Leo Affirms Francis on Blessing of Gay Couples

Leo XIV says Rome rejects only “formalized” gay blessings, Detroit buries the Latin Mass, Fresno plays ecumenical bishop-maker, New Ways trains bishops in secret, and Trad Inc. somehow declares a win!

The Answer They Want You to Misread

Leo XIV’s answer on Cardinal Reinhard Marx and homosexual blessings was a containment strategy.

Asked about Marx’s decision in Munich to press forward with blessings for homosexual couples, Leo did not say that such couples cannot be blessed as couples. He did not say that Fiducia Supplicans created confusion. He did not say that Rome would discipline Marx. He did not even place Catholic sexual morality at the center of the answer. Instead, he began by saying that “the unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters,” then shifted to “justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion,” which he said “would all take priority before that particular issue.” Only after that did he say the Holy See does not agree with the “formalized blessing of couples,” whether homosexual couples or other irregular couples, “beyond what was specifically” allowed by Francis.

That is the whole game.

The word doing the work is formalized. Leo did not close the Francis door. He merely objected to Germany installing a neon sign above it. The problem, apparently, is not that two men present themselves publicly as a couple and receive a blessing from a Catholic priest. The problem is that Cardinal Marx is too German about it. Too organized. Too printed. Too tidy. Too likely to make explicit what Rome prefers to leave in the warm fog of pastoral accompaniment.

And yet the usual conservative applause machine heard this answer and immediately began polishing the silverware for a victory dinner. See? Leo stopped gay blessings. See? Rome has spoken. See? Marx was rebuked.

No. Leo defended the Francis line while pretending to restrain its German application. That is not a correction. That is a velvet rope.

The Victory Lap of the Easily Managed

Damian Thompson supplied the perfect specimen of the problem. After Leo XIV’s answer, he announced that “Vatican sources” had been saying for some time that Leo is “significantly” more conservative on sexual morality than Francis, and that now “we learned beyond doubt” that this assessment is correct.

Beyond doubt?

Leo said that sexual matters should not be allowed to define the unity or division of the Church. He placed other issues ahead of this one. He objected to the “formalized” blessing of homosexual couples only insofar as it went beyond what Francis had already allowed. He did not retract Fiducia Supplicans. He did not say homosexual couples cannot be blessed as couples. He did not discipline Marx. He did not restore the old Catholic clarity that sodomy cries to Heaven for vengeance, that unnatural vice destroys souls, that public scandal must be corrected, or that shepherds who normalize mortal sin place themselves in grave danger.

And from this, Thompson heard: victory.

This is how managed conservatism works. Rome gives one carefully hedged sentence that sounds slightly less revolutionary than the German bishops, and the professional interpreters immediately rush to assure everyone that the crisis has turned a corner. The trick is always the same.

But Leo’s answer was not conservative in any serious Catholic sense. It was Franciscan ambiguity with a more polished delivery. He objected to the German packaging, not to the moral revolution underneath it. Marx wants the revolution in bold type. Rome prefers it in pastoral italics.

That is why Thompson’s comment is so revealing. The bar has now fallen so low that a refusal to fully endorse German-style ritualized homosexual blessings is treated as proof of doctrinal restoration, even while the Roman document that created the category remains untouched. It is the exhausted court journalist’s instinct to find one phrase, any phrase, that allows him to tell his audience the papacy is becoming sane again.

It is not.

A Catholic pope, speaking with the old voice of the Church, would have said that no blessing can be given in a manner that recognizes, dignifies, or normalizes a sinful union. He would have said that men and women living publicly against the moral law must be called to repentance, not accompanied into sacramental theater. He would have reminded the faithful that mercy begins with conversion. Leo instead gave us the usual postconciliar fog machine: unity, welcome, pastoral limits, no formalization, “tutti, tutti, tutti.”

And Trad Inc. heard the trumpet of Lepanto.

Fiducia Supplicans Did Not Bless Two Random Pedestrians

The absurd defense of Fiducia Supplicans has always depended on pretending that the document did not say what it plainly said.

The declaration itself explicitly discusses “the possibility of blessings for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex.” It later places this under the heading “Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of Couples of the Same Sex.” That is not a rumor from a trad blog. That is the text.

Then came the cleanup crew. The DDF’s January 2024 press release insisted that the blessings were “of couples in irregular situations,” while adding the parenthetical escape hatch, “but not of their unions.” It also said bishops could apply prudence locally, but not impose a “total or definitive denial” of this path.

This is theological hair-splitting with a pastoral blowtorch.

A “couple” is not two disconnected pedestrians who happen to approach the priest at the same time. A couple is a relational reality. When two people come forward precisely as a couple, their public claim is the relationship. You can chant “not the union” until the incense runs out, but the ordinary faithful know what they are seeing. So do the activists. So do the bishops. So does Cardinal Marx.

That is why Marx moved exactly where everyone knew this would go. In Munich, priests and pastoral workers were reportedly told to introduce the handout “Blessing Gives Strength to Love,” and priests unwilling to perform these blessings were told to refer the couples elsewhere. The German implementation includes blessings for same-sex couples and others outside sacramental marriage,

with a structured pastoral framework that goes well beyond the fantasy of a spontaneous five-second blessing in a Roman alleyway.

Rome created the category. Germany wrote the manual.

Fernández Already Told You the Door Stays Open

The idea that Leo’s answer represents a serious reversal becomes even sillier when one remembers what Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández has already said.

In 2025, Fernández stated that the approval of blessings of couples in same-sex relationships “will remain” under Leo XIV. He explained that he did not believe Leo would reverse Fiducia Supplicans, while emphasizing the familiar distinction that such blessings are not liturgical and do not formally approve the union.

So here is the actual state of play.

Francis allowed blessings of same-sex couples, provided they were not ritualized as weddings. Fernández defended that framework and said it would remain. Marx formalized the obvious next step. Leo objected to the formalization, while preserving what Francis allowed.

And conservative Catholic media, desperate for one clean headline, is now acting as though Leo XIV descended from the clouds with Quanta Cura in one hand and a German bishop’s resignation in the other.

Please.

Sexual Morality Is Not a Side Issue

The most revealing part of Leo’s answer may not be the “formalized” loophole. It may be the moral demotion that came before it.

Yes, Catholic morality includes justice. Yes, it includes economic, political, and social duties. But the modern crisis in sexual morality is not a boutique obsession of cranky moralists. It strikes marriage, family, procreation, confession, Communion, the priesthood, schools, catechesis, sacramental discipline, and the public witness of the Church.

The Catechism itself, even in the postconciliar edition, states that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered,” “contrary to the natural law,” and “under no circumstances can they be approved,” while also saying that persons with homosexual tendencies must be treated with respect and called to chastity.

That is the Catholic balance. Clarity about the act. Charity toward the person. A call to conversion.

Leo’s answer runs in the opposite direction. He begins by lowering the temperature around sexual morality, then folds the matter into a broader rhetoric of unity. The result is predictable. Those who violate the moral law get accompaniment. Those who defend the old Mass get restrictions. Those who scandalize the faithful get dialogue. Those who preserve Tradition get canonical lectures from men who have tolerated every absurdity short of a clown consecration.

Though perhaps we should not give them ideas.

New Ways Ministry and the Bishop Formation Program Nobody Voted For

While everyone argues over whether Fiducia Supplicans means what it says, the machinery keeps moving.

Since 2023, New Ways Ministry has held three private two-day meetings with U.S. bishops at Georgetown University, St. Louis University, and the Siena Retreat Center in Wisconsin. Seventeen bishops reportedly attended, many at more than one gathering. The meetings were held under the Chatham House Rule, with bishops listening to presentations and personal testimony from gay priests, lesbian sisters, transgender people, theologians, and others, all in the name of creating a more “welcoming” Church.

New Ways Ministry has long been criticized by the U.S. hierarchy. In 2010, Cardinal Francis George stated that New Ways had no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and could not speak on behalf of Catholics, noting its advocacy against the Church’s teaching on marriage.

And now bishops are attending private formation sessions with them.

So while Rome tells traditional Catholics to obey, while Latin Mass communities are shuffled into liturgical reservations, while SSPX bishops are treated as a constitutional emergency, American bishops are quietly receiving pastoral re-education from an organization the bishops’ own conference previously warned Catholics about.

But remember, the real threat to unity is the Latin Mass.

Detroit: Where the Fertile Are Treated as a Disease

Then comes Detroit.

The story of St. Josaphat is almost too perfect. A historic church in decline receives the traditional Roman Mass in 2004, in part as a way to draw Catholics back and save a struggling parish. The Latin Mass community grows. Young families arrive. Money arrives. Life arrives.

And what does the postconciliar machine do when something actually works?

It manages it into the grave.

St. Josaphat is now effectively closed, with no regular Eucharistic life. The broader Detroit crackdown is not in dispute. The Archdiocese of Detroit announced that, beginning July 1, 2025, the traditional Latin Mass would be confined to four locations, while permissions at other sites expired.

This is the new pastoral logic. If a parish is empty, it receives sympathy. If a parish is alive because of Tradition, it receives supervision. If young Catholics show up with children, money, reverence, and vocations, the chancery discovers an urgent need for liturgical uniformity.

The Latin Mass is treated as an invasive species. The barren parish model, apparently, is native habitat.

Fresno and the Ecumenical Bishop Factory

The Fresno story is, if confirmed in all its details, one of those scandals that reveals the entire operating system.

The Episcopal Church confirmed that Gregory Kimura was consecrated and seated as the sixth bishop of San Joaquin on April 18 at St. James Cathedral in Fresno. The official Episcopal report lists Episcopal and Lutheran participants and describes the diocese’s outreach to Latino and LGBTQ+ communities.

Novus Ordo Watch reports that Joseph Brennan, the Catholic bishop of Fresno, was present and actively participated in the ceremony, including gestures associated with the putative conferral of episcopal orders. Their report includes screenshot above, among others, and argues that Brennan joined in the Anglican-Episcopal ordination rite. The official Episcopal report I found does not list Brennan among the consecrating bishops, so the precise public record should be handled carefully. But if the photographic and video identification is accurate, the scandal is enormous.

Because this would not be mere “ecumenical presence.”

This would be a Catholic bishop appearing to participate in the ritual making of an Anglican bishop, in a communion whose orders Rome has historically judged invalid and whose moral doctrine has collapsed into the usual modern package: women clergy, LGBTQ affirmation, and sacramental theater without Catholic faith.

And here is the bitter punchline. Rome will thunder at the SSPX for consecrating bishops to preserve its own sacramental life, but can barely summon a cough when a diocesan bishop wanders into Protestant bishop-making pageantry.

That double standard is no longer a bug. It is the policy.

Pagliarani and the Collapse of the Conservative Middle

This is why Father Davide Pagliarani’s comments sting.

In his interview on the SSPX consecrations, Pagliarani framed the crisis as a question of hierarchy: faith comes before canonical positivism. He argued that the rupture does not come from the SSPX, but from official teachings diverging from Tradition, and he specifically pointed to the continuing errors represented by Amoris Laetitia and Fiducia Supplicans.

He also criticized Cardinals Müller and Sarah for a modern paralysis: the inability to reconcile the demands of faith with the demands of canon law when the two appear to collide. He praised Bishop Schneider and Bishop Strickland for their support, and said the consecrations were not rebellion, but a “cruel necessity.”

One does not have to endorse every SSPX prudential judgment to see the trap.

Rome tolerates Marx. Rome tolerates New Ways influence. Rome restricts Detroit. Rome lets Fiducia Supplicans stand. Rome says no to “formalized” homosexual blessings while preserving the informal permission. And then Rome expects Catholics to tremble before canonical process when the SSPX says, in effect: we do not trust this regime to preserve the priesthood and episcopacy.

The conservative middle wants everyone to pretend the house is basically sound, provided no one looks too closely at the load-bearing walls. Pagliarani’s point is that the walls have been cracking for sixty years, and the men calling him reckless are standing in the rubble with clipboards.

The “Zip It” Policy Has Produced Exactly What Silence Always Produces

This is where Trad Inc.’s quietism becomes unbearable.

The policy was simple. Do not criticize Leo too harshly. Do not connect the dots too fast. Do not sound sedevacantist. Do not embarrass the “good bishops.” Do not alienate Rome. Do not endanger the fragile spaces that remain. Smile, wait, interpret generously. Keep your powder dry.

And what has this bought? An entire class of Catholic influencers now trained to call evasive Roman language a “win” because the alternative would require them to admit that the crisis is not merely local, German, Franciscan, or disciplinary. It is structural.

The modern Vatican has perfected the art of saying no just loudly enough to keep conservatives quiet while saying yes softly enough to keep the revolution moving.

UPDATE!

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt!

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