Martin’s Interview, Burke’s Permission Slip, and Leo’s Eco-Village of Tomorrow

A roundup of papal headlines the quietists tell us not to notice

The Jesuit Courtier and the Rainbow Door

James Martin has now had his private audience with Leo XIV. The Vatican even rolled out the Swiss Guard for him as if he were a dignitary, not a dissenter. He gushed afterward about Leo’s calm, his humor, his “inner freedom,” all the clichés of modern Jesuit spirituality that somehow end with the same five-point plan for parishes to embrace sodomy as a baptized charism.

Martin slipped his proposals directly into Leo’s hands: recognition, welcome, advocacy, full parish integration. Not repentance, not conversion, not amendment of life. Leo, for his part, encouraged him to continue. That’s the headline. Forget the spin. The head of the Church gave his blessing to Martin’s outreach and his program of normalized vice.

Meanwhile, the same weekend, rainbow pilgrims processed through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica itself, complete with crucifix carried by a man and his “husband.” The papal calendar listed the event alongside official Jubilee celebrations. Martin presided at Jesuit Il Gesù with the deputy president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference.

And Trad Inc. is exulting over…Cardinal Burke being permitted to say a TLM in St. Peter’s, as if that balances the scales.

Permission Slips and Distractions

The Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage is being allowed back into St. Peter’s this October. Cardinal Burke will celebrate a Pontifical High Mass at the Altar of the Chair. For many, this is proof that Leo XIV is a friend of tradition. Rorate Caeli has already fired up the megaphone: “Make our numbers great and known!”

But pause. Wasn’t this same Vatican simultaneously authorizing the LGBTQ pilgrimage to march through the very same doors? Both are “permitted,” both are on the calendar. The real message is not toleration of tradition, but managerial parity. The Latin Mass can return, so long as the rainbow flag marches in beside it. It’s no longer the lex orandi of the Roman Church, but one minority option in a pluralist bazaar of spiritual lifestyles.

Trad Inc. wants you to believe that a High Mass proves a thaw. In reality, it proves the revolution has moved past resistance. Tradition is now one exhibit among many in the ecclesial carnival.

Borgo Laudato Si’: Eco-Village of the Future

While Burke warms hearts with Latin chant and Martin warms Leo with “inclusion,” Leo himself inaugurates his crowning achievement: Borgo Laudato Si’, a zero-waste theme park in Castel Gandolfo. Circular greenhouses inspired by Bernini, solar panels, cows and donkeys baptized into “integral ecology,” and Andrea Bocelli crooning “Dolce Sentire.”

The rhetoric is pure Teilhard-by-way-of-UNESCO: a “circular and generative economy” where profits cycle endlessly, trash disappears, and ecology becomes sacrament. The plan even includes a farm-to-table restaurant selling “Laudato Si’” branded wine. The papal summer residence is no longer a place of prayer and retreat but a showroom for sustainable development goals.

All of this is framed as Francis’s “legacy.” Which is true: Leo is building Francis’s eco-paradise in stone and glass. It is the institutionalization of Laudato Si’ as the new spirituality of the Vatican.

The Quietism of Fr. Sensat

Into this cacophony of rainbow Masses, permission slips, and eco-villages comes a voice from the American clerical blogosphere. Fr. Clinton Sensat assures us that Leo is doing us a favor by starving our “addiction” to papal headlines. We shouldn’t care if he meets Martin or Burke. We should focus on our local parishes, not Rome.

This is the same old “don’t look at the papacy” trick. Pretend Peter is a background actor while Paul and Mary Magdalene take center stage. Pretend the universal head of the Church is meant to be invisible. Pretend that what happens in Rome stays in Rome.

But reality will not cooperate. Rome has just permitted rainbow pilgrims to desecrate the Holy Door. Rome has just canonized ecology as a sacrament. Rome has just put James Martin’s “five points of inclusion” into the Pope’s in-tray with encouragement to continue.

Quietism is not fidelity, it is denial. And denial does not save souls.

Conclusion: Two Altars, One Revolution

The week’s headlines tell the whole story. One altar hosts Cardinal Burke for the old Mass, under permission. Another altar welcomes Martin and his rainbow pilgrims, under permission. In Castel Gandolfo, Leo builds an altar to ecology.

Permission for tradition is not victory. It is containment. Permission for sin is promotion. And the eco-village is the shrine of the new religion that enfolds them both.

The choice is not whether to fixate on papal headlines. The choice is whether to notice that the papacy itself is being transformed into the engine of apostasy.