The Consolidator: Leo XIV and the Synthesis of Subversion

While Trad Inc. dozes in the lap of ‘moderation,’ Leo XIV quietly completes the Bergoglian revolution and elevates a misunderstood Newman to bless it.

As Leo XIV rounds out his third month on the Chair of St. Peter, his papacy remains, to borrow Atila Sinke Guimarães’s term, difficult to interpret. The ambiguity is not accidental. It is the strategy.

In a penetrating column at Tradition in Action, Guimarães captures what so many traditional Catholics, myself included, have been warning: Leo XIV is not a break from Francis. He is Francis in Benedict’s clothing: a man chosen not to correct the revolution, but to consolidate it. His job is not demolition; it is interior decorating. His mission is to tidy up the rubble, paint over the Pachamama murals, and rearrange the furniture while making sure the windows are left open for the termites.

And all the while, Trad Inc. claps politely from the gallery, grateful that he smiles and wears a ring.

The Francis–Benedict Synthesis

Francis was brute force. He tore down what little remained of preconciliar integrity in full daylight: Synods on Synodality, transgender banquets, Freemasonic dialogues, the Abu Dhabi panreligion pact, Laudato si’s eco-Marxism, and of course the merciless war on the Latin Mass. He didn’t hide the revolution; he flaunted it.

But there was a cost. By the end of his reign, even some progressive bishops were quietly stalling his directives. Donors withdrew. Priests rolled their eyes. The base was eroding.

Enter Leo XIV, the stabilizer. As Guimarães argues, his purpose is not to undo the revolution but to domesticate it. To take the savage innovations of Francis and “reinterpret” them through the soft-focus lens of Benedictine ambiguity. To ensure the Church doesn’t split, not by returning to truth, but by wrapping error in gold leaf and incense.

The method is clear:

• Retain the errors, but change the tone.

• Repackage heresy as continuity.

• Keep traditionalists docile with crumbs: an ad orientem Mass here, a golden ring there, a footnote praising silence, another to Newman.

Trad Inc., eager for normalcy, eats it up.

“He Said the Mass Ad Orientem!” (And Appointed Bishops Who Back Women’s Ordination.)

Leo’s reign so far has been a careful balancing act of contradiction by design:

• He lives in the Apostolic Palace (like Benedict), but still keeps an office at Santa Marta (like Francis).

• He wears a gold ring (like Benedict), but keeps Francis’s plain pectoral cross.

• He celebrated a Mass ad orientem for the police at Castel Gandolfo, but it was a Novus Ordo liturgy and accompanied by a “Care of the Earth” theme, complete with Liberation Theology buzzwords: “cry of the earth,” “cry of the poor.”

He hasn’t (yet) openly promoted LGBT blessings, but he’s doubled down on feminist appointments at the Vatican, a hallmark of Francis’s later years.

He is what Vatican II always intended: a fluid dialectic. Not the rupture of Bergoglio or the traditional pretense of Ratzinger, but a synthesis. A hybrid. An ecclesial chimera.

The Judas Question: Mercy Without Repentance

And now comes a further revelation: Fr. Spadaro’s announcement that Leo XIV, in private conversation with Francis, heard the latter express hope that Judas Iscariot was saved. Francis even showed Cardinal Prevost (now Leo XIV) an image of Christ tenderly embracing Judas after his suicide, like a sentimental Hallmark card on betrayal and despair.

The theology here is not new. It’s the same undercurrent that fueled Amoris Laetitia: the slow dissolution of the doctrine of Hell into “mystery,” the replacement of repentance with inclusion, and of conversion with ambiguity. The path to universal salvation is now paved with plausible deniability.

And Leo is now positioned to canonize this ethos through polite silences and pastoral footnotes. The age of the bark is over; the age of the coo has begun.

Germany: The Great Implosion

Meanwhile, in Germany, the ground zero of synodal disintegration, the collapse continues. Theologians once trained to deconstruct the Faith now find themselves with no students left to deceive.

Nearly 10,000 fewer students are enrolled in Catholic theology programs compared to a decade ago. Seminaries are emptying. Dioceses are “restructuring,” which, translated, means abandoning the few faithful parishes left while elevating lay bureaucrats to positions of spiritual authority.

What we are seeing is institutional self-extinction. And still the Vatican applauds the “synodal journey” as a sign of vitality.

This is the harvest of Vatican II: not only confusion in doctrine, but sterility in vocation. The Rhine may have flowed into the Tiber, but now the Rhine is dry and so is the Church it tried to recreate in its own image.

Newman as Doctor: Co-opting the Convert for the Revolution

One of Leo XIV’s most public gestures of “continuity” is his move to declare John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church. On the surface, this could appear like a win for orthodoxy. Newman was a convert from Anglicanism, a champion of conscience, and a man of profound interiority. But under this papacy, gestures are never just gestures, they are strategic repurposings.

Francis canonized Newman in 2019, citing him as the proto-dialogue priest, the precursor to Vatican II, the gentle mystic who affirmed that “heart speaks to heart,” and perhaps doctrine speaks to feelings. Leo XIV now elevates him to the pantheon of Doctors, framing him as the ideal bridge figure between the old and the new. It’s the perfect move in the post-Bergoglian synthesis: canonize the man who (allegedly) showed how doctrine can evolve, then let that “evolution” swallow Tradition whole.

Traditional Catholics have long been uneasy about Newman’s most famous idea: his theory of the development of doctrine. While not heretical per se, it opens the door, intentionally or not, to everything the Church now suffers under: ambiguity, innovation, and the false legitimacy of theological drift.

Traditionalist Concerns Include:

• Relativism cloaked as development: Newman’s idea that doctrine “unfolds” organically through history can be twisted to justify contradictory teachings, as long as they’re rebranded as “deeper insights.”

• Undermining doctrinal stability: The emphasis on historical process over fixed content risks making the Magisterium appear as a moving target, something mutable, rather than a guardian of the deposit of faith.

• The “illative sense” problem: Newman’s reliance on intuition and experience as routes to theological certainty, his so-called “illative sense,” has been criticized as overly subjective, inviting spiritualized guesswork rather than objective truth.

• Liturgy and novelty: His theory has, rightly or wrongly, been invoked to support liturgical reform and postconciliar novelty. Whether Newman would have endorsed the Novus Ordo is beside the point. His ideas are being used to justify it.

Even so, it would be unjust to claim that Newman was a modernist. He lived before the movement was fully formed, and he explicitly submitted all his writings to the Church for correction. Pope St. Pius X himself endorsed Bishop O’Dwyer’s defense of Newman against such accusations in 1908, calling him “a Catholic to the tips of his fingers.”

And yet, here lies the danger. Newman’s ambiguous formulations and lack of scholastic precision make him a perfect Trojan horse. He said just enough to be co-opted by modernists, but not enough to be definitively condemned by tradition. As a result, he is now weaponized by the very theologians who would’ve horrified him in life.

This elevation under Leo XIV is not about honoring Newman the convert, the Oratorian, the man who suffered for truth. It is about co-opting Newman the theorist, to give doctrinal cover to an ever-evolving, ever-ambiguous, postconciliar religion.

In the mouth of a modernist, “doctrinal development” becomes doctrinal undoing, and Leo XIV just pinned a golden doctor’s medal on that process.

Conclusion: The Soft Tyranny of ‘Unity’

Guimarães gets it right: Leo XIV was chosen not in spite of his lack of personality, but because of it. He is malleable, obedient, and inoffensive. Precisely the man to neutralize the backlash against Francis while canonizing his program under the guise of moderation.

And Trad Inc. is playing right into his hands.

They do not resist, because resistance requires clarity and clarity requires courage. So they grasp at straws: a golden ring, an ad orientem Mass, a quote from Newman. Meanwhile, the revolution marches on: just slower, smoother, and better dressed.

As always, the wolves are clever. They know that the sheep are tired. Give them enough pageantry and plausible deniability, and they will lie down in the same pastures once burned by Francis, grateful that the fire has cooled.

But it is the same fire. It is the same revolution. And unless we name it for what it is, and resist it, we will be complicit in the great synthesis of apostasy.

If Francis was the storm, Leo is the eye. But make no mistake. The hurricane has not passed.