The EWTN News portal reports on statements by various conciliar “bishops” commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The article catalogues a litany of naturalistic platitudes — “courage,” “service,” “sacrifice,” “compassion,” “healing,” “resilience,” “mercy,” “instruments of peace” — uttered by men who occupy ecclesiastical structures but lack the Catholic faith. Archbishop Ronald Hicks of New York, “Cardinal” Edward Egan, Bishop John Bonnici, “Archbishop” Timothy Broglio, “Archbishop” Paul Coakley (president of the USCCB), “Archbishop” William Lori, Bishop Frank Caggiano, and the Ukrainian Catholic “bishops” all participate in this civic religion ceremony. The piece culminates in a quote from the current usurper antipope Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) that “peace is more than just a goal, it is a presence and a journey.” Nowhere is the Social Kingship of Christ proclaimed; nowhere is the necessity of conversion to the one true Church asserted; nowhere is the reality of divine judgment mentioned. This is not Catholic episcopal teaching; it is the rhetoric of a paramasonic NGO administering the opiate of civil religion to a dying empire.
Usurpers in the Sanctuary: The Invalidity of the Conciliar “Episcopate”
The article parades a roster of names — Hicks, Egan, Bonnici, Broglio, Coakley, Lori, Caggiano — each bearing the title “archbishop” or “bishop” within the conciliar sect. From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, these men are not successors of the Apostles but functionaries of the abomination of desolation occupying the Vatican since 1958. The Novus Ordo Missae they celebrate, the “Masses” at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Basilica of the National Shrine, and the various cathedrals of Bridgeport, Baltimore, and Rochester, are not the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary but Protestantized memorial services, stripped of propitiatory theology, offered by men whose orders are doubtful at best and whose jurisdiction is null by reason of their communion with the antipope. Pope Pius XII, in Sacramentum Ordinis (1947), defined the form of episcopal consecration; the 1968 rite of Paul VI altered the form substantially, casting doubt on the validity of all subsequent consecrations. Even if validly ordained, these men have publicly defected from the Catholic faith by adhering to the heresies of Vatican II — religious liberty, false ecumenism, collegiality, the new ecclesiology — and thus, by Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code, have lost all office ipso facto. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member” (De Romano Pontifice 2.30). The same principle applies to bishops. They are intrusi, hirelings who flee when the wolf comes (John 10:12), offering not the Bread of Life but the stones of humanitarianism.
The Silence of the Shepherds: No Christ, No Cross, No Conversion
Read the statements closely. Archbishop Hicks: “extraordinary courage, service, sacrifice, and compassion.” Cardinal Egan: “extraordinary goodness of our people.” Bishop Bonnici: “genuine kindness and fraternal love.” Archbishop Broglio: “honor the brave first responders… entrust to the mercy of God.” Archbishop Coakley: “instruments of peace in an increasingly fractured and divided world.” Archbishop Lori: “terrorism or violence can never resolve injustice.” Bishop Caggiano: “resilience is not the same thing as moving on,” “mercy,” “forgiveness begins with a full acknowledgment of the wound.” The Ukrainian “bishops”: “capacity for goodness, courage, compassion, sacrifice and love,” “instruments of His love,” “overcome evil with good.”
Not one mentions the Holy Name of Jesus Christ as King of nations. Not one calls the attackers — Muslims acting from Islamic theology — to conversion. Not one warns that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Not one proclaims that the Social Kingship of Christ is the only remedy for the disorders of nations, as Pius XI defined in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed… the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.” Not one echoes the Syllabus of Pius IX condemning the error that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55). This is practical atheism masquerading as piety. The “God” invoked is the vague deity of civil religion, the “Great Architect” of the lodges, not the Triune God who has revealed Himself exclusively in the Catholic Church.
False Peace, False Mercy: The Heresy of Humanitarianism
Archbishop Coakley’s invocation of antipope Leo XIV — “peace is more than just a goal, it is a presence and a journey” — encapsulates the Modernist inversion. True peace is tranquillitas ordinis (St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei 19.13), the tranquility of order, which presupposes the order of justice, which in turn presupposes the recognition of Christ’s rights. There is no peace without the Kingship of Christ. Pius XI: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another… He is the author of prosperity and true happiness for individual citizens as well as for the state.” The “peace” of the conciliar sect is the pax Masonica, the reconciliation of contradictions, the synthesis of truth and error. Bishop Caggiano’s “mercy without justice becomes indulgence” sounds Thomistic but is severed from its supernatural root. True mercy is misericordia — a heart miserable for another’s misery — but ordered to the conversion of the sinner, not the management of trauma. The “forgiveness” he describes is psychological therapy, not sacramental absolution. The “resilience” he praises is Stoic endurance, not the virtus fortitudinis infused by grace. This is the cult of man condemned by Pius XI in Quas Primas and by St. Pius X in Pascendi: the substitution of the supernatural order by the natural, of grace by sentiment, of the Church by the “community of believers.”
The Civic Religion of the Neo-Church: 9/11 as Liturgical Feast
The article reveals the liturgical calendar of the conciliar sect: not the feasts of the Saints, but the anniversaries of national tragedies. The “Vigil Mass” at St. Patrick’s, the Mass at the National Shrine’s Crypt Church, the “invitation-only” character, the livestreaming — all mimic the externals of Catholic worship while evacuating its substance. The “Tribute in Light” — twin shafts of light soaring skyward — is a phallic Masonic symbol replacing the Cross. The “photographs of first responders displayed outside firehouses” are the new hagiography: the secular saints of the new religion. The “interfaith” implication (Muslim attackers, Christian victims, all “children of God” in the conciliar imagination) is the practical application of Nostra Aetate and the Abu Dhabi declaration. The Ukrainian “bishops” asking “What is the legacy of September 11?” answer themselves: a legacy of “solidarity,” “grief,” “communities opening their doors.” Not a legacy of souls converted, of the Cross exalted, of Islam condemned as a false religion. This is the ecumenism of the trenches — not the trenches of spiritual combat, but the trenches of humanitarian aid.
EWTN: The Propaganda Arm of the Conciliar Sect
The source, EWTN News, is not a Catholic media outlet but the mouthpiece of the neo-conservative wing of the conciliar sect. Founded by the late Mother Angelica (a “nun” of the post-conciliar order), it has consistently promoted the “hermeneutic of continuity,” the legitimacy of the antipopes, the validity of the Novus Ordo, and the “traditionalism” of the indult and the FSSPX — all of which are schism within schism. The article’s tone — reverent, solemn, “bipartisan” — is designed to legitimize the usurping hierarchy and to lull the faithful into believing that the conciliar sect is the Catholic Church. The inclusion of the “Ukrainian Catholic bishops” (Eastern-rite functionaries of the same sect) signals the pan-ecclesial unity of the anti-church. The “Subscribe” banner at the end — “I agree to receive communications from EWTN” — completes the picture: a commercial enterprise selling spiritual placebo.
The Theological Verdict: Non est qui credat
St. Paul warns: “If any man preach to you a gospel besides that which you have received, let him be anathema” (Gal 1:9). The “gospel” preached by Hicks, Coakley, Lori, Caggiano, and the rest is the gospel of humanitarian deism: God as a vague supporter of “goodness,” Christ as a teacher of “compassion,” the Church as an NGO for “peace and justice.” This is the synthesis of all heresies — Modernism — condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane Exitu. The propositions condemned there — “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Prop. 26); “Christ did not proclaim any specific, all-encompassing doctrine suitable for all times and peoples” (Prop. 59); “The Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics” (Prop. 63) — are the operating system of the conciliar “bishops.” They do not teach; they “accompany.” They do not judge; they “dialogue.” They do not convert; they “build bridges.”
The 9/11 attacks were a chastisement permitted by God upon a nation that has formally apostatized from the true faith — a nation whose “Catholic” politicians legislate abortion, sodomy, and gender ideology, whose “bishops” give them “Communion,” whose “pope” blesses their wars and their economies. The only Catholic response to 9/11 is the one Pius XI prescribed: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ… if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” The conciliar “bishops” offer the opposite: capitulation to the world, silence before the Kingship of Christ, collaboration with the enemies of the Church. They are the pastores qui non intellegunt (Jer 10:21), the blind guides leading the blind into the pit (Mt 15:14). The true Church — the Ecclesia militans of the catacombs, the remnant faithful to Tradition — mourns the dead of 9/11 by praying for the repose of their souls in the traditional Roman Rite, by offering the Holy Sacrifice for their salvation, and by proclaiming that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation (Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus). That is the charity of the Saints. The rest is idolatry of the world.
Source:
Bishops reflect on 25th anniversary of 9/11 attacks (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 10.09.2026