Leo Promotes Hicks to Archbishop of New York as His Chancellor “Marries” His Boyfriend

Joliet’s canon-law chancellor “marries” his boyfriend; Charlotte bans kneeling; Leo XIV canonizes Vatican II—while Rome delivers Christmas greetings to itself.

(Photo courtesy of Complicit Clergy)

Joliet’s Chancellor, New York’s Archbishop

Here’s what makes the Joliet story more than a sordid local headline: the bishop under whom it happened is being rewarded with one of the most powerful sees in the country. Leo XIV has appointed Ronald Hicks, until now the Bishop of Joliet, as the next Archbishop of New York, with installation set for February 2026.

Under Hicks, the Diocese of Joliet appointed David Salvato as chancellor in 2021: canon-law man, keeper of decrees, custodian of the diocesan legal memory. This week, Complicit Clergy reported that Salvato went missing from his diocesan job and then was “married” to his partner, Jacob Aguilar, in Naperville, complete with the kind of registry breadcrumbs that make the whole thing feel like a parody of ecclesiastical seriousness.

A diocesan chancellor is not some anonymous staffer. He’s part of the bishop’s governing spine. So when the “legal mind” at the center of diocesan administration publicly repudiates Catholic morality, the question isn’t “how embarrassing is this?” The question is: what kind of Catholic governance produces a chancellor who thinks this is compatible with his office and what kind of episcopal leadership responds the way dioceses now respond to everything: silence, HR language, and a quick disappearance?

And that is why you don’t get to treat Hicks as a neutral bystander who just needs to “vet better.” This happened on his watch. Joliet’s chancellor wasn’t a stranger who wandered in off the street, he was Hicks’ appointment. Then, right on schedule, the same article ends by teeing up the obvious: “We hope that Bishop Hicks has a better judge of character when making staffing decisions in his new role as Archbishop of New York.”

Except New York isn’t merely a bigger HR department. It’s already the place where public scandal gets baptized as “welcome.”

Just last month, major outlets reported that ABC anchor Gio Benitez, openly in a civil same-sex “marriage,” was confirmed at St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan, with his “husband” serving as sponsor, and with Fr. James Martin publicly celebrating it as part of the story. That incident didn’t trigger ANY public correction from the Archdiocese’s leadership, much less the kind of correction Catholics used to expect when the sacraments were being used to broadcast a moral lie.

Hicks is walking into New York as the hand-picked successor to a regime of studied silence, arriving from a diocese where a top canonical officer could implode publicly and the institutional response is to make the man “go missing.”

If you’re waiting for the new archbishop to stride into Manhattan and draw a bright line about public sin, about scandal, about the sacraments not being props in an “inclusion” campaign, don’t hold your breath. The system doesn’t promote men to New York because they’re likely to start naming sins out loud. It promotes them because they won’t.

Charlotte: Synodality for Thee, Uniformity for Me

Now pan the camera from Joliet to Charlotte, where the liturgy isn’t being treated like an organic inheritance to be guarded, but like a compliance program to be enforced.

The Diocese of Charlotte has issued a pastoral letter stating that altar rails, kneelers, and prie-dieus “are not to be utilized for the reception of Communion in public celebrations by January 16, 2026.” The Pillar reported the ban in the context of broader reports about governance style, morale, and pushback among clergy.

At the same time, Charlotte announced a change to formation: seminarians will spend a year teaching in Catholic schools before theology studies. The Pillar notes clerical concerns that the change is disruptive, potentially discouraging, and, crucially, rolled out without meaningful consultation.

Whether the “teaching year” is prudent is a legitimate debate. Some dioceses do pastoral years; some do them well; some don’t. But the deeper pattern is what’s alarming: a bishop can’t—or won’t—leave well enough alone. And what “must” be fixed is telling. Not doctrinal confusion. Not moral collapse. Not the public scandals that make Catholics wince and unbelievers laugh. No: the emergency is that some Catholics kneel.

The irony is almost unbearable: the language of “synodality” is constantly invoked as the cure for “rigidity,” but in practice it often means maximum centralization of taste, minimum tolerance for tradition, and instant suspicion of anything that looks like inherited Catholic instinct. The kneeler becomes a threat; the rail becomes “divisive”; the man who wants to receive like his grandparents becomes a problem to be managed.

Meanwhile, actual division, the kind that fractures belief and corrodes morals, gets processed with soft adjectives and quieter consequences.

Leo XIV’s Vatican II Anniversary Letter: “Fidelity” Rebranded

On December 22, the Vatican published an apostolic letter by Leo XIV: “A Fidelity That Generates the Future”, marking the 60th anniversary of Optatam Totius and Presbyterorum Ordinis. Vatican News framed it as a call for renewed priestly formation, fraternity, and a missionary focus.

If you read it carefully, a theme emerges: “fidelity” is presented as a dynamic journey, “conversion,” “listening,” “service,” formation, accompaniment, synodal processes—everything, in short, except what Catholics once meant by fidelity in the first place:

• fidelity to the content of doctrine, not just to an amorphous “communion”

• fidelity to moral law as divine command, not as an optional ideal

• fidelity to the sacrificial priesthood as something distinct, not dissolved into “co-responsibility” talk

• fidelity to worship ordered toward God, not worship as a stage for ecclesial messaging

The letter explicitly folds priestly identity into the “synodal and missionary dimension,” and urges priests to “take part” in synodal processes. That’s the tell. The “future” being generated is not simply holiness, it’s an ecclesial model: the Council’s anthropology, the Council’s vocabulary, the Council’s program, still treated as the untouchable interpretive key for everything.

And so, in the same week you can watch this machine run exactly as designed:

• a diocesan legal officer can publicly defect from Catholic morality

• a diocese can micromanage liturgical posture with administrative urgency

• Rome can issue a grand letter about “fidelity” that treats Vatican II as the fountainhead of renewal

• and the institutional instinct remains: manage appearances, deepen the program, keep moving

This is why so many Catholics feel like they’re living inside a permanent “implementation phase.” The faith becomes a project. The Church becomes a process. Tradition becomes a problem.

Christmas Greetings at the Center: “Mission and Communion” as a Management Style

Leo XIV’s Christmas address to the Roman Curia leaned heavily into “mission” and “communion,” explicitly praising Francis as a “prophetic voice” and emphasizing a “joyful Church, welcoming to all.” The speech warns against “rigidity or ideology,” laments internal power dynamics, and calls for a more “missionary” Curia.

“Communion” becomes what you say when you don’t want to say repentance.

“Welcome” becomes what you say when you don’t want to say conversion.

“Mission” becomes what you say when you don’t want to say doctrine.

“Rigidity” becomes what you say when someone asks for continuity.

And the proof is not theoretical; it’s on the ground:

• In Charlotte, “rigidity” is conveniently located in the kneeler.

• In Joliet, the “welcome” culture can absorb a chancellor’s public repudiation of Catholic moral teaching with the kind of administrative quiet that makes everything feel normal.

• In Rome, the management class urges “friendship” inside the Curia while the wider Church continues bleeding faith, reverence, and vocations.

This is not the language of a Church fighting for souls. It is the language of an institution fighting for equilibrium.

The Week’s Pattern: Swift on Kneeling, Slow on Sin

Catholics are told to stop being “divisive,” stop being “rigid,” stop “obsessing” over externals, while bishops and bureaucrats obsess over externals with a vengeance, so long as those externals smell like tradition.

And if you want to know why trust collapses, look no further: people can endure hardship when they believe their shepherds are telling the truth. What breaks them is watching leaders moralize about “unity” while refusing the basic duty to name sin as sin and guard the sacred as sacred.

The tragedy is that none of this is inevitable. The Church has always had scandals. But she has not always had this peculiar modern reflex: treat the moral law as negotiable while treating inherited Catholic worship as intolerable.

That reflex isn’t “pastoral.” It’s revolutionary. And it keeps generating exactly the future it deserves.

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