not a call to sanctity in the political arena. Each virtue is presented in its natural dimension, stripped of its supernatural context. Humility is recommended so that the politician “does not become enamored of his own image.” Austerity is urged so that he is not “enamored of travel” or “the high life.” Tenderness is emphasized so that he “smiles” and “plays with his children.”
Where is the mention of the virtue of religion — the most fundamental of all moral virtues, which orders man to give God what is due to Him? Where is the mention of the duty of the state to profess the Catholic faith publicly? Where is the mention of the mortal sin committed by a Catholic politician who cooperates with laws contrary to divine law — laws permitting abortion, divorce, the secularization of marriage, the exclusion of God from public education?
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “the best theory of civil society requires that popular schools… should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority, control and interference” (Proposition 47), and that “Catholics may approve of the system of educating youth unconnected with Catholic faith and the power of the Church” (Proposition 48). He further condemned the separation of Church and State (Proposition 55) and the claim that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Proposition 77).
The “bishop” of Chascomús says not a word about any of this. His “virtuous politician” is perfectly at home in the liberal, secular, religiously indifferentist order that Pius IX condemned as intrinsic to the modern apostasy.
The Examination of Conscience That Examines Nothing That Matters
Perhaps the most revealing passage is the “bishop’s” advice that politicians keep a list of their campaign promises and “periodically hold themselves accountable and undertake a sincere examination of conscience.” This is the conciliar method applied to the political sphere: substitute interior sentiment for objective moral law. An examination of conscience, in the Catholic understanding, is an act of the virtue of prudence aided by grace, in which the soul measures its actions against the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church. It presupposes the objective moral order revealed by God and taught infallibly by the Magisterium.
But in the “bishop’s” formulation, the examination of conscience is reduced to a self-referential exercise: “Did I keep my promises? Did I live up to my own aspirations?” There is no mention of whether those promises and aspirations are themselves in conformity with divine law. A politician could faithfully keep every promise — promises to expand “same-sex marriage,” to fund abortion programs, to remove crucifixes from public buildings — and still pass the “bishop’s” test with flying colors, provided he did so with “humility” and “tenderness.”
This is not Catholic moral theology. It is therapeutic deism — the reduction of the moral life to sincerity and good intentions, which is precisely the error condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis as the very heart of Modernism: the replacement of objective truth by subjective religious experience.
“A Den of Thieves” — But No Mention of the Thieves Within
The “bishop” warns that politics should be “a place for the best, the most virtuous, and not ‘a den of thieves.'” He laments “narcissism and mediocrity” among public servants and includes “us who are consecrated religious” in the criticism. This is the conciar rhetoric of false self-criticism — a performative admission of generic failure that never identifies the specific, doctrinal cause of that failure.
The “den of thieves” is not merely a matter of personal vice or narcissism. It is the result of doctrinal apostasy — the systematic rejection of the Church’s teaching on the social kingship of Christ, the rights of the true religion in the public order, the duty of Catholic states to suppress public manifestations of false worship, and the subordination of the temporal order to the supernatural end of man. The thieves are not merely corrupt politicians; they are the architects of the conciliar revolution who gutted the Church’s social doctrine of its supernatural content and handed the faithful over to the mercy of the liberal secular order.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the proposition that “the Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Proposition 63). The “bishop” of Chascomús does not merely fail to defend evangelical ethics — he does not even mention them. His entire framework is one of accommodation to “modern progress,” dressed up in the language of virtue.
The Argentine Context: A Nation Consecrated to What?
The “bishop” concludes by asking God to raise up “ordinary men and women who are approachable, and filled with tenderness and love for our beloved Argentina.” Argentina — a nation that was once formally consecrated to Christ the King, that once had constitutional provisions recognizing the Catholic religion as the religion of the state, that once had laws protecting the faith from public insult and the education of youth from secularist corruption.
What has become of Argentina? It has become a nation where abortion is legal, where “gender ideology” is taught in schools, where the Catholic faith is marginalized from public life, and where “bishops” offer advice to young politicians that could have been written by any secular NGO — advice that never once mentions the obligation of the Argentine state to recognize the kingship of Christ, to repeal laws contrary to divine law, or to restore the Catholic religion to its rightful place in the public order.
The “bishop’s” love for Argentina is a love that refuses to tell the nation the one thing it most needs to hear: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Psalm 126:1). No amount of “tenderness,” “simplicity,” or “humility” on the part of politicians will save Argentina — or any nation — that refuses to submit to the reign of Christ the King.
The Symptom and the Disease
This article is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of the systemic disease that has consumed the structures occupying the Vatican since the death of Pius XII. The conciar “bishops” are not merely incompetent or naive. They are the products of a formation system that was deliberately designed to produce men who think and speak in the categories of the world — men who can discourse eloquently about “the common good” and “social dialogue” while remaining utterly silent about the one thing that matters: the obligation of every soul, every family, and every state to submit to the reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The faithful who desire to enter politics — or any walk of life — need not the advice of a conciliar “bishop” who tells them to be “tender” and “humble.” They need the unchanging teaching of the Catholic Church: that Christ is King, that His law is the foundation of all just legislation, that the Church has the right and the duty to speak with authority on matters of faith and morals — including politics — and that no political program which refuses to recognize these truths can ever serve the true common good of any nation.
Pius XI spoke with the authority of Peter when he declared: “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, everyone will notice how religiously and wisely they will use their authority.” The “bishop” of Chascomús offers none of this. He offers the world what the world already has: good advice, natural virtue, and the absence of God.
Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
Source:
Argentine Bishop Offers Advice to Young People Who Wish to Enter Politics (ncregister.com)
Date: 13.04.2026