Conciliar Sect Beatifies Adulterous Coach: EWTN’s Naturalistic Hagiography of Mike Ditka

The EWTN News portal, mouthpiece of the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican, published on October 9, 2026, a hagiographic obituary for NFL coach Mike Ditka, presenting his divorce, remarriage, and superficial piety as a model of “Catholic” life. The article, authored by Matt McDonald of the National Catholic Register, celebrates a man who objectively lived in public adultery for decades as a “practicing Catholic” and Knight of Columbus, exposing the total substitution of the supernatural order by naturalistic sentimentality in the neo-church.

The Conciliar Sect’s Counterfeit Canonization of a Public Adulterer

The cited article relates that Mike Ditka “married in 1961, got divorced in 1973, and then remarried in 1977,” noting blandly that “Both wives survive him.” This single fact, buried amidst accolades about philanthropy and “team Mass,” condemns the entire narrative. According to the immutable law of God, Quod Deus coniunxit, homo non separet (What God has joined together, let no man put asunder — Matt. 19:6). The Council of Trent anathematizes those who say the Church has not the power to establish diriment impediments or that marriage can be dissolved for adultery (Sess. XXIV, Can. 5, 7). A man living with a second woman while his first wife lives is an objective adulterer, excluded from the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10). The National Catholic Register does not mention this impediment to Holy Communion; it does not mention the necessity of living as brother and sister; it does not mention the state of mortal sin. It presents the adulterous union as a benign biographical detail. This is not pastoral accompaniment; it is institutionalized approval of mortal sin, the very “abomination of desolation” (Matt. 24:15) foretold to stand in the holy place.

The “Team Mass” and the Invalid Novus Ordo: Simulacrum of Worship

The article boasts Ditka “occasionally served as lector at the 7 a.m. team Mass on game-day Sundays.” This “Mass” is the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI, a fabrication of the Masonic “Bugnini” Commission, which stripped the liturgy of its propitiatory character, turning the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary into a “memorial” of a community meal. Pius XII, in Mediator Dei, teaches that the liturgy is the primary organ of the ordinary Magisterium; a rite manufactured by heretics to please Protestants cannot be the lex orandi of the Catholic Church. The article mentions “Cardinal Francis George” — a manifest modernist who implemented the novelties — as a credentialing authority. The “Knights of Columbus,” cited as a badge of Ditka’s Catholicism, is a naturalistic fraternal order long since infiltrated by the same liberalism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (Error 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State…”). Ditka’s “lector” role in a Protestantized service is not Catholic piety; it is liturgical play-acting in a paramasonic structure.

Protestantized “Bible Study” and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes: Ecumenism as Apostasy

The article quotes Ditka’s autobiography admitting he had “no spiritual life at all” until “two other coaches got him involved in a Bible study that reintroduced him to God.” This is the Protestant paradigm of “personal relationship” divorced from the Sacramental Economy. The Syllabus condemns the proposition that “The Church not only ought never to pass judgment on philosophy, but ought to tolerate the errors of philosophy” (Error 11); the conciliar sect tolerates and promotes the “Fellowship of Christian Athletes,” an interconfessional body indifferent to the Una, Sancta, Catholica, et Apostolica Church. Ditka admired Tom Landry for “always keeping his cool… and for his involvement in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.” This admiration for false ecumenism — condemned by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos as a “pan-Christianity” that ruins the true faith — reveals the article’s true theology: religious indifferentism. The “Bible study” replaced the Catechism of the Council of Trent; subjective sentiment replaced fides quae creditur.

Pelagian Self-Justification and the Erasure of Grace

Ditka is quoted: “Nobody is going to do it every day. Nobody is going to do it perfectly… But unless you make the effort you’ve got no chance at all.” And: “When I die, I’m going to be still trying to get better than I am.” This is rank Pelagianism — the heresy condemned by the Council of Carthage (418) and the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, Can. 1-2), which teaches that without prevenient grace, man can do nothing meritorious toward salvation. The article offers no correction, no reference to the necessity of sanctifying grace, the Sacrament of Penance, or the Holy Eucharist as the “medicine of immortality” (St. Ignatius of Antioch). Salvation is reduced to human “effort” and “trying to get better.” This is the cult of man Pius XI warned against in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Here, God is removed from the very economy of salvation; the “coach” becomes his own savior.

Naturalistic Philanthropy as Substitute for Supernatural Charity

The article details Ditka’s philanthropy: “Misericordia and other charities that supported children with special needs,” speaking at fundraisers, “privately visiting with residents.” Mary FioRito, a “Cardinal Francis George Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center” — a secular think-tank — is quoted as a theological authority. This is horizontalism: the reduction of caritas (supernatural love of God for His sake) to philanthropia (humanitarian aid). Pius XI in Quas Primas teaches that the Kingdom of Christ “is primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters… men who wish to belong to it prepare themselves through repentance, but cannot enter except through faith and baptism.” The article presents Ditka’s natural good works — commendable on a natural level — as evidence of his “Catholic faith,” while ignoring his public rejection of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments. This is the laicism Pius XI called “the plague that poisons human society”: “the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.”

The “One Peter Five” Interview: Controlled Opposition within the Neo-Church

The article cites an interview Ditka gave to “One Peter Five” in August 2018. This outlet represents the pseudo-traditionalist wing of the conciliar sect — those “pretending to be traditional Catholics” who recognize the usurpers in the Vatican (John XXIII through Leo XIV) as legitimate popes while critiquing their “imprudence.” They function as a pressure valve, channeling legitimate outrage at the novelties into sterile “recognize and resist” disobedience, never addressing the root: the vacancy of the Holy See since 1958. St. Robert Bellarmine teaches (De Romano Pontifice 2.30): “A manifest heretic… by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head… as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” The “One Peter Five” interview serves to legitimize Ditka’s conciliar “Catholicism” for a conservative audience, whitewashing his adultery and invalid sacramental life.

Symptomatic Diagnosis: The Conciliar Sect’s Anthropocentric Counter-Church

This obituary is not an anomaly; it is the essence of the post-conciliar religion. It exhibits all the marks of the “synthesis of all heresies” — Modernism — condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane Exitu:

Agnosticism: Silence on the Last Things (Judgment, Hell, Purgatory).
Immanentism: Faith reduced to “understanding” and “effort” (Ditka: “I always had faith, but I never had understanding”).
Evolutionism: Doctrine yields to “pastoral” accommodation of divorce/remarriage.
Symbolism: Sacraments become “community celebrations” (team Mass, lectoring).
Naturalism: Philanthropy replaces sanctity; the Knights of Columbus replace the Militia of Christ.

The Syllabus (Error 80) condemns: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” The conciliar sect has done exactly this. It presents a divorced, remarried, Pelagianized sports celebrity as a “Catholic coach” because he fits the imago hominis of the new religion: man as the measure of all things.

Contrast with the Integral Catholic Standard

A true Catholic obituary, written under the light of the true Magisterium (pre-1958), would state plainly: Michael Ditka, baptized Catholic, died outside the visible communion of the Church, having contracted a civil marriage while his valid wife lived, thereby living in public adultery; he frequented the invalid Novus Ordo service; he promoted false ecumenism; he died without the Sacraments of the Church (valid Confession, Extreme Unction) administered by a validly ordained priest. We commend his soul to God’s mercy, but we cannot canonize his life as a model. This is the veritas in caritate (Eph. 4:15). The EWTN article offers caritas sine veritate — sentimentality without truth — which is the devil’s counterfeit of charity.

The “National Catholic Register” and EWTN are organs of the Church of the New Advent, the paramasonic structure erected in the Vatican since the usurpation of John XXIII. They do not save souls; they confirm them in their errors. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi: “The Modernist… would have the Church adapt herself to the conditions of modern life.” Mike Ditka, as presented by EWTN, is the perfect icon of this adaptation: a “tough” man who “tries his best,” gives to charity, and ignores the Cross of Christ’s hard sayings on marriage. Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil (Isa. 5:20).

Source:
NFL legend Mike Ditka was a Catholic coach (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 09.10.2026