“In the beginning God created heaven, and earth” (Genesis 1:1). 

From the first instant of creation, God spoke into the void and order was born. Light separated from the darkness. The waters were divided from the land. Every star, every seed, every breath of life was placed according to a divine design. Creation was not chaos. It was harmony – each part serving its place in the order of God. 

And at the summit of this order, God created man and woman – not as rivals, not as interchangeable beings, but as reflections of divine complementarity. The man to guard and to till, the woman to receive and to bring forth life. Together, they imaged the unity and fruitfulness of the Holy Trinity, for they were made in the image of God. 

This was divine order – not tyranny, but truth; not inequality, but harmony under the reign of God. 

But then came the serpent. And his first temptation was not lust, not violence, not greed – it was disorder. 

“ … You shall be as gods,” he said, “knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). In other words: You will decide. You will govern yourselves. You will unmake the order God made. 

That rebellion echoed down through history – the ancient war of the creature against the Creator, the endless attempt to rebuild what God designed, but this time without Him. 

Then came Christ. The Word made flesh, entering the disorder to restore what man had undone. He did not abolish order – He restored it. He did not erase authority – He sanctified it. He said to Peter, 

“Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church” (Matthew 16:18). 

In that moment, the order of creation was renewed in grace: the Son sent by the Father, the apostles sent by the Son, the bishops succeeding the apostles, and the faithful entrusted to their care. Heaven’s structure mirrored on earth – the hierarchy of love that binds creation to its Creator. 

But now, two thousand years later, that divine hierarchy – the sacred order that flows from God Himself – is being systematically dismantled. Not only in society and government, but in the very Body of Christ. 

When the divine order is rejected, man always tries to build his own. He takes the tools of God and fashions a tower of his own making, one that reaches toward heaven but has no foundation of grace. This is what we see rising again in our time – a new Babel, clothed in the garments of the Church, speaking the language of mercy while laying new bricks of rebellion. 

In recent days, for example, the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Synod celebrated a new “pastoral governance plan” from Bishop Michael Kennedy of Maitland-Newcastle, Australia. His letter spoke of a diocesan pastoral council, of structures of participation, of advisory boards and consultative groups. He declared that his diocese would now operate “in synodal mode,” and the Vatican reposted it approvingly, calling it a sign of hope. 

But this plan is not hope. It is a replacement. A replacement of the apostolic structure with the architecture of the world. A replacement of divine leadership with democratic process. A replacement of the Shepherd’s staff with the committee’s pen. 

This is how the Church is being unmade – quietly, methodically, and under the guise of listening. They say it is a “new way of walking together.” But in truth, it is a new way of walking away from God. It subjects the sacred office of the bishop – born from the breath of God Himself – to the consent of committees and “experts.”  

More than a century ago, Pope St. Pius X published the Apostolic Letter, Notre Charge Apostolique. That document marked the Pontiff’s struggle against the errors of Modernism, which he had condemned in his Encyclical, Pascendi Dominicii Gregis. Although this document was aimed at the errors of the French Catholic movement Le Sillon, these teachings are particularly relevant today as the Church and the world seek to build an entirely new civilization opposed to the divine order.  

Le Sillon upheld the thesis that the origin of all authority is the people. Sound familiar? However, as was addressed by Pope St. Pius X, human authority is not an independent authority that originates from human nature itself, but rather all authority comes from participation in the authority of God, who stands above all created wills and thus can oblige the human will to bend before and acknowledge His authority.  

Therefore, the origin of all authority is God, not the masses, and in the event that some men are given authority over another, it follows that this should derive only from the supreme authority of God. This is the Divine Order – and all who submit to this Divine Order will work together to achieve the end goal – which is always the salvation of souls – not brotherhood or consensus of the masses.  

And Pope St. Pius X, in this document, had a special warning for priests: 

“However, let not these priests be misled, in the maze of current opinions, by the miracles of a false Democracy. Let them not borrow from the rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, the high-flown phrases, full of promises; which are as high-sounding as unattainable. Let them be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise only yesterday; that the Church and the State, at all times and in happy concert, have raised up fruitful organizations to this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to dubious alliances, does not have to free herself from the past; that all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.” 

And in this document, Pope St. Pius X gave the perfect answer to the Church’s drive to implement a synodal process which stands in direct opposition to the Divine Order. He said: 

”Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with “supreme authority” the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them. He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one’s personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.” 

And then he sums up our day even more perfectly when he says: 

“But what have the leaders of the Sillon done? Not only have they adopted a program and teaching different from that of Leo XIII (which would be of itself a singularly audacious decision on the part of laymen thus taking up, concurrent with the Sovereign Pontiff, the role of director of social action in the Church); but they have openly rejected the program laid out by Leo XIII, and have adopted another which is diametrically opposed to it. Further, they reject the doctrine recalled by Leo XIII on the essential principles of society; they place authority in the people, or gradually suppress it and strive, as their ideal, to effect the leveling down of the classes. In opposition to Catholic doctrine, therefore, they are proceeding towards a condemned ideal. 

“We know well that they flatter themselves with the idea of raising human dignity and the discredited condition of the working class. We know that they wish to render just and perfect the labor laws and the relations between employers and employees, thus causing a more complete justice and a greater measure of charity to prevail upon earth, and causing also a profound and fruitful transformation in society by which mankind would make an undreamed-of progress. Certainly, We do not blame these efforts; they would be excellent in every respect if the Sillonist did not forget that a person’s progress consists in developing his natural abilities by fresh motivations; that it consists also in permitting these motivations to operate within the frame of, and in conformity with, the laws of human nature. But, on the contrary, by ignoring the laws governing human nature and by breaking the bounds within which they operate, the human person is led, not toward progress, but towards death. This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.” 

And within that very dream that Pope Pius X mentions lies the seeds of every rebellion now rising in the Church: the call for women’s ordination, the soft acceptance of moral inversion, the blessing of same-sex unions that God’s Word condemns, the confusion of gender that denies the Creator’s design, and the illusion that all religions lead to salvation. 

These are not gestures of mercy; they are acts of demolition. For Christ did not come to build a parliament of faiths. He came to found His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. He did not say, “All paths lead to the Father.” He said, “No man cometh to the Father, but by Me” (John 14:6). 

The same spirit that now speaks of “synodal governance” in the Church is the spirit that speaks of “global governance” in the world. It is the same breath that says, “We will make all things new” – but without God. 

This is why every structure that once reflected divine order is being rewritten. Nations no longer recognize their boundaries, families no longer recognize their form, and men and women no longer recognize what they are. What began as rebellion in Eden has become policy in every capital of the world. 

Governments once built on law are now ruled by decree. Truth is replaced by consensus, justice by ideology, and faith by compliance. It is the same revolution wearing different clothes.  

The Church was meant to be the anchor of truth amid this storm – the last bastion of divine order in a collapsing world. But when the shepherds begin to echo the language of the revolution, the citadel becomes the workshop of the enemy. 

Pope Pius XII warned of this false unity in Humani Generis when he wrote: 

“Some say they are not bound by the doctrine explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the sources of revelation, according to which the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation.” 

That is precisely what we witness now – the Church’s divine claim to truth diluted into a gesture of mere fellowship. The dogma that salvation is found in Christ and His Church alone has been rebranded as exclusion, while relativism is enthroned as charity. 

And because the Church no longer restrains the flood, that same rebellion now sweeps through the nations. The attitude that governs the Synod has become the spirit that governs the world – an ideology that enthrones the masses and dethrones God. It promises freedom, but it is the oldest slavery: the worship of man. 

Even within the Vatican, this spirit finds a welcome home. Pope Leo XIV, though he speaks of reform and renewal, has done nothing to correct the errors of Francis before him. He has allowed the same voices to rule – men who preach the gospel of the masses, not the Gospel of Christ. It is the same current that once flowed through Marx, through liberation theology, through every revolution that claimed to speak for the people while silencing God. 

This is the deception of our age – that truth rises from the crowd, that doctrine is decided by consensus. But Christ did not ask for a show of hands on Calvary. He did not measure truth by popular vote. He reigned from the Cross, not from a committee.  

And yet they speak as if the Faith itself must evolve – as if doctrine bends to the winds of history. In truth, it is not the Faith that has changed; it is hearts that have grown cold. When the shepherds no longer guard the gate, the wolves are welcomed as guests. And the same delusion that dismantles the altar soon dismantles the family, the nation, and the very meaning of man and woman. 

My brothers and sisters, this is the hour in which every believer must decide whom he will serve. The spirit of the age whispers of progress, inclusion and renewal – but beneath its gentle tone lies the same serpent that hissed in Eden: “You shall be as gods.” The world offers us a counterfeit kingdom built on man’s self-rule. Christ offers us a Cross that leads to true freedom. 

We stand at the meeting point of two orders: one divine, one human; one born of obedience, the other of pride. And though the Church seems to crumble, her foundation is eternal: 

“Thou art Peter, said the Lord, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). 

Yes, the gates are raging – through synodal deceit, through false mercy, through the dissolution of every moral boundary – yet still, they will not prevail. For Christ remains the Head, even if His Body is wounded and bleeding. He remains King, even if His servants forget how to kneel.  

Now is the time to repair – to make reparation not only with words, but with lives consecrated to truth. Do not yield to despair. The darker the world grows, the nearer dawn approaches. Every age of confusion has been met by an age of saints.  

Let it not be said of us that we were silent while the Kingdom was unmade. Let it be said that we stood firm when others fled – that we clung to the Cross when the world chose comfort.  

The war against divine order will not end in a council chamber or a news headline; it will end in hearts that still believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. So stand firm, dear brothers and sisters. Repair what has been broken with faith that cannot be bought, and love that cannot be silenced. 

And when the world cries, “We have no king but ourselves,” may the Church – even if only a remnant – answer with one voice, “We have no King but Christ.” 

And so, my dear brothers and sisters, as we lift our eyes once more to the Crucified Lord, may His Sacred Heart strengthen us to stand firm in truth, to love without fear, and to serve without compromise. May the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Queen of the Apostles, guard the Church in this hour of trial. 

And may Almighty God bless you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland 

Bishop Emeritus