(Watchmen at the Altar) — My brothers and sisters in Christ,
There are moments in the life of the Church when a shepherd feels a weight that cannot be ignored. Not a political pressure. Not a media storm. But a quiet, insistent sense of responsibility before God. A sense that silence, however comfortable it might seem, is no longer faithful.
We are living in such a moment.
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The Church is not abandoned. Christ remains her Head. He is present in the Eucharist. He is faithful to His promises. And yet, many of the faithful feel unsettled. They feel disoriented. They struggle to put words to it, but they sense that something precious has been weakened, something essential has been obscured.
They sense confusion – not just in the world, but within the Church herself. And confusion is never neutral.
In Sacred Scripture, the Lord speaks to the prophet Ezekiel and entrusts him with a grave responsibility. He calls him a watchman. A watchman is not asked to predict danger, or to invent threats. He is simply commanded to remain awake, to see clearly, and to warn when danger approaches. If he fails to do so, the Lord says the blood of those harmed will be required at his hand.
That image has been on my heart for some time now. Because bishops are not called merely to administer institutions or preserve calm. We are called to watch, to guard, and when necessary, to speak – even when speaking is costly.
The greatest danger facing the Church today is not persecution from the outside. The Church has endured emperors, revolutions, prisons, and martyrdom. She has survived far worse than criticism or hostility.
The deeper danger today is confusion within. Confusion about what the Church teaches. Confusion about what can change and what cannot. Confusion about the nature of mercy, about obedience, about worship, about sin, about God Himself.
Most faithful Catholics are not rebellious. They are not angry. They are simply trying to be faithful – and they are asking for clarity.
They wonder why clear teaching is so often replaced with careful ambiguity. They wonder why speaking plainly is treated as divisive, while silence is praised as pastoral. They wonder why what once seemed solid now feels negotiable.
And this confusion touches everything, but nowhere is it felt more deeply than in the Church’s worship – the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The liturgy is not merely one aspect of Church life among many. It is the heart. It is where the Church learns who God is and who she is in relation to Him. Worship forms belief. How we pray shapes how we think, how we live, and how we understand truth.
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Over the years, many of the faithful have sensed a loss of sacredness in the liturgy. A loss of reverence. A loss of verticality – that sense that we are being drawn upward toward God, rather than turned inward toward ourselves.
They notice that silence has nearly vanished. That awe has been replaced by informality. That the altar can feel more like a table of gathering than the place of sacrifice. That God no longer seems unmistakably at the center.
This is not about nostalgia. This is also not about rejecting the Mass or denying the validity of the Sacraments. Rather, it is about recognizing a spiritual consequence: when the sense of the sacred fades, belief weakens. When worship becomes horizontal, the soul slowly forgets heaven.
This did not happen overnight. And it did not come from nowhere.
The Second Vatican Council itself called for continuity, for organic development, for fidelity to what had been handed down. It warned explicitly against unnecessary innovations and against ruptures with tradition.
And yet, in the years following that council, changes were introduced that went far beyond what the council Fathers envisioned. Experimental liturgical drafts that failed to receive clear approval nonetheless influenced later developments. Practices became widespread that the council never mandated. And over time, form gave way to formlessness, discipline to improvisation, transcendence to familiarity.
I do not speak of this to condemn, but to acknowledge reality. You cannot heal what you refuse to name.
When worship loses its center, everything else begins to drift. Doctrine becomes harder to articulate. Moral teaching becomes uncomfortable. The call to repentance softens. And mercy is quietly separated from truth.
We hear much about mercy today – and rightly so. Without mercy, none of us would stand. But mercy has been redefined. Too often it is presented as affirmation without conversion, accompaniment without direction, and compassion without truth.
This is not the mercy of Christ.
Christ forgives sins, but He always called souls to repentance. He healed, but He also warned. He comforted, but He spoke plainly about sin, judgment, and eternal life.
A Church that refuses to warn souls of danger is not being merciful. She is abandoning them.
In recent months, the Church has witnessed a consistory of cardinals, with further gatherings anticipated. For many Catholics, these events feel distant and abstract. But they are not insignificant. They shape the future leadership of the Church. They reveal priorities. They influence how the Church will teach, worship, and govern for decades to come.
That is why this moment matters.
Decisions made without honest historical understanding, without a clear diagnosis of the Church’s wounds, risk deepening confusion rather than healing it. Silence does not preserve unity. Avoidance does not protect communion. Truth spoken with charity does.
Many Catholics today wrestle with a painful question: how to remain obedient without betraying the truth. How to stay faithful without becoming silent. How to love the Church while acknowledging her wounds.
True obedience is not blind submission to confusion. It is fidelity to Christ and to the Church as she has always taught. The saints understood this. They remained within the Church. They suffered misunderstanding. They spoke with reverence – and with courage.
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Obedience never requires us to deny reality. It never demands silence in the face of error. It never asks us to pretend that confusion is clarity.
This is not a time for despair. Christ has not abandoned His Church. But it is a time for watchfulness. A time for courage. A time for bishops to teach clearly, for priests to worship reverently, and for the faithful to remain grounded, prayerful, and steadfast.
The Church will not be renewed by fear. She will not be healed by ambiguity. She will not be strengthened by silence.
She will be renewed by truth, strengthened by reverence, and healed by fidelity to Christ.
Because at this point, the crisis in the Church can no longer be explained as a lack of information. The facts are not hidden. The history is not inaccessible. The fruits are visible in every diocese – in empty seminaries, confused catechesis, and Catholics who no longer know what the Church actually teaches.
What we are facing now is not a crisis of knowledge. It is a crisis of will.
For more than half a century, bishops, theologians, and Church leaders have had ample time to study what happened, to examine what was intended, what was implemented, and what has borne good fruit – and what has not. The loss of reverence did not go unnoticed. The collapse in belief in the Real Presence was documented decades ago. The flattening of worship, the trivialization of the sacred, the disappearance of silence – none of this came as a surprise.
And yet, very little was corrected. Not because it could not be corrected. But because correction is costly.
It is far easier to speak in generalities than to name causes. It is far safer to affirm intentions than to judge outcomes. It is far more comfortable to repeat phrases about “journeying together” than to say, plainly, this has failed, and souls are paying the price.
At some point, repeating the same language becomes its own form of dishonesty. And that is where we are now.
When cardinals meet, when bishops gather, they are not simply participating in ceremonial moments. They are exercising real authority. They are shaping the future of the Church. And when those moments pass without honest reckoning, the message is clear, even if unspoken: we know there is a problem, but we are unwilling to confront it.
That silence speaks.
It tells priests that reverence is optional. It tells seminarians that clarity is dangerous. It tells the faithful that what they sense in their hearts must be ignored. And over time, it teaches the Church to lower her expectations – of worship, of doctrine, of holiness itself.
This is why the current moment matters so deeply.
Another consistory. Another reshaping of leadership. Another opportunity either to face reality – or to avoid it yet again.
And avoidance always has consequences.
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Because when leaders refuse to act, the burden shifts downward. Parish priests are left to navigate impossible expectations. Faithful Catholics are forced to choose between silence and suspicion. Young people conclude that the Church does not actually believe what she claims to teach.
That is not unity. That is slow erosion.
It must be said clearly: the problem is no longer that cardinals and bishops do not know. The problem is that many have decided it is safer not to act.
Safer not to correct liturgical abuse. Safer not to restore reverence. Safer not to defend unpopular truths. Safer not to risk being labeled “rigid” or “divisive.
But a shepherd who chooses safety over truth is not protecting the flock. He is leaving it exposed. And this is where obedience has been dangerously misunderstood.
Obedience does not mean pretending that wounds are not wounds. It does not mean praising confusion as complexity. It does not mean surrendering the Church’s worship and teaching to the spirit of the age.
True obedience is fidelity to Christ – even when fidelity brings suffering.
The saints did not remain silent when the faith was obscured. They did not wait for permission to defend what the Church had always taught. They spoke with reverence, yes – but they spoke!
And many paid a price for it.
If we are honest, that price is precisely what many fear today. Not persecution, but loss of standing. Not martyrdom, but marginalization. Not death, but being quietly set aside.
But the Church was not built on career safety. She was built on sacrifice.
This is why the loss of the sacred cannot be treated as a secondary issue. It is not aesthetic. It is not generational. It is theological.
When worship no longer clearly expresses sacrifice, transcendence, and the primacy of God, the Church herself begins to forget who she is. And when leaders refuse to correct that drift – not because they do not see it, but because they do not wish to confront it – the damage deepens.
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At some point, love for the Church must be stronger than fear of consequences. At some point, bishops and cardinals must decide whether they are content to manage decline – or willing to suffer for renewal. This is not a call to rebellion. It is a call to responsibility.
Because the watchman is not judged by whether the people listen. He is judged by whether he warned. And the hour for warning is no longer approaching. It is here!
And so I want to say this clearly, and I say it first to God, and then to you.
I CANNOT REMAIN SILENT.
Not because I believe I am wiser than others. Not because I think I stand above the Church. But because I am a bishop – and a bishop does not belong to himself.
I was ordained to guard what I did not create. To hand on what I did not invent. To warn when danger threatens souls – even when that warning is unwelcome.
There comes a moment when repeating careful language becomes a way of avoiding responsibility. When patience becomes postponement. When restraint becomes refusal.
I believe we are past that moment now.
So as long as God grants me breath and office, I will warn. I will speak when silence is easier. I will name confusion when it is disguised as complexity. I will defend the sacred when it is treated as optional. I will insist that worship must place God – not ourselves – at the center.
I do not say this with anger. I say it with sorrow. And with resolve.
Because a bishop will one day stand before Christ and give an account – not of how well he avoided conflict, but of whether he protected the flock entrusted to him.
If I am ignored, so be it. If I am criticized, so be it. If I am set aside, so be it.
But I will not stand before the Lord and say that I saw the danger and chose silence.
To my brother bishops, I say this with respect and urgency: we do not need more studies, more processes, or more carefully worded statements. We need courage. We need honesty. We need to recover the sacred fear of God.
To priests, I say: guard the altar. Love the liturgy. Teach the truth even when it costs you.
To the faithful, I say: do not lose heart. Christ has not abandoned His Church. Stay rooted. Stay reverent. Stay faithful. Pray for your shepherds – especially when they fail.
And to all of us, I say this:
The watchman is not responsible for how the people respond. He is responsible for whether he warned.
And I intend to warn with even more resolve, with even more courage, and with even more fire – in the coming days.
May God grant me the grace to do so with humility, fidelity, and perseverance – until the day He calls me to give an account.
And now, as we close, I ask you to pause for a moment and place yourselves quietly before the Lord.
May Almighty God look with mercy upon His Church, wounded yet beloved.
May He strengthen all who are confused, weary, or afraid.
May He purify our worship, restore reverence to our altars, and turn our hearts again toward what is eternal.
May the Lord grant courage to His bishops, fidelity to His priests, and perseverance to all the faithful who seek Him in truth.
May He protect you from discouragement, guard you from error, and keep you steadfast in the faith handed down from the apostles.
And may Almighty God bless you and keep you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Bishop Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop Emeritus
Reprinted with permission from Watchmen at the Altar.
