National Register portal (June 21, 2026) publishes a commentary by Joseph Pearce on the occasion of Father’s Day, in which the author presents fatherhood as a path to holiness, invoking Léon Bloy’s famous maxim about the tragedy of not becoming a saint. Pearce frames parenthood as a “pilgrimage” and “the way of the cross,” referencing Blessed Michael McGivney and the Knights of Columbus as models of familial charity. The article reduces the supernatural life of grace to a sentimental narrative of self-improvement, omitting entirely the necessity of the sacraments, the reality of original sin, the obligation of Catholic education, and the absolute primacy of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the sole means by which any family can attain salvation. What presents itself as a meditation on fatherhood is, in substance, a naturalistic homily indistinguishable from Protestant self-help literature, stripped of every specifically Catholic supernatural content.
The Bloy Quote Stripped of Its Supernatural Context
Pearce opens with Léon Bloy’s celebrated declaration: “The only great tragedy in life is not to become a saint.” Taken in isolation, the sentence is unimpeachable. But the question that immediately imposes itself is: what does Pearce mean by “saint,” and what means does he propose for becoming one? The article never once mentions Baptism as the indispensable gateway to the supernatural life. It never mentions Confession as the necessary remedy for mortal sin. It never mentions the Holy Eucharist as the viaticum and sustenance of the soul in the state of grace. It never mentions the necessity of Catholic education for children, the dangers of indifferentism in schooling, or the binding obligation of parents to raise their children in the Faith under pain of eternal damnation.
The Council of Trent, in its Decree on Justification (Session VI, Chapter 7), teaches that justification is not merely a moral improvement but a “transitus from that state in which man is born a child of the first Adam to the state of grace and of the adoption of the sons of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior.” This transitus occurs through the sacrament of Baptism, not through the sentimental embrace of paternal responsibilities. The Catechism of the Council of Trent further insists that parents who neglect the Baptism of their children commit a grave sin. Pearce’s entire meditation floats in a vacuum of natural virtue, as if the supernatural order did not exist.
“Homo Viator” Without the Supernatural Order
Pearce employs the Thomistic concept of homo viator — man as pilgrim — but immediately dilutes it with a psychological self-help framework: “Each of us is on the appointed journey, which is the quest for heaven.” The language of “quest” and “journey” is the vocabulary of secular humanism, not of Catholic theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 109, a. 2), teaches that man in the state of fallen nature “cannot fulfill all the commandments of the natural law” without the aid of grace, and that “in the state of corrupt nature, man cannot be wholly free from sin, even venial sin, except by a special privilege of grace, such as was granted to the Blessed Virgin.” The “civil war” that Pearce borrows from Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn is not merely a psychological struggle; it is the ontological wound of original sin, which no amount of paternal self-sacrifice can heal without the sacramental system of the Catholic Church.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations” (Proposition 3). Pearce’s entire article operates within this condemned framework. Fatherhood, in his presentation, becomes a self-sufficient path to holiness, as if the sacraments were optional accessories rather than the sine qua non of the supernatural life.
The Way of the Cross Without the Cross
Pearce writes: “Parenthood is not the smoothest of paths, nor is it a bed of roses; or, if it is a bed of roses, it is a bed of roses embedded with thorns. It is not an easy way. It is the way of the cross.” This is rhetoric without substance. The “way of the cross” in Catholic theology is not a metaphor for the difficulties of diaper-changing and mortgage payments. It is the literal participation in the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ through the sacraments, through mortification, through the acceptance of suffering in union with the Sacrifice of Calvary. The Imitation of Christ (Book I, Chapter 25) teaches: “In the Cross is salvation; in the Cross is life; in the Cross is protection from enemies; in the Cross is infusion of heavenly sweetness; in the Cross is strength of mind; in the Cross is joy of spirit; in the Cross is the height of virtue; in the Cross is the perfection of sanctity.”
Nowhere does Pearce mention that the family must be consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Nowhere does he mention the necessity of daily Rosary, of mental prayer, of the examination of conscience. Nowhere does he warn that a father who raises his children outside the Catholic Faith — in public schools, in the conciliar sect’s “religious education,” or in no religious education at all — is leading them to hell. The silence is deafening and damning.
Blessed Michael McGivney and the Knights of Columbus: A Sanitized Legacy
Pearce invokes Blessed Michael McGivney as a model of fatherhood and charity. McGivney, the eldest of thirteen children, postponed his priestly studies to support his family after his father’s death, and later founded the Knights of Columbus to aid widows and orphans. These are admirable natural virtues. But the question that Pearce refuses to ask is: what is the current state of the Knights of Columbus?
The Knights of Columbus, as they exist today, are an organization fully integrated into the conciar sect. They participate in the ecumenical agenda, they support the antipopes in the Vatican, they promote the “New Evangelization” of the post-conciliar apostasy. Their charitable works, however laudable on the natural plane, are performed within a framework that has repudiated the social reign of Christ the King. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to remind the world that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “rulers of states… have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” The modern Knights of Columbus honor no such duty. They are, in the language of the Syllabus of Errors, a “clerico-liberal society” (Category IV) that has subordinated the supernatural mission of the Church to the naturalistic agenda of mutual aid and social respectability.
Pearce’s invocation of McGivney is an act of historical amnesia. The McGivney of the nineteenth century operated within the true Catholic Church, under the authority of legitimate bishops, in communion with the true Pope. The Knights of Columbus of the twenty-first century operate within the abomination of desolation that occupies the Vatican. To invoke the former while ignoring the latter is to practice the very “hermeneutics of discontinuity” that the conciar sect claims to reject while embodying in every fiber of its being.
The Universal Call to Holiness Without the Means of Holiness
Pearce writes: “We are all called to be saints. This is what is meant by the universal call to holiness.” The phrase “universal call to holiness” is, of course, a favorite of the conciar sect, having been elevated to prominence by the Second Vatican Council’s Lumen Gentium (Chapter V). But the Catholic teaching on the universal call to holiness, as taught by the pre-conciliar Magisterium, is inseparable from the sacramental system and the authority of the true Church.
Pope Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the proposition that “the Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Proposition 57) and that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Proposition 58). The universal call to holiness is not a vague invitation to “become a saint” through the exercise of natural virtues. It is a binding obligation, imposed by God, to seek sanctifying grace through the sacraments, to avoid mortal sin, to practice the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and to persevere in the state of grace until death.
St. Francis de Sales, in his Introduction to the Devout Life (Part I, Chapter 1), teaches that devotion “is the delight of delights and the queen of virtues, because it is the perfection of charity.” But he immediately adds that true devotion presupposes the state of grace and the practice of the sacraments. Pearce’s article contains not a single reference to any of these necessities. It is, in the final analysis, a Pelagian fantasy: the idea that man can attain holiness through his own efforts, without the supernatural aid of grace communicated through the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
The Omission That Condemns: Silence on the Conciliar Apostasy
The most damning feature of Pearce’s article is not what it says, but what it omits. There is no mention of the fact that the Catholic Church, as it existed before 1958, has been systematically dismantled and replaced by a counterfeit institution. There is no mention of the fact that the “Mass” celebrated in the vast majority of parishes today is a Protestantized rite that denies the propitiatory nature of the Sacrifice. There is no mention of the fact that the “sacraments” administered by the conciar sect are, at best, of doubtful validity and, at worst, sacrilegious mockeries. There is no mention of the fact that the “bishops” and “priests” of the conciar sect are, in many cases, manifest heretics who have lost their jurisdiction ipso facto by virtue of their public defection from the Catholic faith.
Pope Paul IV, in the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio (1559), declared that “if at any time it shall appear that any Bishop… or even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his assumption to the cardinalate or the papacy, has defected from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy: his promotion or elevation… shall be null, void, and of no effect.” St. Robert Bellarmine, in De Romano Pontifice (Book II, Chapter 30), taught that “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” Canon 188, §4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law confirms that “every office becomes vacant by the mere fact and without any declaration by reason of tacit resignation, recognized by the law itself, if the cleric… publicly defects from the Catholic Faith.”
Pearce writes as if none of this matters. He writes as if the conciar sect were the Catholic Church. He writes as if the “Knights of Columbus” were a Catholic organization. He writes as if “fatherhood” could be a path to holiness without the true Faith, without the true sacraments, without the true Church. This is the very essence of Modernism: the reduction of the supernatural to the natural, the substitution of human effort for divine grace, and the silent apostasy that masquerades as piety.
The Only Great Tragedy
Léon Bloy was right: the only great tragedy in life is not to become a saint. But the path to sanctity does not lie through the sentimental embrace of fatherhood as a “pilgrimage” of self-improvement. It lies through the narrow gate of the true Catholic Faith, the sacraments of the true Church, the practice of the true virtues, and the rejection of the conciar apostasy in all its forms. A father who raises his children within the conciar sect, who sends them to its schools, who receives its “sacraments,” who prays at its “Masses,” is not “feathering a heavenly nest.” He is building a nest in the tree of apostasy, and the fruit of that tree is death.
Pope Leo XIII, in the Encyclical Immortale Dei (1885), taught that “the Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each the highest in its kind, and each fixed within limits which are defined by its particular nature and special object.” The family exists within this divine order. It is not a self-sufficient unit of natural virtue. It is a cell of the Mystical Body of Christ, and it can only fulfill its mission in communion with the true Church and under the authority of the true Pope.
Let us keep our eyes on heaven, as Pearce urges. But let us also keep our eyes on the truth: that the conciar sect is not the Catholic Church, that its “fatherhood” is not the fatherhood of the Faith, and that the only path to sanctity passes through the narrow gate of immutable Tradition — the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3).
Source:
Being a Father, Becoming a Saint (ncregister.com)
Date: 21.06.2026