All Are Welcome…Except the Faithful

A bishop blesses a drag queen, Rome preaches summer leisure, and the FBI targets a priest. Welcome to the Church of 2025.

There is something unnervingly consistent about the modern Church’s behavior: whether it’s Pope Leo XIV gifting chasubles while preaching vague spiritualities, bishops blessing drag queens during Mass, or the federal government wiretapping priests who dare to remain silent in the confessional. Across all fronts, liturgical, doctrinal, political, the true faith is being buried under a mountain of euphemism, sentimentality, and soft totalitarianism. And yet we are told that this is progress. That this is the “synodal way.” The “Church of listening.”

It’s time to examine this “listening” Church and to ask who is doing the listening, and who is being silenced.

Leo XIV: Preaching the Gospel of Hospitality, Not Conversion

On July 20th, Leo XIV preached at the Cathedral of Albano and again during his Angelus at Castel Gandolfo. The central theme? Hospitality. Abraham’s welcome of the three visitors. Martha and Mary. Listening and serving. Contemplation and action. All fine scriptural subjects, but what’s notable is what Leo does not say.

Nowhere in the homily or Angelus do we hear about sin, repentance, or conversion. Nowhere is Jesus presented as judge or savior. Instead, we’re told to slow down, enjoy summer, take a vacation, learn to “receive hospitality,” and appreciate “the joy of seeing others.” This is Christianity as an Airbnb review.

Even when Leo quotes Saint Augustine, he doesn’t quote the Doctor of Grace on sin, the two cities, or the final judgment. Instead, we’re given a vision of the Christian life as vaguely sacrificial, definitely therapeutic, and entirely compatible with upper-middle-class summer travel. Jesus becomes a lifestyle consultant.

The climax of the Angelus is particularly revealing. Leo praises Mary for welcoming Jesus into her womb, and then pivots, without irony, to say the Church must be “a home open to all.” We are given the standard postconciliar bait-and-switch: the Virgin’s Fiat is repackaged as synodal inclusivity, with no doctrinal strings attached.

This is not the Catholic Church of the martyrs and missionaries. It is the Church of Oprah. It asks nothing, demands nothing, and therefore converts no one.

The Drag Queen and the Diocese

Meanwhile, in San Diego, one of Leo’s early episcopal appointments, we are reminded, Auxiliary Bishop Ramón Bejarano celebrated a Mass in which an LGBT activist and drag queen was invited to speak from the sanctuary. This was honored. Applauded. Photographed. Posted on Facebook.

Bishop Bejarano offered no call to repentance, no mention of the Catechism, no defense of the moral law. Instead, the activist proudly described a “thunderous ovation” in response to his thanks for the bishop’s advocacy. Bejarano has previously apologized for the Church’s “trauma” inflicted on LGBT persons and now blesses unrepentant public sinners at the altar of God.

Let’s be perfectly clear: what happened here is not just scandalous. It is a public act of blasphemy. The altar of Christ has become a stage for moral inversion. And it is fully sanctioned by the diocese. This is a new religion.

The same Pope who speaks of “Christian joy” and “the value of silence” in his summer homilies remains entirely silent about this desecration. But perhaps we should not be surprised. After all, the man who oversees Cardinal Fernández at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, author of Fiducia Supplicans, the blessing document, can hardly discipline San Diego without indicting himself.

The Listening State: How the FBI Learned to Love the Synod

And while the Church promotes “listening” as the highest virtue, the FBI has taken the concept to heart, by bugging your chapel, profiling your priest, and tracking his credit card purchases.

This week, a new House Judiciary Committee report revealed that the Richmond office of the FBI, with support from headquarters and international field offices, launched an investigation into an SSPX priest because he refused to violate the confessional seal. That’s right: a man under priestly duty to maintain confidentiality was surveilled for not cooperating with state agents asking about a parishioner’s thoughts.

The FBI not only interviewed the priest under false assumptions about legal privilege, they opened a formal investigation, probed his background, monitored his travels to the UK, and pulled his financial records. Their working theory? That “radical traditionalist Catholicism” is somehow adjacent to white nationalism and anti-democratic extremism.

What are the FBI’s indicators of danger? Belief in the Latin Mass, “rigid moral positions,” opposition to LGBT ideology, and a suspicion that modern Catholicism has departed from the faith of the ages. In other words, orthodoxy.

This isn’t even Orwellian anymore. It’s Byzantine. The state investigates priests for being priests, and bishops welcome drag queens to the altar. The Church is full of noise, and the state is doing the listening.

The Common Thread: Hospitality Without Truth

There is a thread connecting Leo’s chasuble gifting, San Diego’s rainbow-stoled activism, and the FBI’s surveillance of a traditionalist priest. It is this: truth is no longer welcome.

Hospitality has become the new gospel. But it is a counterfeit. Abraham welcomed the three strangers because he perceived the divine. Martha and Mary received Jesus because he was the Messiah. The point of hospitality in Scripture is always oriented toward a greater truth: the revelation of God, the call to conversion, the gift of salvation.

Today, hospitality is preached without Christ, and listening is practiced without obedience. Leo speaks of the Church as a “home for all,” but what of the faithful Catholic who refuses to bless sin? Who loves the Mass of the Ages? Who guards the confessional? These are the ones under suspicion: by bishops, by Rome, and by the state.

Conclusion: A Culture of Spying, a Church of Smiling Apostasy

The Church of Leo XIV has made itself easy for the world to love. It asks nothing of public sinners and turns its back on the confessors. It preaches welcome, but exiles the faithful. It preaches peace, but calls down thunderous applause for those who defy the moral law.

Meanwhile, the state grows more brazen in its persecution of traditional Catholics. And not one bishop, not Leo, not Pham, not Bejarano, has spoken out in defense of the priest surveilled for keeping his sacred vow. Not one.

They are too busy speaking about “the dignity of all,” “the beauty of travel,” and the “joy of summer encounters.”

May God preserve His remnant. And may He forgive a hierarchy that listens to everything, except the voice of Christ.