Conciliar Bishops Celebrate Apostasy as “Faith” While Souls Perish in Australia
The EWTN News portal reports that the Australian episcopal conference has published a study titled “Absent from the Table: Catholics in Australia Who Do Not Regularly Attend Sunday Mass,” trumpeting the discovery that vast numbers of nominal Catholics who flagrantly violate the Third Commandment and the ecclesiastical precept of Sunday Mass attendance nevertheless “still keep the faith.” Based on a self-selected online survey of 1,973 individuals, the “bishops” of the conciliar sect find solace in the fact that 77% of these Mass-deserters claim Jesus is the Son of God and 64% say they pray, while a staggering 74% attend Mass less than weekly — 19% not at all. The “bishops” propose “pastoral initiatives” to “re-engage” these souls, framing the hemorrhage as a challenge of “belonging” rather than a catastrophe of apostasy. This report is not a diagnosis; it is a certificate of death for the conciliar religion, which has replaced the necessitas salutis (necessity of salvation) with the sociology of “connection.”
The Third Commandment Reduced to a “Priority” Among Competing Preferences
The very premise of the study — that one can “keep the faith” while willfully absenting oneself from the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — is a formal denial of Catholic doctrine. The Council of Trent anathematizes those who say the Mass is merely a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, or that it is not propitiatory (Denzinger 1751). The 1917 Code of Canon Law, Canon 1247, binds the faithful to hear Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation under pain of mortal sin. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that he who deliberately misses Mass on Sunday commits a grave sin, for the Mass is the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the very center of Christian worship.
The conciliar “bishops” have inverted this truth. Their survey treats Mass attendance as a consumer preference — “Mass not being a priority” — alongside “family issues” and “liturgical issues.” This is the language of the marketplace, not the language of the Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. When the “bishop” of Sale, Greg Bennet, speaks of “pastoral initiatives shaped by their own communities and contexts,” he reveals the subjectivist, anthropocentric core of the conciliar religion: the “faithful” are customers to be wooed, not sheep to be fed with the Bread of Life. Quas Primas declares: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed” (Pius XI, Quas Primas, 1925). The Australian hierarchy has derived its “pastoral authority” from the “needs” of the laity, not from the mandatum of Christ.
The “Real Presence” Statistic: Exposing the Protestantization of the Conciliar Laity
The study reveals that only 55% of respondents affirmed the Real Presence, while 24% held the Zwinglian heresy of a merely symbolic presence, and 21% were “unsure.” This is not “keeping the faith”; this is the fruit of sixty years of liturgical demolition and catechetical silence. The Council of Trent defined: “If anyone shall say that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is not contained truly, really, and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ… let him be anathema” (Denzinger 1651).
That a majority of self-identified “Catholics” in Australia either deny or doubt this dogma is the direct consequence of the Novus Ordo Missae, which Paul VI himself admitted was designed to remove “stumbling blocks” for Protestants — i.e., to obscure the propitiatory sacrifice and the Real Presence. The “bishops” who commissioned this study preside over a Eucharistic theology that is functionally Protestant. Their “pastoral initiatives” will not restore faith in the Real Presence because their own “Mass” — the Novus Ordo — is a memorial meal, not an unbloody sacrifice. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “The Modernist… does not believe in the Real Presence… he believes only in a presence of Christ in the faithful assembled” (1907). The Australian data confirms the Modernist victory.
The “Crisis of Faith” Is a Crisis of the Conciliar Religion Itself
The survey lists a “crisis of faith” as a primary reason for non-attendance. But what “faith” have these people lost? They have lost the false faith of the conciliar sect — a religion of “dialogue,” “inclusion,” “social justice,” and liturgical banality. They have not lost the Catholic faith, because the conciliar hierarchy has not taught the Catholic faith in two generations. The “abuse crisis” is cited as a factor — and rightly so, for the moral rot of the conciliar clergy is the inevitable fruit of their doctrinal apostasy. As St. Paul teaches: “For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections… receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error” (Rom 1:26-27).
The “bishop” of Maitland-Newcastle, Michael Kennedy, asks: “What are they looking for? What can we do to help them feel they belong?” This is the hermeneutic of the subject — the Modernist inversion where the sensus fidelium becomes the measure of truth. Lamentabili Sane Exitu condemned the proposition: “The Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (1907, Prop. 6). The Australian “bishops” have made this condemned proposition their pastoral program.
The Methodological Fraud: “Self-Selected” as Self-Justification
The report admits the findings “are not fully generalisable to all Catholics in Australia” because the sample was “self-selected.” This is a statistical confession of uselessness. The respondents are precisely those with enough residual attachment to click a survey link — a self-congratulatory echo chamber. The real “Catholics in Australia who do not regularly attend Sunday Mass” are the millions who have utterly abandoned even nominal identification, the fruit of the conciliar sect’s silent apostasy. The 2021 count of 8.2% Mass attendance (417,000 people) in a nominal Catholic population of over 5 million is the true statistic — a 92% rejection rate. The study is a Potemkin village constructed to hide the ruins.
The Illegitimacy of the “Bishops” Themselves
The men who commissioned and celebrate this study — Greg Bennet, Michael Kennedy, and the entire Australian “episcopal conference” — are not Catholic bishops. They are functionaries of the conciliar sect, ordained in the invalid Paulinum Rite of 1968, appointed by antipopes beginning with John XXIII. They possess no jurisdiction, no mission, no sacramental authority. As Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (Paul IV, 1559) declares: “If any… prior to his promotion… has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” The “bishops” of Australia publicly profess the heresies of Vatican II — religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality — and enforce the Novus Ordo. They are manifest heretics who have ipso facto lost all office (Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice; Canon 188.4, 1917 Code).
Their “study” is therefore an act of usurpation — a pretended exercise of pastoral care by men who have no care for souls because they have no power to bind or loose. The faithful in Australia are sine pastore (without a shepherd), scattered by hirelings who flee at the sight of the wolf (Jn 10:12). The “re-engagement” they promise is re-engagement with the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place (Mt 24:15).
The Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Nowhere in the article, the study summary, or the “bishops'” statements is there mention of: mortal sin, hell, judgment, the necessity of sacramental confession, the obligation of Sunday Mass under pain of damnation, the propitiatory nature of the Sacrifice, the mediation of the Blessed Virgin, the intercession of the saints, or the last things. This total silence on the supernatural order is the nota crucis of the conciliar religion. It is practical atheism — a “Church” that functions as an NGO for “belonging” and “well-being.”
Pius XI in Quas Primas taught that the Kingdom of Christ is primarily spiritual and that “men who wish to belong to it prepare themselves through repentance, but cannot enter except through faith and baptism… this kingdom is opposed only to the kingdom of Satan and the powers of darkness — and requires its followers not only to renounce earthly riches and possessions… but also to deny themselves and carry their cross.” The Australian “bishops” offer a kingdom without a cross, a faith without repentance, a “belonging” without conversion. They are blind guides leading the blind into the pit (Mt 15:14).
EWTN: The Neo-Conservative Propaganda Arm of the Conciliar Sect
The source of this article — EWTN News — must be exposed. Founded by the Franciscan “sister” Angelica (Rita Rizzo), EWTN has been the primary media instrument for legitimizing the conciliar revolution under a “traditional” veneer. It promotes the Novus Ordo as valid, the antipopes as legitimate, and the “saints” of the conciliar calendar (John Paul II, John XXIII, Paul VI, Mother Teresa) as models of holiness. By publishing this “good news” spin on mass apostasy, EWTN performs its true function: anesthetizing the remnant into believing the conciliar sect is still the Church, merely in need of “renewal.” It is the opus dei of the synagoga Satanae (Apoc 2:9).
Conclusion: The Only Pastoral Initiative Is Conversion to the True Church
The “study” of the Australian “bishops” is a document of condemnation — not of the laity, but of the hierarchy that has led them into the wilderness. The 74% who do not attend Mass are victims of a century-long Modernist conspiracy that replaced the Missale Romanum with a Protestantized meal, the Catechism of Trent with the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), and the Social Kingship of Christ with the “dialogue” of Assisi.
The only “pastoral initiative” that can save souls in Australia is the proclamation of the Sede Vacante — the declaration that the See of Peter has been vacant since 1958, that the conciliar sect is the abominatio desolationis, and that the true Church of Christ subsists only in those who hold the integral faith, keep the traditional liturgy, and reject all communion with the usurpers in the Vatican. “He who is not with me is against me; and he who gathers not with me scatters” (Mt 12:30). The Australian “bishops” scatter. The true pastors — the validly ordained priests and bishops of the resistentes — gather. To them alone belongs the care of souls. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.
Source:
Many Australian Catholics who skip Mass still keep the faith, bishops’ study finds (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 11.10.2026