Defending Faith: The Courage of Church Shepherds Today

Fortitude, fidelity and the responsibility of shepherds to defend the apostolic faith

The contemporary Church speaks frequently of the courage to change, to listen and to reconsider inherited assumptions. Yet Catholics who defend settled doctrine or preserve traditional worship are often portrayed as obstacles to renewal. St Paul’s command to stand fast in the faith presents a different understanding of courage, grounded not in accommodation but in fidelity to what Christ has revealed. As synodality becomes an enduring feature of ecclesiastical government, the question is increasingly unavoidable: do the Church’s shepherds possess the fortitude to defend what they have received, even when doing so means confronting the expectations encouraged within their own institutions?

Vigilate, state in fide, viriliter agite, et confortamini. The words of St Paul to the Corinthians possess a directness rarely encountered in contemporary ecclesiastical discourse. The Douay-Rheims translates them: “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, do manfully, and be strengthened” (I Corinthians 16:13).¹ Four commands establish the character of Christian fidelity. Vigilance recognises the possibility of deception; steadfastness presupposes a faith already received; courage accepts the consequences of professing it; and strength must ultimately come from God rather than human determination. The Apostle does not invite the Corinthians to renegotiate their inheritance. He commands them to remain faithful to it.

There is something almost embarrassing about such language in a Church whose public vocabulary has become remarkably adept at describing listening, dialogue, accompaniment, encounter and discernment. These are not objectionable activities. Listening may be charitable, consultation prudent and discernment indispensable. But they are means of exercising pastoral responsibility, not substitutes for its proper object. The Church exists to proclaim, defend and transmit the Revelation entrusted to her. Consultation may improve the manner in which that responsibility is fulfilled; it cannot determine whether the responsibility remains binding. A Church which constantly commends openness while hesitating to commend steadfastness risks producing Catholics who know how to participate in a conversation but no longer recognise when that conversation has crossed the boundaries of the faith.

The expression viriliter agite deserves particular attention. Its underlying Greek, andrizesthe, commands courageous conduct and is addressed to the whole Christian congregation. Fortitude is not reserved to men. Nevertheless, the traditional Latin preserves an association between manliness and moral firmness which Christian civilisation understood without embarrassment. Manliness implied self-command, responsibility, fidelity to duty and willingness to sacrifice personal advantage for the good of others. These qualities bear particularly upon the Christian responsibilities of men as fathers, husbands and priests, although the virtue itself belongs equally to women. St Agnes, St Cecilia and St Catherine of Siena exemplified extraordinary fortitude; the Blessed Virgin stood beneath the Cross when many who had professed devotion to her Son had fled. None needed to abandon her femininity to demonstrate heroic courage. Christian fortitude is not the possession of one sex, but neither does its universal character make masculine responsibility meaningless.

The more serious contemporary confusion concerns courage itself. Determination is not necessarily virtuous. A person may pursue an evil objective with extraordinary resolution, endure suffering in defence of falsehood or display remarkable fearlessness in the service of ambition. Courage becomes morally admirable only when directed towards the good. St Thomas Aquinas makes this distinction fundamental to his treatment of fortitude, identifying endurance as its principal act.² The courageous Christian is not necessarily the loudest or most combative. He may be the person who quietly fulfils an unwelcome duty, refuses an unjust demand or accepts humiliation rather than deny what conscience, rightly formed, requires.

This explains why martyrdom occupies so exalted a place in Catholic moral theology. The martyrs were not saints because they welcomed confrontation or delighted in suffering. Their greatness lay in refusing to purchase safety through apostasy. St Thomas identifies martyrdom as an act of fortitude commanded by charity, since the martyr remains faithful to divine truth despite the threat of death.³ The dying exhortation of Mattathias to his sons supplies a striking biblical precedent: “You therefore, my sons, take courage, and behave manfully in the law: for by it you shall be glorious” (I Machabees 2:64).⁴ Courage is explicitly joined to fidelity. Mattathias does not encourage his sons to discover a more accommodating interpretation of the Law or calculate how much of their religious inheritance might safely be surrendered. Their circumstances were those of persecution, not ordinary ecclesiastical disagreement, but the moral principle remains: an obligation received from God cannot be relinquished simply because fidelity has become costly.

This understanding of fortitude presents an uncomfortable challenge to contemporary ecclesiastical culture, particularly where the language of courage has become associated with the willingness to reconsider inherited teaching. Questioning established assumptions, embracing new pastoral approaches and exploring previously excluded possibilities are frequently commended as signs of evangelical bravery. Sometimes such initiatives are entirely legitimate. The Church must correct abuses, address injustices and distinguish unchangeable doctrine from disciplinary arrangements which may prudently be reformed. But change possesses no inherent moral superiority over continuity. Its legitimacy depends upon whether it serves the truth entrusted to the Church. A proposal does not become courageous merely because it challenges an established position, any more than resistance becomes cowardly because the person resisting is unwilling to change.

The institutional development of synodality makes this distinction increasingly urgent. Under Pope Leo XIV, the implementation of the Synod on Synodality has continued through a structured programme leading to diocesan and episcopal conference assemblies in 2027, continental assemblies in early 2028 and an ecclesial assembly in Rome that October. The General Secretariat’s May 2026 guidelines identify successive stages of recollection, interpretation, orientation and celebration, with reports and exchanges intended to shape the Church’s continuing reception of the synodal process.⁵ This is not merely a series of local conversations. It is an organised international undertaking, endorsed by papal authority, through which patterns of consultation and collective discernment are being embedded within ecclesiastical administration.

The existence of such structures does not itself constitute a doctrinal departure. Bishops ought to know their clergy and people; ecclesiastical government benefits from accurate information and responsible consultation. The difficulty concerns the relationship between the experiences gathered, the conclusions drawn from them and the doctrinal principles by which those conclusions must be judged. The Holy Ghost does not contradict Himself. A process invoking His guidance must remain accountable to the Revelation already given through His inspiration and preserved in the Church. If the experience of participants is treated not merely as evidence requiring theological interpretation but as an authority capable of altering established teaching, the proper order of Catholic reasoning is reversed. Instead of Revelation judging human experience, human experience becomes the effective judge of Revelation.

This danger is especially apparent when ecclesiastical discussion turns towards personal testimony. The testimony of those who have suffered genuine neglect, injustice or defective pastoral care deserves serious attention. It may expose failures requiring correction and suggest better ways of communicating difficult teaching. What it cannot establish is that the teaching itself is false. Sincerity does not confer doctrinal authority. The intensity of personal conviction cannot determine the constitution of a sacrament. Nor does the suffering associated with a moral obligation demonstrate that the obligation is unjust. These distinctions are elementary to Catholic theology, yet they become increasingly difficult to maintain when the language of accompaniment encourages institutions to treat the acknowledgement of someone’s experience as requiring the validation of conclusions drawn from it.

The continuing debate about women’s ordination demonstrates the consequences. In March 2026, the Synod’s General Secretariat published the final report of its study group on women’s participation in ecclesiastical life and leadership.⁶ The legitimate responsibilities of Catholic women are considerable, and their contributions to theology, religious life, education, charitable activity and ecclesiastical administration have never depended upon priestly ordination. The Church may examine how those responsibilities are exercised and whether unjustified obstacles exist. But that is a different question from whether Holy Orders may be conferred contrary to the sacramental constitution received from Christ. Conflating the two does a disservice both to women and to Catholic doctrine.

Nuntiatoria addressed this distinction in its earlier examination of Sister Mary Teresa Barron’s appointment to a senior missionary office and her remarks concerning women who experience a call to ordained ministry.⁷ The point is not whether such women are sincere, whether their experience deserves pastoral attention or whether their gifts should be recognised. It is whether an experienced vocation can establish that the Church possesses the authority to fulfil it. St John Paul II declared in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination upon women, and that this judgement must be definitively held by the faithful. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith subsequently confirmed its definitive character.⁸ A pastoral process which leaves participants expecting that sufficient testimony or continued discernment might eventually reverse this judgement does not need formally to deny doctrine in order to weaken its authority. It need only encourage the impression that a definitive answer remains provisional.

This is the more subtle danger of endless ecclesiastical reconsideration. A teaching can remain intact in official documents while being progressively emptied of practical force. It may be affirmed in principle but surrounded by qualifications, exceptions and procedural uncertainty until ordinary Catholics can no longer discern what the Church actually requires. The reception of Amoris Laetitia has exposed precisely such tensions concerning the relationship between objective moral norms, individual culpability and sacramental discipline. Catholic moral theology has always distinguished the objective character of an action from the subjective responsibility of the person performing it. Pastoral discernment must take such distinctions seriously. But the reduction of culpability does not change the moral nature of an act, nor can the particular difficulties of a person’s circumstances create a general authority to disregard divine law. Mercy becomes unintelligible when the distinction between sin and repentance is obscured.

Pope Leo XIV cannot remain merely the sympathetic patron of processes whose theological consequences are left indefinitely unresolved. He has inherited these controversies, but their continuation under his authority is now part of his own pontifical responsibility. The Pope does not need to suppress legitimate discussion or prevent the faithful from expressing their difficulties. He must, however, ensure that ecclesiastical processes do not promote expectations which the Church has no authority to satisfy. The courage required of the successor of Peter includes the willingness to tell those conducting such processes that particular conclusions are impossible, however strongly desired, extensively discussed or emotionally compelling. To confirm the brethren is not simply to provide a forum in which every aspiration may continue to be expressed. It is to strengthen them in the faith they have received.

The inconsistency becomes particularly striking when contemporary ecclesiastical openness is compared with the treatment of Catholics attached to traditional Roman worship. The restrictions introduced through Traditionis Custodes and their subsequent implementation have subjected the older liturgy to a degree of suspicion and administrative control which stands in conspicuous contrast to the willingness to accommodate experimentation elsewhere.⁹ Concerns about ecclesiastical unity and rejection of legitimate authority cannot simply be dismissed. There are traditional Catholics whose conduct requires correction, just as there are serious abuses and doctrinal difficulties in other ecclesiastical environments. But attachment to the traditional Mass does not itself establish disobedience, and criticism of postconciliar developments cannot automatically be equated with rejection of the Church.

The pastoral question is unavoidable. Why should the experiences of Catholics seeking reconsideration of inherited teaching receive institutional attention, while the experiences of Catholics seeking to preserve inherited worship so often meet with suspicion? Why is one group’s dissatisfaction readily interpreted as evidence of circumstances requiring accompaniment, while another group’s attachment to a venerable liturgical inheritance may be treated as a problem requiring restriction? The cases are not identical: the Church possesses disciplinary authority over liturgical books which she does not possess over divine Revelation. But this distinction strengthens rather than weakens the argument for consistency. If pastoral sensitivity is sufficiently important to justify prolonged engagement with demands for doctrinal reconsideration, it cannot become irrelevant when Catholics ask to worship according to forms which nourished generations of their forebears.

There is also a deeper spiritual consequence. The traditional Roman liturgy embodies a conception of Christian formation grounded in reverence, sacrifice, restraint and submission to what has been received. Its prayers, silences, gestures and ceremonial discipline continually direct attention beyond the preferences of priest and congregation towards the worship of Almighty God. The priest does not own the sacred action. The faithful do not assemble to manufacture a collective religious experience. They enter a worship which precedes them and which they are charged with receiving faithfully. Such formation does not guarantee sanctity, nor does attachment to the older rites excuse pride, factionalism or disregard for legitimate authority. It does, however, cultivate precisely those dispositions of humility, obedience and perseverance which the virtue of fortitude requires.

The weakening of ascetical formation throughout much of contemporary Catholic life has made these dispositions harder to sustain. Where Christianity is principally presented through welcome, participation and affirmation, mortification can appear psychologically suspect, chastity unnecessarily restrictive and moral discipline incompatible with personal authenticity. The traditional penitential seasons, frequent confession, fasting and the lives of the martyrs once impressed upon Catholics the conviction that holiness involves resistance to one’s own disordered desires. The Christian life was understood as spiritual warfare because sin is real, the Devil is real and eternal salvation is at stake. Christ did not summon His disciples merely to discover an accommodating religious community. He called them to conversion, self-denial and the carrying of the Cross.

Nor can charity be invoked to evade the obligations imposed by truth. St Paul’s exhortation to courage is immediately followed by the command: “Let all your things be done in charity” (I Corinthians 16:14).¹ The proximity is essential. Fortitude without charity degenerates into harshness, pride and factionalism; charity severed from truth becomes sentimentality, permitting what ought to be corrected and withholding what ought to be taught. Later in the same chapter the Apostle declares: “If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, maran atha” (I Corinthians 16:22).¹ The man who commanded charity also understood that communion with Christ possesses an objective doctrinal content. Love does not abolish truth. It supplies the supernatural motive for defending it, especially when doing so demands patience, sacrifice and the willingness to incur misunderstanding.

The witness of persecuted Catholics places these responsibilities in their proper perspective. Cardinal Ernest Simoni endured imprisonment and forced labour under Albanian communism. Cardinal François-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận secretly celebrated Mass during his imprisonment in Vietnam. Priests ministering under severe restrictions in Communist China have likewise faced grave pressures upon their religious fidelity.¹⁰ Their circumstances are not interchangeable, and ordinary ecclesiastical disagreements must never be inflated into equivalents of imprisonment or martyrdom. Nevertheless, their witness exposes the inadequacy of a religious culture in which avoiding institutional disapproval or professional disadvantage becomes the overriding consideration. Their fidelity was not conditional upon favourable prospects or public recognition. They persevered because their vocation belonged to God.

Such examples should also correct the temptation to mistake constant confrontation for fortitude. The virtue is often exercised quietly, through duties fulfilled without recognition and sacrifices accepted without complaint. The parent who teaches the faith despite social hostility, the priest who preaches difficult doctrine without cruelty, and the bishop who refuses to subordinate Catholic teaching to institutional convenience may never receive the public acclaim given to those celebrated as agents of reform. Their task is not to cultivate opposition, but to remain faithful. The Church has no need of needless controversy or spiritual arrogance disguised as zeal. She does need Catholics capable of accepting the consequences of conviction without converting every disagreement into a personal crusade.

The distinction between legitimate authority and the truth it exists to defend must therefore be maintained with particular care. The Roman Pontiff possesses supreme authority within the Church, and bishops exercise authentic governing responsibilities within their jurisdictions. Catholics are not free to dismiss these obligations whenever an administrative decision becomes unwelcome. Yet the First Vatican Council taught that the Holy Ghost was promised to Peter’s successors not that they might reveal new doctrine, but that they might faithfully guard and expound the Revelation transmitted through the Apostles.¹¹ Papal authority is consequently neither personal sovereignty nor permission to reconstruct the deposit of faith. It is an office instituted for the protection of what Christ entrusted to His Church.

This is also why traditional Catholics must distinguish carefully between dogma, authoritative doctrine, theological opinion, disciplinary legislation and prudential administration. A lawful decision may be unwise. A regrettable disciplinary measure need not be heretical. A pastoral initiative may deserve criticism without justifying disobedience. But neither does a theological proposal acquire legitimacy merely because it has emerged through a synodal process or received institutional endorsement. The Church may deliberate upon how best to communicate revealed teaching. She cannot deliberate upon whether she is free to contradict it. To insist upon this distinction is not resistance to the Church’s authority; it is fidelity to the purpose for which that authority was instituted.

St Paul’s command to the Thessalonians expresses the governing principle: “Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle” (II Thessalonians 2:14, Douay-Rheims–Challoner).¹² Nuntiatoria previously examined this obligation under the title State, et Tenete Traditiones, distinguishing genuine development from the reconstruction of what has been received. Tradition does not require the preservation of every historical custom or disciplinary arrangement. The Church can reform institutions, amend legislation and correct abuses. But she cannot develop her doctrine by contradicting its substance. Organic growth preserves identity. The abandonment of identity is not development, however carefully the change is described.

The decisive test of the present synodal programme will therefore not be the number of participants consulted, the sophistication of its methodology or the enthusiasm with which its conclusions are received. It will be whether the Church emerges more capable of proclaiming the apostolic faith without ambiguity, maintaining sacramental discipline without contradiction and defending the integrity of her worship without treating fidelity as a pastoral disorder. These are not peripheral matters to be considered after the procedures have concluded. They are the standards by which those procedures must be judged. An impressive process cannot compensate for an uncertain proclamation, and institutional consensus cannot supply the authority which belongs to divine Revelation alone.

That responsibility falls with particular weight upon bishops. They are not appointed merely to facilitate conversations between competing ecclesiastical constituencies. They are successors of the Apostles, entrusted with the duties of teaching, sanctifying and governing. Their pastoral office includes listening to the faithful, but also correcting error; exercising mercy, but also calling sinners to repentance; protecting legitimate freedom, but also guarding the boundaries of Catholic doctrine. A bishop who habitually avoids these obligations because clarity might prove unpopular has not discovered a more sophisticated form of pastoral leadership. He has neglected an essential part of the office entrusted to him.

The Roman Pontiff bears the same responsibility at its highest level. Leo XIV’s continuation of the synodal programme places before him a test more consequential than the successful administration of its assemblies. He must determine whether the structures being consolidated under his authority strengthen the Church’s capacity to transmit her faith or encourage the belief that what has been received remains perpetually available for reconsideration. To permit discussion is one thing. To permit settled doctrine to acquire the practical status of an unresolved question is another. The latter can undermine ecclesiastical certainty without the promulgation of a single formally contradictory definition.

The Church does not need an indiscriminate attachment to the past, nor a theatrical opposition to every reform. She needs shepherds who know the difference between what may be changed and what must be defended, and who possess the fortitude to act upon that knowledge. The deposit of faith has been received, not invented. The responsibility to guard, expound and transmit it binds the humblest layman, the parish priest, the diocesan bishop and the Roman Pontiff himself, each according to his proper office.

St Paul did not command the Corinthians to stand fast until their convictions became inconvenient, until sufficient opposition arose or until someone devised a more accommodating interpretation. He commanded them to stand fast in the faith. That command has not expired.

Vigilate, state in fide, viriliter agite, et confortamini.

Watch. Stand fast in the faith. Do manfully. Be strengthened.

A Church which cannot distinguish the courage to change from the courage to remain faithful will eventually mistake accommodation for fortitude and institutional survival for fidelity. Her shepherds are not required to win the approval of the age. They are required to defend the faith entrusted to their care, even when the cost is borne by themselves.

The measure of Christian courage is not how far one is prepared to move with the times, but what one is prepared to suffer rather than betray the truth.