Our Father Is Faithful in All Seasons — A Symptomatic Reading of Modern Catholic Sentimentality
The National Catholic Register portal published on June 20, 2026, a personal testimony by Bridget McCartney Nohara, a writer from Ontario, Canada, titled “Our Father Is Faithful in All Seasons.” The article recounts the author’s six-year struggle with infertility, her emotional and spiritual journey through that trial, and the eventual unexpected pregnancy she describes as “miraculous.” The piece is framed as a narrative of surrender to divine providence, gratitude for God’s gifts, and a proclamation that “he is faithful in all seasons.” While on the surface this appears to be a harmless personal reflection, a rigorous examination from the perspective of integral Catholic theology reveals a deeply symptomatic document — one that, through its omissions, its theological imprecision, and its sentimental naturalism, exemplifies the spiritual poverty of post-conciliar Catholic culture.
The Reduction of Supernatural Suffering to Therapeutic Narrative
The article opens with a familiar modern trope: the personal journey of suffering reframed as a story of self-discovery and emotional growth. The author writes: “As my husband and I wrestled with these questions and concepts, among many others, we found ourselves returning to one enduring truth: We deserve nothing. Everything we have is a gift from God.” This statement, while superficially orthodox, is deployed in a context stripped of supernatural depth. The language of “deserving nothing” and “everything is a gift” is presented not as a conclusion drawn from the Church’s teaching on original sin, the necessity of grace, and the redemptive value of suffering united to the Cross of Christ, but rather as a therapeutic insight arrived at through personal reflection. The author “found herself returning” to this truth — as though it were a psychological coping mechanism rather than an immutable dogma of the Catholic faith.
What is conspicuously absent is any mention of the theology of suffering as taught by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. Pope Pius XII, in his 1956 address to the Colloquium of the Italian Society of Anesthesiology, taught that suffering, when united to the Passion of Christ, has expiatory and meritorial value. The Church has always taught that patientia in adversis (patience in adversity) is a supernatural virtue, not merely a human resilience. The author’s suffering is presented almost exclusively in emotional terms — “pain points,” “temptation toward shame,” “dissonance” — language borrowed directly from the vocabulary of modern psychology, not from the ascetical tradition of the Church. Where is the language of mortification? Where is the invocation of the sacrifice of Isaac, of Hannah’s prayer in the Temple (1 Kings 1:10-11), of the sterility of Elizabeth that preceded the birth of the Precursor? These are not mere literary references; they are the theological framework within which Catholic couples have always understood the mystery of fertility and barrenness. Their absence reveals a mind formed not by the liturgy and the Fathers, but by the therapeutic culture of the 21st century.
The Omission of the Church’s Sacramental and Liturgical Life
Perhaps the most damning silence in this article is the near-total absence of any reference to the sacramental life of the Church as the means by which grace is obtained and suffering is sanctified. The author mentions prayer in the vaguest terms: “we’ve prayed for the grace to accept God’s will.” But what prayer? Was it the Traditional Latin Mass — the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary — where the propitiatory nature of the Sacrifice is expressed with unsurpassed theological precision? Was it the Litany of the Saints, invoking the intercession of St. Anne, St. Elizabeth, St. Gerard Majella, St. Rita of Cascia — the great patrons of impossible causes and mothers in distress? Was it the Rosary, meditating on the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Divine Motherhood, through which the Blessed Virgin Mary has always been the refuge of those who suffer?
The article is silent. And this silence is not accidental. It is the silence of a Catholic culture that has been systematically emptied of its sacramental substance. The author writes that “the Lord has revealed himself in new ways” — but the Church has never taught that God reveals Himself in “new ways” that bypass the sacraments. Lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). If the prayer life of this couple was formed by the post-conciliar liturgical revolution — the Novus Ordo Missae with its horizontal orientation, its suppression of prayers for the propitiatory sacrifice, its reduction of the Mass to a communal meal — then it is no surprise that their spiritual reflection reads like a self-help article rather than a supernatural testimony.
The author speaks of “moments of both consolation and desolation” — language that echoes St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. But Ignatius’s framework is precisely one of discernment of spirits, conducted under the direction of a spiritual director, within the context of a rigorous ascetical life. The author’s use of this language is superficial, detached from the disciplined framework in which it was originally situated. It is spiritual vocabulary stripped of spiritual content.
The Theology of “Gift” Without the Theology of Sacrifice
The article’s central theological claim is that “every good thing we have in our lives is a pure gift.” This is true — but it is only half the truth, and in its incompleteness, it becomes a distortion. The Catholic faith teaches that every good gift comes from God through the merits of Jesus Christ, and that the reception of these gifts is conditioned upon our cooperation with grace, our fidelity to the commandments, and our participation in the sacramental life of the Church. The author’s theology of “gift” is presented in a vacuum — disconnected from the necessity of sanctifying grace, the danger of mortal sin, and the obligation of state that binds every Catholic.
Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Tametsi (1900), taught that the sacrament of Matrimony confers upon the spouses the graces necessary for the fulfillment of their conjugal and parental duties. The Council of Trent, in its Session XXIV, anathematized those who deny that the sacraments confer grace ex opere operato (by the very performance of the sacramental act). Where in this article is any recognition that the graces needed for the sanctification of marriage and the acceptance of children flow primarily through the sacraments? The author’s gratitude is directed vaguely to “God” — but the Catholic faith teaches that God has ordained specific channels of grace, and that to ignore or neglect them is not humility but presumption.
Furthermore, the author writes: “The author of life and death will always have the final say, and it is always for his glory and our good.” This statement, while doctrinally correct in isolation, is deployed in a context that effectively denies the reality of spiritual combat. The Church has always taught that the Devil is princeps huius mundi (the prince of this world, John 12:31), that he seeks the destruction of souls, and that suffering can have its origin not only in divine permission but in demonic malice. The author’s narrative presents a sanitized universe in which everything that happens is directly willed by God for our good — a position that veers dangerously close to the quietism condemned by Pope Innocent XI in 1687 in the Caelestis Pastor.
The “Miracle” Narrative and the Erosion of Supernatural Discernment
The author describes her pregnancy as “gloriously unexpected, miraculous life within my womb.” The word “miraculous” is used here not in its theological sense — a supernatural intervention by God that suspends the laws of nature — but in its colloquial, sentimental sense: something wonderful and unexpected. This linguistic imprecision is symptomatic of a broader erosion of supernatural discernment in post-conciliar Catholic culture.
The Church has always maintained a rigorous distinction between the natural order and the supernatural order. A pregnancy, however unexpected or medically improbable, is not a “miracle” in the theological sense unless it involves a suspension of natural laws — as in the case of St. Elizabeth conceiving St. John the Baptist in her extreme old age (Luke 1:7-13), or of Sarah conceiving Isaac when she was past the age of childbearing (Genesis 18:11-14). To call every unexpected pregnancy “miraculous” is to dilute the concept of miracle to the point of meaninglessness, and to obscure the true miracles that the Church has always recognized as signs of divine intervention.
Moreover, the author’s framing of her pregnancy as a reward for faithfulness — “He is faithful in all seasons” — risks falling into the very error that Our Lord Himself warned against. In John 9:3, when the disciples asked whether a man’s blindness was caused by his own sin or that of his parents, Jesus replied: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” The Catholic faith does not teach that suffering is always a consequence of personal sin, nor that the removal of suffering is always a reward for personal virtue. The author acknowledges this in passing — “I am painfully aware that not all sufferings will be relieved on this side of the veil” — but this acknowledgment is not integrated into the theological framework of the article. It is a concession to intellectual honesty, not a conclusion drawn from the Church’s teaching on the mystery of iniquity and the inscrutability of divine providence.
The Absence of the Social Reign of Christ the King
Perhaps the most profound omission in this article is its complete silence on the social reign of Christ the King over marriage, family, and the transmission of life. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), taught that Christ the King reigns over all aspects of human life — not only the interior life of the soul, but also the public, social, and institutional structures of human society. The institution of marriage, the family, and the education of children are all subject to the royal authority of Jesus Christ, and it is the duty of Catholics to work toward the recognition of this authority in the laws and customs of nations.
The author’s article is written as though the Catholic faith is a private, interior reality — a matter of personal feelings, personal prayer, and personal gratitude. There is no recognition that the crisis of fertility in the modern world is not merely a personal trial but a social and spiritual catastrophe rooted in the rejection of Christ the King by the nations. The legalization of contraception, the normalization of abortion, the destruction of the family through divorce and gender ideology — these are not merely “cultural trends” but acts of rebellion against the divine order that have concrete consequences for the fertility and stability of Catholic families. To write about infertility without mentioning these realities is to treat the symptom while ignoring the disease.
Pope Pius XI wrote in Quas Primas: “His reign, namely, 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 author’s silence on this teaching is not merely an omission — it is a symptom of the laicism that Pius XI identified as the great plague of the modern age: the removal of Christ and His law from public life, and the reduction of religion to a private affair.
The National Catholic Register: A Portal of Ambiguity
It is necessary to note that this article was published by the National Catholic Register, a portal that, while presenting itself as a source of Catholic news and commentary, operates within the framework of the post-conciliar conciliar sect. The Register’s editorial line consistently avoids the fundamental questions that the present crisis demands: the legitimacy of the post-conciliar “popes,” the validity of the Novus Ordo Missae, the binding force of the pre-conciliar Magisterium, and the obligation of Catholics to resist the modernist revolution. By publishing articles like this one — articles that are theologically vague, sacramentally empty, and socially silent — the Register contributes to the formation of Catholics who are sentimentally attached to a vague idea of God but theologically illiterate and spiritually defenseless against the errors of the age.
The author, Bridget McCartney Nohara, is described as a graduate of Franciscan University — an institution that, while preserving some elements of Catholic identity, operates within the structures of the conciliar sect and does not challenge the fundamental legitimacy of the post-conciliar revolution. Her formation, like that of millions of post-conciliar Catholics, is a formation in Catholicism without the Cross — a faith that speaks of “gifts” but not of sacrifice, of “grace” but not of the sacraments, of “God’s will” but not of the obedience due to the Magisterium.
Conclusion: The Faithfulness of God and the Unfaithfulness of Men
The author concludes: “He is faithful in all seasons.” This is true. God is faithful. But the faithfulness of God does not excuse the unfaithfulness of men — and above all, the unfaithfulness of those who have been entrusted with the guardianship of the deposit of faith. The crisis of Catholic marriage and family life in the modern world is not a mystery that admits of no explanation. It is the direct and foreseeable consequence of the modernist apostasy that has ravaged the Church since the beginning of the twentieth century — an apostasy condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) and Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), and which has reached its fullest expression in the conciliar revolution.
The author’s personal suffering is real, and her gratitude for the gift of new life is understandable. But personal gratitude, however sincere, cannot substitute for theological truth. The Catholic faith is not a collection of personal stories and emotional reflections. It is the depositum fidei — the deposit of faith — entrusted by Christ to His Church, to be preserved intact and transmitted without alteration to all generations. Until Catholics return to this faith — the faith of the Traditional Latin Mass, the faith of the Council of Trent, the faith of St. Pius X and Pius XI and all the pre-conciliar Pontiffs — they will continue to produce testimonies like this one: sincere, moving, and profoundly empty.
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam — but only if the God we glorify is the true God, known through the true faith, worshipped in the true Sacrifice, and obeyed through the true Magisterium. Anything less is not faithfulness — it is sentimentality. And sentimentality, however well-intentioned, does not save souls.
Source:
Our Father Is Faithful in All Seasons (ncregister.com)
Date: 21.06.2026