The Catholic Trumpet: When Screens Replace Saints and Silence Replaces Shepherds

[Stone]

When Screens Replace Saints and Silence Replaces Shepherds

The Catholic Trumpet [slightly adapted and reformatted] | June 23, 2025


I’ve stepped back from the complete touchscreen world.

The iPhone is gone. In its place: a CAT S22 Flip Phone, basic and blessedly boring—yet powerful enough to let me install apps like NewPipe, where I can still listen to Fr. Hewko, Fr. Ruiz, +Archbishop Lefebvre, and St. Alphonsus. But gone are the rabbit holes. Gone are the distractions. Gone is the sin-soaked scroll of Babylon.

What replaced it?

Better sleep. Sharper thought. More silence. Deeper prayer.

This one small change has helped push The Catholic Trumpet from screen to street. Every Sunday, our remnant here prays 15 decades of the Holy Rosary publicly—in reparation for sin and for the one request from Heaven that remains scorned: the 1929 Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in union with all the bishops of the world. It has not been done. We will not stop praying until it is.

If you want to step back into sanity, I suggest the CAT S22 Flip. It’s about $130 CAD—and worth every cent if it saves you even one mortal sin.

But this is not just about phones.

It’s about war.

It’s about priests—good priests who are now silent. Priests who once resisted Vatican II, but now ignore the betrayal of the Neo-SSPX, or worse, justify it. Priests who once red-lighted compromise, but now look the other way while souls attend Novus Ordo Masses, indult Masses, and sedevacantist chapels.

It’s about bishops who once stood with Lefebvre, but now seem to stand for nothing.

It’s time to write them. Call them. Warn them.

The priests and two bishops left in the Neo-SSPX must return to the uncompromising position of +Archbishop Lefebvre. And the priests and bishops orbiting Bishop Williamson—whose “resistance” long ago fell silent—must be reminded that silence in the face of error is betrayal.

A resistance that resists nothing is not a resistance.

I now lean toward a better name: The True Assistance. Because it assists Modernist Rome through its silence. It assists the betrayal by doing nothing. It assists confusion by speaking in riddles while Rome burns.

Let us be honest: Bishop Williamson was once a lion. A voice for truth. But around 2013, the voice faltered. He began promoting alleged miracles in the Novus Ordo, softening his critique of the Neo-SSPX, tolerating indult, sedevacantist, and even Novus Ordo masses. The fire became a whisper. The resistance became an observation deck.

But this is not the time for observations.

This is the time for saints.

But if I’m being honest, there’s something deeper that’s been haunting me lately. A common denominator I keep seeing in Catholics who are sliding into compromise—good people, even priests—is this:

smartphone reliance, and use.

It’s become a kind of “necessary evil” for many. And in some cases, perhaps it is. But the real evil is that we’ve stopped calling it evil. We’ve stopped fighting it. We’ve stopped guarding our souls and our homes.

We are desensitized, addicted, distracted—and wide open to influence.

Even good Catholics spend hours scrolling, absorbing modernist moods, tolerating filth in the name of “information” or “balance.” And slowly, the fire fades. The clarity dims. The prayers shrink. The resistance dies.

I don’t take the puritan view that all technology is evil—there is good tech. But when nearly every major doorway into a Catholic’s home has become a glowing portal to sin, softness, compromise, and confusion, the line must be drawn.

This isn’t just my own opinion. One priest saw it long before the smartphone even existed. And his words have been ringing in my conscience like a thunderclap.

As Fr. Frank Poncelet warned:

“The priest… must come to an honest recognition of the primary avenue to the destruction of souls in his Catholic homes… the television set. And he must continually point out to his parishioners that acceptance of TV entertainment is simply not compatible with the Christian life of spirituality.”

“The disintegration of real Catholic culture has been a slow process begun two generations back… thanks to the constant depiction—in an entertainment mode—of immoral acts… now pass[ing] for commonplace… even among those claiming religious convictions.”

“We cannot hide from basic Catholic moral laws forever. And the sins that are most easily committed, and which involve most grievous matter, are also the sins most exploited on television—those against chastity and purity.”

The medium has changed.

But the evil is the same.

And we’ve grown far more silent.

If this doesn’t make priests, fathers, and faithful souls tremble—it should.

We can not be spectators in this war.

We must be soldiers.

We either resist, or we assist and cooperate.

We either pray publicly, or we betray silently.

We either speak the truth, or we assist the lie.

Choose the Rosary.

Reject the screen.

Contact the priests.

Confront the silence.

And never, ever compromise.

✠ A. Mari Servus