A Church That Affirms the World Instead of Converting It

Last updated on: August 26, 2025 at 8:56 am by Dennis Knapp

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A Church That Affirms the World Instead of Converting It 2025-08-26T08:56:42-06:00 Dennis Knapp

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Quick note to any reader wondering about my absence: I’m doing fine. With the start of the school year and sending my eldest off to college, life has been full. Many thanks to Pilgrim (Peter) for contributing during my brief absence.

Returning to the topic of the Church’s appearance if progressives had their way, I now examine how the Church would look in progressive hands. As I stated in the original article, progressive Catholics would steer the Church away from the perennial truths given by her Founder and toward secular ideals of equity of outcomes and social justice. This Church would no longer seek to sanctify and transform. Instead, it would validate identities and endorse progressive ideologies.

Below, I detail how a progressive Catholic Church would reshape four essential areas: Confession, worship, holy orders, and mission (evangelism).

Confession: From Repentance to Activism

Traditionally, the sacrament of Confession calls each person to repentance, forgiveness, and transformation through grace. In contrast, progressive Catholicism redefines sin (especially sexual sin) and replaces personal responsibility with systemic analysis. It emphasizes collective guilt and “structures of sin” over personal conversion. Instead of acknowledging sins such as fornication, contraception, cohabitation, or homosexual acts, this model condemns “new sins” like carbon emissions, voting against progressive policies, or benefiting from “privilege.”

Instead of personal penance aimed at interior conversion, progressive penance demands public activism—protesting injustice or working for equity of outcomes. This reimagining transforms the confessional from a place of soul-searching and divine mercy into a chamber of therapeutic ideological reinforcement.

Worship Deconstructed: From Adoration to Affirmation

In progressive Catholicism, reverence for Christ in the Eucharist gives way to gender-neutral prayers and activist homilies. A clear example appears at All Saints Church in Syracuse, New York. There, Fr. Fred Daley (an openly gay priest) routinely refers to God in gender-neutral language and uses homilies to promote LGBTQ and social justice agendas.

For an example, see below:

Pride Mass

Slide: 1 of 2

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https://boxcast.tv/channel/y8w2ofbcxut8j11gllzz?b=s1ljsxbp6nsojirzgo2m

Note: In his closing blessing, Fr. Daley invokes the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier—not the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This shift drains worship of its transcendence. It no longer lifts hearts to the mystery of God but instead centers on affirming the self.

Holy Orders Dismantled: From Nuptial Symbolism to Political Statement

Jesus established the Church and chose apostles to carry His message. These apostles (and those they appointed) were male. Neither Jesus, nor His apostles, nor their successors ordained women. Theologically, the male priesthood configures itself to Christ the Bridegroom, ordered toward sacramental grace. Each male priest, acting in persona Christi during the Eucharist, brings about the miracle of transubstantiation.

Progressive Catholicism seeks to discard this sacramental foundation. In its place, it promotes ordaining women, transgender individuals, and others based on identity politics. It treats the priesthood not as a spiritual office conformed to Christ, but as a platform for social equity. In doing so, it strips the priesthood of its Christological and nuptial meaning and retools it for ideological service.

Mission Abandoned: From Evangelization to Affirmation

Why evangelize the world, progressives ask, if evangelization reflects cultural imperialism and triumphalism? In their view, people don’t need a Savior who names sin and calls for repentance. They need affirmation, inclusion, and validation.

In this view, truth becomes too narrow and exclusive. Progressive Catholicism gives people what they want, not what they need. It replaces the Great Commission with what some call the Great Affirmation—a celebration of self-constructed identities as reflections of “God’s imagination.”

But what remains absent from this “imagination”? Jesus’ actual command:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19–20)

Note again: The command invokes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—not the progressive liturgical formulation of Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

Final Thoughts: Dim the Light, and Souls Will Perish

When the Church mirrors the culture, it loses the authority to challenge it. Imagine a lighthouse that dims its beam for fear of offending the ships. Such a lighthouse no longer protects anyone. In the same way, a Church that softens the call to repentance, blurs sacramental truth, and affirms the world’s broken identities abandons its mission.

This may look like compassion—but it’s a counterfeit compassion that trades salvation for affirmation and truth for tolerance.

Christ did not establish a Church to echo the world. He founded a Church to convert it—to call every soul to repentance through transformative grace. The Gospel does not affirm the self. The true Gospel demands self-denial, repentance, and holiness. The Church must never baptize the values of the Age. She must make disciples of all nations in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

If we dim the light, souls will perish.

Let the Church burn brightly instead.

I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. (Luke 12:49-51)