Only One Thing Is Necessary — Or Is It? Archbishop Hebda’s Naturalistic Vision of Family Life

The Ulma Family: Beatified by an Antipope, Dead for Natural Charity

Hebda holds up the Ulma family — beatified by the antipope Francis in 2023 — as a model. Let us be precise: the Ulmas were killed by Nazis in 1944 for sheltering Jews. This was an act of natural charity, commendable in itself, but not martyrdom. Martyrdom, as defined by Catholic theology, requires that death be inflicted in odium fidei — out of hatred for the faith. Dying for hiding Jews, however noble, is dying for an act of natural virtue, not for the Catholic faith. Furthermore, the unborn child of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma could not be considered a saint, as it was not baptized — and without baptism, one cannot enter heaven (Council of Florence, Cantate Domino). That an antipope performed this “beatification” renders it null and void in any case, since a manifest heretic loses his jurisdiction ipso facto (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice II:30). Hebda’s invocation of this family is not Catholic catechesis — it is the promotion of a naturalistic, humanitarian ethic dressed in liturgical vestments.

Saints Louis and Zélie Martin: Sanitized Models of “Ordinary Holiness”

The letter commends Saints Louis and Zélie Martin — the parents of St. Thérèse of Lisieux — as “relatable models of ordinary holiness” who “made it a point to do three things very well: to love each other and their children unconditionally; to teach their children about God and the virtuous life; and to worship God at home and in the parish.” This description is revealing in its banality. Where is the mention of mortification, penance, the renunciation of the world? Where is the call to detachment from creatures, to the carrying of the Cross, to the pursuit of contemptus mundi? The Martin couple is presented as a warm, middle-class Catholic family — a Hallmark card with a rosary. This is the post-conciliar cult of “ordinary holiness” that has replaced the heroic sanctity demanded by the Gospel: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matt. 16:24). The true Louis and Zélie Martin were devout Catholics who lived in an era when the Church still taught the necessity of suffering, sacrifice, and the renunciation of worldly attachments. Hebda’s version is a modernist reconstruction — a family that would fit comfortably in any suburban parish of the conciliar sect.

The Complete Absence of the Supernatural: No Mass, No Grace, No Sin, No Hell

The most damning feature of this pastoral letter is what it does not say. In an entire document devoted to Catholic family life, there is no mention of:

• The necessity of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the center of family life — not merely “worship at home and in the parish,” but the propitiatory sacrifice that alone applies the merits of Calvary to souls.
• The state of grace — without which no one can see God (Council of Trent, Session XIV, ch. 2), and which is lost by a single mortal sin.
• The reality of mortal sin and its eternal consequences — the possibility that a child raised in a “loving Catholic family” may yet perish eternally if he dies in enmity with God.
• The necessity of baptism for salvation — “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).
• The dangers of sacrilegious Communion — receiving the Eucharist in the state of mortal sin, which is to receive one’s own condemnation (1 Cor. 11:29).
• The obligation of parents to ensure their children’s baptism and to raise them in the fullness of Catholic truth, not in the diluted naturalism of the conciliar sect.
• The reality of the conciliar apostasy and the duty of Catholic families to resist it — to refuse the new “Mass,” the new sacraments, the new catechism, and the new ecclesiology that have destroyed the faith of millions.

This silence is not accidental. It is the defining characteristic of post-conciliar pastoral literature: a relentless focus on the natural — relationships, emotions, mental health, social cohesion — and a systematic erasure of the supernatural. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught that Christ’s kingdom “is primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters” and that “there is no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” Hebda’s letter, by contrast, presents the family as a purely natural unit whose problems are solved by love, communication, and parish programs — not by grace, sacrifice, and the Cross.

Screens and Sins: A Naturalistic Diagnosis

The letter identifies the challenges facing modern families: “a general societal decline in religious practice and church affiliation,” the prioritizing of money over relationships, fatherlessness, mental illness, addictions, loneliness, and declining marriage and birthrates. Of screens, Hebda asks: “What would our families and our society look like if we spent but a fraction of what we spend on screens looking at the faces of our family members?”

This is the language of a social worker, not a bishop. Where is the identification of the root cause of these evils? Pius XI, in Quas Primas, identified it with precision: “This plague is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors… It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations; the Church’s authority to teach men, to issue laws, to govern nations, which authority she received from Christ the Lord to lead men to eternal happiness, was denied.” The decline in religious practice, the fatherlessness, the addictions, the loneliness — these are not problems to be solved by better screen-time management. They are the fruits of apostasy, the consequences of removing Christ the King from the laws, the schools, the families, and the hearts of men. Hebda’s diagnosis is not merely superficial — it is a deliberate evasion of the true cause, because the true cause is the very conciliar revolution that he serves.

“The Church Journeys With You”: Which Church?

Hebda’s exhortation — “Dear families, please take heart. You are not alone. The Church journeys with you, the Church loves you, and the Church needs you!” — is perhaps the most revealing sentence in the entire letter. Which Church? The Church that Christ founded, which teaches that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12)? Or the conciliar sect that has replaced the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with a Protestant memorial meal, that has embraced religious liberty as a human right, that has declared dialogue with false religions to be a duty, and that has effectively denied the necessity of conversion to the Catholic Church for salvation?

The “Church” that Hebda represents is the same “Church” that has:

• Suppressed the Traditional Latin Mass — the immemorial rite of the Roman Church — in favor of the Protestantized Novus Ordo of Paul VI (the antipope Montini).
• Embraced the ecumenism condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos and by the Syllabus of Errors (proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion”).
• Promoted the “cult of man” condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas, replacing the worship of Christ the King with the worship of human dignity, human rights, and human fraternity.</li
• Beatified and “canonized” individuals whose lives and teachings are incompatible with the Catholic faith — including the Ulma family, John Henry Newman (a convert from Anglicanism whose theory of the development of doctrine is a cornerstone of Modernism), and Faustyna Kowalska (a pseudo-mystic whose writings bear the marks of the condemned Kozłowska movement).

This is not the Church of Christ. This is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Matt. 24:15). And Hebda’s invitation to Catholic families to place their trust in this structure is not pastoral care — it is spiritual entrapment.

The Prayer to the Holy Family: Composed by an Antipope

The letter concludes with a prayer to the Holy Family of Nazareth composed by the antipope Francis. This is the same Francis who has called for the welcoming of migrants without regard for the common good of Catholic nations, who has signed the Abu Dhabi Declaration affirming that God wills the diversity of religions, and who has systematically undermined Catholic moral teaching on marriage, sexuality, and the natural law. To commend a prayer composed by this man as the conclusion of a pastoral letter on Catholic family life is to place the seal of apostasy on the entire document. It is a final, unmistakable sign that this letter, for all its pious language, is a product of the conciliar sect and serves its agenda.