Two Titles, Two Feasts, Two Religions

 

At first glance, the title appears orthodox, even pious. It invokes the theological virtues; faith, hope, and love (charity). Crafted to sound Catholic, but its structure reveals a Modernist philosophy of religion, not Catholic doctrine.

Prologue: Catholic Common Sense at First Glance

A well-formed Catholic reads titles the way a conscientious watchman scans the horizon.

He knows titles already preach.

His instinctive questions are simple:

• Is Jesus named or carefully avoided?
• Is truth proclaimed or postponed into a “journey”?
• Is error exposed or wrapped in gentle words?

Catholic common sense distrusts foggy virtue-talk:

• faith without doctrine, 
• love without truth, 
• searching without arrival.

It recognizes the Modernist habit:

• sound Catholic, 
• say nothing binding.

Where the Holy Name is spoken clearly, the soul breathes easy.

Where everything becomes “process” and “openness,” the guard goes up.

Now, this is in no way harshness. It is clarity; charity born of faith.

For Catholics know:

• light saves; 
• twilight only delays.

Sunday evening a post showed up on my news feed and it caught my attention. Yes. My Catholic antenna literally spotted a signal. It was from a Modernist new order “Bishop”. It read:. 

“Faith & Hope Sustain the Search; Love Fulfils It – Homily from the Epiphany of the LORD 4 January 2026” 

It was sufficiently a liturgical oddity that the feast of Epiphany is affirmed to be on the day assigned to the feast of the Holy Name by the Traditional Catholic liturgical calendar.  

At first glance, the title appears orthodox, even pious. It invokes the theological virtues; faith, hope, and love (charity). Yet this is precisely the Modernist method condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi:

to retain Catholic words while evacuating Catholic meaning.

The title is crafted to sound Catholic, but its structure reveals a Modernist philosophy of religion, not Catholic doctrine.

I decided to ask ChatGPT to compare that title with the tile for my sermon for the feast of the Holy name of Jesus from Pre-Vatican II Traditional Catholic perspective and format it into a tract under a fitting title.  My title reads:

“Jesus – The Name Poured Forth: Light Against the Darkness of Indifferentism”

(Sermon for the feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (from the sermon of St. Bernard of Clairvaux…)

I consider this comparison relevant for good willed but misled souls and their appreciation of the liturgy. 

Why?

Because how we name Christ, and how we respond to His feasts; shapes not only our worship but the very direction of our souls toward light or wandering.

What follows is the unedited outcome of my prompt. 

This title proclaims that the revelation of Jesus Christ ends ambiguity, exposes error, and calls every soul out of darkness into light. It announces a 

Catholic preaching in its proper key: clear, luminous, confident, and ordered to salvation.

*************************

The Name That Ends the Search — and the Search That Replaces the Name

Two Titles, Two Feasts, Two Religions

Prologue: Not the Same Feast — Yet the Same Divide

Let us be clear from the outset.

One title belongs to the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.

The other claims to be a Homily for the Epiphany of the Lord, though shifted by Modernist authority to the 4th of January rather than the 6th.

They are not the same feast.

But they reveal the same fault line.

For in both cases, the question is identical:

Does preaching lead souls to the Name before which every knee must bow — or does it keep them forever “searching”?

I. The Feast of the Holy Name: A Title That Knows Its Day

“Jesus – The Name Poured Forth: Light Against the Darkness of Indifferentism”

(Sermon for the feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus (from the sermon of St. Bernard of Clairvaux…)

This title is liturgically obedient and theologically exact.

The Feast of the Holy Name exists for one reason: to proclaim that salvation is in no other name.

Here the preaching is:

• Focused
• Christocentric
• Patristic
• Militant against error

Indifferentism is not politely managed — it is named as darkness. The Holy Name is not suggested — it is poured forth.

This is how the Church has always preached on this feast: with clarity, sweetness, and holy force.

II. The Epiphany Recast: A Title That Forgets Its Own Feast

“Faith & Hope Sustain the Search; Love Fulfils It” 

(Homily for Epiphany — 4 January 2026)

Even before theology is examined, a sign appears:

• Epiphany is detached from its fixed day
• The feast becomes movable, flexible, accommodating

So too does its doctrine

What Epiphany is:

• The manifestation of Christ as King
• The end of Gentile searching
• The moment of adoration

What the Modernist title makes it:

• A metaphor for lifelong seeking
• A spirituality of process
• A journey with no final kneeling

The calendar is shifted — and so is the meaning.

III. Epiphany vs. Search: When Revelation Is Softened

Traditional Epiphany (6 January)

• The star leads
• Scripture confirms
• Christ appears
• The Magi fall down and adore
• The search ends.

Modernist Epiphany (4 January)

• Faith sustains uncertainty
• Hope tolerates delay
• Love fulfils without truth
• No adoration is required

The search is preserved, even sanctified.

IV. The Virtues: Rightly Ordered, Then Reversed

On the Catholic Holy Name Feast

• Faith assents to what God has revealed
• Hope desires Heaven through Christ
• Charity loves the Truth who has appeared
• Virtues lead to confession and reverence.

On the Modernist Epiphany

• Faith encourages openness
• Hope tolerates ambiguity
• Love replaces doctrine
• Virtues are turned into lubricants for indifferentism.

V. A Calendar Tells the Theology

The shift from 6 January to 4 January is not innocent.

It reflects:

• Discomfort with fixity
• Preference for flexibility
• Suspicion of binding forms
• Fear of sharp doctrinal edges

When feasts become movable, truth soon follows.

VI. Two Titles, Two Endpoints

Feast of the Holy Name

• A Name proclaimed
• Light vs. darkness
• Indifferentism exposed
• Knees bend
• Truth ends the search

Modernist Epiphany

• A search prolonged
• Twilight without judgment
• Indifferentism normalized
• Conversations continue
• The search replaces truth

Closing Word: The Name Still Stands

The Church did not institute the Feast of the Holy Name to sustain searching souls, but to end their wandering.

Epiphany is not a meditation on human openness.

It is the thunderclap of divine manifestation.

And the Holy Name is not an accessory to love.

It is the Light by which love sees.

Jesus is not the companion of the search.

He is its end — whether men celebrate Him on the sixth day or forget Him on the fourth.

******************* 

The end.

Epilogue: A Simple Test of Objectivity

Before agreeing or disagreeing with above comparison and analysis, the reader is invited to pause and ask a few plain questions; questions that require no polemic, only honesty:

• Which title names Jesus clearly, and which avoids naming Him?
• Which feast ends the search in adoration, and which keeps it open-ended?
• Which title demands a response, and which merely sustains a process?
• Which leads to knees bent, and which to conversations prolonged?

No caricature has been used.

No words have been imported.

Each title has been taken as it stands, weighed by Scripture, Tradition, and the liturgy itself.

• If clarity appears on one side and fog on the other, that is not bias; it is simply discernment.
• If one concludes with worship and the other with wandering, that is not harshness; it is fact.

The Church has always taught that truth can endure examination.

Only error fears comparison.

So let the reader decide, calmly and before God:

Which title sounds like the Church teaching her children to adore; and which sounds like the world teaching them to keep searching?

God speed you!