The Great Reversal: Trad Inc. Repents, Trump Goes Trad, and Leo Converts

Brother Peter Dimond takes over the DDF, Sede Picante buys Avoiding Babylon with Kokx cash, and the SSPX consecrations become the social event of the year.

A Sudden Outbreak of Honesty

In scenes described by witnesses as “without precedent in the postconciliar era,” several leading Trad Inc. personalities reportedly appeared at dawn outside their own studios clothed in sackcloth, covered in ashes, and reading aloud from printouts of their old Leo XIV takes with visible trembling.

The public act of repentance, which began shortly after Matins and continued through most of breakfast, is said to have included repeated admissions that they had, in fact, assured traditional Catholics that Leo would calm things down, restrain the worst bishops, rein in the liturgical vandals, and reward strategic patience. According to those present, the mood shifted from awkward throat-clearing to full emotional collapse when one well-known figure allegedly stated, “In retrospect, describing obvious treachery as a nuanced balancing act may have been a mistake.”

Several senior members of the cautious commentary class then released a joint statement under the heading A Season of Reflection, which was already being mocked online because it took seven paragraphs to say the words “we were wrong.” The statement admitted that the effort to present Leo as a hidden ally of tradition had suffered “certain interpretive difficulties” after the continued promotion of modernist bishops, the preservation of anti-traditional machinery, and the total absence of any actual evidence that Rome intended to reverse course.

One media figure was seen trying to salvage his dignity by announcing that he had “privately harbored concerns from the beginning,” a claim immediately undermined by hundreds of hours of public footage showing him doing the opposite.

Trump Enters Full Communion and Heads to the SSPX Consecrations

The next shock arrived from the United States, where Donald Trump announced that he had converted to Catholicism, gone fully traditional, and would be attending the SSPX episcopal consecrations in person.

The announcement was delivered from a ballroom lined with American flags, Swiss Guard colors, and an unexpectedly tasteful reproduction of a Baroque high altar. Standing before reporters with what aides described as “an unmistakably counterrevolutionary glow,” Trump declared that he had completed what he called “a very strong and beautiful conversion, a great conversion, some people say the greatest conversion anyone has ever seen.”

He then explained that after years of observing the collapse of public order, decorum, masculinity, architecture, and religion, he had concluded that the old Mass was “the only thing in the West that still looks like it believes in itself.”

His remarks were vintage Trump.

“I looked at the Novus Ordo and I said, what happened? Honestly. What happened? You had majesty, you had mystery, you had discipline, you had Latin, you had silence, you had an actual sense that God was there. Then all of a sudden you’ve got guitars, freelance Eucharistic theology, and people hugging in the aisles. It’s very bad. Very weak. Frankly, very low energy.

When you really think about it, nobody respects Tradition more than me. Nobody. I looked at what they did to the Latin Mass, and I said, this is terrible. Just terrible. You had something beautiful, something strong, something with order, with incense, with tremendous chanting, and they replaced it with felt banners and guitar people. Sad. Very sad. So I said, we’re going back. We’re going back big league. And these consecrations? Tremendous consecrations. Historic. The best bishops. Real bishops. Not these synodal types, not these wicker-chair modernists. Believe me.”

He continued.

“The SSPX bishops, these are strong men. Strong. They know borders, they know order, they know hierarchy. They’re not asking whether doctrine can evolve every fifteen minutes depending on who cried at a synod listening session. They’re asking what the Church taught, what the Church did, and why we stopped doing it. I love that. I really do.”

He then announced that he would deliver a short sermon at the event on “the relationship between borders, hierarchy, and objective truth,” followed by remarks on why altar rails are “common sense protections.”

He has also reportedly commissioned a red tie embroidered with the words Anathema Sit and asked advisers whether papal tiaras can be made “a little more gold, a little more American, a little more winning.”

Lightning on the Via Triumphalis

If the first two stories suggested an unusual news cycle, the third moved decisively into the apocalyptic.

According to multiple Vatican sources, Leo XIV was riding into Palm Sunday ceremonies on a donkey in what the Holy See Press Office had described as a gesture of evangelical simplicity and ecological humility. The choreography was proceeding according to plan until a bolt of lightning struck the pavement directly in front of the procession, throwing Leo from the saddle and causing several liturgical planners to flee into nearby hedges.

One witness said the scene resembled Caravaggio painted by an irate sedevacantist.

The donkey survived unharmed and is now being widely praised across Catholic media as the most stable doctrinal presence in the Roman Curia.

Leo, however, rose from the ground shaken, pale, and visibly changed. Witnesses say he stood in silence for several seconds, looked at the crowd, then asked in a low voice, “Who approved all of this?”

The question reportedly referred not only to the Palm Sunday staging but to the last sixty years.

Within the hour, the Vatican announced a stunning reversal. Leo had undergone what one official delicately called “a decisive encounter with clarity.” Aides say the pope spent the next several hours reading old condemnations of modern errors, demanding to know why certain bishops were still employed, and asking whether it was possible to remove half the episcopate before Vespers.

The first wave of dismissals came quickly. Cardinals Roche, Hollerich, McElroy, Cupich, Gregory, Fernández, and several other prelates associated with the managerial destruction of Catholic life were informed that their services were no longer required. Bishop Stowe was reportedly removed by courier. A number of chancery officials fainted when they realized the new standard for survival was no longer vague concern for “dialogue” but actual conformity to the Catholic religion.

One official who requested anonymity said, “For the first time in decades, men in Rome are asking whether a bishop is Catholic before promoting him. The adjustment has been difficult.”

The Dimond Appointment That Shook the Curia

The greatest astonishment of all came when Leo announced the appointment of Brother Peter Dimond to head the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Roman establishment responded as one would expect when a flamethrower is handed the keys to an archive full of oily rags.

Brother Peter arrived with several cases of notes, decades of polemics, a sharpened sense of purpose, and the unmistakable expression of a man who had been preparing for this moment since dial-up internet. Reporters expecting diplomacy instead received an inaugural statement that sounded like a merger of a theological censure and a siege proclamation.

“For decades,” he declared, “this city has sheltered every variety of doctrinal vandal, liturgical saboteur, ecumenical illusionist, and pastoral euphemist in the Western world. Men have denied dogma in slow motion, dissolved discipline under therapeutic language, and acted as though the Mystical Body of Christ were a nonprofit devoted to feelings management. That era is finished.”

He then outlined the new policy.

“If you promoted religious indifferentism, you will be excommunicated. If you taught that false religions are means of grace, you will be excommunicated. If you spent your career flattening divine revelation into dialogue, accompaniment, process, listening, inclusivity, or any of the other narcotics by which truth has been smothered, you will be excommunicated. If your name appears in a synod document more than once, bring a lawyer.”

When asked how many files the dicastery had opened in the first afternoon, an aide answered, “All of them.”

Brother Peter then closed with what one Vatican correspondent called “an absolutely unhinged but oddly invigorating summary.”

“The Catholic faith will no longer be administered like a hospice chaplaincy for modern errors. The counterfeit shepherds will be identified. The professional ambiguators will be removed. The doctrinal termites will be fumigated. The age of smiling apostasy is over.”

Three cardinals reportedly began looking into retirement property in Paraguay before the press conference had ended.

Kokx Cash Acquires Avoiding Babylon

No less dramatic was the media earthquake that followed, when Sede Picante announced the acquisition of Avoiding Babylon in a deal financed by Stephen Kokx and instantly dubbed “Kokx cash.”

Sources close to the negotiations say the purchase was finalized after a confidential meeting in which both parties agreed that the future of Catholic media would require less throat-clearing, fewer soft landings for compromised men, and substantially more muppets.

The transaction includes the Avoiding Babylon brand, studio rights, livestream assets, and what insiders are calling “a very transferable audience of exhausted Catholic men who have spent too long being told that every fresh disaster is secretly encouraging.”

Under the new ownership structure, the muppet JPIII will replace Anthony Abbate, while Sir Dare Sae will take over Rob’s chair. Executives insist the transition will be smooth because the lineup already possesses more of the core competencies required for the role, namely a muppet who knows the Faith better than Anthony, actual humor, better guests and topics, and a crotchety British frog who participates in the discussions, unlike Rob.

At a press conference announcing the new era, Kokx thanked supporters, praised the efficiencies of puppet-led analysis, and denied that the buyout represented a hostile takeover.

“This was not hostile,” he said. “It was corrective.”

He then added, “The age of coping content is over. The audience has demanded sharper blades.”

A leaked internal memo reportedly describes the relaunch strategy in sober corporate terms.

“Phase one is brand purification. Phase two is puppet optimization. Phase three is revenue expansion through ridicule.”

New Vocations for Anthony and Rob

With the buyout complete, personnel changes followed swiftly.

Anthony Abbate, following the sale, has accepted a new position as the construction worker in the Village People.

Friends say the role was attractive because it allowed him to preserve the high-visibility hard-hat aesthetic while stepping away from the exhausting burden of pretending that strategic patience remained a viable ecclesial category. He is said to be approaching the work professionally and with characteristic seriousness.

A person close to the production described Anthony as “excited for a role where I can learn choreography instead of theology.”

Rob, meanwhile, has signed a multi-platform endorsement agreement with Krispy Kreme and will become the face of its new campaign aimed at middle-aged Catholic men who live sedentary lives at their computers.

In the first commercial, he sits beneath soft studio lighting, studies a glazed donut with the expression of a man who has seen too much, and uses the pastry to explain the concept of eternity.

The Broader Meaning of the Day

Taken together, these developments mark what may be the single most encouraging news cycle of the entire postconciliar period.

Trad Inc. has repented. Trump has discovered tradition. Leo has been knocked off his donkey into clarity. Rome has found the courage to purge its own demolition crew. Brother Michael Dimond is reorganizing the DDF like a man who has been waiting thirty years for somebody to hand him the keys. Sede Picante has seized a major media property with Kokx cash. Anthony and Rob have found dignified new callings in America’s service and pastry sectors.

In ordinary times, such a sequence of events would strain belief. In the present crisis, it merely reads like the kind of thing Catholics would have to classify under “best case scenario.”

That, perhaps, is the real joke.

The modern Church has become so inverted, so absurd, so crowded with men whose primary talent lies in reframing surrender as wisdom, that the only way to describe genuine reform is to write it as parody. The restoration of sanity now sounds less plausible than satire. Truth arrives wearing the costume of a joke because the joke has already taken over the institutions.

So let the reader understand the spirit of this report. It is April 1. The stories are false. The longing behind them is not.

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