The Register portal reports on a commentary by Andrea M. Picciotti-Bayer, “The Theology of Presence,” published June 4, 2026, which describes a friendship forged between two Catholic families at a parish Corpus Christi picnic. The author frames the relationship — an older couple befriending younger parents, including a blind Paralympian and his wife — through the lens of “accompaniment,” modeled on Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth. The article quotes “Pope” Leo XIV’s Jubilee of Youth address warning against shallow digital relationships, and cites the Institute for Family Studies on young parents’ desire for community. While the human warmth described is not in itself objectionable, the article exemplifies the post-conciliar reduction of the Church’s mission to mere horizontal sociability, devoid of any mention of the supernatural end of souls, the necessity of sanctifying grace, or the eternal stakes that should animate every Catholic encounter.
The Visitation Without the Magnificat: A Hollowed-Out Model
The author invokes the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth as the paradigmatic model for the kind of “accompaniment” she describes. This is, on its surface, a beautiful analogy. Mary indeed went “in haste” to the hill country, and the child in Elizabeth’s womb leapt at her arrival. But the author’s extraction of this scene from its theological context reveals precisely the kind of selective, naturalistic reading of Scripture that the Church has always warned against.
What did Mary bring to Elizabeth? The article tells us: “her presence, her prayer, her joy.” What it omits — and this omission is devastating — is the content of that presence. Mary carried within her womb the Incarnate Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made flesh. The Visitation was not merely a social call; it was a salvific event. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Ghost, cried out: “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:42-43). And Mary responded with the Magnificat — a hymn of divine praise that proclaims the scattering of the proud, the deposing of the mighty, the exaltation of the humble, and the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham “and his seed forever.”
The article’s version of the Visitation is the Magnificat without Christ. It is accompaniment without doctrine, presence without truth, charity without the supernatural order. This is not the Catholic faith; it is a sentimental parody of it.
“Accompaniment”: The Conciliar Hermeneutic Applied to Human Relationships
The word “accompaniment” has become one of the signature terms of post-conciliar discourse, deployed repeatedly by the usurpers occupying the Vatican to justify the refusal to teach, correct, or demand conversion. It appears in the documents of the Synod on Synodality, in the writings of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and now in a Register commentary about babysitting and T-ball games. The word functions as a theological solvent, dissolving the hard edges of Catholic moral teaching into a warm bath of mutual affirmation.
Consider what the article actually describes: an older woman befriends a younger couple, offers parenting advice (including, humorously, suggestions for Mother’s Day gifts), and occasionally serves as “an informal sounding board when questions about work, parenting and modern life begin closing in.” The author notes that her “Gen X sensibilities” have been useful when the young father “edges toward what I jokingly refer to as ‘the edge of intolerance.'” The reader is left to wonder: intolerance of what? Of whom? The article does not say, because to specify would be to introduce the very note of judgment that “accompaniment” is designed to suppress.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught that Christ’s kingship demands 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.” This is not a counsel of “accompaniment”; it is a command of the Divine King. The article’s vision of Catholic life — tea parties, T-ball, Shakespeare performances, and Paralympic road trips — is not evil in itself, but it is presented as sufficient, as though the whole of the Catholic mission to souls could be fulfilled by neighborly kindness and generational friendship.
The Silence About the Supernatural: Diagnosis of a Conciliar Mind
What is most striking about this article is not what it says but what it does not say. There is no mention of sanctifying grace, no mention of the sacraments as the means of salvation, no mention of the state of one’s soul, no mention of the Four Last Things — death, judgment, heaven, hell. There is no mention of the necessity of faith and baptism, no mention of the Church as the one ark of salvation, no mention of the obligation to evangelize and convert.
The article speaks of “the sense that they are not navigating family life entirely alone.” But the Church has always taught that no one navigates anything alone who is in the state of sanctifying grace, for the Holy Ghost dwells in the soul of the just man. And conversely, no amount of human companionship can substitute for the loss of that grace. “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26).
The author quotes “Pope” Leo XIV’s warning that “only genuine relationships and stable connections can build good lives,” and his caution against “the shallow ties of the digital age that reduce persons to commodities.” These are banalities that any secular sociologist could affirm. Where is the Pope’s duty to warn against the far more dangerous shallow ties of sin? Where is the teaching that the most “genuine relationship” available to man is the hypostatic union of divine and human nature in Christ, and that all other relationships must be ordered toward participation in that union through the sacraments of the true Church?
The Institute for Family Studies and the Quantification of the Soul
The article cites the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) for the finding that “what young parents want most is the sense that they are not navigating family life entirely alone.” The IFS is a secular research organization that measures human behavior through the lens of social science. Its findings are descriptive, not prescriptive; they tell us what people want, not what they need. The Catholic faith has always insisted that man’s deepest need is not companionship but God — not the absence of loneliness but the presence of sanctifying grace.
By citing the IFS as though its data confirmed a theological truth, the article commits the error condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 4: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations.” The welfare of families is not secured by survey data about loneliness; it is secured by fidelity to the divine constitution of the family, the sacramental bond of matrimony, the Catholic education of children, and the father’s role as priest of the domestic church.
The “Blind Family” and the Theology of Affirmation
The article describes the Simpson parents as both visually impaired and Catholic converts, and notes that the author’s family initially referred to them as “the blind family” — a designation the Simpsons “find hilarious.” The tone here is one of comfortable self-deprecation, as though the only appropriate response to disability is humor and acceptance.
But the Catholic faith has a far more profound theology of suffering than this. Our Lord Himself was asked whether a man was born blind because of his own sin or his parents’ sins, and He answered: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (John 9:3). Suffering, including physical disability, is a mystery of the divine economy — an occasion for the manifestation of God’s glory, a participation in the Cross of Christ, a means of merit for eternal life.
The article’s treatment of the Simpsons’ blindness as a charming detail — mentioned alongside Goalball medals and backyard gardens — is not wrong, but it is incomplete in a way that reveals the conciliar habit of reducing everything to the natural plane. Where is the recognition that this couple’s suffering, united to the Sacrifice of the Mass, has infinite supernatural value? Where is the acknowledgment that their blindness, borne with faith and patience, may be the very instrument by which God manifests His works in them and in their children?
The Corpus Christi Picquet and the Absence of the Eucharist
The friendship described in the article began at a parish “Corpus Christi picnic.” The Feast of Corpus Christi was instituted by the Church to honor the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist — the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the same Christ who offered Himself on Calvary and who renews that sacrifice in an unbloody manner at every valid celebration of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Yet the article makes no mention of the Eucharist. Not a word about the Real Presence, about adoration, about the propitiatory sacrifice, about the necessity of receiving Holy Communion in the state of sanctifying grace. The “Corpus Christi picnic” is reduced to a social gathering — a venue for making friends, not the occasion for the public and solemn profession of faith in the Mystery of the Altar.
This silence is not accidental. It is the hallmark of the post-conciliar mentality, which has systematically emptied Catholic feasts of their supernatural content and refashioned them as celebrations of community, togetherness, and human solidarity. The feast that Thomas Aquinas composed — with its hymns of faith in the Real Presence, its processions of the Blessed Sacrament, its public triumph over heresy — has been replaced by a potluck.
Mary Went in Haste — But Toward What?
The article concludes with the exhortation: “Mary went ‘in haste’ to Elizabeth because love does not dawdle. Neither should we.” This is true as far as it goes. But the article never asks the question that the Church has always asked: Why did Mary go in haste? She went because the Incarnate God dwelt within her, and that God was to be adored. She went to proclaim, through the Holy Ghost’s inspiration, the mighty deeds of God. She went to remain three months — not to provide childcare or swap parenting tips — but to be an instrument of the divine plan of salvation.
If we are to imitate Mary’s haste, let it be the haste of the saints who burned with zeal for the salvation of souls. Let it be the haste of the missionaries who carried the faith to the ends of the earth, not to accompany but to convert. Let it be the haste of the martyrs who shed their blood rather than deny a single article of the Creed. Anything less is not the theology of presence; it is the theology of absence — the absence of Christ, the absence of truth, the absence of the only things that will matter when every T-ball game has ended and every friendship has been dissolved in the light of eternity.
The article’s final sentence — “None of it is complicated. All of it is priceless” — is the most revealing line of all. Nothing described in the article is, in fact, “priceless” in the supernatural sense. Babysitting, tea parties, and road trips are good things, but they are not the supreme thing. The supreme thing is the salvation of souls through Jesus Christ and His one true Church. Until that reality stands at the center of Catholic life — in every family, every parish, every friendship — the “theology of presence” will remain what it is: a theology of absence, dressed in the language of warmth, and starving the faithful of the Bread of Life.
Source:
The Theology of Presence (ncregister.com)
Date: 04.06.2026