It’s Over, Trad Inc!

Leo says the quiet part out loud: Catholic doctrine on homosexuality and marriage is changeable; Trads can shut up and say the Novus Ordo in Latin.

On September 18, 2025, Leo gave a bombshell interview to Crux senior correspondent Elise Ann Allen, excerpts of which were published in her new biography Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the XXI Century. In the conversation, Leo laid out his vision on four flashpoints that have torn at the Church for decades: homosexuality, women’s ordination, synodality, and the liturgy.

What he said was a program. He signaled openness to revisiting women’s ordination, defended Fiducia Supplicans on LGBT blessings, suggested episcopal conferences might gain doctrinal clout, and dismissed the difference between the Traditional Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo as a matter of attitude. Most chillingly, he floated the possibility that Church doctrine on marriage and sexuality could change once “attitudes” have been softened first.

Trad Inc’s “wait and see” is over. That posture is now clear complicity.

“Attitudes First, Doctrine Later” — The Heresy in Plain Sight

Here is the most chilling line of Leo’s interview, spoken in direct response to a question about changing Catholic teaching on homosexuality:

“We have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the Church says about any given question.”

Let the weight of that sink in. When pressed about whether the Church might one day alter her moral doctrine on sodomy, fornication, and so-called same-sex “marriage,” Leo’s answer was not a clear and binding no. It was a roadmap: first shift the mindset, then shift the magisterium.

That is the precise formula condemned by Pope St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, where he explains that Modernists make dogma evolve “according to the needs of the times” and “the consciousness of the people.” Divine revelation becomes hostage to public opinion.

Leo then added:

“I find it highly unlikely, certainly in the near future, that the Church’s doctrine in terms of what the Church teaches about sexuality, what the Church teaches about marriage, [will change].”

Again, listen carefully. He did not say such a change is impossible. He said it is unlikely, at least not in the near future. That is the language of a man who believes the Church’s moral teaching could, in fact, be rewritten, once enough “attitudes” have been softened.

The result is simple, and deadly:

First you teach Catholics to smile at sodomy.

Then you change the Catechism.

First you preach “respect” for transgender choices.

Then you change the doctrine of creation itself.

This is an open heretical program, broadcast under the cover of “listening” and “synodality.” It makes doctrine subject to mood, culture, and focus groups, precisely the way every heretical sect has broken with the Catholic Church across the centuries.

Leo has told the world exactly what he intends: change attitudes now, change dogma later. That is betrayal.

Women and Holy Orders — The “Open Question” That Isn’t

Leo floats yet another “study” of women in the diaconate, as if the sacrament’s boundaries were fog. The Church has already marked the property lines: only a baptized man can be validly ordained to sacred orders. That is universal law, rooted in Christ’s will, not a committee’s hunch.

Treating Holy Orders like a buffet in which the diaconate might be “women-optional” fractures the one sacrament into three unrelated rituals. Rome has even imposed excommunication on attempts to “ordain” women. Leo knows this. He presses the fantasy anyway.

His rhetorical sleight of hand, asking whether we should “invite women to become clericalized,” distracts from the real issue: fidelity to Christ.

LGBT Blessings — Cosmetic Restrictions, Real Scandal

Leo endorses Francis’s Fiducia supplicans framework, which pretends to bless individuals “spontaneously” without blessing their unions. Trad Inc. “resisted Francis to the face” over sodomitic blessings. Now Leo says he supports it. Will they continue to remain silent and complicit?

The Church cannot bless what she teaches is sin. To say otherwise is to turn the priest’s raised hand into a sign of approval. When you must explain for five pages that your blessing is not a blessing, you have already admitted it is scandal.

Episcopal Conferences — Doctrinal Federalism in Disguise

Leo muses aloud about granting episcopal conferences greater “doctrinal authority.” John Paul II’s Apostolos Suos already settled this: conferences as such have no authority to teach infallibly. The subject of infallibility is the pope and the bishops united, not a bureaucracy in Brussels or Bogotá.

To float doctrinal federalism is to invite schism by another name.

Liturgy: “No Real Difference” Between Rites?

Finally, Leo’s remarks on the liturgy deserve their own autopsy.

First, he tries to reduce the entire battle to a matter of language:

“The question about, people always say ‘the Latin Mass.’ Well, you can say Mass in Latin right now. If it’s the Vatican II rite there’s no problem.”

This is either ignorance or insult. Traditional Catholics have spent half a century explaining that the issue is not the language, it is the rite itself: its theology, its prayers, its gestures, its orientation, its very soul. No one endured persecution, exile, and mockery just to hear Eucharistic Prayer II in Latin. To pretend otherwise is an affront to every priest who was suspended, every faithful driven into hotel ballrooms, every family that built chapels out of barns to keep the Roman Rite alive.

Next, Leo shrugs:

“Obviously, between the Tridentine Mass and the Vatican II Mass, the Mass of Paul VI, I’m not sure where that’s going to go. It’s obviously very complicated.”

Complicated? He is the pope. If he doesn’t know “where it’s going to go,” who does? The Council of Trent settled it with Quo Primum: the Roman Rite is to be preserved and handed down, not tinkered with by committees. This is not “complicated.” It is only complicated if you refuse to obey the liturgical tradition memorialized your predecessors.

Then comes the classic deflection:

“Part of that issue… has become a process of polarization… people have used the liturgy as an excuse for advancing other topics. It’s become a political tool, and that’s very unfortunate.”

What “other topics” does he mean? Climate activism and mass immigration rallies celebrated in the Novus Ordo? Rainbow flags on altars? Puppet Masses and Pachamama liturgies? If weaponizing the liturgy for ideology is the problem, then the Novus Ordo is guilty as charged. His hypocrisy is staggering.

But the worst line comes here:

“If we celebrate the Vatican II liturgy in a proper way, do you really find that much difference between this experience and that experience?”

This is gaslighting. To say the Tridentine Mass and a “well-done” Novus Ordo are basically the same is to spit in the face of every Catholic who has tasted the difference. The rites do not just “feel” different, they are theologically different. One is an organic fruit of tradition, the other a committee product stitched together in the 1960s. To suggest they are interchangeable reveals exactly why Leo will never defend the old rite: in his mind, there’s no reason it should exist at all.

Finally, Leo admits:

“I have not had the chance to really sit down with a group of people who are advocating for the Tridentine rite.”

But he had time to meet with Fr. James Martin. He had time to invite LGBTQ activists to the Vatican who then committed sacrilege. He had time for drone shows and rock concerts in St. Peter’s Square. But he has no time to meet the faithful Catholics begging to preserve the Mass of the Ages. That silence speaks volumes.

And yet Trad Inc. still whispers, “Wait. Be patient. He’ll restore the Latin Mass if we don’t provoke him.” What delusion! The man just told you he doesn’t even think the old rite is meaningfully different. To keep silent, hoping for crumbs, is not prudence. It is betrayal.

The Verdict: Complicity or Resistance

After this interview, no one can plead ignorance. Leo has spoken plainly. He entertains women’s ordination. He leaves open the door to doctrinal change on homosexuality once “attitudes” soften. He toys with making episcopal conferences mini-magisteriums. He dismisses the gulf between the Mass of the Ages and the Novus Ordo as a matter of mood.

It is unconscionable for Trad Inc. to stay silent. To keep quiet, hoping for crumbs from this man, a future indult here, a tolerated parish there, is complicity. Worse, it is criminal.

Leo has declared his program. To resist him is to defend the faith. To remain silent is to collaborate in its undoing.

Update: New Trad Inc. Music Video