The EWTN News portal reports that Joe Schmid, operator of the popular YouTube channel “Majesty of Reason” and a self-professed agnostic for a decade, has announced his “return to the Catholic Church.” The article, penned by Daniel Payne, frames this intellectual migration as a triumph of grace and reason, citing Schmid’s reliance on “vindicatory miracles” — specifically the charisms of Padre Pio, the healings at Lourdes, the apparitions of Fatima, and Eucharistic miracles — as the intellectual bedrock of his adhesion. The conciliar campus ministry at Princeton (the “Aquinas Institute”) and the professional apologist Trent Horn publicly celebrated the event. This spectacle exposes the complete vacuity of the conciliar sect’s “apologetics”: a purely naturalistic, philosophical assent to a counterfeit church validated by Masonic false apparitions and dubious stigmatics, devoid of the supernatural Faith and submission to the true Vicar of Christ.
The Narrative of Intellectual Autonomy Masquerading as Grace
On the factual level, the article reveals a “conversion” driven not by the motives of credibility proper to Catholic theology — miracles worked by God through the true Church to confirm her divine mission — but by a curated selection of phenomena outside the juridical and doctrinal boundaries of the pre-1958 Church. Schmid admits his journey was an “arduous conversion process” lasting a decade, fueled by “contingency arguments” from philosophers like Rasmussen and Pruss. He explicitly states: “I converted after a long process of working through my many objections to Catholicism and appreciating the many powerful arguments in its favor.” This is the Pelagianism of the intellect: the soul saves itself by resolving dialectical difficulties. The article quotes Schmid: “Conversion is a gift of God’s grace… So God is ultimately what led me to Catholicism.” Yet the mechanism described is entirely autonomous ratiocination. Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit (grace does not destroy nature but perfects it); it does not reduce the supernatural act of Faith to the conclusion of a philosophical syllogism. The true Catholic Faith demands obsequium fidei (submission of faith) to a living Magisterium, not the satisfaction of private intellectual criteria.
The Rhetoric of “Head and Heart”: Modernist Subjectivism
On the linguistic level, the vocabulary betrays the Modernist infection condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu and Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Schmid describes his process as a “culmination of ‘head factors and heart factors’.” This dichotomy — intellect vs. sentiment — is the hallmark of the nouvelle théologie and the personalist phenomenology that has replaced Thomistic metaphysics in the conciliar sect. The article notes his videos shifted from “criticizing arguments for God’s existence” to “the best-ever cumulative case for God.” This reveals the voluntarism of the convert: he remains the arbiter of truth, merely switching the polarity of his arguments. The language of “gift of God’s grace” functions as a pious veneer over a decision rooted in probabilism — condemned in Lamentabili (Prop. 25: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities“). The EWTN reporter, Daniel Payne, uncritically amplifies this subjectivist narrative, treating the “conversion” as a human interest story rather than a juridical act of abjuration and profession of faith required of those entering the Church from heresy or infidelity.
The Triad of False Miracles: Fatima, Lourdes, and the Stigmatic of Pietrelcina
On the theological level, the specific “miracles” cited by Schmid constitute a catalogue of the conciliar sect’s false credentials.
He cited the charisms of Padre Pio, the healing miracles at Lourdes, the apparitions of Our Lady of Fátima, Eucharistic miracles, “and much more besides.”
Fatima: As documented in the theological dossier on the False Fatima Apparitions, the Fatima message is “theologically contradictory to Catholic doctrine,” a “tool to divert attention from modernism,” and a “potential Masonic ‘psychological operation’ against the Church.” The demand for the “consecration of Russia” undermines the social kingship of Christ taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas (“Peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ“), substituting a private revelation for the public law of the Church. The “Miracle of the Sun” is exposed as “mass optical manipulation (natural phenomenon) and mass panic and autosuggestion.” The very name “Fatima” signifies “Christian-Islamic syncretism.” To cite Fatima as a motive of credibility is to build on sand.
Lourdes: While the Church approved Lourdes in 1862, the modern conciliar exploitation of Lourdes serves the cult of man and humanitarianism, diverting pilgrims from the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary to a therapeutic spa. The “healing miracles” are paraded as proofs of the neo-church’s vitality, yet they occur within a structure that denies the Social Kingship of Christ (Syllabus, Prop. 55, 77) and teaches religious liberty.
Padre Pio: The “charisms” of Francesco Forgione (Padre Pio) are invoked as “vindicatory miracles.” Per the directives of integral Catholic faith, Padre Pio is a pseudo-mystic whose stigmata and phenomena have never been canonically verified by a true Pope (the last being Pius XII). His “canonization” by the antipope John Paul II (Wojtyla) is null and void, performed by a manifest heretic who lacked jurisdiction (Cum ex Apostolatus Officio; Canon 188.4). To invoke him as a pillar of Faith is to invoke a sign of contradiction erected by the enemy.
Eucharistic Miracles: These are cited generically, stripped of their connection to the Propitiatory Sacrifice of the Traditional Latin Mass. In the conciliar sect, where the “Mass” has been reduced to a “table of assembly” (Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, 1969), any “Eucharistic miracle” serves only to legitimize the Novus Ordo Missae, a rite fabricated by the Freemason Bugnini to destroy the theology of the Cross.
The Absence of the True Church: Jurisdiction, Sacraments, and the Papacy
The article is radically silent on the only sine qua non of Catholic conversion: submission to the Roman Pontiff and the Church’s immutable doctrine. Schmid “returns” to a structure where:
- The “pope” (Leo XIV, Robert Prevost) is a manifest heretic who teaches religious liberty, false ecumenism, and the salvation of non-Catholics in their false religions — errors condemned by the Syllabus (Props. 15, 16, 17, 18, 77, 79, 80) and Quanta Cura.
- The “bishops” are invalidly ordained (post-1968 Pontificale Romanum) or, if validly ordained (pre-1968), have defected from the Faith (Canon 188.4: “Publicly defects from the Catholic faith“), losing all jurisdiction ipso facto (Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice; Wernz-Vidal).
- The “Mass” is the Novus Ordo, a Protestantized memorial that denies the propitiatory sacrifice (Council of Trent, Sess. XXII, Can. 1-3).
- The “sacraments” are administered with defective form, matter, or intention (new rites of ordination, confirmation, extreme unction).
Schmid’s “conversion” is an adhesion to a paramasonic structure occupying the Vatican, the “abomination of desolation” spoken of by Daniel (9:27; 11:31; 12:11) and Christ (Matt. 24:15). He has not entered the Ark of Salvation; he has boarded a vessel of apostasy. The “Aquinas Institute” at Princeton — a conciliar campus ministry — urging prayers for him confirms the ecclesial context: he is being assimilated into the Church of the New Advent, the neo-church of the Antichrist.
The Symptom: EWTN as the Propaganda Arm of the Great Apostasy
On the symptomatic level, this article functions as propaganda for the conciliar counter-church. EWTN, founded by the modernist “Mother” Angelica, serves as the media wing of the usurpation. It promotes “conversions” that require no abjuration of Modernism, no profession of the Quo Primum Mass, no rejection of the Novus Ordo hierarchy, no acceptance of Cum ex Apostolatus Officio or the sedevacantist thesis. It presents the philosophical theism of a Princeton PhD candidate as a victory for the “Catholic Church.” This is the democratization of the Church condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Schmid’s “God” is the God of the philosophers, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob revealed exclusively in the Roman Catholic Church subsistit in the remnant faithful to Tradition. The “conversion” of a “popular nonbeliever” is the currency of the neo-church: it buys credibility for the usurpers among the simple. Non est hic Deus nisi in Ecclesia Catholica (God is not here except in the Catholic Church) — and the Catholic Church is not the conciliar sect.
Conclusion: Joe Schmid has not converted to the Catholic Church. He has intellectually assented to the conciliar sect, seduced by the false signs and wonders (Matt. 24:24) of Fatima, Lourdes, and Padre Pio, facilitated by the naturalistic apologetics of the neo-church’s hirelings (Trent Horn, EWTN). He remains outside the Ark, a philosopher-king in the city of man, mistaking the whited sepulchre (Matt. 23:27) of the Vatican occupation for the City of God. Qui non est mecum, contra me est (Matt. 12:30).
Source:
‘God is good’: One of the internet’s most popular nonbelievers announces his return to the Church (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 02.09.2026