In every age, there have been pressures to redefine doctrine – to soften moral teachings, to reinterpret dogmas, to substitute feelings for truths.
(LifeSiteNews) — Welcome to another episode of "A Shepherd's Voice."
There is something deeply satisfying about a well-built wall. Not a modern drywall with studs and screws – but a hand-laid stone wall or a timbered structure whose strength comes from precise alignment. And for that kind of work, one tool is essential: the plumb line. A simple weight suspended from a string it reveals the absolute vertical, no matter what the eye may suggest.
Now imagine Christ in His carpenter’s shop. Before He preached a parable, before He healed a blind man, before He climbed Calvary, He shaped wood. And perhaps – as tradition and reverent imagination suggest – He used the same tools any craftsman would have: a square, a rule, and yes, a plumb line.
It’s a fitting image, because Christ is not only the Carpenter of Nazareth; He is the Architect of the Church. He does not build on shifting sand or by popular consensus. He builds by a divine measure, and His doctrine – what He taught and handed down – is the plumb line.
This episode of “A Shepherd’s Voice” is called “The Carpenter’s Measure: Christ’s Standard and Doctrinal Integrity.” We are going to look at what the standard is, why it cannot be moved, and how the Church, especially today, must realign herself to it.
In every generation, the temptation arises to nudge the line just a little – to shift doctrine to suit the times. But the truth has a weight to it. It falls straight from heaven, like the plumb line of the prophet Amos, like the tool held in the steady hand of the Carpenter from Nazareth. You cannot push a plumb line. And you cannot bend doctrine without departing from Christ.
WATCH: The carpenter’s measure | Christ’s unbending standard of truth
The prophet Amos gives us the image: “Behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made with a plumb line, and in His hand a plumb line. And the Lord said to me: What seest thou, Amos? And I said: A plumb line. And the Lord said: Behold I will set a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel: I will no longer spare them” (Amos 7:7-8).
The image is clear. God is not measuring Israel by her neighbors or by her own self-perception. He is measuring her by His own righteousness, and she is found crooked.
The plumb line is not punitive. It is revelatory. It shows what is true and untrue, upright or warped. It does not bend. It does not accommodate. It simply reveals what is.
A plumb line is not a tool of compromise. It does not sway or curve to the wall. It reveals the truth. If the wall is crooked, it is not the plumb line that is wrong.
And so it is with doctrine. God’s revelation is the plumb line dropped from heaven – His truth descending into our world, unmoved by winds of change. It is Christ Himself, the Word made flesh.
For thirty years, Christ lived hidden in Nazareth. The Creator of all things worked with wood and stone – He who upholds the universe was obedient to a foster father’s trade. Can you picture Him? Bent over the bench, tools in hand, patient and strong. Among his tools, surely, was the plumb line.
He came to make the crooked straight. Not by bending the line to us, but by calling us to straighten ourselves by His measure.
And when He taught, He taught with authority – never changing truth to fit the crowd, never yielding to the scribes’ evasions.
He said: “Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass” (Matthew 24:35). He is the measure. And He entrusted that measure to the Church.
The faith of the Church is not a set of policies to be adjusted, nor a political platform to be negotiated. It is the deposit entrusted to the apostles, the inheritance of the saints, the rule of faith handed down whole and entire.
St. Paul wrote to Timothy: “Hold the form of sound words, which thou hast heard from me in faith and in the love which is in Christ Jesus. Keep the good thing committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in us” (2 Timothy 1:13-14).
And to the Galatians, he warned with holy severity: “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema” (Galatians 1:8).
This is the apostolic mission: not to innovate, but to hold fast. And yet, how tempting it is to try to “push the plumb line” - to try and twist doctrine to suit a changing age. But a true plumb line does not yield. If you try to force a crooked beam to appear straight by tugging on the string, the line will swing back. It simply can’t be moved. In the same way, divine truth does not yield to human pressure.
Today, we are told that the world has changed – and so the Church must change. The moral law must evolve, the commandments soften, and doctrine become more “pastoral.” But you cannot push a plumb line. You may push against it, but it will not move.
You may bend yourself, or break the wall – but the line remains.
Think of St. Athanasius, who stood firm during the Arian heresy. The whole world seemed to have gone mad. Bishops and emperors, councils and priests, were insisting that Christ was not consubstantial with the Father – that He was merely a creature, though exalted.
But St. Athanasius stood firm. He was exiled five times, branded a disturber of the peace – yet he would not deny that Christ is consubstantial with the Father. He measured the doctrine by the Carpenter’s standard, not by imperial pressure.
Arius, a priest from Alexandria, taught that the Son of God was created by the Father and therefore not co-eternal. In short, Arians believed that “there was a time when He was not.”
This directly contradicted the Apostolic teaching that Jesus is true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father – a doctrine the Church formally defined at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD in the Nicene Creed.
Athanasius held to the unchanging truth that Christ is consubstantial with the Father, even when it meant exile, slander, and personal loss. The Church had not yet defined the term “consubstantial” dogmatically when Arius began spreading his heresy. There was enormous political and social pressure to find a “middle ground” for unity. Many were willing to bend doctrine for the sake of peace.
St. Jerome later wrote: “The whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian.”
But Athanasius knew: doctrine is not built by consensus. It is measured against what has been handed down – what aligns with the Gospel, the Apostolic witness, and the clear revelation of Christ’s divinity. He saw clearly that if Christ were not truly God, then we are not truly saved.
He could have avoided conflict by softening his position, but he did not. Like a carpenter checking the wall against the plumb line, he held the teaching up to the standard and said: This does not align. The fact that he was exiled five times for his fidelity only proves his measure was true. The wall was crooked, but the line was straight. As the saying goes: “Athanasius contra mundum” - Athanasius against the world. But in truth, it was the world that was tilted. He was simply holding the line.
St. Joan of Arc, condemned as a heretic by corrupted clergy, held fast to her mission and her faith. She died with Christ’s name on her lips, not because she had conformed, but because she would not.
Another example: St. Catherine of Siena. A Dominican tertiary, a laywoman–not a cloistered nun – who held fast to the truth amid corruption and crisis. She called the pope back to Rome. She confronted bishops, priests, even the Holy Father himself – not with arrogance, but with supernatural charity. She wrote: “Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.”
And St. Ignatius of Antioch, in the early second century, wrote on his way to martyrdom: “Do nothing without the bishop, but above all heed the doctrine of Christ … Stand firm as an anvil under the hammer.” He spoke of bishops as a safeguard, but not just by office. Their office is only a safeguard IF they hold the line.
During the Protestant revolt, St. Thomas More laid down his life rather than acknowledge a king as head of the Church. He said: “I am the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” He died for a plumb line. For a standard that was invisible to many, but essential to the structure.
These saints did not seek conflict. They simply refused to compromise the truth. The world called them stubborn. The Church calls them holy.
Their alignment with the plumb line cost them dearly, but gained them everything.
When Peter and John were brought before the Sanhedrin and commanded not to speak in the name of Jesus, they answered: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
The Church’s first bishops bore witness not just in word, but in blood.
And St. Paul was beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, stoned – yet he wrote with joy from his chains: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).
St. John, the last of the original apostles, bore witness to the Word made flesh even into old age, guarding the truth from false teachers who sought to twist Christ’s identity.
These men were not innovators. They were guardians. As St. Jude exhorted the early faithful: “Contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).
In every age, there have been pressures to redefine doctrine – to soften moral teachings, to reinterpret dogmas, to substitute feelings for truths.
What does this mean for us?
It means we cannot simply rely on majority opinion, on news reports, or even on human authority when it departs from Christ’s teaching. We must test all things against the measure – the Carpenter’s Measure.
The faithful must become familiar with true doctrine, not as a list of prohibitions, but as the structure of eternal life. Read the catechism. Study the councils. Know the Scriptures.
“Jesus Christ, yesterday, and today, and the same forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
He does not change. His words do not change. And those who hold fast to Him must not change either.
As Pope Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “The true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries nor innovators, but traditionalists.”
We are not clinging to old things for their own sake. We are clinging to Christ’s measure – because it is divine.
It is Christ’s truth, measured by His own hand – the Carpenter's Measure. Let us not strive to move it, but to move ourselves. Let us build upon the rock, with walls made straight by the rule of His word, and with hearts shaped by love of truth.
In our own time, we have seen the plumb line shaken – but never broken. Some statements from Pope Francis, sadly, caused widespread confusion because they appeared to depart from the clear measure of Christ’s teaching.
One striking example came in the 2019 Document on Human Fraternity, signed in Abu Dhabi, which stated that “the diversity of religions … is willed by God in His wisdom.” This caused deep confusion. The Church has always taught that false religions arise from man’s search for God, and while seeds of truth may be found within them, only one faith is revealed and willed by God in its fullness: the Catholic faith. As St. Paul says: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5).
To speak as if all religions are equally willed by God is not mercy – it is a misalignment. The plumb line is not a measure of sincerity, but of truth. And truth has a name: Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
Or take the ambiguity surrounding the blessing of same-sex couples. While the Church must always welcome every soul with love, her doctrine cannot contradict itself – she cannot bless what is contrary to God’s law. A plumb line does not bend to sentiment. Christ welcomed the woman caught in adultery, but also told her, “Go, and now sin no more” (John 8:11).
In such moments, the faithful are not to panic, nor abandon the Church, but to remember the Carpenter’s measure. Christ’s words remain the rule. We are not called to judge hearts, but we are called to hold fast to the truth – especially when even high offices in the Church seem to sway in the wind.
As the Church enters a new chapter with the election of a new pope, our hope and our prayer is that he will take up the Carpenter’s measure with reverence and resolve. We pray that he will realign what has been allowed to lean, clarify what has grown confused, and preach the truth not in vague terms, but with the boldness of the Apostles. A successor of Peter is not called to reinvent the Church, but to strengthen his brethren and guard the Deposit of Faith. May he be a man who stands under the plumb line of Christ, not above it – and by doing so, help bring the Church once more into visible, doctrinal integrity.
As Psalm 18 says:
“The law of the Lord is unspotted, converting souls: the testimony of the Lord is faithful, giving wisdom to little ones” (Psalm 18:8).
Let us pray to be aligned with that measure. Let us not push the plumb line, nor ignore it, nor twist it. Let us stand beneath it, and be made straight.
And if we are found crooked? Let us confess it, and be realigned. The Church is not a crooked house. It is a temple built on the Cornerstone. May we build nothing that cannot stand beneath the Carpenter’s Measure.
May the Lord, who is the Cornerstone and Master Builder of His Church, grant you the grace to stand firm in the truth, to walk upright in faith, and to be measured by His perfect standard in all things. May your hearts be strengthened, your minds enlightened, and your lives aligned with the plumb line of Christ who is Truth.
And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, descend upon you and remain with you forever. Amen.
This article was previously published on Bishop Strickland's Substack page. Republished with permission.
