NCR portal publishes a commentary by former diplomat and EWTN contributor Alberto M. Fernandez surveying recent Hollywood depictions of Odysseus, Napoleon, and Washington, lamenting a “cynical modern era” that struggles with heroism while praising “Christian filmmaker” Jon Erwin’s *Young Washington* and Angel Studios’ *Mother Cabrini* as modest correctives. The article concludes that the Church possesses true heroes in the saints and needs “storytellers who can compellingly tell heroic stories that are beautiful and true.” This analysis exposes the piece as a quintessential exercise in naturalistic palliative care, substituting cinematic sentiment for the *heroism of the Cross* and the *Social Kingship of Christ the King*, thereby confirming the neo-church’s total capitulation to the spirit of the world.
The Naturalistic Reduction of Heroism to Cultural Consumption
The cited article relates a taxonomy of heroism entirely confined to the order of nature: box-office receipts, “hot takes,” partisan politics, and the psychological satisfaction of the viewer. Fernandez writes, “It is not quite true that we live in a post-heroic age but certainly true that our cynical modern era has real issues with heroism, whether sacred or profane.” This dichotomy—”sacred or profane”—is immediately evacuated of supernatural content. The “sacred” heroism on offer is not the *heroica virtus* of the martyrs confessing Christ before tyrants, but the celluloid portrayals of a “Christian filmmaker” whose *House of David* streams on Amazon Prime, a platform of the globalist technocracy. The article’s frame of reference is entirely immanent: “No one knows what will become a hit nor what will truly be influential and impact the culture.” The criterion of truth is replaced by the metric of cultural “impact” and commercial viability. This is the hermeneutic of the marketplace, not the sensus fidei.
The article treats the “unabashedly patriotic Top Gun: Maverick” and the “Marvel or DC superhero franchise” as evidence that “Hollywood is not completely anti-or post-heroic,” placing the Summa Theologiae of heroism on the same plane as Jason Statham action vehicles.
This is the idolatry of the trivial. St. Pius X condemned the Modernist error that “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement, applied or applicable to different times and places” (Lamentabili, prop. 59). Here, the “heroic” is reduced to a movable cultural feast, a “story” to be “compellingly told” by professional narrators, rather than the immutable imitatio Christi lived in the state of grace.
The Theological Vacuum: Silence on Grace, Sacraments, and the Kingship of Christ
The gravest accusation against this commentary is its total silence on the supernatural order. There is not a single mention of:
- The state of grace as the sine qua non of true heroism;
- The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the fountainhead of all Christian fortitude;
- The Social Kingship of Christ the King over nations, solemnly defined by Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925): “If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.”
- The necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus), without which no natural virtue, however “heroic” in appearance, merits eternal life.
Pius XI teaches: “Christ reigns in the minds of men… because He Himself is Truth… He reigns also in the wills of men… because He inclines our free will and conquers it with His inspiration… Finally, Christ the Lord is King of hearts because of His love.” (Quas Primas). Fernandez’s “heroes”—Odysseus, Napoleon, Washington—are presented as objects of aesthetic debate, not as subjects measured against the regula fidei. Washington, a Freemason and Deist, is lauded as “heroic” by a “Christian filmmaker” without a whisper that his “heroism” was exercised outside the Ark of Salvation. This is the sin of religious indifferentism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus (prop. 16, 18): “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation… Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion.”
The “Christian Filmmaker” and the Neo-Church’s Collaboration with the World
The article holds up Jon Erwin and Angel Studios as beacons of hope. Erwin is described as a “Christian filmmaker” whose House of David was “excellent, quite heroic.” Angel Studios produced a “careful, well-made 2024 film on Mother Cabrini.” The author fails to note that Mother Cabrini was canonized by “Pope” Pius XII in 1946—validly—but that Angel Studios operates entirely within the conciliar sect’s ecosystem, seeking approval from the very structures that have abrogated the Mass of the Ages and promulgated the Novus Ordo service, which Cardinal Ottaviani and Cardinal Bacci declared “represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass.”
The article’s enthusiasm for these productions reveals the neo-church’s strategy of “inculturation”: baptizing worldly media forms to render the Faith palatable to modern man, rather than converting modern man to the integral Catholic Faith.
This is the hermeneutic of continuity in practice: a seamless blending of the sacred and the profane. The “heroism” on display is a humanitarian heroism, stripped of the odium theologicum that marks the true saint. St. Cyprian teaches: “Non potest habere Deum patrem, qui ecclesiam non habet matrem” (He cannot have God for a father who has not the Church for a mother). The “Church” referenced by Fernandez is the post-conciliar counterfeit, the “Church of the New Advent” occupying the Vatican, whose “pope” Leo XIV (Prevost) presides over the abomination of desolation.
The False Idols of the Age: Fauci, Thunberg, and the “Schizophrenia” of the Neo-Church
Fernandez observes a “type of idolatry in recent years directed toward unlikely figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci and activist Greta Thunberg” and calls this “ambivalence and schizophrenia.” He diagnoses the symptom but ignores the cause. This idolatry is the direct fruit of the conciliar revolution which, in Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, enthroned Man in the place of God. The Syllabus of Pius IX condemns the error: “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (prop. 41) and “The State… is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits” (prop. 39). The neo-church’s “dialogue” with the world has produced a laity incapable of distinguishing the City of God from the City of Man. The “schizophrenia” is the inevitable cognitive dissonance of those who profess Catholicism on Sunday but render to Caesar the things that are God’s on Monday.
The Sedevacantist Critique: The Only True Heroism is Martyrdom for the Integral Faith
From the perspective of the integral Catholic Faith—the sole criterion of evaluation—true heroism is confessing the Truth in the face of the Antichurch. It is the heroism of Archbishop Lefebvre (however imperfect his resistance) consecrating bishops in 1988 to preserve the priesthood; it is the heroism of the faithful laity who refuse the Novus Ordo bread-service and seek out valid Masses at the risk of social ostracism; it is the heroism of priests validly ordained before 1968 who keep the Tradition alive in catacombs.
The article’s final paragraph is a masterpiece of Modernist equivocation:
“Holiness and sacrifice certainly are types of heroism and it is a continuing challenge for Catholics, whether artists, clerics or the lay faithful, to effectively communicate those virtues as they were and are lived by very real people.”
“Types of heroism.” “Effectively communicate.” “Very real people.” This is the language of marketing and public relations, not the language of the Cross. The true heroism demanded today is rejecting the false “saints” of the neo-church (John Paul II, John XXIII, Paul VI, Mother Teresa—all “canonized” by usurpers), rejecting the false “Mass”, and adhering to the Throne of Peter which has been vacant since 1958. As Bellarmine teaches: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… a non-Christian in no way can be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member” (Defense of Sedevacantism). The line of usurpers from John XXIII to Leo XIV constitutes the Great Apostasy foretold in 2 Thess 2:3.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Cinema
The NCR article is not a critique of culture; it is a symptom of the disease. It proves that the neo-church’s intellectuals have no concept of the supernatural. They seek “heroes” in the flickering shadows of Plato’s cave (the cinema screen) while the True King, Christ Jesus, is dethroned in the sanctuary by the Novus Ordo and His Vicar’s seat is occupied by a manifest heretic. The only “story” that matters is the Historia Salutis enacted daily on the altar of the True Mass. “He who gives the Kingdom of Heaven does not take away earthly things!” (Quas Primas, hymn Crudelis Herodes). But the neo-church gives earthly things—movies, “impact,” “storytelling”—and has lost the Kingdom of Heaven.
Non est aliud nomen sub caelo datum hominibus, in quo oporteat nos salvari (Acts 4:12). There is no salvation in Jon Erwin, nor in Angel Studios, nor in Christopher Nolan, nor in the “pope” Leo XIV. The heroism of the age is fidelity to Tradition. Everything else is vanitas vanitatum.
Source:
Odysseus, Washington, Napoleon and Heroes in an Unheroic Age (ncregister.com)
Date: 22.07.2026