The Gospel of Inclusion: How Leo’s Church Made Atonement a Sin

From Germany’s “queer bishop” rebuking prayers of reparation to a U.S. archbishop rejoining the Girl Scouts, Leo’s Church is now repenting for orthodoxy itself.

The Atonement Scandal: When Prayer Becomes Hate

Auxiliary Bishop Ludger Schepers of Essen, Germany, was not outraged by sodomy, sacrilege, or the desecration of St. Peter’s Basilica. He was outraged by prayer.

Four bishops (Strickland, Schneider, Eleganti, and Mutsaerts) had the audacity to offer public reparation for an LGBTQ pilgrimage that turned St. Peter’s into a rainbow-themed spectacle. In response, Schepers called their act “scandalous,” denouncing it as a “shameful” display of “fear of diversity.”

Schepers’ message was clear: there is no sin to atone for, only the sin of believing there is sin. He recast the pilgrimage not as a provocation but as a “celebration of faith,” insisting that “these pilgrims are the Church.” What began as a denial of moral law has now become an inversion of it: the penitents are guilty, and the guilty are saints.

This is a moral inversion. A bishop who speaks of “self-criticism” rather than repentance, of “diversity as a gift” rather than disorder, is replacing Christ’s Church with a therapeutic collective. His “dream” of a Church that never excludes anyone, even those who reject divine law is apostasy.

The Vatican’s Blame Game: Tucho vs. the Germans

Meanwhile in Rome, Cardinal “Tucho” Fernández is scrambling to keep his fingerprints off the global scandal of homosexual “blessings.” After years of chaos unleashed by Fiducia Supplicans, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith now claims he never approved the German bishops’ formalized same-sex rites.

He insists he warned them against “ritualisation,” as if the problem were choreography rather than heresy. But whether it’s lit candles or whispered benedictions, the sin remains the same: blessing what God condemns. The comedy of it all is that Fernández’s own document made this inevitable. Fiducia Supplicans opened the door; the Germans merely held it wide.

So now the Vatican’s moral contortionist blames his students for taking his logic seriously. Like Pilate washing his hands, Fernández distances himself from the mess he made, even as he continues to defend the principle that “irregular couples” can be blessed. It’s theology by gaslight: invent ambiguity, feign outrage when others act on it, and insist orthodoxy is intact.

Cincinnati’s Girl Scouts and the Catechism of Compromise

In Cincinnati, Archbishop Robert Casey has restored the archdiocese’s partnership with the Girl Scouts; the same organization his predecessor banned for promoting gender ideology and homosexual “marriage.”

Casey, a Francis appointee and one-time Cupich auxiliary, framed the move as dialogue: “We’ve focused on our shared desire for the flourishing of young women rather than our differences.” It’s the same empty formula used for every surrender: “shared values,” “accompaniment,” “listening.” The moral law becomes one “difference” among many.

The Girl Scouts’ own activities still include “Pride Month” badges, “gender identity” workshops, and “inclusive” camping rules that let boys identifying as girls sleep alongside them. Yet Casey insists this partnership will help girls “grow in faith.” Which faith? The faith of the Catechism, or the faith of the Human Rights Campaign?

What’s left of Catholic witness when bishops see partnership as progress and separation as hostility? When cooperation with sin is rebranded as mission? Cincinnati’s decision is capitulation dressed as compassion.

Dilexi Te: The Church of the Poor—or the Poor Church?

While bishops moralize about “diversity,” Leo XIV has been preaching about “the poor.” His apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te continues the Franciscan narrative of redistribution as redemption, now wrapped in theological language about love.

Cardinal Michael Czerny insists the document is “100% Francis and 100% Leo”: a mathematically impossible but theologically revealing statement. The “Francis spirit” lives on unaltered: the same fixation on social structures, the same hostility toward markets, the same refusal to name the real oppressors.

As Raymond Arroyo and Fr. Gerald Murray noted, Leo blames capitalism while ignoring communism and China’s exploitation of Africa. He claims poverty is rising when even secular economists agree it has halved since 1990. This is less a social encyclical, and more a catechism of resentment: a call to envy disguised as empathy.

The early Church called almsgiving an act of worship. Leo’s Vatican calls it an economic theory.

The Church That Apologizes for Faith

From Germany to Rome to Cincinnati, one thread runs through all of this: the Church of Leo XIV has turned repentance inside out. Bishops apologize not for sin but for belief. Prayer is scandalous. Atonement is exclusion. Chastity is cruelty. Orthodoxy is hate.

This is not a Church seeking to save sinners; it’s a church seeking to save feelings. It kneels not before God but before public opinion. It no longer says “Go and sin no more,” but “Go and be yourself.”

And as long as bishops like Schepers and Casey are its shepherds, and Fernández and Leo its theologians, the Church of the New Pentecost will keep preaching the same gospel: that mercy means never having to repent.