Catholic News Agency reports on “Archbishop” Bernard Hebda’s pastoral letter responding to federal agents’ fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. The prelate describes a “heaviness” in the community, urging prayers for the Good family, political leaders, law enforcement, and immigrants fearing deportation. He highlights declining Mass attendance in Latino parishes and promotes events like Bishop Andrew Cozzens’ talk titled “A Wounded Church: Finding Peace and Healing.” The article concludes with requests for prayers for “Fr.” Greg Schaffer in Venezuela and financial support for affected parishes.
Theology of Feelings Replaces Doctrine of Salvation
Hebda’s pastoral approach exemplifies the neo-church’s abandonment of extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church there is no salvation) in favor of therapeutic moralistic deism. His letter fixates on psychological states – “heaviness,” fear, division – while omitting any mention of mortal sin, repentance, or the Four Last Things. This emotional reductionism directly violates Pius XI’s condemnation in Quas Primas (1925) that “the majority of men… had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives,” becoming “exiles from the kingdom.”
The reported 50% decline in Mass attendance among immigrant communities reveals the fruit of decades of sacramental minimalism. Rather than calling these souls to return through Sacramentum Poenitentiae (Sacrament of Penance), Hebda suggests laity “join them some weekend” as if Eucharistic worship were a social support group. Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis (1943) explicitly warned against this desacralization: “The Eucharistic Food contains… the Author of grace Himself… not to serve as nourishment for the body but for the welfare and comfort of the soul.”
Naturalism Masquerading as Pastoral Care
The promoted event “A Wounded Church: Finding Peace and Healing” epitomizes the conciliar sect’s substitution of natural virtues for supernatural faith. Nowhere does Hebda mention reparation for blasphemies, the necessity of the Sacrifice of the Mass for societal healing, or the Immaculate Heart’s triumph over modern errors – omissions that confirm the analysis in False Fatima Apparitions that modernist clergy “diminish the efficacy of Holy Mass in favor of spectacular acts.”
“We continue to be at a time in this country when we need to lower the temperature of rhetoric, stop fear-filled speculation, and start seeing all people as created in the image and likeness of God.”
This pious-sounding platitude deceives by omission. The Catechism of St. Pius X clarifies that while all humans bear God’s image, only the baptized in a state of grace are adopted children of God. Hebda’s equivocation implies an implicit universalism condemned by Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864), which rejected the notion that “good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ” (Proposition 17).
Political Neutrality as Apostolic Cowardice
In addressing the ICE shooting, Hebda carefully balances prayers for law enforcement and protesters while avoiding any judgment on the incident’s morality. This false even-handedness constitutes a betrayal of the Church’s prophetic office. Leo XIII’s Immortale Dei (1885) mandated: “The Church cannot give… approval to… error or… those who profess them.” By refusing to condemn either the federal agent’s actions or the deceased’s alleged “domestic terrorism,” the “archbishop” reduces the Church to a passive observer of temporal conflicts.
The article’s focus on immigrant fears of deportation reveals the neo-church’s Marxist roots. Pius XI’s Divini Redemptoris (1937) condemned communism’s “false ideal of social justice and social charity,” yet conciliar clerics like Hebda adopt its victim-oppressor paradigm. Traditional Catholic teaching upholds both the right of nations to secure borders (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II Q.10) and the duty to treat migrants with justice – principles utterly absent from this humanitarian reductionism.
Ecumenical Antichrist Prepares the Way
Bishop Cozzens’ talk title “A Wounded Church” inverts the true nature of the crisis. The Church as Christ’s Mystical Body cannot be wounded, only her members through sin. This emotive language prepares minds for the “wounded healer” paradigm of apostate ecumenism. Pius IX’s Syllabus condemned the error that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Proposition 18), yet Hebda’s entire approach implicitly accepts Protestant anthropological errors.
The call for “Eucharistic adoration” rings hollow when conducted under conciliar rite sacraments of doubtful validity. St. Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane (1907) condemned the proposition that “the sacraments arose as a result of the interpretation by the Apostles or their successors of Christ’s thoughts” (Proposition 40), yet the neo-church’s sacramental theology rests precisely on this evolutionist premise.
Until these conciliar clerics renounce their adulterous union with modernity and return to the unchanging Magisterium, their saccharine appeals for “healing” will only deepen the Church’s crucifixion by her enemies.
Source:
Archbishop Hebda calls for hope, healing as community suffers ‘heaviness’ after shooting (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 13.01.2026