The EWTN News portal reports (June 26, 2026) that the Michigan Attorney General’s office has released its sixth report on clergy sexual abuse, this time targeting the Diocese of Saginaw. The report details allegations against 37 priests and one deacon, dating back to the 1950s, with most alleged abusers deceased and none of the living accused in active ministry. The article quotes the apologies of “Bishop” Robert Gruss and the statements of Attorney General Dana Nessel, framing the revelations as a step toward “accountability” and “safer communities.” This report is not a sign of the Church’s health but a symptom of the deep moral and doctrinal collapse that followed the post-conciliar revolution, where naturalistic “safeguards” replace the supernatural discipline of Tradition, and where the very hierarchy that should guard the faith has become a source of scandal and confusion.
The Post-Conciliar Moral Collapse and the Illusion of “Progress”
The article’s narrative, echoed by the conciliar hierarchy, is that the Church has made “significant progress” over the last 20 years in implementing safeguards. This is a modernist deception. The crisis of abuse is not a problem of the pre-conciliar Church, which, for all its human failings, operated within a framework of objective moral law, sacramental discipline, and the fear of God. The post-conciliar Church, having jettisoned these supernatural foundations in favor of psychology, “dialogue,” and a man-centered therapeutic model, has created the very conditions for the proliferation of perversion. As Pope Pius XI warned in *Quas Primas*, “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The same applies to the internal governance of the Church. When the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass is reduced to a communal meal, when the sacrament of confession is treated as a therapeutic encounter, and when the formation of priests is infected by naturalism and a false concept of “human rights,” the result is not holiness but rot. The “safeguards” praised by “Bishop” Gruss are bureaucratic band-aids on a wound caused by the conciliar sect’s own apostasy. They address symptoms while ignoring the disease: the loss of the supernatural spirit, the denial of original sin, and the rejection of the Church’s exclusive divine mission to save souls.
The Scandal of a “Bishop” Apologizing
The response of “Bishop” Robert Gruss is a textbook example of the conciliar leadership’s failure. He offers “deepest sorrows” and a “sincere apology,” but this is the language of a corporate executive managing a public relations disaster, not of a shepherd wielding the sword of the Spirit. Where is the clear, doctrinal condemnation of these acts as mortal sins that cry to heaven for vengeance and incur automatic excommunication? Where is the recognition that these crimes are a direct result of the modernist errors condemned in *Pascendi Dominici gregis* and *Lamentabili sane exitu*, which reduced faith to a feeling and morality to a social contract? The apology is empty because it lacks the supernatural context. It is an apology that implicitly blames a lack of “safeguards” and a failure of “systems,” rather than the corruption of the will and the loss of faith. As St. Robert Bellarmine teaches, a manifest heretic—and a prelate who governs by naturalistic, man-centered principles is a practical heretic—loses his authority. The “Bishop” of Saginaw, by his words and his adherence to the conciliar sect, demonstrates his inability to provide true spiritual leadership. His call for “acknowledgment” and “safer communities” is a call for a purely temporal order, a “City of Man” dressed in ecclesiastical vestments.
The State as Judge and the Violation of the Church’s Rights
The entire premise of the Michigan Attorney General’s investigation is a violation of the Church’s divine right to govern herself according to her own laws. The state, acting on a purely naturalistic and often anti-Catholic motive, assumes the right to investigate and judge the internal disciplinary matters of the Church. This is the very error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the *Syllabus of Errors*, which rejects the proposition that “the civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Proposition 44). While the state has a legitimate temporal interest in prosecuting civil crimes, the manner in which these investigations are conducted—often with a clear bias against the Church and a refusal to acknowledge the Church’s own canonical penalties—is an act of aggression against the freedom of the Church. The Church has her own law, her own courts, and her own means of punishing crimes, especially those that violate the sixth commandment and the sacredness of the priesthood. The state’s intervention, applauded by the conciliar hierarchy as “accountability,” is in reality a humiliation of the Church, reducing her to a mere civic association subject to the whims of secular authorities. This is the bitter fruit of the doctrine of religious liberty, condemned by Pope Gregory XVI and Pope Pius IX, which places the Church on equal footing with error and allows the state to meddle in things that belong to God.
The Omission of the Supernatural and the Root of the Crisis
The most glaring omission in the article and in the responses of both the state and the conciliar hierarchy is any mention of the supernatural. There is no talk of sin, of the state of grace, of the necessity of confession and penance, or of the eternal consequences for the perpetrators. The victims are offered therapy and “acknowledgment,” not the healing of their souls through the sacraments and the pursuit of Christian perfection. The perpetrators are treated as criminals to be managed by the state, not as souls who have profaned the Body of Christ and incurred the penalty of excommunication *latae sententiae*. This silence is the gravest accusation. It reveals that the post-conciliar Church has lost the sense of the sacred. The crisis is not primarily one of “abuse” in the secular sense; it is a crisis of sacrilege. The abuse of a minor by a priest is a sacrilege against the innocence of the victim and against the sacred character of the priesthood. It is a direct attack on the Mystical Body of Christ. Without a return to the integral Catholic faith—which includes the clear teaching on the indelible character of Holy Orders, the automatic loss of office for manifest heresy, and the absolute necessity of the traditional Mass and sacraments—there can be no true reform. The “safeguards” of the conciliar sect are a mockery, for they seek to build a “safer community” on the foundation of apostasy, while the true Church, founded on the Rock of Peter, endures in the faithful who reject this modernist revolution and cling to the unchanging Tradition.
Source:
Michigan report cites abuse claims against 37 priests, 1 deacon in Saginaw (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 26.06.2026