The Oscars’ “God is Good”: A Liturgy of Naturalistic Humanism
The 2026 Oscars ceremony featured several winners, including Michael B. Jordan, Nicole Kidman, and Jessie Buckley, who expressed belief in God and the importance of family. While presented as a positive display of faith, this narrative fundamentally reduces the supernatural to a naturalistic, human-centered sentiment, utterly incompatible with the integral Catholic faith. The article from EWTN News, by uncritically reporting these statements, participates in the modernist project of emptying religious language of its dogmatic content and presenting a “god” who is little more than a guarantor of personal success and familial sentiment.
1. Factual Deconstruction: Vague Theism as a Substitute for Catholic Truth
The article highlights three main examples:
- Michael B. Jordan stated, “God is good. God is good,” and thanked his family, including his father who flew from Ghana. In a 2020 interview, he said he “believed in a higher power, something bigger than myself.”
- Nicole Kidman said she prepares for events by going to church, which “centers” her. She mentioned a Catholic grandmother and that she and her ex-husband Keith Urban used to attend church as a family.
- Jessie Buckley celebrated motherhood, dedicating her award to “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart,” and expressed love for her husband and desire for more children.
These statements, while superficially religious, are theologically vacuous. They present a generic, undefined “God” and a natural family love stripped of its supernatural purpose. There is no mention of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation, the Redemption, the sacraments, the Church as the sole ark of salvation, the necessity of grace, the final judgment, or the ultimate destiny of the soul. This is the “natural religion” condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Error #5: “Divine revelation is imperfect, and therefore subject to a continual and indefinite progress, corresponding with the advancement of human reason”) and the “indifferentism” of Error #16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation.”
2. Linguistic Analysis: The Tone of Naturalistic Sentimentality
The language used is emotional, personal, and centered on human experience. Jordan’s “God is good” is a exclamation of personal gratitude, not an act of adoration of the Supreme Being. Kidman’s church attendance is framed as a self-centering practice (“it centers me”), akin to therapy or meditation, not as the worship due to the One True God. Buckley’s focus is entirely on the natural bond of motherhood and marital love. The tone is one of immanent, earthly fulfillment, not transcendent, supernatural hope. This is the precise “cult of man” denounced by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Here, God is removed from doctrine and worship and reduced to a feeling.
3. Theological Confrontation: The Absolute Primacy of God’s Law Over Sentiment
Integral Catholic theology, as defined before the conciliar revolution, demands that all human affairs, including the family, be ordered to the supernatural end of the salvation of souls. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, establishes the duty of states and individuals to publicly recognize the reign of Christ the King: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” The Oscars’ mentions of God are a direct negation of this duty. They present a “king” who is not Christ, but a vague “higher power” who blesses personal achievement. This is the error of “national conversion without evangelization” applied to the individual, as critiqued in the analysis of false Fatima messages: it omits the main danger, which is the rejection of the Catholic faith.
Furthermore, the family is extolled as a natural good without reference to its supernatural institution as a “domestic Church” (Ecclesia domestica) and its role in the propagation of the faith. St. Pius X, in his condemnation of Modernism (Lamentabili sane exitu, Prop. 54), denounces the error that “Dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy… are merely modes of explanation and stages in the evolution of Christian consciousness.” The Oscars’ narrative treats family as an evolving, natural sentiment, disconnected from the sacrament of Matrimony and its purpose of “the procreation and education of offspring for the worship and service of God” (Council of Trent, Session XXIV, Chapter 1).
4. Symptomatic Analysis: The Conciliar Church’s Apostasy in Microcosm
This article is not an anomaly; it is the logical fruit of the post-conciliar “abomination of desolation.” The “Church of the New Advent” has systematically replaced the Sacrifice of the Mass with a “table of assembly,” the salus animarum with “dialogue” and “human development,” and the exclusive reign of Christ with a pluralistic “reign of values.” The Oscars, a temple of worldly glory, now feature “God-talk” that the conciliar church has rendered acceptable by its own silence on dogma. As the Syllabus of Errors condemned (Error #77): “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” The inverse is now true: it is no longer expedient to hold that Catholicism is the only true religion at all. Hence, any “God” will do.
The article’s source, EWTN News, is a prime example of the “neo-church” in media. It reports on these vague professions of faith without a single corrective, without a call to conversion to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith, without a mention of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes that suppresses the Traditional Latin Mass. This is the “hermeneutics of continuity” in action: treating the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar as compatible, when in reality they are mutually exclusive. The “faith” displayed at the Oscars is the faith of the “Church” that “listens” more than it teaches, as condemned in Lamentabili, Prop. 6: “The Church listening cooperates… that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening.”
5. The Omission: Silence on the Supernatural and the Sacramental
The gravest accusation is what is not said. There is no mention of:
- The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the re-presentation of Calvary, the sole true worship of God.
- The sacrament of Penance, necessary for salvation after mortal sin.
- The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
- The authority of the Catholic Church as the sole dispenser of salvation.
- The duty of Catholic states to profess the Catholic faith exclusively (Quas Primas).
- The condemnation of religious liberty (Syllabus, Error #15).
- The sin of idolatry in worshipping a vague “God” not revealed by Christ.
This silence is not neutrality; it is apostasy. It teaches by omission that the supernatural order, the sacraments, and the Church are irrelevant to “faith” and “family.” This is the “diversion from apostasy” noted in the analysis of Fatima: focusing on external, naturalistic threats (here, the threat of “division” or “chaos” in family life) while omitting the internal, modernist apostasy that has emptied the Church of its divine content.
6. Critique of the “Clerics” and the “Pseudo-Traditionalist” Enablement
The article comes from EWTN News, a network that, while sometimes featuring traditional language, fully accepts the legitimacy of the conciliar “popes” and their false ecumenism. Its writers, like Walter Sánchez Silva, are “clerics” of the “neo-church.” They are guilty of scandal by presenting this naturalistic “faith” as something positive and newsworthy for a Catholic outlet. They fail in their duty to “make known and attack” the errors of the world (as Pius IX urged in the Syllabus conclusion) and instead sanction them by reporting them as “faith on display.”
Furthermore, this article reveals the bankruptcy of the “pseudo-traditionalist” position (e.g., FSSPX, indultists) who claim to uphold tradition while acknowledging the conciliar authorities. If the “Church” today can celebrate such empty God-talk at the Oscars as a positive event, what does that say about the “reform” they claim to resist? They have been neutered by their own compromise, unable to condemn the fundamental apostasy because they recognize the “authorities” who promote it. As the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Paul IV teaches, a manifest heretic (and what is more manifest than the universal promotion of naturalism?) loses all jurisdiction ipso facto. The “popes” and “bishops” of the conciliar sect have no authority, and their media organs propagate poison.
Conclusion: Return to the Unchanging Faith
The Oscars 2026 did not display “faith.” It displayed the final stage of the Modernist synthesis: the complete reduction of the supernatural to the natural, of dogma to sentiment, of the Church to a cultural club. The “God” of Michael B. Jordan, Nicole Kidman, and Jessie Buckley is an idol, a projection of human desires for success, centrality, and familial bliss. This is the “natural religion” of the Syllabus and the “cult of man” of Quas Primas.
The only response for a Catholic is the uncompromising rejection of this entire spectacle and a return to the immutable faith of the pre-1958 Church. We must believe with St. Robert Bellarmine that a manifest heretic (and the entire conciliar hierarchy is manifestly heretical) loses all office. We must hold that the kingdom of Christ is not a vague influence but a society—the Catholic Church—to which all nations and individuals must submit in faith and morals. We must reject the “ecumenism” that allows a “Catholic” news service to report on idolatrous sentiments without condemnation.
The path is narrow: the Traditional Latin Mass, the sacraments administered by validly ordained bishops in communion with the unchanging faith, and the total rejection of the conciliar sect and its apostate “popes.” There is no middle ground. The Oscars showed the world’s god; the Catholic must worship the God of the Council of Trent, the God of Quas Primas, the God who demands exclusive adoration and the public reign of His Son, Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
Source:
‘God is good’: Faith and love for family on display at 2026 Oscars (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 17.03.2026