On this the feast day of Saints Simon and Jude, apostles of Christ, let us pause to snapshot a story that illustrates in a new way the Modernist errors Pope Saint Pius X warned about at the turn of the twentieth century.

RECENT & RELATED

There’s a strange and almost cinematic beauty to the story of Saints Simon and Jude in Persia today, found in the Benedictus monthly prayer book I pray and study daily. It is written by Fr Francis Xavier Weninger, an Austrian priest (d. 1888).

A scandal erupts: a nobleman’s daughter gives birth and accuses one of the apostles’ own deacons of being the father. The king, presiding as the voice of justice, demands answers. But the apostles, knowing the man’s innocence, do not turn to rhetoric, proof, or persuasion. They simply summon the accused, the parents–and the infant.

Then comes the miracle: the infant speaks. Loudly. Clearly. “The deacon is innocent.”

We could stop the story there and have the headline miracle so many a modern man, not to mention those of the Biblical, crave. But that’s not where the apostles stop. When pressed to ask the infant for the name of the true guilty man, they refuse. “We come not to accuse the guilty, but to protect the innocent.”

That line alone would destroy half the world’s power structures if people actually lived by it–particularly in the world of politics and sports.

It is one of those lines that pierces the veil between time and eternity.

In that one sentence, if we peer closely, we are witness to the chasm between apostolic order and modern chaos. The apostles sought to defend innocence. Modern man seeks to manipulate guilt. The Church of the Apostles lived by divine revelation; the Church of Modernists lives by public relations–and public scourgings.

The difference is everything.

I see this as not just a separation of the innocent and the guilty regarding multiple persons, but also in regards to a single person in the public limelight–what is innocent and what is guilty about him or her, and him or her only.

This can certainly apply to a most talked about recent event in Louisiana.

The miracle of the speaking child wasn’t meant to entertain the crowd or prove the apostles’ credibility, as we see in so many a public chatroom today. It was to reveal divine justice as radically different from human justice–truth without vengeance, light without shadow-play. Simon and Jude’s miracle is not a courtroom stunt; it is a restoration of right order.

But look at our world today. Lies are the Caesar coin of the realm. False accusations are not just tolerated but weaponized. “Trust the science,” they say, while silencing doctors. “Love your neighbor,” they say, while locking them in their homes. Every modern “miracle” has been an inversion of this one–a false voice made to speak, declaring the innocent guilty and the guilty untouchable.

It’s no longer revelation–it’s reverse engineering.

The Holy Scriptures speak:

¹⁶ Six things there are, which the Lord hateth, and the seventh his soul detesteth:

¹⁷ Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood,

¹⁸ A heart that deviseth wicked plots, feet that are swift to run into mischief,

¹⁹ A deceitful witness that uttereth lies, and him that soweth discord among brethren. -Prov 6:16-19

The apostles knew that Old Testament wisdom. They would have nothing to do with that game.

Their restraint is something that must return to modern society. It is the very thing, a fossilized illustration speaking from ages past, that exposes modern man’s corruption, cynicism, and stiff-necked unwillingness to simply do it God’s way. For Simon and Jude understood what the Modernist never will: that justice detached from grace becomes cruelty, and truth detached from God becomes propaganda.

Again, it is something to consider in the wake of the big news coming out of Louisiana these last few days.

And despite even myself and what I’d planned to write concerning Simon and Jude today, that’s exactly what Pius X warned us about in his encyclical Pascendi, what I’ve been unpacking with great fervor over the last couple of weeks. Once faith becomes subject to the “science” of the public laboratory, the divine order collapses. The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, ceases to be a court of truth and becomes a laboratory of spin and vain spectacle. The modernist king still calls the accused before him–but there is no infant to speak, no miracle to confirm innocence–only experts and algorithms, headlines and hashtags, curating a counterfeit truth for clicks.

Do I believe in justice and making things right on Earth? Absolutely. I have experienced as much myself, and am the better for it. It is far better to experience the purging here than after we die.

It is the electronic pitchforks and torches I am bringing into question–a digital bloodsport dressed in moral and just language. Admittedly it’s as a sort of afterthought once the reflection on the Simon and Jude story got rolling. Funny, where your stream of consciousness can take you….

It may end up being the most important thing someone reads today.

Saints Simon and Jude stood before the throne of power and let God speak for Himself.

The Modernist stands before the mob and let the mob speak for God.

It’s Christ and Barabbas, Pilate and the mob.

We choose Barabbas every day without even recognizing it. It is a reality we live in that we don’t realize is a direct assault on the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The goal is to avoid being a Modernist, my dear ones. The goal is to live the Gospel in full.

Saints Simon and Jude, pray for us.