The Pillar portal (September 11, 2026) publishes a sociological study correlating family size with religious service attendance, drawing on data from the Cooperative Election Survey and the National Survey of Family Growth. The analysis concludes that large families correlate marginally with weekly attendance among married “Catholics” and Evangelicals, while noting blended families and “nones” skew the data. This exercise in religious sociology epitomizes the naturalistic bankruptcy of the conciliar sect: it treats the supernatural Faith as a demographic variable, ignores the apostasy of the Vatican II religion, and equates the True Church with heretical sects and infidels.
The Naturalistic Reduction of the Supernatural Order
The article opens with a premise dripping with secularism: “In a society where artificial birth control is widely available and accepted, having a large family is increasingly seen as a choice taken primarily by people outside the mainstream, often for religious reasons.” Immediately, the framework is naturalistic and utilitarian. Children are “choices”; religion is a “reason” for a lifestyle. There is zero mention of the primary end of marriage—proles—or the bonum sacramenti, or the duty to accept children as gifts from God (Gen. 1:28). Pius XI in Casti Connubii (1930) condemned this very mentality: “Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.” The article accepts the contraceptive culture as the baseline “society,” thereby capitulating to the laicism Pius XI denounced in Quas Primas: “It began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations… then, slowly, the Christian religion began to be equated with other false religions.”
The study measures “religious attendance” as a proxy for faith. This is the Protestant error of fiducia divorced from fides, elevated to a sociological metric. St. Robert Bellarmine teaches that a manifest heretic is not a Christian and cannot be a member of the Church (De Romano Pontifice, Bk. 2, Ch. 30). To count heads at a Novus Ordo “service” or a Mormon temple and call it “religious practice” is to confuse the lex orandi of the True Church with the idolatry of the secta. The article’s conclusion—“large families are more likely to go to church, but not by that much”—reduces the Social Kingship of Christ to a statistical correlation coefficient.
Data Derived from the Conciliar Sect is Canonically Null and Spiritually Toxic
The “Catholics” surveyed are members of the post-conciliar structure occupying the Vatican. Since the usurpation of the See of Peter by John XXIII (1958), the line of antipopes—culminating in the current antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost)—has promulgated a false religion. Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code declares that an office becomes vacant ipso facto by “public defection from the Catholic faith.” Wernz and Vidal confirm: “By notorious and publicly manifested heresy, the Roman Pontiff… is deprived ipso facto of his personal jurisdiction even before any declaratory sentence.” The “Catholics” in this dataset belong to a body that has defected from the Faith (Vatican II heresies: religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, new mass). Their “attendance” at the Novus Ordo Missae—a Protestantized memorial meal fabricated by the freemason Bugnini—is not Catholic worship; it is idolatry and sacrilege. As Pope Paul IV defined in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio: “his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” Analyzing the demographics of a false church yields data on apostasy, not on the Church of Christ.
Indifferentism and the Equating of the True Church with False Sects
The article blithely compares “Catholics,” “Evangelical Protestants,” “Mainline Protestants,” “Mormons,” “Jews,” and “Nones” (atheists/agnostics) on the same graph. This is the condemned heresy of Indifferentism. The Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX, 1864) anathematizes:
15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.
16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation…
18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion…
Pius XI in Quas Primas insists: “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The article’s methodology—treating the “religious tradition” as a demographic variable like income or education—is a practical application of the Modernist proposition condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 59): “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement…” By placing the Bride of Christ on par with the synagogue of Satan (Apoc. 2:9) and the sect of Joseph Smith, The Pillar commits spiritual adultery.
The Scandal of Blended Families and the Silence on Adultery
The NSFG data reveals a damning reality: “Among married people with 5 or more children, in only 39% of cases had the respondent had all of their children with their current spouse…” The article treats this adulterous concatenation of households as a neutral “family structure.” It notes lower church attendance among these “blended” families but fails to thunder against the crime of divorce and remarriage. Our Lord said: “Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth adultery against her” (Mark 10:11). The Council of Trent (Sess. 24, Can. 7) anathematizes those who say the Church errs in not dissolving valid marriages. The “annulment” factories of the conciliar sect (millions granted annually) are a diabolical mockery of the indissolubility of the Sacrament. That 61% of large “Catholic” families in the survey are built on serial polygamy is not a “different model of family”; it is a census of public adulterers receiving “Communion” in the conciliar sect’s “table of assembly,” fulfilling the prophecy of Lamentabili (Prop. 46) on the corruption of the sacrament of Penance.
Contraceptive Mentality and the “Theology of the Body” Heresy
The article mentions “John Paul II’s Theology of the Body” as a theological appeal for educated “Catholics.” Karol Wojtyła (John Paul II) was a manifest heretic (e.g., Redemptor Hominis on “man as the way of the Church,” Assisi 1986 interreligious prayer, kissing the Quran). His “Theology of the Body” is a personalist phenomenology that obscures the teleology of the body defined by Pius XI and Pius XII, opening the door to the “contraceptive mentality” via the “NFP” loophole. The data shows “Catholics with at least a four-year college degree… 7% [with 5+ kids]… lower than the broader Catholic population (8%)”. This confirms that the “educated” laity of the conciliar sect have imbibed the spirit of the world—scientia inflat (1 Cor. 8:1)—using “theology” to rationalize the limitation of offspring. The article’s silence on Humanae Vitae (Paul VI, 1968)—itself a compromised document yielding to the “responsible parenthood” ambiguity—exposes the total collapse of moral theology in the neo-church.
The Absence of the True Mass, Confession, and Eschatological Reality
Nowhere does the article mention: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (Tridentine), the Real Presence, Confession, the State of Grace, Mortal Sin, Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, or the Last Judgment. This silence is the gravissima accusatio. The “religious attendance” measured is attendance at a cena luterana. The “Catholics” going weekly (44% of large married families) are likely receiving invalid “Communion” in the hand from lay ministers, standing, without confession for years. St. Pius X in Lamentabili condemned the Modernist view that “The sacraments merely serve to remind man of the presence of the ever-benevolent Creator” (Prop. 41). The conciliar sect has realized this prophecy. The Pillar’s sociology is the obsequies of a dead religion.
Symptomatic of the Great Apostasy Foretold
This article is a symptom of the mysterium iniquitatis (2 Thess. 2:7). The “Church” has become a “field hospital” for demographic trends. The Syllabus (Error 80) condemned: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” The Pillar, a mouthpiece of the conciliar establishment, does exactly this: it baptizes sociology, sanctifies statistics, and offers the world a “Catholicism” compatible with the City of Man. True peace is only in the Kingdom of Christ (Pius XI, Quas Primas). The true Church—Ecclesia Militans—subsists in the bishops and priests retaining valid Orders and the True Mass (pre-1958), rejecting the conciliar sect entirely. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. No demographic study of the abomination of desolation (Matt. 24:15) can alter this dogmatic reality. Non possumus.
Source:
Are larger families actually more religious? (pillarcatholic.com)
Date: 11.09.2026