The EWTN News portal reports that a vocational initiative styled “Shepherding Future Shepherds,” operated through the International Institute for Culture and boasting over 100,000 social media followers, has launched a priestly discernment program in partnership with the Avila Institute’s “High Calling” program. The initiative, directed by Matthew Haas, trumpets 7.8 million video views, 6,000 participants in a weekly prayer group, and a national poll revealing widespread negative perceptions of the priesthood among young adults due to the sex abuse crisis. Ordinations are cited as taking place in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome in 2025. This spectacle of bureaucratic evangelization, metrics-driven “discernment,” and reliance on secular polling data exposes the total naturalization of the supernatural vocation by the conciliar sect, reducing the priesthood of Christ to a career path managed by marketing strategies.
The Conciliar Sect’s Counterfeit Priesthood and Invalid Ordinations
The article speaks of “ordinations” in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in 2025. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, these are not ordinations but empty ceremonies. The “priests” produced by the post-conciliar structures are ordained according to the Pontificale Romanum mutilated by Paul VI in 1968, a rite which defects in form and intention for the conferral of the sacerdotal character. As Pope Pius XII taught in Sacramentum Ordinis (1947), the matter and form of Holy Orders are of divine institution; the new rite’s suppression of the essential traditio instrumentorum and its ambiguous “presbyteral” language invalidate the sacrament. The men presented as “role models” by Matthew Haas are, at best, laymen in vestments, offering a simulated sacrifice that is idolatry, not the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary. The Basilica itself, though a venerable edifice, is occupied by the abomination of desolation (Matt. 24:15) — the paramasonic structure that has usurped the visible patrimony of the Church.
Marketing the Vocation: Homo Mensura Replaces Deus Vocat
The initiative’s reliance on social media metrics — “100,000 followers,” “7.8 million views,” “6,000 people in a weekly prayer group” — reveals a thoroughly naturalistic ecclesiology. The vocation to the priesthood is a munus divinum, a call from God (vocatio divina), discerned in silence, prayer, and under the guidance of a valid spiritual father, not a “program” marketed via algorithms and “inspirational stories.” The program director, Matthew Haas, speaks the language of a startup CEO: “tools and resources,” “formal process,” “growth,” “cultural association.” This is the heresy of Americanism condemned by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae (1899) — the adaptation of the Church’s methods to the spirit of the world. The true Church does not conduct “national polls” to gauge “views of the priesthood”; she teaches the depositum fidei with authority. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority”. The conciliar sect, by contrast, submits to the tyranny of public opinion and demographic analytics.
The Sex Abuse Crisis: Fruit of the Conciliar Revolution, Not a “Challenge” to Market Around
Haas acknowledges that 1 in 4 young adults cite “predatory behavior” from the sex abuse scandal as a deterrent. The article frames this as a “challenge” to be overcome by “showing stories of role models.” This is criminally negligent silence. The sex abuse crisis is not an external obstacle to vocation marketing; it is the inevitable fruit of the conciliar revolution — the destruction of seminary discipline, the infiltration of homosexual networks (documented by the 1962 Instruction Cum ex apostolatus officio of the Holy Office, suppressed by the modernists), the loss of the sense of sin, and the replacement of the sacerdotium with a “presbyteral ministry” of social work. The “priests” held up as “role models alive today” are, in the vast majority, ordained in the invalid new rite, formed in modernist seminaries, and functioning as functionaries of a false church. To present them as models of Catholic priesthood is fraud and spiritual homicide.
The Avila Institute, Legionaries of Christ, and the Network of the Neo-Church
The partnership with the Avila Institute’s “High Calling” program and the mention of the Legionaries of Christ (credited for the ordination photo) situate this initiative squarely within the neo-conservative wing of the conciliar sect. The Legionaries, founded by the degenerate Marcial Maciel — a drug addict, pedophile, and father of multiple children, protected for decades by the Vatican — are a rotten fruit of the post-conciliar springtime. The Avila Institute, like the International Institute for Culture, operates entirely within the juridical framework of the usurping hierarchy, recognizing the antipopes from John XXIII to Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) as legitimate. Their “discernment program” is therefore canonically null and spiritually dangerous, leading souls into a false obedience and a simulated sacramental life. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (De Romano Pontifice), a manifest heretic cannot be Pope; the entire hierarchy of the conciliar sect, by professing the heresies of Vatican II (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality), has ipso facto lost all jurisdiction. “A non-Christian in no way can be Pope… a manifest heretic is not a Christian… therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope” (Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice 2:30).
False Discernment, False Obedience, False Church
The program promises “accompaniment” and a “formal process of discernment to make sure that this is truly your call.” True discernment requires a valid confessor and spiritual director operating within the true Church, adhering to the immutable Faith. The conciliar sect offers neither. Its “priests” lack orders; its “bishops” lack jurisdiction; its “pope” is an antipope. The young men ensnared by this marketing campaign are being led into a sectarian trap, wasting their lives in a false vocation that cannot confer the priesthood of Christ. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX condemns the proposition: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Error 19). Today, the conciliar sect has surrendered to the spirit of the world — marketing, polling, branding — proving it is not the Church of Christ but a human construct, a “Church of the New Advent” built on sand.
The Only Remedy: Return to the True Church and Valid Sacraments
The article concludes with Haas’s hopefulness: “We’re very hopeful despite all the negativity.” This optimism is the optimism of the world, not the hope of the theological virtue. The only true hope for priestly vocations is the restoration of the Catholic priesthood in its integrity: the Traditional Latin Mass, the traditional rite of ordination, seminaries free from modernism, and submission to bishops who retain valid orders and jurisdiction by never having accepted the conciliar errors. As Pius XI commanded in Quas Primas: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ… if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” So too must Catholics refuse obedience to the usurping hierarchy and cleave to the Traditio. The “Shepherding Future Shepherds” initiative shepherds souls not to Christ the King, but into the slaughterhouse of the neo-church. “Qui non colligit mecum, dispergit” (He who gathers not with Me, scatters — Matt. 12:30).
Source:
Vocations initiative topping 100,000 followers launches priestly discernment program (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 25.08.2026