From the age of Nero and Diocletian to the days of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and even under the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the Catholic Church has faced persecution and hostility. Most often, these threats come from outside the Church. In recent years, however, the Church has also faced enemies from within: both the prideful schismatics who establish themselves as a higher authority than Rome and the pernicious progressives who seek to undermine, dilute, alter, and abolish the Church’s longstanding teachings to suit the spirit of the age, rather than the spirit of eternity.
Under the pontificate of the late Pope Francis, only one of those enemies was treated with hostility, the “rigid” traditionalist Catholics, which in the Francis Vatican’s view did not merely encompass the schismatics and sedevacantists, but also included Catholics faithful to Rome and devoted to the old rite of the Mass, what has been variously called the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), the Tridentine Mass, or, in the phrasing of the late Pope Benedict XVI, the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. Pope Francis (rightly) excommunicated schismatic and rebellious prelates, but also (wrongly) placed heavy restrictions on faithful Catholics’ access to the TLM.
While it is still early days, in the terms of a pontificate, it appears that Pope Leo is quietly reversing many of the errors of the Francis pontificate.
While traditionalist Catholics were derided and ostracized by the Francis pontificate, the progressive element in the Church was coddled and frequently treated with kid gloves. Avowed LGBT activists like Jesuit James Martin and Cardinal Jean Claude Hollerich were not disciplined, but were instead given leadership positions in the Vatican. When the German bishops’ Synodal Way (rife with LGBT, feminist, and anti-clerical ideology) threatened schism, Pope Francis and his envoys spent months dialoguing with the dissident bishops. No such dialogue was afforded to traditionalist Catholics.
Today, Pope Leo XIV faces many of the same rebel foes, but is evidently taking a more measured and just approach than that of his immediate predecessor. The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) openly clashed with the Vatican in 1988, when SSPX founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre defied the orders of Pope St. John Paul II and created four new bishops for the SSPX, bringing automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication upon Lefebvre and the four priests whom he consecrated. The excommunications upon the priests were later lifted in 2009, under Pope Benedict, who (as Pope John Paul II’s right-hand man and Vatican doctrine chief) had cautioned against the excommunications and in favor of dialogue in the first place. The Benedict pontificate attempted to reconcile the SSPX to Rome, although the order still has an “irregular” situation in the Church.
Now, the SSPX is at it again. The semi-schismatic order is careening towards full schism with plans to consecrate new bishops — again, without papal mandate — prompting a warning not only from the Vatican but from other prominent traditionalists. Cardinals Gerhard Müller, Robert Sarah, and Joseph Zen, all proponents of the TLM and considered among the most doctrinally conservative of prelates alive, have urged the SSPX not to defy the Vatican. Meanwhile, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), has warned that the SSPX episcopal consecrations will result in excommunication.
Predictably, the SSPX has rejected the Vatican’s warning and signaled its intention to proceed with the consecrations despite the threat of excommunication. As in 1988, the SSPX argued that the excommunications cannot be lawfully incurred, citing what the society perceives as moral and doctrinal errors in the Church following the Second Vatican Council. Instead of dialoguing with the Vatican, the SSPX suggested that it meets the “minimum necessary” required “to be in communion with the Church.” Of course, the “minimum necessary” is not the hallmark of the faithful Catholic.
Instead of focusing its wrath exclusively on the SSPX (and extending that wrath to non-dissident traditionalist Catholics), however, the Leo Vatican is also addressing the errors of the progressive dissidents. German Cardinal Reinhard Marx announced recently that he is planning to “normalize” blessings for same-sex couples in his archdiocese. While Pope Francis nominally approved such blessings in the controversial Fiducia Supplicans, Pope Leo subsequently clarified that such blessings are not permitted to same-sex unions but are, rather, general blessings, akin to the blessing given at the end of Mass. Marx is openly defying both the technical aspects of Fiducia Supplicans and Pope Leo: the blessings proposed by Marx would be conferred upon same-sex couples as couples, rather than as individuals who happen to be engaged in what the Church has long declared to be sinful and disordered relationships.
Pope Leo responded by publishing a letter from the Francis Vatican, forcefully rejecting the German proposal when it was first floated in 2024. “The Holy Father stated on the return flight from Africa that the Holy See had already sent a response regarding this matter to the German bishops, and many were asking where that response was or what it said. For that reason, we decided to make it public,” Cardinal Fernández said in releasing the letter. Pope Leo himself said, simply, that “the Holy See has already addressed the German bishops and has made it clear that it does not agree with the formal blessing of same-sex couples,” warning that the dissident actions of the German bishops threatens the unity of the Church.
Unlike the Francis pontificate, however, Pope Leo is not only disciplining traditionalist schismatics and trying to prevent schism from the progressive element, he is also defending faithful traditionalist Catholics. After bishops in Argentina implemented new measures to prevent Catholics from receiving Holy Communion on the tongue or while kneeling, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (DDW) hosted talks reminding the bishops that Catholics have a right to receive the Holy Eucharist on the tongue or while kneeling. The Vatican reiterated that “the faithful have the freedom to receive Communion according to the methods established by the Church, and this freedom cannot be restricted.”
Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte in North Carolina could certainly stand such a lecture himself, after ruthlessly barring Catholics in his diocese from kneeling to receive the Blessed Sacrament.
While it is still early days, in the terms of a pontificate, it appears that Pope Leo is quietly reversing many of the errors of the Francis pontificate by simply applying the laws of the Church and defending Catholic teaching fairly and evenly. This is, ultimately, what a pontiff is meant to do. For too long, too many Catholics have sought ideology in the actions of the popes, have clamored for a “conservative” or “traditionalist” pope or a “liberal” or “progressive” successor to St. Peter. In the end, though, the pope is not meant to be an ideologue: his goal should not be to further an agenda, but to simply preserve, pass down, and, when necessary, defend the longstanding teachings and practices of the Holy Catholic Church. Who would have guessed that a canon lawyer from Chicago would grasp that concept more readily than bishops from the heart of Christian Europe?
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