National Catholic Register portal (April 13, 2026) publishes a commentary by Andrea M. Picciotti-Bayer titled “Our Catholic Moment,” which presents a rosy picture of the post-conciliar institution’s alleged growth and cultural influence in America. The article celebrates conversions, vocations, legal victories, and the pontificate of the usurper Leo XIV as evidence of a Catholic resurgence. Beneath this veneer of optimism lies a profound spiritual bankruptcy: the complete absence of any mention of the supernatural life, the state of grace, the necessity of true sacraments, or the immutable Catholic faith that alone can save souls. What is offered is not the Catholic Religion but a naturalistic humanitarianism dressed in liturgical aesthetics.
The Illusion of Growth Without the Supernatural
The article opens with a telling admission disguised as triumph: “People do not convert in meaningful numbers to an institution that has nothing to offer. Something is being offered here — and received.” The author never once specifies what this “something” is. Is it the Catholic faith — the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic faith defined by the Council of Trent and the Vatican Council? Is it the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the true propitiatory sacrifice of Calvary renewed on every altar? Is it the sacraments as Christ instituted them — baptism regenerating the soul, confession restoring the state of grace, Holy Eucharist conferring the very Body and Blood of Our Lord? Not a single word.
What is actually described is a naturalistic program of social formation: “programs, communities, and vocations quietly built over decades to form men and women capable of contributing to the common good.” The “common good” — that malleable phrase beloved of every liberal and Masonic charter — replaces the supernatural end of man: the Beatific Vision, the salvation of souls, the glory of God. Pius XI in Quas Primas taught that Christ’s reign extends over all men and all societies, and that the Church’s mission is to lead men to eternal happiness — not to temporal prosperity or professional networking. The article reduces the Church’s mission to producing competent professionals for courtrooms, boardrooms, and newsrooms. This is not the Catholic Church; it is a human resources department with vestments.
The Sisters of Life and the Dominican Sisters: Formation Without Foundation
The author celebrates the Sisters of Life and the Dominican Sisters of Nashville for their growth and attractiveness to young women. Yet she never asks the decisive question: what rule do they follow? What liturgy do they celebrate? What doctrine do they profess? The conciliar sect has systematically gutted religious life of its contemplative and penitential character, replacing the religious habit with civilian dress, the traditional Divine Office with eclectic prayer services, and the theology of self-oblation with the psychology of self-fulfillment.
Pope Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis warned that the Modernists — “the synthesis of all heresies” — would infiltrate religious communities and transform them from within. The growth of these communities is not evidence of the Holy Spirit’s action; it is evidence that they offer what the world wants: community without mortification, identity without doctrine, belonging without conversion. As the condemned proposition 65 of Lamentabili sane exitu states: “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.” This is precisely what these communities represent.
The Leonine Forum and Tepeyac Initiative: Catholic Action Without Catholic Faith
The Leonine Forum and the Tepeyac Leadership Initiative are presented as exemplars of lay renewal. Their stated purpose is to “cultivate emerging leaders to bring serious moral formation into public and private sectors” and to form “young Catholic professionals who understand that integrity and excellence reinforce each other.” One searches in vain for any mention of the necessity of faith, the sacramental life, the virtues of hope and charity, the reality of sin, or the need for redemption through Christ and His true Church.
This is Catholic Action drained of Catholicism. The lay apostolate, as defined by Pius XI in Quas Primas, exists to restore the reign of Christ the King over society — to ensure that “all relations in the state be ordered on the basis of God’s commandments and Christian principles, both in the issuing of laws and in the administration of justice, as well as in the education and formation of youth in sound doctrine and purity of morals.” The Leonine Forum produces lobbyists; the Church produces saints. The Tepeyac Initiative forms professionals; the Church forms soldiers of Christ. The article’s vision is indistinguishable from that of any secular leadership incubator — save for the aesthetic trappings of Catholicism.
Legal Victories Substituting for Spiritual Triumph
The author cites recent Supreme Court decisions — Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, Carson v. Makin, Kennedy v. Bremerton, and Mahmoud v. Taylor> — as victories for religious freedom. While any legal protection for the exercise of religion is preferable to persecution, the article’s enthusiasm reveals a deeper problem: the conciliar sect has learned to thrive within the liberal order rather than to challenge it.
Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors condemned the proposition that “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), and further condemned the idea that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (proposition 80). The article celebrates accommodation with the liberal democratic order as though it were a triumph, when in reality it represents the capitulation condemned by every Pope from Gregory XVI to Benedict XV. The Church does not need the permission of the Supreme Court to exist; she needs the grace of God and the fidelity of her ministers.
Moreover, the legal victories cited protect the institutional interests of the conciliar sect — its schools, its employees, its programs — not the rights of the true Church to preach the Gospel, administer the sacraments, and govern souls. The confusion between institutional self-preservation and the mission of the Church is total.
Leo XIV: The Usurper as Hero
The article reserves its most effusive praise for the current usurper on the Chair of Peter: “a son of Chicago who spent years as a missionary in Peru. He brings to the Chair of Peter a rare combination: fluency in the American democratic tradition and a pastor’s feel for the spiritual hunger of the Western Hemisphere.”
Let us be clear. Robert Prevost — the man calling himself “Leo XIV” — occupies the Vatican as part of a line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII, who convened the apostate Vatican II Council. The conciliar popes have systematically dismantled the Catholic faith: they promulgated the apostate Nostra Aetate, which denied the Church’s exclusive claim to truth; they introduced the sacrilegious Novus Ordo Missae, which reduced the Most Holy Sacrifice to a Protestant-style meal; they advanced the ecumenism condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos; and they canonized heretics and apostates.
The author’s description of Leo XIV’s “formation” reveals everything: “His election did not happen in spite of that formation. It happened because of it.” His formation is the conciarist formation — the formation that produced the apostasy. His “fluency in the American democratic tradition” is precisely the liberalism condemned by Pius IX. His “pastor’s feel for the spiritual hunger of the Western Hemisphere” is the naturalistic pastoralism that replaces the preaching of conversion, penance, and the necessity of the Catholic faith for salvation.
The true Church endures — not in the marble halls of the Vatican occupied by apostates, but in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith, who receive the true sacraments from validly ordained priests, and who reject the conciliar revolution in its entirety. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches, a manifest heretic ceases to be Pope and head ipso facto, and the usurpers in the Vatican exercise no jurisdiction, no authority, and no legitimacy.
“Our Catholic Moment” — Or the Abomination of Desolation?
The author concludes: “I like to call this time we are living in ‘Our Catholic Moment.'”i> She contrasts the “noise” of the culture with the “men and women quietly building, serving, forming the next generation — and the converts who are joining them,” and confidently predicts that the latter “will have the century.”
This is the language of secular triumphalism baptized with Catholic vocabulary. Where is the preaching of the Gospel? Where is the call to repentance? Where is the warning that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12)? Where is the recognition that the conciliar sect is not the Church but the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15)?
The “Catholic Moment” described in this article is not the triumph of Christ the King. It is the triumph of naturalism, liberalism, and apostasy wearing the mask of Catholicism. It is the “broad and liberal Protestantism” that Pius X warned would be the final fruit of Modernism. The men and women being formed in these programs are being formed for the world, not for Heaven. They are being equipped to succeed in American professional life, not to die to themselves and live for Christ.
The true Catholic moment — the moment that matters — is the moment of conversion to the true faith, reception of the true sacraments, and incorporation into the true Church of Christ, which subsists in the faithful who have remained faithful to the deposit of faith handed down from the Apostles. Everything else is noise.
Source:
Our Catholic Moment (ncregister.com)
Date: 13.04.2026