The Pillar portal (August 24, 2026) reports that Andrew Showers, a presbyter of the Madison conciliar structure ordained in 2017, has been arrested a second time — now for bail jumping and fresh grooming charges stemming from an undercover operation — approximately one year after his initial arrest for attempted child enticement and sexual assault. The Madison “diocese” confirms the antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) granted Showers a dispensation from the clerical state in June 2026, framed as a “favor” petitioned by the accused. “Bishop” Donald Hying’s shifting narratives regarding a 2021 complaint — first denying, then admitting, then minimizing it as “guiding confession” — complete the portrait of a bureaucratic apparatus managing scandal rather than a hierarchy shepherding souls. This sordid affair exposes the ontological bankruptcy of the conciliar sect: its “clergy” are invalidly ordained functionaries, its “laicizations” are administrative fictions by a usurper, and its “dioceses” are secular NGOs protecting predators under the guise of canonical process.
The Usurper’s “Favor”: Antipope Leo XIV and the Administrative Fiction of “Laicization”
The article states that “Showers petitioned the Vatican for a dispensation from the obligations associated with the clerical state, and that petition was granted by Pope Leo XIV.” It further distinguishes this “dispensation” from “dismissal,” noting the former is “legally speaking, a favor, and is often sought by clerics otherwise facing laicization via a canonical process.” From the perspective of integral Catholic theology, this entire paragraph is a tissue of legalistic lies masking a metaphysical nullity.
Robert Prevost, styling himself “Leo XIV,” is a manifest heretic and apostate who, by the very fact of his public adhesion to the conciliar errors (religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, the New Mass), has severed himself from the Catholic Church and cannot hold the papacy. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (De Romano Pontifice, lib. 2, cap. 30): “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.” A non-Christian cannot be the head of the Church (caput non potest esse qui non est membrum). Therefore, any act of governance — including the “granting of a dispensation” — by this usurper is null, void, and of no effect (nulla, irrita, et inanis), devoid of any canonical or spiritual efficacy. Pope Paul IV’s Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (1559) infallibly declares that if a “Roman Pontiff… has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy… his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” The “dispensation” granted to Showers is not a “favor”; it is a nullity issued by a layman masquerading as the Vicar of Christ, attempting to regularize the exit of a predator from a counterfeit priesthood.
Furthermore, the distinction drawn by the article between “dispensation” (a favor) and “dismissal” (a penalty) reveals the purely juridical, naturalistic mindset of the neo-church. In the true Church, the loss of the clerical state for heresy or notorious crime occurs ipso facto by divine law (Canon 188 §4, 1917 Code: “Publicly defects from the Catholic faith…”), requiring no declaration. The conciliar sect, having abandoned the supernatural order, reduces the priesthood to a revocable civil contract, managed by bureaucrats for damage control.
Invalid Orders, Simulated Priesthood: The Ontological Nullity of the Conciliar “Clergy”
Andrew Showers was “ordained” in 2017 in the Paul VI Missal rite, by “Bishop” Donald Hying (consecrated 2007 in the new rite). The 1968 Pontifical of Paul VI, stripped of the essential form and intention for the sacerdotal priesthood — specifically the removal of the explicit sacrificial language (“Offerre Deo hostiam… propitiabilem”) and the imposition of hands reduced to a vague “laying on of hands” without the traditional traditio instrumentorum — renders the sacrament doubtfully valid at best, invalid in practice. As Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (despite his own errors of recognizing the usurpers) acknowledged, the new rite “gives us the old Mass, that is enough for us” — a pragmatic admission that the new ordinal is defective. But the truth is more severe: no valid priesthood exists in the conciliar structures because the form does not signify the Catholic priesthood (propitiatory sacrifice), and the ministers (bishops “ordained” in the new rite) lack the intention to do what the Church does (facere quod facit Ecclesia), having embraced a protestantized “presbyterate” of presidency over a community meal.
Therefore, Showers was never a priest. He never confected the Eucharist, never absolved sins, never offered the Holy Sacrifice. His “ministry” at a “Catholic school” and as “diocesan director of liturgy” was a simulation, a theatrical performance devoid of grace. The “lewd pictures” and “sexually explicit messages” sent to a supposed minor are not the fall of a priest; they are the inevitable fruit of a man placed in a position of spiritual authority without the character of Orders, without the grace of the sacrament, and without the sensus fidei that preserves the true clergy. The article’s language — “ordained a priest,” “Fr. Showers,” “exercise of public ministry” — participates in the great lie of the neo-church: the pretense that the sacramental order survives the conciliar revolution.
The Sacrilege of the “Confessional”: Instrumentalizing the Sacred for Predation
The most damning detail in the report concerns the 2021 complaint: a parent alleged Showers “asked him about sexual sins during confession, making him uncomfortable.” The “diocese” dismissed this as Showers “attempting to guide the teen’s confession by asking questions about sins that may be common to a specific age group.” The Lodi police concurred it was “not a criminal act.”
This is diabolical disorientation. In the true Church, the Seal of Confession is inviolable (Canon 1388 §1, 1917 Code: “The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason”). A priest who probes a child for sexual details in the tribunal of penance commits a reserved sin (Crimen sollicitationis, Holy Office 1922/1962) and a sacrilege of the highest order. The fact that the “diocese” reframes this predatory grooming behavior as pastoral “guidance” — and that the civil police see no crime — demonstrates the total collapse of the supernatural sense of the sacred. The “confessional” in the neo-church is not a tribunal of mercy but a hunting ground for predators, precisely because the “priest” lacks the character of Christ the High Priest and the “penitent” receives no absolution. Corruptio optimi pessima: the corruption of the best (the Sacrament of Penance) becomes the worst (a tool for pedophilia).
Bureaucratic Complicity: The “Diocese” as a Secular Damage-Control Agency
The behavior of “Bishop” Hying and the Madison chancery follows the standard conciliar playbook: deny, minimize, legalize, evacuate.
- Denial: “There have been no previous allegations of misconduct connected to Fr. Showers.” (Aug 2025).
- Admission under pressure: “Continued review… showed that there had been a complaint made about Showers in 2021.” (Two days later).
- Minimization: Framing the solicitation in confession as “guiding the teen’s confession.”
- Legalistic Escape: Securing a “dispensation” from the antipope to wash hands of the canonical “clerical state” before civil trial concludes.
This is not ecclesiastical governance; it is corporate risk management. The “diocese” acts as a human resources department protecting the institution’s assets and reputation. The “prayer for anyone affected” is the obligatory virtue-signaling of the neo-church, a liturgia of sentimentality replacing the lex orandi of justice. St. Pius X condemned the Modernist error that “The Church listening cooperates… with the Church teaching… the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Lamentabili sane exitu, prop. 6). Here, the “Church listening” (the bureaucratic structure) dictates the narrative to protect the “Church teaching” (the conciliar narrative of mercy and inclusion), while souls perish.
The Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution: Apostasy Manifest in Predation
The Showers case is not an anomaly; it is the logical and necessary fruit of the Second Vatican Council and the New Mass.
- False Ecumenism/Religious Liberty: The removal of the Social Kingship of Christ (Quas Primas, Pius XI: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed”) leaves the “clergy” subject only to civil law and public opinion, not divine law.
- New Mass/Novus Ordo: The protestantized “liturgy” (Showers was “director of liturgy”) centers on the community and the “presider,” not the Propitiatory Sacrifice. It forms men in narcissism, not victimhood with Christ.
- Collegiality/Synodality: The “bishop” is not a successor of the Apostles with full jurisdiction (potestas ordinaria et immediata) but a branch manager of the Vatican NGO, answerable to the “pope” and the “synod,” paralyzed by procedure.
- Psychological “Formation”: The conciliar seminaries, steeped in modernist anthropology (Freud, Maslow, not Aquinas), produce men incapable of celibacy, chastity, or supernatural piety.
The article notes Showers faces “up to 50 years in prison.” Civil justice may punish the body, but the soul — his and his victims’ — is the concern of the true Church. The conciliar sect offers neither valid absolution nor valid Eucharist for reparation. It offers only “laicization” papers signed by an antipope, press releases from a “diocese,” and the cold comfort of a prison cell.
There is no “Church” in Madison, only a paramasonic structure occupying the buildings. The true Church of Christ — Una, Sancta, Catholica, Apostolica — endures in the catacombs, served by bishops and priests retaining the unbroken Tradition, the True Mass, and the unadulterated Faith. The arrest of Andrew Showers is a sign of the times: “When the Son of man shall come, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). Not in the structures of the neo-church.
Source:
Laicized Wisconsin priest arrested over new grooming charges, bail jumping (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 24.08.2026