From Gay Confirmations to Empty Coffins

How Leo’s Vatican blesses public sin, punishes tradition, flatters activists, and forgets to bury its own faithful

Digital Dunces and the Camera Church

The National Catholic Reporter says the latest danger to the Church is “traditionalists on Catholic Twitter” “obsessed” with James Martin.

Their proof is the Gio Benitez confirmation.

A network anchor in a civil same-sex “marriage” is confirmed at a Manhattan parish, accompanied by his “husband” as sponsor, with James Martin smiling in the sanctuary and Leo XIV invoked as the pope whose “legacy of inclusivity” made it all possible. NCR presents this as a feel-good story. The only people who ruin the mood are Catholics who dare ask what it means to confirm a man whose public life contradicts Catholic moral teaching.

In the old order, someone in such a situation was called to repentance and amendment of life before public sacramental celebration. In the new order, he tells his story on Instagram, repeats language about “finding a home,” and the sacrament is repackaged as content.

The author’s real anger falls on Dominican Fr Peter Totleben for calling Martin “chaplain to the Beautiful People.” NCR responds by listing Martin’s charitable work, as if the issue were whether he ever helped the poor, rather than what message he sends when he presides at a liturgy where public, ongoing sin is treated as a model of “Catholic inclusivity,” and critics are sneered at as “digital dunces” instead of taken seriously.

Papal Encounter Without Conversion

Christopher Hale’s account of Leo receiving a “married” gay couple is the papal version of the same religion.

Leo meets a tech executive and a Catholic philanthropist who happily say “we are married.” We are told he responds with warmth and no hesitation. Their civil union is never questioned. It is simply assumed to be compatible with a “Church of the Beatitudes.”

There is no mention of sin, confession, or conversion. The couple are praised; James Martin’s ministry is commended as a lifeline. The catechesis is clear: whatever Scripture and tradition once said about sodomy now yields to the higher law of emotional affirmation. No doctrinal decree is needed. The photographs and prose do the work.

Transgender Banquets and the New Jubilee

The announced papal lunch with a transgender activist during the “Jubilee of the Poor” drives the point home.

A man who presents as a woman, with a history of public papal encounters, is invited with other trans activists to dine with Leo at Paul VI Hall. He describes feeling rejected and fearing the Church might “turn back on LGBTQ rights.”

Again, nothing is changed on paper, yet everything is signaled in practice. Gender ideology is honored at an event that once would have highlighted the poor and unknown. The world hears a promise that the Vatican will not reverse course. Faithful Catholics are expected to watch their own doctrine treated as an embarrassment and call it mercy.

The Old Mass on Probation, Kneeling Under Suspicion

While these gestures flourish, the old religion remains under lock and key.

The nuncio in Britain announces that Leo will not abrogate Traditionis Custodes. The Latin Mass survives only by two-year, renewable permissions, usually in marginal locations. A Vatican official stresses that this is just business as usual.

At the same time, the bishop of Austin’s vicar general orders pastors to remove kneelers used for Communion. Kneeling is still “permitted,” but anything that visibly facilitates kneeling might “confuse” people about the norm or put “pressure” on them to kneel.

So Catholics are “free” to worship as their fathers did, provided they accept probation and exile from parish churches. They are “free” to kneel, provided no furniture makes it easy and no one treats kneeling as normal. The structures of reverence must disappear so that the structures of accommodation can shine.

A Church That Can’t Bury Its Dead

From 2001 to 2024, Catholic funerals in the United States fell by roughly a third while the reported Catholic population rose. Cremation is up. “Celebrations of life” at funeral homes replace Requiem Masses. Ashes are scattered or kept on shelves. Adult children ignore their parents’ written requests for a funeral Mass and ask priests for a few minutes of generic prayers at the grave.

Observers rightly point to a collapse of catechesis. But catechesis failed because the hierarchy has spent decades signaling that doctrine can be softened, that mortal sin is nuanced, that judgment is impolite. If the pope can publicly affirm a same-sex couple without mentioning repentance, why should anyone think a funeral Mass is urgently needed for the dead? If transgender activists are honored at papal events without being called out of their delusion, why should anyone think the Church’s teaching on the body must be honored after death?

A Church that barely preaches judgment will not produce children who fear dying unshriven. A Church that treats sin as therapy will produce Catholics who treat the sacraments as optional extras. The funeral statistics are not an isolated sociological blip. They are the tombstone over the post-conciliar experiment.

From Gay Confirmations to Empty Coffins

Look at the week as a whole.

A gay television star confirmed with his “husband” as sponsor and James Martin beaming nearby. A “married” gay couple embraced and praised in the papal palace. Transgender activists dining with Leo at a Jubilee event. The Latin Mass kept on probation. Kneelers removed. Catholic funerals collapsing.

These are not disconnected headlines, but the fruit of a project that wants everyone to “feel at home” and almost no one to be told that he is on the wrong road.

That is why people keep bringing up James Martin. Not because he is uniquely powerful, but because he perfectly embodies the new faith: a Church that blesses public sin, marginalizes its own tradition, flatters activists, and cannot be bothered to bury its own faithful with the rites of a religion that still believes in heaven, hell, and judgment.

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