Healed But Still Paralyzed: Leo XIV’s Gospel of Inertia

A Church Too Paralyzed to Repent, Too Proud to Be Healed

On June 18, 2025, Leo XIV delivered a meditation at his General Audience that was equal parts therapeutic and tragic. Ostensibly centered on John 5, the healing of the paralytic at Bethesda, it offered what has become the dominant spiritual motif of the postconciliar Church: personalized paralysis.

Leo does not dwell on sin, or the role of Christ as divine judge, or even on the reality of supernatural grace. Instead, he reads the Gospel story as a psychological case study. The “paralytic” is not primarily someone in bondage to the devil or weakened by sin, but someone stuck in “apathy,” self-blame, and low motivation. Christ’s healing becomes therapy. The mat is a metaphor. The miracle is mostly interior.

“We feel discouraged and risk falling into apathy.”

“Sometimes we prefer to remain in the condition of sickness, forcing others to take care of us.”

“The mat… represents his past of sickness, his history. Until that moment, the past had blocked him… Now it is he who can take that mat and carry it wherever he wishes.”

This is, in short, the synodal Church’s answer to crisis: carry your mat. Don’t throw it away. Accept your broken past, and walk forward with it as a badge of resilience. There is no call to penance. No divine intervention beyond one’s internal “desire to heal.” No suggestion that the water is stirred anymore. No rebuke to the men who designed the pool to favor the fastest.

It’s all just “your story.” Jesus does not break chains or cast out demons; He just reminds you that your trauma doesn’t define you. Pick up your mat. But don’t expect the Church to lift you.

A House Without Healing

Leo’s metaphor takes a darker turn when he describes the pool at Bethesda as an image of the Church itself:

“That pool was called Betzatà, which means ‘house of mercy’: it could be an image of the Church, where the sick and the poor gather and where the Lord comes to heal and give hope.”

But in this Church-as-pool analogy, the water doesn’t heal anymore. It hasn’t stirred in thirty-eight years. The sick drag themselves to the edge, but there’s no one to help them in. It’s a “war among the poor,” and the strong still win.

If this is the Church today, and one suspects Leo thinks it is, then his message is chilling. His solution is not reforming the system, driving out the unjust stewards, or even ensuring that the sacraments are validly administered. His solution is simply this: pick up your mat and accept it.

The pool doesn’t need to be purified. The shepherds need not be converted. No new saints must rise. The Church will remain paralyzed. And you will carry that paralysis as a form of piety.

Sacred Polyphony for a Muted Liturgy

Later that day, Leo XIV spoke at an event honoring Palestrina, whose Missa Papae Marcelli once symbolized the glory of post-Tridentine Catholicism. It was a moment to remember the Church as she was: ordered, solemn, and oriented toward the sacred. And Leo did, briefly, allow himself to sound traditional:

“Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is one of the composers who contributed most to the promotion of sacred music, ‘for the glory of God and the sanctification and edification of the faithful.’”

But even here, the rhetoric of resonance overwhelmed any call to revival. Gregorian chant, polyphony, and structured harmony were praised for their metaphoric value. The purpose of sacred music, he said, was to create “a dynamic unity in diversity.” a phrase that could be lifted from Amoris Laetitia or a UN climate summit.

Palestrina is not held up as a model to be recovered, but as a beautiful echo of the past. One can almost hear the subtext: “Listen, but don’t imitate. Admire, but don’t restore.”

This is what happens when the Church becomes paralyzed not only in liturgy but in doctrine, discipline, and sacramental life. The altar still exists, but now it hosts guitar Masses, interfaith processions, and jubilee meditations given by nuns. Meanwhile, the memory of Palestrina becomes a postage stamp.

“War Is Always a Defeat” – Except When the Church Surrenders

Leo’s final note that day was a boilerplate anti-war statement, delivered in the name of peace. He invoked both Pius XII and Gaudium et Spes, saying:

“War is always a defeat! Nothing is lost with peace. Everything may be lost with war.”

But for those who see this same Vatican waging a liturgical war on its own tradition, the words ring hollow. Is there no defeat when bishops suppress the Latin Mass? No war when Rome allows idols in cathedrals, rainbow flags in churches, and Eucharistic desecration from prelates who promote women’s ordination?

This selective pacifism, in which world conflict is condemned, but ecclesial annihilation is tolerated, betrays the same spiritual paralysis described in Leo’s morning audience. The Church lies by the pool, unable or unwilling to heal herself.

“Do You Want to Be Well?”

Do you, Leo, want the Church to be well?

If so, why allow her to limp under the burden of postconciliar abuse? Why call the pool holy if no water stirs within it? Why praise Palestrina while your bishops ban his music? Why tell the paralyzed to get up while installing shepherds who broke their legs?

The sad truth is that modern Rome wants to be comforted, not cured. It will not denounce the spiritual poison, because it helped to mix it. It will not cast out demons, because they dress as dialogue. It will not say “Sin no more,” because it forgot what sin is.

The Church is not just carrying her mat. She is being carried by men who no longer believe in healing.