Leo XIV’s Eco-Theology and the Death of Catholic Substance

Birdsong liturgies, climate conversion Masses, and Vatican-approved apparitions. Welcome to the synodal sacrament of feelings.

“Let Jesus set you free,” says a newly approved Marian apparition from Slovakia.

“Repent, climate deniers,” says Leo XIV.

“New wine needs new wineskins,” echoes a Singapore cardinal defending perpetual liturgical revolution.

A common thread unites them all: the Christian life has become a mood board.

A New Liturgy for a New Religion

On July 9, Leo XIV celebrated the debut of the Vatican’s newest liturgical formulary: the Mass for the Care of Creation. Fittingly, the ceremony took place not in a church, but in a garden, complete with birdsong and a faint whiff of carbon-neutral pantheism. As America Magazine dutifully reported, the Pope did not just pray for conversion to Christ, but for “the conversion of many people, inside and outside of the Church, who still do not recognize the urgency of caring for our common home.”

The Vatican has now canonized climate action not just as a moral duty, but as a quasi-sacramental one. There is now a proper Mass offered “for the care of creation,” formally inserted into the Roman Missal and celebrated by the Vicar of Christ himself, complete with Latin readings, eco-conscious chants, and a presiding pontiff in an open-air garden flanked by climate activists and university bureaucrats.

This isn’t Catholicism with an ecological conscience. It’s the substitution of the Gospel with a new environmental liturgy, replete with its own language of “conversion,” its own eschatology (“the world is burning”), and its own moral orthodoxy (“climate denial” is a sin demanding repentance).

And what is Leo’s answer to all this? Not penance for sin. Not the salvation of souls. Not the return to the traditional Mass or the restoration of reverence. No, he gives us this:

“We listen to the cry of the earth, we listen to the cry of the poor, because this cry has reached the heart of God. Our indignation is his indignation; our work is his work.”

This is not the language of Christ the King. It is the theology of a United Nations staffer with a clerical collar. God is no longer the transcendent Creator to whom we owe submission, but a kind of divine eco-activist whose wrath mirrors our climate angst.

The Gospel According to Litmanová

At nearly the same time, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released a formal green light, nihil obstat, for public devotion to the alleged apparitions at Mount Zvir in Slovakia. These claimed Marian messages are nothing if not tailor-made for Leo’s new religion. No fire, no judgment, no urgency for baptism or conversion. Instead:

“Let Jesus set you free… I love you as you are… The mission of each of you is to love, because life is made for this.”

This brand of Marian spirituality is perfectly aligned with the eco-sacramentalism Leo is pushing. It’s not doctrinal; it’s emotional. Not theological, but therapeutic. Like a Hallmark Channel version of the Magnificat. The Virgin is not a Queen summoning penance, but a cosmic mother whispering affirmations. Sin is not to be feared; it is just emotional clutter to be cleared away by “living simply” and “seeking silence.”

The few messages that do contain theological backbone (like warnings about sin causing disease or souls being lost en masse) were dismissed as “confusing” and omitted from publication. In other words, only the palatable bits survive, just like in postconciliar Catholicism.

Birds, Bread, and Buzzwords

Leo’s homily in the garden was a triumph of feelings over verity. He praised “the cathedral of nature” and invoked the Gospel storm as a climate allegory. But instead of calling men to repentance in the face of God’s power, he preached cosmic solidarity:

“Jesus calms the storm. His power does not destroy, but gives new life… Our work is His work.”

The result is a dangerous inversion: we become co-saviors of the planet. We give creation new life. We “oppose the princes of this world,” but only if they burn fossil fuels. Rome no longer guards the Deposit of Faith. It now guards the thermostat.

Meanwhile, over in Singapore, Cardinal William Goh added theological gloss to this climate catechism. In his July 5 homily, he declared that fidelity requires change, that repeating old practices is “slavish,” and that the evolution of the liturgy proves tradition must always adapt. “The celebration of the Eucharist,” he explained, “has been changing since the first Mass.”

This logic is the doctrinal justification for the synthetic faith now unspooling before our eyes:

• A liturgy without form

• A theology without clarity

• A Gospel without conversion

Tradition is a clay toy, molded to modern moods. The same thinking that gave us communion in the hand and clown Masses now gives us Masses for the Climate Crisis, where the central sacrificial act of Calvary is transfigured into symbolic caretaking of “the common home.”

The Pious Quietism of the New Church

Leo’s July 6 Angelus was perhaps the most revealing piece of the week. Gone was the eco-zealotry. In its place: soft pleasantries, gentle words about the “harvest,” and an exhortation to become “joyful laborers” without worrying too much about “theoretical ideas.”

“Perhaps there is no shortage of ‘intermittent Christians,’” Leo mused, “but there are few ready to labor in God’s harvest… We need to pray more.”

Gone is the zeal of the martyrs. Gone is the urgency of apostolic preaching. Gone is the clarity of dogma. In its place: passive spirituality, defanged discipleship, and therapeutic niceness. The Church, we are told, doesn’t need “too many theoretical ideas.” Just good feelings and harmony.

But harmony with what? The modern world? The UN’s sustainability goals? “Mother Earth”?

Conclusion: A Church That Worships Itself

What unites these episodes (the garden Mass, the Slovak apparition, the Singapore sermon, the Sunday Angelus) is not Christ, but a post-Christian sacramentality. Everything is symbolic. Nothing is defined. The Eucharist is “cosmic.” The Virgin is “affirming.” The liturgy is “organic.” Tradition is “adaptive.” And the mission? To become peace, to care for creation, to feel loved, to listen to the cry of the Earth.

In this new religion, the old wineskin, namely, Catholicism, is a liability. It cannot hold the frothing brew of synodality, ecospirituality, liturgical evolution, and horizontal theology. But instead of pouring the wine back into the wineskin of Tradition, Leo and his cohorts are trying to ferment it in plastic: Mass as performance art, Mary as wellness guru, doctrine as slogan, salvation as sustainability.

No wonder the wine is turning sour.

Let those with eyes to see flee the garden liturgies and return to the foot of the Cross.