No Surrender by Silence
A reply to Avoiding Babylon on “moving on,” “olive branches,” and why trading quiet for crumbs hands the next generation to the revolution
Introduction: A Podcast Case for Silence
In a recent Avoiding Babylon episode entitled “Will Pope Leo Kill the Trad Movement?” the hosts argued that traditional Catholics should “move on” from constant criticism of Leo XIV. Their counsel was clear: turn down the outrage machine of the Francis years, lower your voice, receive the supposed “olive branch,” and trust that quiet deference might secure broader access to the Latin Mass. They even warned that “Rome watches” Anglo Catholic media, implying that too much agitation could cost families their sacraments.
It was, in effect, a manifesto for silence. Silence in exchange for stability. Silence as the new strategy for survival.
But what they framed as prudence is, in reality, a trap. It recasts vigilance as disloyalty and asks parents to buy liturgical crumbs at the cost of doctrinal surrender. That is not mercy; it is a devil’s bargain designed to guarantee twenty years of muzzled preaching while the revolution cements itself as official Catholicism.
The Claim on the Table
Thesis: Stop naming errors, and Leo will be freer, or more inclined, to expand the old rite.
Implied cost: Criticism endangers permissions; silence purchases them.
Goal: Spare families from driving four-hours for a Traditional Rite baptism and rotating chapels by strategic deference for the length of Leo’s reign.
This is the pitch: truth on the shelf in exchange for Mass on the calendar.
The Record That Betrays the Bargain
As I recently showed in The Case Against Leo XIV and It’s Over, Trad Inc., the evidence is plain:
Continuity with Francis where it most matters: sodomitical “blessings” remain entrenched via Fiducia supplicans; adulterous communions continue via Amoris Laetitia, Tucho is still in charge of doctrine, the TLM still suppressed even though Leo could have freed it on day one. The scandalous Abu Dhabi declaration and Fratelli Tutti are not revoked but proudly cited and praised.
Ecclesiology blurred: “sister churches” language repeated, schismatics praised as saints.
Appointments that reward the revolution: prelates hostile to tradition promoted, women placed in authority over clergy, advocates of women’s ordination and LGBT agendas raised to the episcopacy.
Liturgy minimized: the gulf between the Roman Rite and the manufactured rite waved away as a mere difference of “experience,” while pro multis becomes “for all” again and eco-liturgies take center stage.
The clearest tell: Leo himself admitting doctrine can change once “attitudes” have been softened.
This is not a neutral backdrop for détente. It is the program itself.
The Trap of “Indult for Quiet”
The bait is obvious: speak deferentially, keep a low profile, and a new indult will appear; perhaps devolved to bishops, perhaps dressed in “unity.” But the unwritten price is silence about the revolution.
Even without a formal oath, the leash will be enforced by fear. The moment a priest preaches against Fiducia, Amoris, Synodality, ecumenism, etc, permissions can be revoked. As Leo said, such things are “polarizing” and use the liturgy as a “political tool.” In doing so, Leo has reduced the Traditional Catholic Faith and its defense to a mere foreign “ideology” rather than God’s unchanging truth that condemns his program. That is a problem. Two decades of this will breed a homiletic chill: the rite tolerated, but the pulpit gagged.
What good is an approved Mass schedule if the truth cannot be preached from it?
The Mirage of “Protecting Families”
The plea is always framed as compassion: stay quiet for the sake of parents and children. But at best, it offers an illusion of safety, a stateroom on the Titanic, floating for now while the ship still sinks.
The Mass cannot be idolized apart from the Faith it serves. Without the Faith, the liturgy becomes an empty husk.
Japanese Catholics endured centuries without priests, surviving on baptisms and catechesis until missionaries returned. A child baptized at home with water and the Trinitarian formula receives the same grace as one baptized at a pontifical high Mass in St. Peter’s. The externals do not save, the Faith does.
To buy a Mass at the price of surrendering the Faith is not prudence, but apostasy.
What Twenty Years of Silence Really Buys
If the old rite is tolerated under the condition of silence, what fills those decades?
Priests internalize the boundaries: safe moral sermons, but never touching the taboos Leo is actively softening.
Catechesis drifts: the rite shapes devotion while silence shapes thought.
Attitudes shift by omission: teenagers grow up never hearing a direct refutation of the reigning errors, because Father must “avoid controversy” to keep his faculties.
Then comes Leo’s successor, ready to complete the program. Leo said the quiet part out loud. With attitudes softened, doctrine can change. The silence purchased today becomes the warrant for tomorrow’s “development.”
Obedience and Witness
Respect for office is not a gag order. The baptized are bound to confess the faith, resist novelties, and protect their children’s souls.
Deference to a cardinal’s “request” for quiet is not virtue when it functions as a political instrument. We do not owe Rome influence management. We owe our families the truth.
What Real Help Would Look Like
If Leo wished to help families, there are concrete acts he could take tomorrow:
Rescind the punitive machinery of Traditionis Custodes.
Erect personal parishes with guaranteed stability.
Clarify publicly that Fiducia cannot bless disordered unions, and Amoris cannot allow sacrilegious communion. Discipline those who attempt it.
End the double-speak: stop calling separated bodies “sister churches,” stop canonizing Francis and schismatic universalists, and return to preaching conversion.
Stop promoting supporters of women’s ordination and the LGBTQ agenda to the episcopacy.
Remove the heretical and scandalous head of the DDF.
Defrock Fr. James Martin and similar Bishops who continue to flout God’s law publicly with reckless abandon with not only no consequence, but accolades.
And these are just the tip of the iceberg. Until these tangibles or something similar appears, talk of “olive branches” is nothing but camouflage while the machine grinds forward.
The Verdict
Taking the truce being offered is not prudence, but capitulation by installment. A muzzled pulpit under the old rite catechizes children into accepting the very revolution that destroyed their grandparents’ parishes. “Change attitudes first” is the roadmap: a long papacy of silence preparing the ground for juridical change later.
A regime of managed quiet will not preserve the Faith, it will strangle it. The bargain mortgages the future so that families may borrow time today.
Better to endure hardship now with eyes open than to sign away twenty years in exchange for a few schedules on borrowed time. Pray yes, but also speak, write, preach—relentlessly—so that your children inherit not only the rite, but the religion the rite conveys.
What Trad Inc. offers is not a deal, but a death warrant.
Cowardly bishops denied the sacraments to most during Covid. Two of my children were denied Confirmation at our FSSP parish on orders from Rome last year. Tired of this evil.
One of your best so far, Chris. It infuriates me what they're being allowed to do. And what they are doing is building the "ape" church, the false church that will fool many, while the True Church is forced underground. This has long been prophesied and we are now there. Voices like yours and those on this substack must never be silenced, even if but a lone voice crying out in the wilderness. We're definitely in the time of chasetisement and the only way out is the True Faith of Christ on earth in His Church Militant. Keep on fighting as if your soul depended on it because it does. God bless you mightily, Chris, and all those who listen to your words and do something about it. Refuse to be silent!