In the reflections of the Tuesday and Wednesday in the Second Week of Lent, St. Alphonsus emphasized the danger of persisting in sin: the hardening of the sinner’s heart:

“A bad habit hardens the heart, and God justly permits it in punishment of resistance to His calls. The Apostle says that the Lord ‘hath mercy on whom He will; and whom He will, He hardeneth.’ (Rom. 9:18). Saint Augustine explains it thus: It is not that God hardens the habitual sinner, but He withdraws His grace in punishment of his ingratitude for past graces, and thus his heart becomes hard as stone.” (p. 78)

With these words, St. Alphonsus identified one of the most terrifying consequences of persisting in sin: at some point God may withdraw His grace as a punishment for our ingratitude to the graces He has given us, leaving us with a hardened heart. With a hardened heart, a sinner faces the probable consequence of dying obstinate in his sin:

“When light is lost, and the heart is hardened, the probable consequence will be that the sinner will make a bad end and die obstinate in his sin.” (p. 83)

St. Alphonsus spoke with great eloquence but said nothing new. His diagnosis of the sinner with a hardened heart is entirely consistent with the words of Our Lord and countless saints. His words reflect the continual teaching of the Catholic Church.

So many people in the world now mistakenly believe that men like Francis and McElroy represent the Catholic Church, whereas their allegiance is entirely with the anti-Catholic Synodal Church. The situation is analogous to a cancer patient who presents himself to a doctor who is reputed to be a trusted specialist, whereas he is actually a fraud.

Whereas the Catholic Church warns the sinner to avoid persisting in a bad habit, Francis’s Synodal Church (which has now separated itself from the Catholic Church to a significant extent) accompanies the sinner in his sins, by listening rather than judging:

“Listening requires that we recognize others as subjects of their own journey. When we do this, others feel welcomed, not judged, free to share their own spiritual journey.” (Synodal Working Document for the Continental Stage)

Some of the most egregious examples of this “accompaniment” arise in connection with transgenderism. As reported by Reuters on July 25, 2023, Francis even went so far as to blasphemously assert that God loves sinners as they are:

“One of the young people was Giona, an Italian in their early 20s who said they were ‘torn by the dichotomy between (their Catholic) faith and transgender identity.’ Francis replied that ‘the Lord always walks with us . . . Even if we are sinners, he draws near to help us. The Lord loves us as we are, this is God's crazy love.’”

Similarly, as part of his comments condemning Catholics who oppose Fiducia Supplicans, Cardinal Robert McElroy touched on the Synod’s commitment to listening to the anguished voices of all LGBT+ persons who feel unfairly judged:

“The searing question of the Church’s treatment of LGBT+ persons was an immensely prominent facet of the synodal dialogues . . . Anguished voices within the LGBT communities, in unison with their families, cried out against the perception that they are condemned by the Church and individual Catholics in a devastating way.”

Clearly McElroy does not reject the practice of condemning people — otherwise he would not condemn American Catholics for questioning Fiducia Supplicans — so his true objective is to condone what the Church has always identified as sinful.

So many people in the world now mistakenly believe that men like Francis and McElroy represent the Catholic Church, whereas their allegiance is entirely with the anti-Catholic Synodal Church. The situation is analogous to a cancer patient who presents himself to a doctor who is reputed to be a trusted specialist, whereas he is actually a fraud. The unsuspecting patient simply wants to know what he can do to cure the cancer, but the fraudulent doctor tells him there is no cancer. If the patient insists that he does indeed have cancer, the fraudulent doctors tries to persuade him that it is not fatal, and cannot be treated in any case.

Our determination to oppose such a doctor would generally increase in proportion to the amount of harm we saw the doctor perpetrating. And because spiritual death is infinitely worse than physical death, one can make a reasonable argument that no group of people alive today do more harm to mankind than Francis and his collaborators.

Like a fraudulent doctor who convinces the patient to avoid treating the cancer, fraudulent Catholics like Francis and McElroy convince the sinner to avoid combatting the sin. Perhaps the sinner will eventually find an actual Catholic to tell him the truth; unfortunately, though, as with cancer, time is often of the essence in beginning the treatment for sin, because each new sin makes it more difficult to recover:

“Saint Gregory, on that passage of Job: “He hath torn me with wound upon wound, he hath rushed in upon me like a giant” (16:15), remarks: ‘If a person is attacked by an enemy, he is perhaps able to defend himself at the first wound he receives; but the more wounds that are inflicted on him, the more strength does he lose, until at last he is overcome and killed.’ Thus it is with sin: after the first or second time, the sinner has still some strength left (always, be it understood, through the means of grace, which assists him): but if he continues to sin, sin becomes a giant.” (p. 84)

With each new sin, recovery becomes more difficult and less likely. But hope is not entirely lost so long as God gives us time to repent and the grace to do so:

“But the habitual sinner will exclaim: Then my case is desperate? No, not desperate, if you wish to amend. But well does a certain author observe that great ills require great remedies: ‘It is good in severe diseases to commence the cure by several remedies. If a physician were to say to a sick man in danger of death who refused to apply proper remedies, being ignorant of the serious nature of his malady: ‘My friend, you are a dead man unless you take such a medicine’ — how would the sick man reply? ‘Here I am,’ he would say, ‘ready to take anything: my life is at stake.’” (p. 84)

With these words, St. Alphonsus made the most compelling case for Catholics to speak courageously against the diabolical malpractice of fraudulent Catholics like Francis and McElroy: souls who earnestly seek to amend their lives need to know that the Catholic Church actually does offer the cure. Sinners seeking to return to God need to know where to find the remedies that God has entrusted to mankind; they need to find the Catholic Church and avoid the Synodal Church.

St. Alphonsus described what the Catholic Church will tell the sinner who sincerely wants to please God and save his soul:

“Dear Christian, I say the same to you: if you have contracted the habit of some sin, you are in a bad way, and of the number of those such men who ‘are rarely cured,’ according to St. Thomas of Villanova. You are on the brink of perdition. If, however, you wish to recover, there is a remedy: but you must not expect a miracle of grace; you must on your side do violence to yourself, you must fly from dangerous occasions, avoid bad company, and resist when you are tempted, recommending yourself to God. You must make use of proper means, going frequently to Confession, reading every day a spiritual book, practicing devotion to the Blessed Virgin, praying constantly to Her that She may obtain for you, strength not to relapse. You must do violence to yourself, otherwise the threat of the Lord against the obstinate will be fulfilled in your regard: ‘You shall die in your sin’ (John 8:21). And if you do not amend, now that God gives you light, it will be more difficult to do so later.” (p. 85)

Most of us need to hear words like these more or less continuously, which is one reason that Holy Mother Church gives us Lent each year to make special efforts to return to God. Whereas the Catholic Church loves sinners enough to help them recover from the sin that darkens their days in this life and deprives them of eternal beatitude, the Synodal Church renders spiritual euthanasia by telling sinners they do not need to amend their lives.

All of us are sinners in great need of God’s mercy. By telling the world that sin is no longer sin, the fraudulent Synodal Church seeks to starve the world of God’s mercy. The first victims are those who seek God’s truth in the Church He established, but there are ripple effects throughout society, harming even those who have no direct knowledge of the Church.

Going back to the analogy of the fraudulent doctor, most of us would not hesitate to expose a doctor who deliberately lied to his patients. Our determination to oppose such a doctor would generally increase in proportion to the amount of harm we saw the doctor perpetrating. And because spiritual death is infinitely worse than physical death, one can make a reasonable argument that no group of people alive today do more harm to mankind than Francis and his collaborators.

God alone can solve this crisis, but we who can see have an obligation to do all we can to cooperate with God’s grace to oppose the malefactors masquerading as Catholic authorities. Our opposition should include generously applying the remedies — first to ourselves, and then for others — that these fraudulent Catholics refuse to provide to our sinful world. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

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