The National Catholic Register portal (July 26, 2026) publishes a laudatory review by Joseph Pronechen of Peggy Stanton’s book The United Saints of America, a state-by-state guide to post-conciliar shrines that enshrines the Masonic Fatima operation and the Medjugorje fraud as pillars of American Catholic identity. The review reveals a religion of tourism, celebrity, and naturalistic sentimentality utterly devoid of the regnum Christi and the sacrificium laudis — a perfect mirror of the conciliar sect’s apostasy.
The Conciliar Sect’s Liturgical Tourism Replaces the Kingship of Christ
The article opens by framing the book as a celebration of the “250th anniversary of our country,” chronicling Catholicism’s growth from “living in the shadows to becoming the largest single Christian body in the United States.” This triumphalist demographic language — numerus clausus substituting for veritas — exposes the naturalistic ecclesiology condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus Errorum (Error 39: “The State… is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits”; Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State”). The review nowhere mentions the Social Reign of Christ the King, solemnly defined by Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925): “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Instead, the reviewer celebrates a “travel book for Catholics” that “hints at how the Church has grown not just in population but also in the numbers of shrines.” This is the hermeneutic of continuity in action: the ecclesia militans reduced to a travel agency.
Medjugorje: The False Apparition That “Converted” the Author
The review states explicitly that Peggy Stanton “converted from ‘a cultural Catholic to a committed Catholic’ after a trip to Medjugorje.” Medjugorje — condemned by the local Ordinary, Bishop Žanić, and never approved by any legitimate Magisterium — is here presented as a vehicle of grace. The review further recounts how in Delaware “the faithful wanted a 33-foot-tall stainless-steel statue of the Blessed Mother that resembled the Lady in Medjugorje” and pledged 500,000 Rosaries to obtain it. In New York, a fallen-away ABC executive “picked up a pamphlet about Our Lady of Medjugorje, went on pilgrimage to the mountain village of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and ‘re-embraced his Catholic faith.’” This is falsa religio masquerading as conversion. As St. Pius X teaches in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), Modernism “aims at such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption.” Medjugorje’s “messages” — vague, sentimental, ecumenical — are the very synthesis of all errors condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (Prop. 21: “The revelation which is the object of Catholic faith did not cease with the Apostles”). The conciliar sect promotes it because it serves the ecumenism project and the cult of man.
Fatima: The Masonic Psychological Operation Enshrined as Devotion
The review devotes significant space to Fatima. It describes the “National Blue Army Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima” in New Jersey and the shrine near St. Germanus Church in Arapahoe, Nebraska, founded by a “Marian-hearted priest.” Stanton “brings in the importance of the First Saturday Devotions and quotes what the Blessed Mother asked for,” adding her own candor: “‘That’s the chance of a direct flight to paradise, folks.’” This blasphemous trivialization of salvation — salus extra Ecclesiam non est — is compounded by the book’s inclusion of “a fascinating display of 4,000 rosaries from around the world… which includes one set of prayer beads from Venerable Sister Lucia of Fatima.”
The context file False Fatima Apparitions demonstrates conclusively that Fatima is a Masonic operation (“Symbolism of dates: 1717, 1917, 2017 – ritualistic 200-year cycles”; “Miracle of the Sun: mass optical manipulation… mass panic and autosuggestion”; “Disinformation strategy” in three stages). The “conversion of Russia” without specification of the Catholic Faith opens the way to religious relativism and legitimizes dialogue with schismatic Orthodoxy. The seers’ mortifications bear “the marks of Jansenist rigorism, not Catholic asceticism.” The “Two Lucia Sisters” theory, while dismissed in the file, underscores the total control of the narrative by the conciliar hierarchy. To promote Fatima is to promote a psychological operation against the Church. The reviewer, Joseph Pronechen, is the author of Fruits of Fatima — Century of Signs and Wonders — a professional propagandist for the Masonic myth.
False “Saints” and the Canonization Factory of the Antipopes
The book and review celebrate “the growing number of canonized and beatified Americans, both natives to our land and naturalized citizens.” Among them: “St. Junípero Serra” (canonized by the antipope Francis in 2015), “Mother Cabrini” (first “U.S. citizen to be canonized” by Pius XII in 1946, but here presented in the conciliar narrative), and “Venerable Father Emil Kapaun” (a post-conciliar cause). The review mentions “Father (now St.) Junípero Serra’s possession” of a Bible. These “canonizations” by the usurpers John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and now Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) are null and void. As the Defense of Sedevacantism file establishes: “A Pope-manifest heretic loses his office automatically” (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice). The line of usurpers beginning with John XXIII has publicly professed the heresies of Vatican II (religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality, evolution of dogma). They cannot bind the faithful. The “Ulma Family” and “Maximilian Kolbe” (mentioned in the FRAMEWORK as pseudo-saints) are further fruits of this fabrica idolorum. The book’s title — The United “Saints” of America — unwittingly places “Saints” in scare quotes, a Freudian admission of the fraud.
EWTN and the Celebrity Clergy of the Neo-Church
The review notes the first Alabama stop is “Mother Angelica and EWTN, where Stanton was a guest on the network’s shows in 2023.” The foreword is by “Father Mitch Pacwa, host of EWTN Live.” EWTN is the propaganda arm of the conciliar sect, promoting the Novus Ordo, the false apparitions, and the legitimacy of the usurpers. Mother Angelica’s “convent” is a studio; her “apostolate” is television. This is the cult of man and democratization of the Church condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili (Prop. 59: “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples, but rather initiated a certain religious movement”). The review’s tone — “armchair tour,” “gorgeous pictures,” “custom tour guide,” “reminiscences add extra life” — reveals a religion of sentimentality and celebrity, not the Crux et Sacerdotium.
Silence on the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
Nowhere in the review — nor, by implication, in the book — is there mention of: the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary) as the center of pilgrimage; the state of grace and the necessity of sacramental confession; the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell); the Social Kingship of Christ over nations and laws; the duty to reject the conciliar sect as the abomination of desolation (Matt. 24:15). The review speaks of “faith-nourishing pilgrimages” but describes only tourism, statues, springs, staircases, and rosary collections. This is naturalismus purus. As Pius XI wrote in Quas Primas: “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 book offers a pilgrimage without penance, a shrine without sacrifice, a “saint” without sanctity.
Linguistic Decay: The Vocabulary of the Neo-Church
The review’s language betrays the theological vacuum: “travel book,” “armchair tour,” “gorgeous pictures,” “blessed stops,” “custom tour guide,” “topical vignettes,” “reminiscences,” “fascinating facts,” “revelations,” “hit bookshelves.” This is the rhetoric of Consumer Christianity. The word “pilgrimage” is stripped of its ascetical meaning (peregrinatio pro Dei amore) and reduced to “faith-nourishing” tourism. The phrase “direct flight to paradise” trivializes the via crucis. The author’s background — “ABC TV’s first female news correspondent,” “traveled the world with her husband, U.S. Rep. Bill Stanton” — signals the mundanitas of the enterprise. The reviewer, Joseph Pronechen, is a “staff writer with the National Catholic Register since 2005” — an employee of the conciliar sect’s media apparatus.
Symptomatic Level: The Conciliar Revolution’s Logical Fruit
This book and its promotion are not anomalies; they are the necessary fruit of Vatican II. The Council’s Gaudium et Spes (n. 22) proclaimed the “cult of man”; Dignitatis Humanae enshrined religious liberty; Nostra Aetate opened the door to syncretism; Sacrosanctum Concilium dismantled the Mass. The result is a “Church” that measures success by shrine attendance, book sales, and media appearances. The Syllabus Errorum (Error 80) condemned the proposition: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” The conciliar popes did exactly that. This travelogue is the liturgical expression of that reconciliation. It replaces the Regnum Christi with a “Marian America” that includes Fatima (Masonic) and Medjugorje (fraudulent). It replaces the Sacerdotium with TV personalities. It replaces Sanctitas with a canonization factory producing “saints” for the neo-church’s marketing needs.
Conclusion: Return to the Immutable Tradition
The faithful Catholic must reject this book, its review, and the entire structure that produces them. The true Church of Christ subsists in those who hold the integral Faith of Trent and Vatican I, who attend the Missale Romanum of St. Pius V, who recognize the See of Peter as vacant since 1958, and who await a true Pope elected by a legitimate College of Cardinals. As Bellarmine teaches: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member.” The conciliar sect is not the Church; it is the synagoga Satanae (Apoc. 2:9). Its shrines are not holy; its “saints” are not saints; its pilgrimages are not pilgrimages. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Let the faithful flee the abomination of desolation and cleave to the Traditio Catholica entire.
Source:
New Book Explores Catholic Shrines Across America, State by State (ncregister.com)
Date: 27.07.2026