It’s been over a year since I last wrote about the new Catholic pope. In that piece on Pope Leo, I concluded that his background in economics and connection to America meant he would carefully loosen Pope Francis’ restrictions on the Latin Mass. I looked at the lifeblood of the Church and surmised the financially prudent thing to do would be to start promoting traditional masses because that’s where all the marriages, babies, and baptisms are. On a basic business level, it made a lot of sense. I reasoned his connection to America was a key factor why he was selected for the job. The Church needed someone who could speak to the richest country in the world and who better to reignite Catholic enthusiasm than an American pope?
Alas, since those optimistic musings I have been thoroughly disabused of this pope’s business acumen with the realization that Pope Leo will be anything but conciliatory towards tradition, the Church’s strongest growth segment. He’s made a spectacle of himself generally diffusing the authority of his office and promoting an agenda that waters down the already watered-down teachings of the Faith.
Regarding the traditionalists Catholics, he’s made it abundantly clear that there’s no place in the Church for us. He seems to be toying with the idea of making Vatican II an essential article of faith that one must assent to in order to be Catholic.
While embracing celebrities who are pro-abortion or Satanic, he has also attempted to excommunicate the bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a group I don’t belong to but nonetheless strongly sympathize with. That order of excommunication included vague language purporting to excommunicate the entire society including all priests and laity. Most canonical attorneys agree the letter as-written lacks any legal force.
It’s reasonable to believe the lack of clarity is calculated. Weaponized ambiguity was a favorite tool of the Francis papacy: say one thing, do another, and maybe write something else that supports neither.
Pope Leo has embraced this method as his own. While the SSPX bishops were excommunicated for undergoing consecration without Vatican approval, in the People’s Republic of China, which is run by militantly atheistic Communists, bishops consecrated without Vatican approval by the secular government church were later confirmed, by the Vatican.
So we have two unauthorized consecrations of bishops, but two radically different responses.
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