The Vatican News portal reports on an interview with Bishop William Shomali, vicar general of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, who appeals for continued attention to the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank, decries Israeli settlements, and expresses concern for the declining Christian presence in the Holy Land. The interview frames the conflict entirely in secular political and humanitarian terms, omitting any supernatural perspective, the duty of rulers to recognize Christ the King, or the imperative of conversion. This reflects the post-conciliar Church’s complete abandonment of Catholic integralism for naturalistic humanism, reducing the Gospel to a social justice program and tacitly endorsing nationalist aspirations condemned by the pre-conciliar Magisterium.
The Secularist Framework: A Direct Assault on Quas Primas
The entire interview operates within the naturalistic, secularist paradigm that Pope Pius XI condemned as the “plague” of our times in his encyclical Quas Primas. Bishop Shomali speaks of “two million people still suffering,” “collapsing economy,” “scarce medicines,” and “lack of security.” These are purely material concerns, presented as the primary, if not sole, evils. Pius XI, however, declared that the root cause of all societal misfortune is the removal of “Jesus Christ and His most holy law from… public life.” He wrote: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The interview’s silence on the necessity of the public and social reign of Christ the King—a reign that orders all laws, governments, and international relations to the divine law—is not a mere omission but a positive denial of Catholic doctrine. It treats the conflict as a purely geopolitical-humanitarian crisis, solvable by political agreements and aid, precisely the “natural religion” and “natural inner impulse” Pius XI identified as the endpoint of secularism.
Endorsement of Nationalist Heresy: The “Palestinian State”
Bishop Shomali explicitly states that Israel’s settlement policy aims “to prevent the birth of a Palestinian state.” This endorsement of a secular, nationalist political entity—the so-called “State of Palestine”—is a direct repudiation of Catholic social teaching as defined in the Syllabus of Errors. Error #55 condemns the notion that “national churches, withdrawn from the authority of the Roman pontiff and altogether separated, can be established.” The very concept of a “Palestinian state” founded on nationalist, rather than Catholic, principles is a manifestation of this condemned error. It promotes a political solution based on ethnic and territorial claims, antithetical to the Catholic principle that all legitimate authority derives from God and must be subordinate to His law. The bishop’s concern for the “future of the emergence of a Palestinian state” reveals a complete subscription to the liberal, nationalist ideology that Pius IX anathematized.
The Omission of Supernatural Ends: A Symptom of Modernist Apostasy
The most damning aspect of the interview is its absolute silence on the supernatural purpose of human life and society. There is no mention of the salvation of souls, the necessity of the Catholic Faith for eternal happiness, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the role of the Church as the sole dispenser of salvation, or the final judgment. This is the hallmark of the Modernist heresy condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu and Pascendi Dominici gregis. Proposition #63 of Lamentabili states: “Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development, it became first Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal.” This evolutionary view, which reduces the Faith to a human religious movement, is the implicit foundation of an interview that discusses “Christian communities” as an ethnic or cultural group within a political conflict, not as the Mystical Body of Christ tasked with converting all nations. The bishop’s confidence that “the Lord will not allow the Church to disappear from the Holy Land” is a vague, deistic hope, devoid of the Catholic dogma that the Church will endure until the end of time because she possesses the immutable truth and sacraments, not because of some abstract “sense.” It is the language of a man who believes in a generic “Lord” and a generic “Church,” not in the Catholic Church alone.
The Demolition of Christ’s Royal Dignity
Pius XI in Quas Primas insisted that Christ’s kingdom is not merely spiritual and interior but also extends to temporal affairs: “He received from the Father unlimited right over all that is created, so that all is subject to His will.” The bishop’s analysis contains not a single reference to this doctrine. He does not call on Israeli or Palestinian authorities to obey the law of Christ. He does not condemn the secular, apostate nature of the Israeli state, which explicitly rejects the kingship of Christ. He does not call for the conversion of the Jewish people, whose official position is the denial of the Incarnation and the Kingship of Christ. Instead, he operates entirely within the framework of “international law,” “occupation,” and “human rights”—the very concepts that the Syllabus of Errors (#39, #40, #41) condemns as replacing the law of God. His appeal is to human sentiment and political pressure, not to the binding obligation of all rulers to “publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” as Pius XI demanded.
The “Two-State Solution”: A Heresy of Nationalism and Indifferentism
The underlying assumption of the interview is that a political partition of the land into Jewish and Palestinian states is a viable, even desirable, solution. This is the logical outcome of the conciliar embrace of religious freedom and the separation of Church and State, condemned by Pius IX. Error #77 of the Syllabus states: “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 post-conciliar Church, by accepting the legal equality of all religions and the legitimacy of secular states, has been led to support precisely such partitions, where different “peoples” with different “faiths” are granted sovereign territory. This is the antithesis of the Catholic doctrine that the State must recognize the Catholic religion as the sole true religion and govern according to its principles. The bishop’s focus on “settlements” and “annexation” as the primary problem, without a word on the apostate nature of the Israeli state itself or the need for a Catholic protectorate over the Holy Places (as existed historically), demonstrates a complete surrender to the secular, nationalist paradigm.
The “Cardinal” and the Conciliar Structure: Ministers of Apostasy
The interview features “Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa,” a figure of the post-conciliar “Church.” His request to Israeli authorities for permission to celebrate Holy Week “with small numbers” is a scandalous admission that the “Church” must beg the secular, anti-Catholic state for the right to worship. This inverts the Catholic order, where the Church is perfect and independent from secular power (as defined in Quas Primas and the Syllabus). The fact that “no one can go against the Status Quo” is treated as a given, as if this Ottoman-era agreement, which regulates Christian worship in the Holy Sepulchre, is a higher law than the divine law governing the public worship of Christ the King. The entire episode—a “cardinal” negotiating with a Masonic, Talmudic state for limited access to the holy places—epitomizes the abject投降 (surrender) of the post-conciliar hierarchy. They are not pastors of the Catholic Church but functionaries of a paramasonic structure that has abandoned the fight for the social reign of Christ.
The False Concern for “Christians”: A Naturalistic, Not Catholic, Compassion
Bishop Shomali’s lament for the Christian community—down to 1%—is framed in demographic and cultural loss terms. He notes they were a majority in the early centuries and now are a minority. This is the language of an ethnographer or a sociologist, not a bishop of the Catholic Church. A true Catholic bishop would first and foremost be concerned with the state of grace of his flock, the validity of the sacraments, and their perseverance in the true Faith. The interview contains not a whisper about the rampant Modernism, the invalid Masses, the loss of faith, or the need for traditional Catholic practice. His “confidence” that the Church will remain as “a small flock near the Holy Sites” is a capitulation to the very secularism that drives Christians away. It accepts a future where Catholics are a tolerated, insignificant relic in a land governed by infidels and apostates, rather than calling for the conversion of the land and its rulers to Christ. This is the spirit of the “Church of the New Advent,” which has traded the spiritual monarchy of Christ for a seat at the table of the United Nations.
Conclusion: The Apostasy of the Conciliar Sect in Microcosm
This interview is a perfect microcosm of the post-conciliar apostasy. It:
1. Replaces the supernatural kingship of Christ with secular human rights discourse.
2. Endorses nationalist political solutions condemned by the Syllabus.
3. Omits any call to conversion, the necessity of the Catholic Faith, or the social reign of Christ.
4. Accepts the legitimacy of a secular, anti-Catholic state (Israel) and negotiates with it as an equal.
5. Treats Christians as an ethnic group facing demographic threats, not as members of the one true Church.
6. Demonstrates the total integration of the conciliar hierarchy into the naturalistic, Masonic world order they were designed to serve.
The only “solution” to the crisis in the Holy Land, from an integral Catholic perspective, is the restoration of the social reign of Christ the King over all nations, the conversion of the Jewish people to the Catholic Faith, the repudiation of Zionist nationalism, and the establishment of a Catholic protectorate over the sacred sites under the direct authority of the true papacy. Until then, the suffering is a just punishment for the apostasy of the “Church of the New Advent,” which has exchanged the truth of God for the lie of naturalistic humanism. The interview is not a call to prayer and penance for the conversion of souls, but a lobbying effort for a political outcome within the apostate world system. It is the theology of the Antichrist disguised as pastoral concern.
Source:
Bishop Shomali: Let us not forget Gaza and the West Bank (vaticannews.va)
Date: 01.04.2026