The National Catholic Register (May 12, 2026) reports that “Father” Jose Molina of the Institute of the Incarnate Word was removed from ministry in the Archdiocese of Chicago following allegations of “improper and inappropriate conversations and communications with minors and adult women,” according to a letter from “Cardinal” Blase Cupich dated May 9, 2026. Molina was sent back to his order’s provincial house and stripped of faculties, while the archdiocese claims to have reported the matter to civil authorities. In a separate but simultaneous case, “Father” Chris Williams of the Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico, was relieved of all duties after allegedly conspiring to steal over 60,000 private diocesan financial records — a scheme described by “Bishop” Peter Baldacchino as exposing the diocese to “significant risk of misappropriation and theft.” These two cases, emerging within days of each other, are not isolated incidents but rather the predictable fruits of the post-conciliar revolution that has systematically destroyed clerical discipline, moral theology, and the sacred character of Holy Orders since the abomination of Vatican II.
The Predictable Collapse of Clerical Discipline in the Conciliar Sect
The removal of “Fr.” Jose Molina for “inappropriate conversations with minors and adult women” is presented by the National Catholic Register as a measured, responsible action by “Cardinal” Cupich. But the very language employed — “inappropriate conversations,” “improper communications” — reveals the bureaucratic, naturalistic mentality of the conciliar apparatus. There is no mention of sin, no mention of scandal in the theological sense, no mention of the offense against God inherent in such conduct. The vocabulary is that of corporate human resources management, not of the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ to sanctify souls. As Pope Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemning the proposition that “moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction” (error no. 56) and that “the science of philosophical things and morals and also civil laws may and ought to keep aloof from divine and ecclesiastical authority” (error no. 57): the conciliar sect has precisely adopted this condemned framework, reducing grave moral evils to administrative infractions.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition that “the Church, in condemning errors, has no right to require any internal assent from the faithful to the pronouncements issued by the Church” (error no. 7). The conciliar structures have internalized this very error: moral discipline is treated as a matter of policy adjustment rather than divine law. The result is that predators and corrupt men are allowed to fester within the system for years, even decades, while the “authorities” issue carefully worded letters devoid of any supernatural conviction. The Institute of the Incarnate Word itself — a religious community born within the post-conciliar milieu — is a product of the same theological confusion that produced the crisis. Communities founded after 1958, lacking the unbroken chain of authentic religious life governed by the Rule and the Vow of Stability, are structurally incapable of forming men of genuine virtue.
The Theology of the “Office of Assistance Ministry” — Naturalism Masquerading as Pastoral Care
“Cardinal” Cupich’s letter notes that Molina’s accusers were “offered the services of the archdiocese’s Office of Assistance Ministry.” This phrase deserves scrutiny. In the true Catholic Church, the proper response to victims of clerical abuse would involve: the sacrament of confession, spiritual direction aimed at the healing of souls wounded by scandal, prayers of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Instead, the conciliar apparatus offers bureaucratic “ministry” — a term emptied of all supernatural content and filled with the therapeutic language of secular psychology. This is the logical consequence of the modernist error condemned by St. Pius X: “Right consists in the material fact. All human duties are an empty word, and all human facts have the force of error” (error no. 59 of the Syllabus). When the supernatural order is denied or ignored, all that remains is the horizontal plane of “assistance” — a pale imitation of charity that leaves souls spiritually starving.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught that Christ’s reign “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 conciliar sect, by contrast, has effectively dethroned Christ the King in its own governance, replacing His laws with the procedures of secular institutions. The Office of Assistance Ministry is not a Catholic institution — it is a damage-control mechanism designed to protect the reputation of the organization, not the souls of the faithful.
The Theft of 60,000 Diocesan Records — Corruption as Systemic Feature
The case of “Father” Chris Williams in Las Cruces is, if anything, even more revealing. The alleged theft of over 60,000 private diocesan financial records — a conspiracy involving “certain employees” of the Basilica of San Albino — is not merely a crime of opportunity. It is symptomatic of an institution that has lost all sense of the sacred. In the true Church, diocesan records are not mere administrative documents; they contain sacramental registers — records of baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and deaths — that have eternal significance. The casual treatment of these records, their vulnerability to theft and misappropriation, reflects a system that no longer believes in the reality of what those registers represent.
“Bishop” Peter Baldacchino’s statement that the theft “exposed the diocese and all parishes to a significant risk of misappropriation and theft” is a masterpiece of understatement that entirely misses the spiritual dimension. The true risk is not financial — it is the risk to souls. When the institutional Church cannot safeguard its own records, how can it claim to safeguard the deposit of faith? This is the conciliar sect in miniature: an organization that has lost its reason for existing, reduced to managing assets and liabilities while the faithful are abandoned to spiritual destitution.
Moreover, the appointment of “Father” Michael Williams — the accused’s own brother — as temporary pastor of the basilica is a decision so breathtakingly tone-deaf that it would be comical if the stakes were not so grave. It confirms what every Catholic with an intact faith already knows: the conciliar structures are not merely incompetent — they are deliberately structured to perpetuate dysfunction and prevent authentic reform.
The Root Cause: Apostasy from the Faith Itself
These two cases — sexual predation and financial corruption — are not unrelated pathologies. They share a common root: the apostasy from the Catholic faith that was formalized at Vatican II and has been deepened by every subsequent “pontificate” in the line of usurpers from John XXIII through Leo XIV. When the Church’s teaching on the nature of sin, the reality of Hell, the necessity of grace, and the supernatural destiny of man is systematically undermined, the inevitable result is moral collapse at every level of the institution.
The Syllabus of Errors condemned the proposition that “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” (error no. 58). This is precisely the moral universe of the conciliar sect: a world stripped of the supernatural, where “priests” prey on the vulnerable and conspire to steal financial records, and where “bishops” respond with bureaucratic letters and therapeutic “ministries” instead of the sword of the Spirit.
St. Robert Bellarmine, whose authority on the question of heretical popes is cited in the Defense of Sedevacantism, taught that “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” The conciliar “pontiffs” — all of them, without exception from John XXIII onward — have taught and approved errors condemned by the Church’s own Magisterium. They are, by Bellarmine’s criterion, manifest heretics who have lost their office ipso facto. The structures they govern are not the Catholic Church but a counterfeit — a “Church” that retains the external forms of Catholicism while having emptied them of supernatural content.
The scandals reported by the National Catholic Register are not anomalies within a functioning system. They are the normal output of a system built on the rejection of Catholic truth. As Our Lord warned: “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matt. 7:16). The fruits of the conciliar revolution are corruption, abuse, apostasy, and the spiritual ruin of countless souls. There is no reforming this structure — it must be rejected entirely, and the faithful must cling to the immutable Tradition of the Catholic Church, which endures in those who profess the true faith and receive the true sacraments from validly ordained priests who have not succumbed to the modernist heresy.
The true Church — the Church of all ages, founded by Christ, governed by His law, and sanctified by His grace — does not issue bureaucratic letters about “inappropriate conversations.” She teaches, governs, and sanctifies. She forms saints, not predators. She safeguards souls, not financial records. And she will endure until the end of time, while the conciliar sect, like all institutions built on the rejection of God, crumbles into the dust from which it was made.
Christus Rex.
Source:
Chicago Priest Removed After ‘Inappropriate Conversations’ With Children, Women (ncregister.com)
Date: 12.05.2026