Observations on the Note “A Journey of Hope” by the Dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith, Christian Unity, and Interreligious Dialogue

The Note A Journey of Hope, drafted for the sixtieth anniversary of Nostra Ætate, bears the signatures of Cardinals Fernández, Koch, and Koovakad. Leo XIV approved it and ordered its publication. It is dated September 16, the memorial of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian.

I do not know whether the authors noticed the irony: St. Cyprian is the Father who bequeathed to the Church the formula salus extra Ecclesiam non est. He taught that he who does not have the Church for his Mother cannot have God for his Father. Under his patronage, a document has been published that, for sixty entire paragraphs, takes great care never to repeat that truth; indeed, in many ways, it contradicts and denies it. And this is the Dicastery that was once the Holy Office. The body established to guard the Catholic Faith now signs off on its liquidation.

I would add that the Note comes out four days after the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary. Blessed Innocent XI extended this feast to the Universal Church in 1683, in thanksgiving for the liberation of Vienna from the Ottomans. Precisely during these same days of September, the Holy See explains to us that the true danger to Christendom is called Islamophobia.

Let us therefore examine the document, not for what it claims to be, but for what it actually “teaches.”

The Note presents itself as the testimony of an «enriched continuity». Yet a simple reading suffices to realize that the text itself refutes this claim, and more than once.

Already at the outset (n. 1), it asserts that Nostra Ætate marked a profound change in the way the Church understands her relationship with other religions. In its conclusion (n. 57), it takes pleasure in the fact that this Conciliar Declaration radically transformed interreligious relations. The Church, the document claims, supposedly pivoted from a reserved and distant stance to a journey of dialogue. At n. 51, it goes so far as to state that dialogue transforms individuals, communities, and at times even ecclesial structures.

Now, the Church cannot «understand differently» her relationship with error, for that relationship is fixed by Divine Revelation. The First Vatican Council taught this in words that admit of no updating. The sense of sacred dogmas once declared by the Church must forever be retained: nec umquam ab eo sensu, altioris intelligentiæ specie et nomine, recedendum; one must never depart from that meaning [of the dogmas] under the pretext or appearance of a deeper understanding (Dei Filius, ch. 4). And in the Anti-Modernist Oath of St. Pius X, every cleric up until 1967 swore: prorsus rejicio hæreticum commentum evolutionis dogmatum, ab uno in alium sensum transeuntium diversum ab eo, quem prius habebat Ecclesia – “I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation of the evolution of dogmas, passing from one meaning to another different from that which the Church held before.”

A document celebrating the «radical transformation» of a teaching does not describe a homogeneous development. It describes a mutation. And the individuals within those Dicasteries who are adulterating the Faith, with Leo’s consent and patronage, betray and abuse the authority they hold.

The doctrinal core of the Note is a thesis the Church has always condemned: that false religions are, to one extent or another, pathways to God.

It repeats (n. 1) that the Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in other religions. It adopts (n. 33) Leo’s catechesis of October 29, 2025, according to which every sincere religious search should discern a reflection of the sole Divine Mystery. It affirms (n. 59) that the Holy Spirit works within the various religions of peoples and kindles in them the flame of wisdom. Finally (n. 51), it defines interreligious dialogue as «a theological locus, where the Holy Spirit wishes to make Himself heard».

The fact that fragments of natural truth are scattered among the errors of the pagans, no Catholic has ever denied. The devil himself, in order to deceive, mingles the true with the false. But it is one thing to recognize a fragment of truth within an erroneous system; it is quite another to attribute to that system, as such, a salvific value, a presence of the Holy Spirit, or a function as a «theological locus». This second step is precisely what the perennial Magisterium has always condemned.

Blessed Pius IX condemned the following propositions in the Syllabus: Homines in cujusvis religionis cultu viam æternæ salutis reperire æternamque salutem assequi possunt. Men can find the way of eternal salvation and attain eternal salvation in the worship of any religion (prop. 16).

Saltem bene sperandum est de æterna illorum omnium salute, qui in vera Christi Ecclesia nequaquam versantur. We must at least entertain good hope concerning the eternal salvation of all those who are in no way within the true Church of Christ (prop. 17).

Pius XI, in Mortalium Animos (1928), described future interreligious congresses with prophetic accuracy. He condemned their core principle: the false opinion of those who consider all religions plus minusve bonas ac laudabiles, more or less good and praiseworthy. And he warned that whoever adheres to such an opinion departs entirely from the Religion revealed by God.

St. Pius X, in Pascendi, exposed the theological root of this error: Modernist immanentism. If religion springs from the experience of the divine within human feeling, then every religion, even that of the pagans, must be called true. The Note merely applies this principle when it speaks of a «sincere religious search» and a «dialogue of religious experience» (n. 39).

The Holy Spirit is Spiritus veritatis (Jn 16:13), and cannot dwell where the Divinity of the Son who sent Him is denied. The Psalmist knew nothing of the nuances of dialogue: Quoniam omnes dii gentium dæmonia – for all the gods of the pagans are demons (Ps 95:5). Nor did the Apostle know them: quæ immolant gentes, dæmoniis immolant, et non Deo – what the pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God (1 Cor 10:20).

The most grave section of the document concerns Judaism. I wish to be clear from the outset, for the bad faith of the neo-Modernists stands ready to misrepresent my words. Hatred toward the Jews is a sin, and the Church has always condemned it; charity toward them is a duty. Yet the greatest charity one can show them is that which the Church has always practiced: praying for their conversion to Our Lord Jesus Christ, their Messiah. It is precisely this charity that the Note suppresses.

At n. 10, the Note sets forth a reconstruction that no Father of the Church would ever have recognized. Primitive Christianity supposedly developed out of the «movement initiated by Jesus». The early Christians allegedly adopted principles of contemporary Judaism, adapting them to the new post-Paschal situation. Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity would thus appear as two parallel branches of the same root.

This is the history of religions according to 19th-century rationalism, not the Catholic Faith. The Church of Christ is not an «adaptation» of Judaism. She is the true Israel, Israël Dei (Gal 6:16), in whom the promises are fulfilled. Rabbinic Judaism, which arose after the destruction of the Temple, is not a twin brother to the Church: it is the continuation of that portion of Israel that failed to recognize the time of its visitation (Lk 19:44).

That a document from the former Holy Office should invoke the authority of the Calvinist theologian Karl Barth (n. 5) to illustrate the Incarnation as «the Word [who] became Jewish flesh» says everything about its underlying inspiration...

At n. 13, the Note asserts that the covenant with the Jewish people is irrevocable and possesses theological significance. It adds that the religiosity of today's Jews, not merely that bound to the Old Testament, is relevant for Christians. It goes so far as to present it as an effect of the revealed Word, a current and dynamic value capable of enriching us. The Note takes pains to deny the existence of «two ways of salvation». Yet this is a mere facade, for immediately afterward it attributes salvific and theological value to the very thing it claimed not to view as a parallel path. Against this doctrine stands the entire perennial Magisterium of the Church.

The Apostle Paul teaches: Dicendo autem novum, veteravit prius. Quod autem antiquatur et senescit, prope interitum est; in speaking of a new covenant, God has declared the first one old; and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away (Heb 8:13).

The Council of Florence, in the Bull Cantate Domino (1442), defined that the legal prescriptions of the Old Testament ceased with the coming of Christ. After the promulgation of the Gospel, they cannot be observed without forfeiting eternal salvation. The same Council proclaims that no one existing outside the Catholic Church – not only pagans, but also Jews, heretics, and schismatics – can become partakers of eternal life. Firmiter credit, profitetur et prædicat, nullos extra catholicam Ecclesiam existentes, non solum paganos, sed nec Judæos aut hæreticos atque schismaticos, æternæ vitæ fieri posse participes.

St. Thomas (S. Th. I-II, q. 103, a. 4) teaches, alongside the Fathers, that the ceremonies of the Old Law became dead after the Passion, and mortiferous (deadly) after the propagation of the Gospel.

Pius XII, in Mystici Corporis (1943), teaches that with the death of the Redeemer, the Old Law was abolished, and the New Testament took its place.

For nineteen centuries, the Catholic Church prayed on Good Friday for God to lift the veil from the hearts of the Jewish people, according to the words of St. Paul: velamen positum est super cor eorum. Cum autem conversus fuerit ad Dominum, auferetur velamen – to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed (2 Cor 3: 15-16). But the Note does not view that veil as an impediment to be removed; rather it sees it as a richness from which to learn.

There is a detail that reveals the method. At n. 14, the Note invokes the Holy Office decree of March 25, 1928 (AAS 20 [1928], 103-104) as a precedent for its fight against antisemitism. That decree indeed condemns hatred against the people once chosen by God. Yet the Note remains silent regarding the 1928 decree’s primary objective. The decree suppressed the association Amici Israël, whose members requested, among other things, modifications to the Good Friday liturgy. The Holy Office judged their ideas contrary to the mind of the Church, the doctrine of the Fathers, and the sacred Liturgy.

Thus, the officials of the Roman Dicasteries quote in support of their position a document that condemned the very things they are now promoting. This is no oversight: it is the hallmark of a deceitful operation sustained by amputated citations and calculated omissions.

Here lies the misconception upon which the entire edifice of the Note, and of Nostra Ætate, is built: speaking of Judaism as though it were the religion of Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets, surviving intact down to our day through another channel. It is not so, and the Magisterium has always known it. The religion established by God on Sinai was entirely ordered toward the Temple, the Levitical priesthood, and ritual sacrifice: when the veil of the Temple was rent and the Sacrifice of the Cross fulfilled and abolished these figures, that economy came to an end; and the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, which no observant Jew has ever been able to remedy, was the visible sign of this end. What arose thereafter – Rabbinic and Talmudic Judaism, codified in the Mishna and Talmud between the 2nd and 6th centuries and in its subsequent schools—is not the continuation of the Mosaic religion: it is a post-Christian construct, developed largely in opposition to the Church and to the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah come in the flesh. It is not the ancient branch: it is a new branch, born after Calvary and against Calvary, born of the Sanhedrin that condemned Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the expressions «elder brothers» (n. 20) and «fathers in the faith» (n. 12) are not merely unfortunate phrases: they are theological errors. Far from elder brothers! Our fathers in the faith are the Patriarchs and Prophets who awaited Christ and whom Christ, descending into hell, set free. Most Holy Mary, the Apostles, and the early martyrs were Jews, and the Ecclesia ex circumcisione is our mother. But later Rabbinism is in no way our father: it was born after us and in controversy against us. St. Paul, who loved his brothers according to the flesh so much that he wished himself accursed and separated from Christ for their sake (Rom 9:3), teaches that the natural branches were broken off because of unbelief, and that God has the power to graft them in again if they do not persist in unbelief (Rom 11:20, 23). The Apostle's entire hope rests upon that if – and the Note, while quoting the Epistle to the Romans copiously, never mentions that if.

Let me add a word that I wish to be understood precisely as stated. The criterion given by St. John the Apostle does not concern a people, a bloodline, or a nation; it concerns a doctrine: Quis est mendax, nisi is qui negat quoniam Jesus est Christus? Hic est antichristus, qui negat Patrem et Filium. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son (1 Jn 2:22). Whoever denies Christ falls under that judgment: Greek or Roman, European or American, layman or cleric, and today preeminently cleric... But a religion historically constituted around the denial of the Messianic identity of Our Lord Jesus Christ is not a sister faith with a few omissions: it is, in principle, the antithesis of Christianity. To say this is not contempt for anyone: it is the very reason why the Catholic Church prayed for the conversion of Israel on every Good Friday in her history. Whoever stripped us of that prayer did not render us more charitable; they rendered us indifferent to the eternal salvation of men we claim to love.

That which the Note intends to bring to completion bears an ancient name, found in the Epistle to the Galatians: quomodo gentes cogis judaizare? Why do you compel the Gentiles to judaize? (Gal 2:14). St. Paul fought all his life against those who sought to maintain a parallel economy alongside the Cross, using words that no Dicastery would dare reprint today: si circumcidamini, Christus vobis nihil proderit; if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you (Gal 5:2). The Judaizer does not deny Christ: he places something alongside Him. He does not say the Cross is useless: he says it is not spes unica. This is precisely the structure of n. 13, where the doctrine of two ways of salvation is denied in words but reaffirmed in substance, attributing an ongoing theological significance to the Old Covenant and a value to contemporary «Jewish religiosity» that allegedly enriches us.

This Christianized Judaism is no Conciliar invention: for nearly two centuries, the Anglo-Saxon Protestant world has cultivated the same two-covenant theology – the dispensationalism of Darby and Scofield – with political consequences now visible across Western nations, where proponents of “Christian Zionism” subject nations to the Ashkenazi mafia. The synodal church has done nothing more than import its substance, dressing it in “Catholic” vocabulary: today's Judaizing Catholicism is the synodal counterpart to Protestant Zionism. Two paths different in origin, identical in effect, for both render the Cross partially superfluous and reduce the Catholic Church to merely one path among many.

If one denies that Jews must convert to Christ, the question remains: what is offered to the Gentiles? Rabbinic tradition offers an ancient and consistent answer: the seven Noahide laws (Sanhedrin 56a), a minimal moral code reserved for non-Jews that excludes any supernatural claim for them. A universal religion without the Trinity, without the Incarnation, without the Cross, without the Priesthood, without the Church, without Grace, and without the Sacraments. This is no mere scholarly curiosity: in 1991, the United States Congress, through Public Law 102-14, solemnly recognized the «Seven Noahide Laws» as the foundation of civilization.

Compare that project with what the Note proposes. At n. 58, religions are called upon to transform the world so that it becomes a fraternal expression of the will of God, while at n. 53 it hastens to exclude any intention of founding a world religion. The result, however, is identical: a generic monotheism, a common morality, a fraternity without the Son of God. I need not attribute motives to anyone, and I refrain from doing so: it suffices to observe that the synodal church is preaching to the Gentiles roughly what the Synagogue has always reserved for the Gentiles, and in neither framework does any place remain for Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is this, and not evangelical fraternity, that hides behind the phrase «elder brothers».

At n. 43, the Note reiterates the claim from Nostra Ætate that Muslims worship the one God. It further rejoices in a growing critical awareness regarding Islamophobia.

But what God is worshipped by a person who explicitly denies the Most Holy Trinity, the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Death on the Cross, and His Resurrection? St. John the Apostle answers unambiguously: Omnis qui negat Filium, nec Patrem habet; whoever denies the Son does not have the Father (1 Jn 2: 23). And again: Omnis qui recedit, et non permanet in doctrina Christi, Deum non habet; anyone who goes ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God (2 Jn 9). A monotheism that rejects the Son is not an imperfect form of the true faith: it is its denial, and a deliberate one, for the Quran knows Christ and yet rejects Him as God.

Then there is the practical dimension, which the Note touches upon with revealing caution. At n. 45, it draws from Evangelii Gaudium to ask Christians to welcome Muslim immigrants with affection, while imploring Islamic countries to grant Christians freedom of worship. Note the asymmetry of the verbs: on one side a duty, on the other a plea. Reciprocity has been invoked for sixty years and has never arrived, yet no one dares draw the obvious conclusion.

Meanwhile, mass immigration continues, promoted by political and financial powers well aware of its effects, and blessed by a hierarchy that has found in it its ultimate social purpose (and a convenient source of profit compensating for disastrous losses in donations and offerings from its own faithful). The consequences are visible to anyone not paid to ignore them: entire European suburbs effectively removed from Christian law and custom; churches sold, closed, or converted while mosques multiply; a planned ethnic and religious replacement that can no longer be denied, which people prefer to label as enrichment. At n. 47, the Note acknowledges the persecution of Christians by extremist groups, but without naming the place, the cause, or the remedy: the sole response identified is yet more dialogue – a dialogue that turns its gaze elsewhere, almost annoyed by the blood of Catholic Martyrs in Nigeria, daily massacred by those whose smiling hands Rome shakes.

Charity toward the individual foreigner is a duty, and no one here disputes it. But charity has an order – the ordo caritatis that St. Thomas expounds in the Summa (II-II, q. 26, a. 6-8) – and charity toward the foreigner does not obligate a Christian people to hand over to their children a de-Christianized land. The Pontiffs who organized the Holy League loved the Turks enough to desire their conversion, and loved their own peoples enough not to surrender them to their rule. Today, both approaches have ceased, and this double, cowardly abandonment is hypocritically labeled as “welcome.”

The Note repeatedly invokes St. Francis of Assisi as the patron of «universal brotherhood» (n. 30). In the past few days, the Church celebrated the Stigmata imprinted upon his sacred body. Now, when the Poverello traveled to Damietta to meet Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil in 1219, he did not go to «build a fraternal society capable of accepting differences». He went to preach Our Lord to him and to convert him. In his First Rule, he prescribed that friars going among the Saracens should proclaim the Word of God, so that they might believe and be baptized. This is Franciscan brotherhood: the charity that desires the eternal salvation of the brother, not that he be confirmed in error.

St. Pius V did not fight Islamophobia: he assembled the Holy League, entrusted the fleet to the Rosary, triumphed at Lepanto, and instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory. Blessed Innocent XI, after the Battle of Vienna, consecrated September 12 to the Name of Mary. According to the criteria of this Note, both should be numbered among the «monolithic models» that n. 54 declares to be a source of violence and suffering.

The Note explicitly ties Nostra Ætate to Dignitatis Humanæ (n. 2). It presents religious freedom as the prerequisite for any respectful relationship among religions and places it at the foundation of a «universal citizenship».

Gregory XVI, in Mirari vos (1832), calls freedom of conscience an absurd and erroneous proposition, or rather a delirium, stemming from the poisoned source of indifferentism: Ex hoc putidissimo indifferentismi fonte absurda illa fluit ac erronea sententia, seu potius deliramentum, asserendam esse ac vindicandam cuilibet libertatem conscientiæ.

Blessed Pius IX, in Quanta Cura (1864), made that condemnation his own. The Syllabus condemns the proposition that everyone is free to embrace that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true (prop. 15). It likewise condemns the proposition that it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State (prop. 77).

Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei (1885) and Libertas præstantissimum (1888), teaches that the State cannot treat all forms of worship in the same manner without sinking into practical atheism. Liberty of worship, understood as a right to profess any religion, contradicts the virtue of religion, which is owed to the one true God alone.

Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), proclaims the Social Kingship of Christ over individuals, families, and States. He denounces secularism as the plague of our time.

Even the dream of a «universal brotherhood» without Christ has already been judged. St. Pius X did so in his Apostolic Letter Notre charge apostolique (1910), condemning the Sillon. He denounced a vast movement of apostasy organized in all countries pour l’établissement d’une Église universelle qui n’aura ni dogmes, ni hiérarchie, ni règle pour l’esprit, ni frein pour les passions, for the establishment of a universal Church which will have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, nor rule for the mind, nor restraint for the passions. The Note, at n. 53, hastens to clarify that it does not intend to establish a great world religion, yet meanwhile demands that religions transform the world into a fraternal expression of God's will (n. 58). A will of God that, evidently, can express itself indifferently in a synagogue, a mosque, a pagoda, or St. Peter's Basilica.

In that same Letter, St. Pius X recalled that the true friends of the people ne sont ni révolutionnaires, ni novateurs, mais traditionalists – the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries nor innovators, but traditionalists. This explains why traditionalists today are treated as enemies.

The point at which the Note drops its mask is n. 54. There we read that «defending one’s position and proselytism», as modes of encounter with the other, no longer make sense in the «global village». At n. 22, those who might be «tempted» to insist upon the obligation to proclaim Christ are admonished. At n. 46, assurances are given that there is no proselytism within the dynamics of love.

Before answering, one must unmask the lexical deceit upon which this entire operation rests.

Proselytism, in current usage, carries a negative connotation: it evokes aggressive persuasion, psychological pressure, recruitment, a conscience bought with bread or bent through threat. Now, evangelization is not proselytism, and never has been. The Church has always taught that the act of faith must be free and that infidels cannot in any way be coerced into belief (S. Th. II-II, q. 10, a. 8). St. Gregory the Great forbade baptizing Jews against their will, and that prohibition entered into the decree Sicut Judæis, renewed by a long line of Pontiffs. No Catholic worthy of the name has ever defended forced conversions.

The deception consists in conflating the terms evangelization and proselytism. Bergoglio deceptively played upon this identification, attributing the abhorrent traits of proselytism to the mandate of evangelization: arrogance, violence, lack of respect for the other. Once the substitution was complete, the game was won: whoever preaches conversion becomes an aggressor; whoever remains silent becomes a man of dialogue; and the missionary, who for twenty centuries stood as the purest image of Christian charity, is cast as intolerant and divisive.

It is an elementary sophism, and for that very reason effective. But it must be stated clearly: none of us promotes proselytism – that is rather the hallmark of sects, particularly those of Protestant origin. We claim the mandate of Our Lord, which is a vastly different thing, and which no Pope and no Dicastery has the power to abrogate.

In the conciliar and synodal church, Our Lord’s command is considered a form of intolerance to be banished. Yet that command cannot be erased: Euntes ergo docete omnes gentes, baptizantes eos in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti (Mt 28:19). Nor does it admit of exceptions: Qui crediderit et baptizatus fuerit, salvus erit; qui vero non crediderit, condemnabitur (Mk 16:16).

Benedict XV, in Maximum illud (1919), reminded missionaries that their sole end is the extension of the Kingdom of Christ and the salvation of souls. The same was taught by Pius XI in Rerum Ecclesiæ (1926) and Pius XII in Evangelii præcones (1951). A Church that renounces converting infidels is no longer missionary and betrays her reason for being. She becomes a cultural mediation agency serving «peaceful coexistence».

Even the practices praised by the Note were explicitly forbidden by Church law. No. 49 praises «shared celebrations»; canon 1258 § 1 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law (in force until 1983) established that it is not licit for the faithful to actively assist in or take part in the sacred rites of non-Catholics in any way: Haud licitum est fidelibus quovis modo active assistere seu partem habere in sacris acatholicorum. No. 19 celebrates the 1986 pantheon of Assisi, with the leaders of false religions gathered to pray each to his own god. Mortalium Animos had strictly forbidden Catholics from participating in such assemblies.

No. 41 presents «interreligious couples» as a fruit of dialogue. Canon 1070 established that disparity of cult renders a marriage null. Canon 1060 declared that the Church likewise forbids mixed marriages with non-Catholic baptized persons.

No. 38 of the Note records with satisfaction that the Dicastery sends greeting messages for the feasts of other religions. St. John commanded not even to greet those who do not bring the doctrine of Christ: Nec Ave ei dixeritis (2 Jn 10). Today, the Holy See sends best wishes for the worship of idols. But what concord has Christ with Belial? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? Quæ autem conventio Christi ad Belial? Qui autem consensus templo Dei cum idolis? (2 Cor 6:15-16).

It remains to speak of language, which is not an accessory but the very vehicle of error.

The Note offers us the «culture of complexity, flexibility, and friendship» (n. 55) and the model of the «polyhedron» (n. 56). It speaks to us of a «common home», a «global village», and «martyrs of dialogue» (n. 33). None of these terms belongs to the vocabulary of Faith. They all belong to the lexicon of globalist ideology. The Martyrs of the Church died for refusing to dialogue with idolatry, and for refusing to offer a single grain of incense to Jupiter. The Note has invented a new category for them: martyrs of compromise.

Pius XII, in Humani Generis (1950), described this phenomenon with precision. He deplored the false irenicism of those who, to foster union, are willing to hollow out dogmas of their meaning and replace Scholastic terminology with vague and adaptable formulas. Truth is not openly denied: it is rendered unspeakable, because the words to speak it have been abolished.

A Church that can no longer utter the words infidel, heresy, conversion, or hell has no need to formally renounce the Faith. She has already done so in her language.

The Note is entitled A Journey of Hope, and its final paragraph invites everyone to walk it together. Yet Our Lord warned us that two ways exist. One is narrow and leads to life. The other is wide and spacious, et multi sunt qui intrant per eam(Mt 7: 13). The path proposed by Leo and the Roman Dicasteries displays every characteristic of the second. It is wide, for anyone may enter it without conversion. It is spacious, for everything is admitted except the claim to Truth. It is crowded with dignitaries of all religions, lacking only Him who said: Ego sum via, et veritas, et vita. Nemo venit ad Patrem nisi per me (Jn 14:6). Abraham, of whom the Note claims common fatherhood, contra spem in spem credidit (Rm 4:18): he believed in hope against all human hope, because he believed in the promise of God, who is Our Lord Jesus Christ. The hope offered to us by the Note is the exact opposite: an entirely human hope that has ceased to believe in the Promise.

This is not theological hope, which has eternal life for its object and the merits of Our Lord for its foundation. It is the worldly hope of peace without the Prince of Peace, fraternity without the Father, and coexistence without the Cross. It is the Religion of Man that Freemasonry theorized for three centuries and which the conciliar church, sixty years ago, began preaching from its pulpits.

To those who ask me whether it is licit to reject a document approved by the Pope, I answer with St. Paul: Licet nos aut angelus de cælo evangelizet vobis præterquam quod evangelizavimus vobis, anathema sit (Gal 1:8). I have cited Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, the Council of Florence, and the First Vatican Council. Who among them and this Note stands in contradiction with the Faith of all time? Certainly not those Pontiffs.

To the faithful I say: do not be troubled. What was true for nineteen centuries did not become false on October 28, 1965, with the promulgation of Nostra Ætate, nor on September 16, 2026, with the publication of this Note. Continue to pray for the conversion of infidels, heretics, and Jews, as the Church has always done. Continue to profess that outside the Church there is no salvation. Continue to love souls enough to desire their Baptism.

And let us turn to Her of whom the Church sings: Gaude, Maria Virgo, cunctas hæreses sola interemisti in universo mundo. She who saved Christendom from the sword at Lepanto and Vienna will save it from this more subtle deception as well. She will do so when a Pope returns to doing what St. Pius V and St. Pius X did: confirming his brethren in the Faith, condemning error, and restoring to the Church her mission. Or Our Lord Himself will do so on the Day of His Second Coming, when He shall gather up unto Himself universal Kingship and the Supreme Pontificate.

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“A Journey of Hope”

To me, the word "journey" in a Catholic document is a red flag. It suggests that the traditional teachings can be dispensed with as we move on towards a more "enlightened" understanding of the faith. In this "journey," everyone is welcome except those who uphold the traditional faith.

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