EWTN News reports: The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), through its president, Bishop Mariano Crociata, expressed “deep concern” over the EU’s new Return Regulation, which streamlines deportation procedures for illegal immigrants. Crociata emphasized the “inviolable dignity” of migrants, urged policies that respect this dignity, and called on Europe to “reaffirm its founding values” of humanity and solidarity. The statement aligns with the call of “Pope” Leo XIV for an “examination of conscience” regarding migrants.
The Conciliar Sect’s Migration Rhetoric: A Masterclass in Modernist Subversion
The statement by COMECE, the official voice of the conciliar sect in the European Union, on the EU’s Return Regulation is a textbook example of the Modernist corruption that has consumed the post-1958 institution. While draped in the language of “human dignity” and “solidarity,” this declaration is not merely a policy critique; it is a theological and philosophical assault on the natural law, the common good, and the divinely ordained order of nations. It represents the culmination of decades of doctrinal erosion, where the Church’s immutable teaching on the state’s duty to protect its citizens and the limits of charity has been supplanted by a sentimental, naturalistic humanism indistinguishable from secular progressivism.
The Idolatry of “Inviolable Dignity” and the Erasure of the Common Good
At the heart of Crociata’s statement lies the repeated invocation of the “inviolable dignity” of every person. While Catholic theology certainly affirms the inherent dignity of the human person as created in the image of God, the conciliar sect has weaponized this concept to render it meaningless. Dignity, in the Catholic understanding, is not an abstract, detached quality that trumps all other considerations. It is a dignity ordered towards God, a dignity that carries with it the obligation to live according to His law, both natural and divine. To speak of “dignity” while remaining silent on the moral and spiritual state of the individual, the legality of their presence, and the duty of the state to uphold justice, is to engage in a hollow, Pharisaical charade.
Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), unequivocally declared that Christ’s reign “extends not only to Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” This dominion is not merely spiritual but has implications for the temporal order. A state, to be just, must recognize this sovereignty and govern accordingly. The COMECE statement, by contrast, reduces the state’s role to that of a passive facilitator of individual “rights,” specifically the “right to seek protection” and the “right not to be forced to leave their homeland.” This is a direct inversion of the Catholic understanding of rights and duties. Rights are not autonomous claims against the community but are derived from and ordered towards the common good, which is itself ordered towards the ultimate good of man: the vision of God.
The silence of COMECE on the common good is deafening. The common good, as defined by St. Thomas Aquinas, is “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 58, a. 9). This fulfilment is not merely material or social but, above all, spiritual. A state that allows its borders to be overrun, its social fabric to be strained, and its citizens’ security and cultural identity to be threatened, is failing in its most basic duty to the common good. To prioritize the “dignity” of those who have illegally entered a country over the safety, stability, and spiritual well-being of its own citizens is not charity; it is a dereliction of justice. As St. Paul admonished, “if any man will not work, neither let him eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). This is not a call to cruelty but a statement of the natural order, where rights are contingent upon the fulfilment of duties.
The Heresy of Religious Indifferentism and the Denial of Order
COMECE’s call for “solidarity” and “humanity” is a thinly veiled promotion of the heresy of religious indifferentism, condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos (1832) and reiterated by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864). The statement makes no distinction between Catholic and non-Catholic migrants, between those fleeing genuine religious persecution and those seeking economic opportunity. It treats all migration as a monolithic phenomenon, subject only to the criteria of “dignity” and “protection.” This is a direct denial of the Church’s teaching that the Catholic religion is the only true religion and that the state has a duty to recognize this truth and, while tolerating other forms of worship for the sake of the common good, must not place them on an equal footing with the one true Faith.
Error 15 of the Syllabus explicitly condemns the proposition that “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.” Error 17 condemns the idea 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.” COMECE’s statement, by failing to acknowledge the spiritual dangers posed to both migrants and host nations by the influx of non-Christian populations, implicitly endorses these condemned errors. It treats migration as a purely socio-economic problem, devoid of any spiritual dimension, thereby reducing the Church’s mission to that of a humanitarian NGO.
Furthermore, Crociata’s appeal to address the “root causes that force people to migrate” – war, persecution, poverty, corruption, environmental collapse – is a classic example of the Modernist obsession with temporal solutions to spiritual problems. While the Church has always advocated for justice and peace, she has never proposed that the solution to the world’s ills lies in the dissolution of national borders and the mass movement of populations. The root cause of all human suffering is sin, both original and personal. The solution is not a new social order built on “solidarity” but the conversion of hearts to Jesus Christ and the establishment of His Kingdom in the souls of men and in the laws of nations. As Pius XI declared, “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior” (Quas Primas).
The Usurpation of Authority and the Betrayal of the Faithful
The COMECE statement is not merely a theological error; it is an act of institutional betrayal. By aligning itself with the agenda of the European Union, a body founded on the principles of secular liberalism and religious indifferentism, the conciliar sect has revealed its true nature as a servant of the world rather than of Christ. The statement’s invocation of “Pope” Leo XIV’s call for an “examination of conscience” is particularly galling, as it uses the authority of an illegitimate usurper to lend weight to a modernist agenda. Leo XIV, like his predecessors from John XXIII onward, is a manifest heretic who has forfeited any claim to the Chair of Peter. His calls for “dialogue,” “mercy,” and “inclusion” are not expressions of Catholic charity but tools of the Antichrist to dissolve the Church from within.
The bishops of COMECE, by their own admission, are not speaking as pastors entrusted with the care of souls but as lobbyists seeking to influence EU policy. They have abandoned their prophetic mission to preach the Gospel in season and out of season, to rebuke sin and call all men to repentance. Instead, they have become functionaries of the abomination of desolation, using the vestments of religion to sanctify the errors of the age. Their statement is a lamentable confirmation of the words of Our Lord: “If the world hate you, you know that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18-19). The conciliar sect is not hated by the world because it is of Christ; it is loved by the world because it has become of the world.
The Duty of the Faithful: Resistance and Rejection
In the face of this apostasy, the duty of the faithful Catholic is clear: to reject the false teachings of the conciliar sect and to cling to the immutable Tradition of the Church. This means recognizing that the state has not only the right but the duty to control its borders, to deport those who enter illegally, and to prioritize the spiritual and temporal well-being of its own citizens. It means understanding that true charity begins at home, with the care of one’s own family and community, and that it cannot be exercised at the expense of justice. It means praying for the conversion of migrants, yes, but also praying for the restoration of the true Church and the overthrow of the modernist usurpers who have hijacked her institutions.
The COMECE statement is not a call to conscience; it is a call to capitulation. It is a demand that Catholics surrender their Faith, their nations, and their children to the forces of globalism and religious indifferentism. Let us reject this demand with the firmness of the martyrs and the clarity of the Fathers. Let us proclaim with St. Pius X: “We will not hide the fact that We are deeply grieved by the audacity of those who, under the guise of more serious criticism and in the name of historical method, aim at such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption” (Lamentabili Sane Exitus, 1907). The conciliar sect has corrupted the faith; let us, by God’s grace, preserve it whole and entire until the day of Our Lord’s return.
Source:
Church in European Union calls for migration policy that respects inviolable dignity of every person (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 18.06.2026