EWTN News Staff reported on April 26, 2026, that Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and Bishop David Bonnar of Youngstown, Ohio, issued statements condemning the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., where a gunman injured a Secret Service agent and forced the evacuation of President Donald Trump and other officials. The bishops called for prayer and emphasized that “violence is never the answer,” with Bonnar adding the platitude that “we all must look deeper into the human heart to build each other up rather than tear each other down.” Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, similarly posted on X that “Jesus commanded us to love our enemies, and that includes our ideological opponents.” Yet in this torrent of pious-sounding but theologically vacuous verbiage, not a single one of these men — occupying positions of authority in the conciliar sect — thought it necessary to remind the faithful that the root cause of such violence is the organized rejection of Jesus Christ and His Law by civil society, precisely the evil that Pope Pius XI identified nearly a century ago when he wrote that “this kind of outpouring of evil has afflicted the whole world because very many have removed Jesus Christ and His most holy law from their customs, from private, family, and public life” (*Quas Primas*, 11.12.1925). The statements are not merely inadequate; they are symptomatic of the spiritual bankruptcy of an institution that has abandoned its divine mission.
The Duty of Bishops and Their Cowardly Silence
The Catholic Church, established by Christ as a perfect society endowed with full authority to teach, govern, and sanctify, has a divinely mandated duty to proclaim the social Kingship of Jesus Christ over all nations, families, and individuals. This is not a pious aspiration but a binding doctrine of faith, solemnly defined by Pope Pius XI in *Quas Primas*: “The reign of our Savior extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” Pius XI further taught that “rulers of states… should fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” When a society systematically expels God from its laws, its schools, and its public life — as the United States has done with increasing ferocity since the so-called Enlightenment and especially since the revolution of 1968 — the result is precisely the “seeds of discord sown everywhere, flames of envy and hostility” that Pius XI lamented.
What did Archbishop Coakley say? “Because human life is a precious gift, there is no room for violence of any kind in our society.” Bishop Bonnar said: “The United States is built on freedom and respect for all.” Bishop Barron urged people to “remember that it is possible to disagree with a politician’s ideas without demonizing and dehumanizing him.” These are the sentiments of men who have thoroughly imbibed the spirit of the conciliar revolution — a revolution whose very foundation, as exposed in the *Syllabus of Errors* condemned by Pope Pius IX, is the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Proposition 55). These men occupy the structures of the neo-church, an institution that since 1958 has systematically dismantled the Church’s teaching on the social reign of Christ the King and replaced it with the modernist heresy of religious liberty and false ecumenism.
“Violence Is Never the Answer” — But What Is the Question?
The refrain “violence is never the answer” has become the universal incantation of a clergy that refuses to think theologically about the nature of civil society and its obligations toward God. It is a phrase designed to sound moral while saying nothing of substance. The Catholic Church has always taught that there is a legitimate use of force — by lawful authority, for a just cause, with right intention. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (*Summa Theologiae*, II-II, Q. 40), and the constant teaching of the Magisterium all affirm that legitimate defense, including the use of proportionate force, is not only permissible but sometimes obligatory. To flatten all distinctions into the slogan “violence is never the answer” is to adopt the pacifist naturalism condemned by the Church and to abdicate the duty of a bishop to teach the fullness of Catholic moral doctrine.
Moreover, the article notes that “since 2025, the United States has seen a marked escalation in political violence, including assassination attempts and lethal attacks linked to ideological extremism.” The bishops respond with prayers and platitudes. But where is the analysis of cause and effect? Where is the recognition that a nation that legalizes the murder of the unborn by the millions, that promotes sodomy as a civil right, that educates its children in godless schools forbidden by Pope Pius XI in *Divini Illius Magistri*, and that has structured its entire public order on the rejection of Christ the King — such a nation is reaping what it has sowed? As Pope Leo XIII wrote in *Immortale Dei*: “The Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each the highest in its own order, and each fixed within certain limits, defined by its own nature and special object.” When the civil power inverts this order — as the United States has done — the result is the disintegration of social order and the proliferation of every species of violence.
The Omission of the Supernatural Order
The most damning feature of these episcopal statements is not what they say but what they omit. Not one of these men — Coakley, Bonnar, or Barron — mentions the necessity of conversion to the Catholic faith, the obligation of the state to recognize the true Church, the reality of sin, the need for sacramental confession, the propitiatory sacrifice of the Most Holy Mass, or the eternal consequences of dying in a state of mortal sin. Bishop Barron’s invocation to “love our enemies” is stripped of its supernatural context and reduced to a therapeutic platitude indistinguishable from what any secular humanist might say. The command to love enemies, as taught by Our Lord in the Sublime Discourse on the Mount (Matthew 5:44), is inseparable from the entire supernatural order of grace, merit, and eternal salvation — an order that these men, as functionaries of the conciliar sect, have effectively denied by their acceptance of the post-conciliar novelties condemned in *Lamentabili Sane Exitu* and *Pascendi Dominici Gregis*.
Pope St. Pius X, in condemning Modernism — which he called “the synthesis of all heresies” — identified its core error as the denial of the supernatural order and its reduction of religion to subjective experience and social utility. The statements of these bishops are pure Modernism: they address violence as a purely natural phenomenon to be managed by natural means (dialogue, prayer as therapy, “looking deeper into the human heart”), while remaining utterly silent about the supernatural causes and remedies. As St. Pius X taught in *Lamentabili*, Proposition 20: “Revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” — this is the operative theology of the conciliar sect, and it renders every statement issued by its functionaries spiritually void.
The Conciliar Sect and the Abdication of Spiritual Authority
It must be stated plainly: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is not the Catholic Church. It is an organ of the conciliar sect, a paramasonic structure that has occupied the physical buildings and institutional apparatus of the Church while systematically destroying the faith once delivered to the saints. The men who lead this structure — Coakley, Bonnar, Barron, and their ilk — have accepted the usurpation of authority by the line of antipopes beginning with John XXIII, have promulgated or acquiesced in the heretical documents of the Second Vatican Council (particularly *Dignitatis Humanae* on religious liberty, condemned in advance by Pope Pius IX’s *Syllabus*, Proposition 77), and have participated in the systematic dismantling of the Church’s liturgy, discipline, and doctrine.
Pope Paul IV’s Bull *Cum ex Apostolatus Officio* declares null and void any promotion or elevation of a person who has defected from the Catholic faith or fallen into heresy. If this binding papal legislation is applied consistently — and it must be, for it is the law of the Church — then the entire hierarchy of the conciliar sect, having embraced and propagated heresy, has ipso facto lost all jurisdiction and authority. Their statements on violence, politics, or any other matter carry no more weight than those of any other private citizen. The faithful are not only not bound to obey them; they are bound to reject their authority and seek the sacraments from priests who remain in communion with the integral Catholic faith.
The True Remedy: Recognition of Christ the King
The only true remedy for the violence, discord, and moral chaos afflicting the United States and every other nation is the one that Pope Pius XI prescribed: the public and social recognition of the Kingship of Jesus Christ. This means not merely private devotion but the ordering of civil society according to the commandments of God and the principles of the Catholic faith. It means the rejection of the liberal heresy that the state may be neutral toward religion — a heresy condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in *Mirari Vos* and by Pope Pius IX in the *Syllabus*. It means the restoration of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the center of Catholic life, the preaching of the fullness of Catholic doctrine without compromise, and the formation of Catholics who understand that their primary loyalty is to Christ the King, not to any earthly republic.
Until the men who occupy the structures of the conciliar sect are replaced by true bishops — men who possess valid jurisdiction, who profess the integral Catholic faith, and who are willing to proclaim boldly that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12) — the faithful must look elsewhere for spiritual leadership. The statements issued by Coakley, Bonnar, and Barron in response to the White House shooting are not merely inadequate; they are further evidence that the conciliar sect is incapable of providing the spiritual guidance that souls need for salvation. As Our Lord warned: “If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit” (Matthew 15:14).
Source:
U.S. bishops say violence 'never the answer' after shooting at White House press dinner (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 26.04.2026