On the Urgent Need for a Militant Catholicism

There is no shortcut to sanctity. There is no Christianity without the Cross. Holiness is a thousand decisions daily, each one a cut, until you bleed out for Christ.

The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Christ is not a pacified mascot for modern spirituality. He is not the soft-eyed, flower-crowned “Buddy Jesus” peddled by the neo-Protestantized husk of Catholicism that poisons so many parishes today. This sentimental impostor—this counterfeit Christ—is an insult to the King of Kings.

Our Lord is the Divine Warrior. The Victor over sin, death, and hell. The God-Man who does not merely comfort but commands. St. John gives us a vision of Him in the Apocalypse (Rev. 19:11–16) that should burn itself into the soul of every baptized man (woman and child):

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and He that sat upon him was called faithful and true, and with justice doth He judge and fight. And His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on His head were many diadems, and He had a name written, which no man knoweth but Himself. And He was clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood; and His name is called, THE WORD OF GOD. And the armies that are in heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of His mouth proceedeth a sharp two edged sword; that with it He may strike the nations. And He shall rule them with a rod of iron; and He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God the Almighty.

And He hath on his garment, and on His thigh written: KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS…

If that vision doesn’t terrify you into reverence, you’re either spiritually dead or willfully blind.

The grotesque parody of Christ embraced by the modern Church—the therapeutic, effeminate, bourgeois caricature—is a major reason Catholicism has been castrated in our time. What masquerades as religion in many corners of the Church is not the Ark of Salvation but a floating bathtub toy: safe, plastic, and utterly useless in a storm.

And we are in a storm.

This crisis of weakness is not theoretical for me. It’s personal. Over the years, my disgust with the hollowed-out Church of Comfort has grown into something like a private crusade. I’ve been ridiculed—told I have a “ministry of suffering” because I refuse to shut up about the collapse of Catholic masculinity and the fact that the modern Catholic has an aversion to suffering. So be it.

Recently, a young convert, still fresh in the Faith but already wearied by the contradictions between true Catholicism and what he sees in the pews, remarked with bitter humor: “Catholicism is hard.”

Yes. It is. And it’s supposed to be. The road is narrow and few enter, indeed.

Not because we believe in salvation by human effort—God forbid—but because Christ has called us to war. War against ourselves, against the world, and against the legions of hell. The path to glory is Calvary-shaped: suffering, sacrifice, and martyrdom.

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me… (Luke 9:23)

But how many Catholics even attempt this anymore? How many priests preach it? How many bishops believe it? The Gospel has been replaced in many pulpits by a religion of comfort, niceness, and compromise.

One of the most brutally honest things I ever heard about Christians came from an American Zen master whose name I’ve forgotten, but whose words I haven’t. Paraphrased, he said: “You Christians claim to worship the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—but what you really worship is Safety, Pleasure, and Convenience.”

That’s it. The unholy trinity of modern Western Catholicism. A triad of cowardice that has neutered the Church.

While reading The Life of Christ by Archbishop Fulton Sheen recently, a phrase from page 21 hit me like a slap across the face. Speaking of Our Lord, Sheen writes:

“He had the soldierly qualities necessary for the final victory over evil: the glad acceptance of suffering, unwavering courage, resoluteness of will, and unshakable devotion to the Father’s mandate.”

There it is. A fourfold code. A battle manual. A summary of what we’ve lost—and what we must recover. Militant Catholicism is not optional. It is the only Catholicism that survives the fire.

We are not called to be nice. We are called to be holy. And holiness is war.

This article is addressed to all Catholics—but especially to men, and most urgently to the young. If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the fire in the Faith, or why it feels like you’re sleepwalking in a padded cell while the world burns, I invite you to keep reading.

You may not like what you find… but deep down inside you will know it’s true.

A call to ‘militancy’ in the Holy Scriptures

A quick search yielded at least 26 explicit verses spanning the Old and New Testament on the subject of spiritual warfare, discipline, endurance and fighting the good fight of faith. Then we are not even talking of the implications of repeated admonishments to “endure” or “persevere” until the end. Clearly this can’t be in reference to “enduring” some kind of easy-going Catholicism?

Here are some of the verses. (By the way, unless otherwise indicated, I usually use the Douay-Rheims translation):

· 2 Timothy 2:3-4: Labour as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No man, being a soldier to God, entangleth himself with secular businesses; that he may please him to whom he hath engaged himself. (The ESV reads “share in suffering as a good soldier”. So whatever way you look at it, there are two little words there that the modern Catholic have an allergy to: “labour” and “suffer”!

· Ephesians 6:10-18 calls us to put “on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil”.

· 1 Timothy 6:12: Fight the good fight of faith: lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art called…

· 2 Corinthians 10:3-5: For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to God unto the pulling down of fortifications, destroying counsels, And every height that exhalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ…

· Hebrews 12:1-4: And therefore we also having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head, laying aside every weight and sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us: Looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who having joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God. For think diligently upon him that endured such opposition from sinners against himself; that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds. For you have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin… (Tell me again about reaching Eternity with Christ, the “easy” way?)

· 1 Peter 5:8-9: Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist ye, strong in faith: knowing that the same affliction befalls your brethren who are in the world…

· 1 Peter 2:11: …to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul…

I think it is clear. You are in a war. And you do not get to choose peace with the enemy.

Now let us see what this militant Catholicism could possibly look like, at the hand of Bishop Fulton Sheen’s quote.

Glad Acceptance of Suffering and the Rejection of the Cult of Comfort

There is no shortcut to sanctity. There is no Christianity without the Cross. Holiness is a thousand decisions daily, each one a cut, until you bleed out for Christ. And yet, we live in a time when the very notion of suffering is considered pathological, something to be treated, numbed, or medicated out of existence. The modern world, including not a few within the Church, has declared war on pain—and in doing so, has declared war on Christ. To reject and avoid a path of suffering is to reject the Gospel.

Christ did not flee suffering; He ran toward it. His entire mission was to embrace the wood of the Cross and be lifted upon it. “I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized,” He said, “and how am I straitened until it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). Archbishop Fulton Sheen, recognizing the soldierly soul of Our Lord, declared that victory over evil would come only through “the glad acceptance of suffering.” Not resignation, not mere endurance—but gladness. Joy in pain. This is incomprehensible to a culture raised on convenience, consumerism, and comfort. It is especially incomprehensible to the average modern Catholic, whose soul has been disarmed by softness and seduced by the false gospel of comfort.

The disease of effeminacy, long warned against by saints and doctors of the Church, has become epidemic. St. Thomas Aquinas defines effeminacy as the vice by which a man “shuns what is hard because of an attachment to pleasure” (ST, II-II, Q.138, a.1). In simpler terms, the effeminate man cannot endure discomfort—he recoils at fasting, avoids discipline, shrinks from confrontation, and flees from spiritual hardship. This is not just a moral weakness; it is a spiritual defect that cripples the Church’s ability to form saints. It breeds men who are unwilling to be martyrs, husbands who will not sacrifice, fathers who will not lead, and priests who will not preach the truth. This is the kind of man who scrolls through his phone looking at the lives of the rich and filtered, addicted to envy, lulled into acedia by social media’s satanic liturgy of vanity.

We are living under the threefold tyranny of the modern mind: pleasure, safety, and self-worship. These idols rule the culture and now increasingly infect the Church. Christ calls men to take up their cross and follow Him; the world calls them to take up their remote, take another bite, and follow their impulses. We are told suffering is to be avoided at all costs, and in place of mortification we are given mindfulness; in place of fasting, self-care; in place of penance, pop psychology. Catholic men have exchanged the hairshirt for the gym shirt and pretend they are warriors because they lift iron instead of spiritual burdens. They are more formed by dopamine than by discipline. They have learned to fear discomfort more than they fear Hell.

But the Church, in her tradition, has always taught the opposite. From her very beginning, she proclaimed the Gospel with bleeding feet. “Unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish,” says the Lord (Luke 13:3). The saints have echoed it. “To suffer and be despised,” says The Imitation of Christ, “is the lot of the Christian” (Book II, Ch. 12). Penance is not a medieval superstition—it is the path of Christ Himself. Fasting, mortification, bodily discipline: these are not optional extras for religious fanatics. They are the normal Christian life. No man will enter Heaven comfortably. The gates of Paradise are guarded by a Cross.

Social media has made it worse. Platforms designed for vanity, instant gratification, and constant pleasure teach men to model their lives after professional athletes, actors, influencers, and narcissists. Catholic men begin to believe these curated, artificial lives are the standard—and they feel ashamed of their struggles, their crosses, their unseen sacrifices. But Christ says the opposite: “Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they shall separate you, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake” (Luke 6:22). If your life looks like theirs, it is not because you are holy—it is because you are worldly.

The true Catholic man must become a man of penance. He must fast. Not once in a while. Regularly. He must mortify his body, resist his flesh, train his soul. As the Apostle says, “They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the vices and concupiscences” (Galatians 5:24). St. Paul himself declares, “I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection” (1 Cor. 9:27). This is not because the body is evil—it is because the passions are disorderly, and without mortification, the man becomes a slave.

In an age of soft Christianity, we need the hard wood of the Cross. There is no holiness without suffering. There is no manhood without self-denial. There is no glory without the grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying. The world will scoff. It will call this fanaticism. But the world called our Lord mad, and nailed Him to a Cross. The question is not whether you will suffer—the question is whether you will suffer well. Will you suffer in union with Christ, or flee to the false comforts of this dying world?

Glad acceptance of suffering is the manly way. It is the Catholic way. It is the way of Christ. Everything else is effeminacy disguised as spiritual maturity. Let the Church be filled again with men who fast, men who kneel, men who mortify their flesh, and men who welcome the Cross not as a punishment, but as a privilege. The Cross is not a tragedy. It is the throne of the King—and He calls us to join Him upon it.

Unwavering Courage because there is No Place for Cowards in the Kingdom of God

Christ was no coward. He strode into Gethsemane knowing the hour of darkness had come. He stood silent before Pilate, majestic in His resolve. He walked to Calvary under the crushing weight of the Cross not because He was forced, but because He willed it. And He expects His followers—especially His men—to do likewise.

The modern Church has become allergic to courage. Too many clergy speak in euphemisms and platitudes, afraid to offend anyone except God. Too many laymen remain silent in the workplace, in their families, in the public square—afraid to lose comfort, friends, or reputation. Fear of human respect has become the dominant virtue in a world that crucifies truth. But Our Lord left no room for cowardice in His Gospel. “But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:33). The coward, the compromiser, the lukewarm Catholic—these are not small sins. These are spiritual suicides.

The Book of the Apocalypse is more explicit still: “But the fearful, and unbelieving… shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone” (Apocalypse 21:8). The fearful, first on the list of the damned. Why? Because cowardice is not just weakness—it is betrayal. It is a refusal to stand with Christ when it costs something. And what is a man who will not fight for his King?

Unwavering courage is not mere bravado or testosterone. It is the interior fortitude to remain faithful to the truth, even when the whole world mocks you for it. It is the strength to speak when silence is easier. It is the backbone to stand when others kneel to idols. It is the grace to die rather than sin. This was the courage of the martyrs—men who faced wild beasts, flames, prisons, and swords with psalms on their lips and Christ in their hearts.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to be devoured by lions in the Colosseum, wrote: “Let me be food for the wild beasts, through whom I can reach God… Come fire and cross, struggling with wild beasts, cutting and tearing, crushing of bones and mangling of limbs, come all the torments of the devil—if I may but gain Christ!” This is courage. This is manhood. And this is what Catholic men today have forgotten.

Instead, we have moral paralysis. Catholic men terrified of being called “judgmental,” “intolerant,” or “divisive.” Fathers too timid to correct their own children. Husbands too passive to lead their homes. Professionals too cautious to speak Catholic truth in public. Clergy too spineless to name sin from the pulpit. We have turned fortitude into fanaticism, and prudence into paralysis. We quote “judge not” as a shield for silence. But silence in the face of evil is not prudence. It is cowardice.

The saints had no such hesitation. St. John Chrysostom declared: “It is better that the sun should not shine, than that the Church should be without fearless preachers.” St. Athanasius stood against the entire Arian world and declared: “They have the buildings, we have the faith.” St. Thomas More went to the executioner’s block for refusing to betray the truth about marriage. Their courage was not born of machismo, but of conviction—of a soul so anchored in Christ that no storm could shake it.

Courage, like suffering, begins in the will. The man of courage is not fearless; he is faithful. The martyrs were not without fear—they simply refused to let fear rule them. Christ Himself, in His Sacred Humanity, sweat blood in the garden. He asked the Father to let the chalice pass—but then He rose and drank it. That is courage: not the absence of trembling, but the dominion of truth over fear.

It is no accident that fortitude is one of the four cardinal virtues and a gift of the Holy Ghost. It is essential for salvation. Without it, we do not persevere. Without it, we do not evangelize. Without it, we do not resist temptation, defend the faith, or protect the innocent. Courage is the sinew of the saints. It is the blood of the martyrs. It is the breath of true masculinity.

The world hates courageous Catholics. It mocks them, bans them, cancels them, and sometimes kills them. Good. The Church was never meant to be popular. “Woe to you when men shall bless you,” Our Lord warns, “for so did their fathers to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26). If you are universally loved by the world, you are doing something very wrong. The world has always hated Christ. If it does not hate you, perhaps you do not resemble Him.

So Catholic men must rise and steel their souls. It is time to be hated. It is time to be mocked. It is time to speak plainly, act boldly, suffer willingly, and stand publicly. There can be no more spiritual pacifism. The Cross was not a compromise—it was a battle. Christ did not come to bring peace in the sentimental sense. “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword” (Matthew 10:34). That sword is truth, and it cuts before it heals.

Now is the hour for unwavering courage. The hour to confess the Faith whole and entire. The hour to say “No” when the world demands “Yes.” The hour to preach the Gospel with blood if necessary. If Catholic men do not become lions now, they will be led like lambs to apostasy. There is no neutral ground. We either fight, or we fall.

So let us pray for courage—not the courage of Hollywood or of politics, but the courage of the saints. The courage to live for Christ, suffer for Christ, and, if need be, die for Christ. And then, we shall live forever.

Resoluteness of Will, the Steel Backbone of the Saints

Christ did not hesitate. He set His face like flint toward Jerusalem, knowing full well it would be the city of His Passion, His betrayal, and His crucifixion. “He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). No human respect, no shifting moods of the crowd, no pleas from Peter could deter Him. Even in the agony of the garden, when every natural instinct recoiled from the horror to come, He stood firm: “Not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22:42). This is resoluteness of will. This is divine determination. And this is what is utterly lacking in the Catholic man today.

We are a generation raised on options, comfort, and chronic indecision. We think weakness is virtue and vagueness is prudence. Men no longer know how to command their souls. Their wills are flabby, their habits soft, their disciplines rare. They follow Christ until it costs them something, and then they retreat, hoping for an easier path. But the way of the Cross has no detours.

To follow Christ, we must become men of resolute, unyielding will. Not mere enthusiasm. Not good intentions. Will. That iron interior muscle that says “Fiat!” and never looks back. It was the will that made martyrs mount the scaffold singing. It was the will that made missionaries cross oceans and die in foreign lands. It was the will that made the saints rise each day to mortify the flesh, fight temptation, endure calumny, and press on toward Heaven when no consolation remained.

The Imitation of Christ puts it bluntly: “How much you are able to do, depends on the fervor of your will” (Bk 1, Ch. 25). In other words, holiness is not born of talent, intellect, or personality—it is born of will. Do you want to be a saint? Then will it—and act accordingly. The man who waits for perfect circumstances, good feelings, or external motivation will never rise above mediocrity. Grace is not magic. It presupposes effort. It strengthens the man who is already marching.

But today, we see men ruled by impulse, enslaved to habit, and addicted to their passions. They cannot fast because they “don’t feel like it.” They cannot pray because they are “too tired.” They cannot rise early, endure hardship, persevere in suffering, or take on penance. They quit when it gets hard. They retreat at the first obstacle. These men will never reach Calvary because they will not will to climb it.

St. Alphonsus Liguori, master of the spiritual life, wrote: “All our sanctity depends on the exercise of the will. The soul that does not resolve, that does not will firmly to belong entirely to God, will never belong to Him.” It is that simple. The will must be trained, mortified, made strong through habit, prayer, and sacrifice. It must become like steel. A man who cannot command himself cannot serve Christ. And a man who cannot obey God in the small things will never endure the great trials when they come.

The saints were men of tremendous resolve. Think of St. Francis Xavier, who crossed continents and baptized hundreds of thousands because he refused to give up. Think of St. Isaac Jogues, who returned to the very people who had mutilated him, determined to preach Christ again. Think of St. Benedict Joseph Labre, who lived in filth, insult, and obscurity, and never wavered in his interior fire. These men had wills like swords. And they were forged on the anvil of prayer, fasting, and a love that no suffering could extinguish.

Even the pagan philosophers knew this. The Roman Stoics spoke of the animus invictus, the unconquered soul. But Christ does not merely ask us for discipline—He infuses us with grace, if we correspond to it. That is the difference. Grace perfects nature—but it does not replace effort. A Catholic man must rise each morning and will to serve Christ. Will to reject sin. Will to overcome sloth. Will to climb his own Golgotha without whining or complaint.

The worst heresy of our age is not doctrinal—it is psychological. We have been taught that our emotions are sovereign, that our feelings define reality, and that we cannot be expected to rise above them. But the saints rose above themselves every day. Christ in Gethsemane did not “feel” like dying. He chose to obey. He willed the Father’s will.

The will is the throne of the soul. If the devil can unseat it, the man becomes a slave. But when the will is aligned with the will of God—when it becomes unshakable, determined, and anchored in charity—then the man becomes invincible.

There is no room for vacillation in the spiritual life. “No man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). The man who dithers, who debates obedience, who hesitates before duty, is not ready for battle. God desires men whose yes means yes, and whose no means no—men who will climb the mountain even when the wind is against them, and the summit is veiled in storm.

So let us beg God to forge our wills anew. Let us resolve once and for all that we will serve the Lord, no matter the cost. Let us become immovable in truth, unshakable in virtue, and unbending before the demands of the flesh. And then, by the grace of Christ, we shall not merely follow Him—we shall reign with Him.

Unshakeable Devotion to the Father’s Mandate equates Obedience to Our Traditional Catholic Faith

The life of Our Lord was governed by no human agenda. He lived not for the approval of the multitudes, nor for the accommodation of the powerful, but for one thing only, the will of the Father. “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, that I may perfect His work” (John 4:34). His every word, miracle, movement, and breath were in obedience to a divine mandate. That mandate did not originate in compromise. It was not built on novelty. It was not left undefined. It was precise, concrete, and complete. To establish on this earth the one true Religion, the Catholic Church—the Kingdom of God.

The mandate for us is not a vague spirituality. It is the full deposit of Faith, the divine system revealed by Christ, handed to the Apostles, and perpetuated in the visible Church through their true successors. The true Faith is not an abstraction. It is not a spectrum of interpretations, liturgical preferences, or theological trends. The Father's will is the Traditional Catholic Faith—the Catholicism of the Ages. The Catholicism that confesses one baptism for the remission of sins, one sacrifice for the living and the dead, one hierarchy established by Christ, one unchanging creed, and one infallible magisterium. Not the farcical ecclesial circus of modernism.

This is the Faith of the Church born from the side of Christ suffering on the Cross. The system He authored in His divine wisdom and ratified by His blood. It is the Faith of the Roman Rite, the Council of Trent, the Latin Mass, the saints and martyrs, the teachings of the Fathers, the thunder of popes like St. Pius V, Leo XIII, and St. Pius X. This Faith—whole and entire—is the mandate. And any Catholic man who imagines that he can be devoted to God while dismissing or diluting this Tradition is deluding himself.

For what is Tradition but the very voice of Christ echoing through time? “He who hears you, hears Me,” He told His Apostles (Luke 10:16). The Faith they transmitted, uncorrupted and entire, is the Father's will. To cling to it is obedience. To cast it aside, modify it, or subject it to the modern world is rebellion. The Fathers of Vatican I declared infallibly: “The Holy Ghost was not promised to the successors of Peter that they might make known new doctrine, but

In short. It is time to get back to do the hard things our Catholic faith requires of us.

The hard things needed without which we will not have the spiritual fitness to reach our Eternal home.

Christus vincit!

Christus regnat!

Christus imperat!

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