The Modern Papacy’s Need to Dialogue With the World and Apologize to Schism
On the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Leo XIV Praises Schism, Reforms Monasticism, and Rewrites Martyrdom
The Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul ought to be a thunderclap of apostolic faith: Rome recalling her origins in the blood of martyrs, reaffirming the unchanging Gospel they died to defend. Instead, under Leo XIV, we are treated to another year of Jubilee diplomacy in which the memory of Peter and Paul is repurposed as a canvas for sentimental pluralism. Three addresses over two days, delivered to Eastern Orthodox delegates, modernized Benedictines, and Greek-Catholic pilgrims, reveal a common thread: the Church is not a bulwark of revealed truth but a journeying body always in dialogue, always reforming, never arriving.
Apostolic Succession Without Apostolic Authority
Leo’s June 28 address to the delegation from Constantinople bears all the hallmarks of postconciliar ecumenism: flattery, ambiguity, and selective memory. The Orthodox Church, formally schismatic, lacking unity with Peter, rejecting papal primacy, is not once described as such. Instead, it is a “sister Church,” already in “profound communion” with Rome. The pope of Vatican II’s vision no longer speaks with thunder; he listens “respectfully” and invites “suggestions” from those outside the fold.
Gone is the clarity of Mortalium Animos (1928), where Pius XI condemned the false assumption that “all religions are more or less good and praiseworthy.” Gone is the hard line drawn by Florence and Vatican I, demanding submission to the Roman Pontiff as a condition of communion. In their place, Leo cites Lumen Gentium, paragraph 23, the favorite passage of conciliar ecumenists, which blurs jurisdictional lines and gives the illusion of shared responsibility between Rome and Constantinople.
The irony is acute: on the feast of Peter and Paul, Leo speaks as if he were merely first among equals, not the Vicar of Christ holding universal jurisdiction. Peter is no longer the rock; he is the dialoguer-in-chief.
The Monastery as Social Project
In his second address, delivered to the General Chapter of the Vallombrosan Benedictines, Leo returns to his favored script: change, renewal, and listening. Gone is the Rule of Saint Benedict understood as a radical life of conversion under obedience. In its place is a spirituality that must remain “in dialogue with the contemporary world” and a renewed call to be “less self-referential,” more socially engaged, and open to “simplification.”
Pope Paul VI is quoted fondly as a forerunner of renewal; and indeed he was. He dismantled the Roman Rite, laicized thousands of religious, suppressed contemplative orders, and paved the way for the demolition of the Catholic cloister. To Leo, this is not a cautionary tale but a blueprint. He presents monastic fragility not as a crisis to be remedied by restoration but as an opportunity to embrace the flux of the world with “joy” and “depth.” Tradition is not the foundation; it is the museum exhibit we periodically reinterpret.
Saint John Gualbert reformed his order to return to sine glossa obedience to the Gospel and Rule. Leo’s reform is a call to dilute both; to lower the demands of asceticism until all that remains is a lifestyle blog in vestments.
The Ukrainian Church and the Optics of Unity
The third address, to pilgrims of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, is rhetorically the richest, yet theologically the most dangerous. Here Leo acknowledges real suffering: war, martyrdom, and the price of fidelity. He honors the Greek-Catholics who bled rather than renounce communion with Rome, only to turn around, the day before, and call their Orthodox persecutors a “sister Church” already in “profound communion.”
The contradiction is staggering. The Ukrainian Catholics were canonized, exiled, and murdered for clinging to Peter. But today, Leo’s Rome celebrates both their fidelity and the schism it cost them everything to reject.
What is the message to the Catholic East? That martyrdom was a tragic misunderstanding? That reunion with Rome is now optional? That dogma yields to diplomacy?
Leo tells them: “Faith does not mean having all the answers.” But Peter did have the answer: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Faith means clinging to that confession, not waiting for the world to approve it.
The Ghost of Vatican II Speaks Again
Across all three speeches, the refrain is familiar: listen, accompany, reform, journey, renew. Gone is the call to convert, the solemn duty to preach the Gospel to every creature with the aim of salvation. Instead, unity becomes a horizon, not a demand; tradition, a scent, not a substance; monasticism, a lifestyle, not a crucifixion.
Leo’s papacy is shaping up to be the final stabilization of the conciliar revolution. Whereas Francis broke things in public, Leo sweeps the shards into a mosaic of “communion,” binding the fragments together not with truth, but with sentimentality.
We were once warned by Saint Pius X: the modernists do not destroy doctrine, they reinterpret it. Leo does not call the Orthodox “heretics.” He simply acts as if their errors no longer matter. He does not dissolve the monastic vocation. He redefines it as hospitality and social dialogue. He does not silence the martyrs. He thanks them while extending the same legitimacy to their persecutors.
It is doctrinal gaslighting.
You see the problem well.
All this is a consequence of the changed concept of faith.
While faith previously meant subordinating reason to the revealed objective divine truth,
today faith means the absolutely irrational, which is a subjective and communal experience. In the past, the rationality of natural was ensured by the supernatural. Today, the validity of the concept of faith understood as irrationality and its irrational content of faith is not given by its objectivity, since here irrationality means precisely that it is not real, but rather that it is the community of subjects that makes the unreal real and valid. This is why the sacrifice was replaced by the feast, the common meal, the Canon Missae by Institutio Narrationis, and this is why in the NOM amen must be said at the communion, as a creative expression of the subjective content of faith.
Pope Provost has unpacked a lot in the last few days. And at the risk of sounding like a dissenter, a lot of truth dwells in what he says. The schism of 1054 was more political than theological, and was a team effort. The Roman Church, of course, helped the cause by elevating the Barbarian Charlemagne to a Papa; Creation- the "Holy Roman Empire". God passed swift Judgment on the Carolingians, swiftly dividing it into three camps which would be played against each other and the Papacy for centuries by the Banksters of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice for centuries, until World War One saw the destruction of the Prussian, Austrian, and French Dynasties. (Well, that is a vast oversimplification, but people should get the point.)
The Orthodox Church fared no better, for their part being finally overrun by the Pederasts- er, Sons- of Mohammed (who was a student of the Kabbalah but I digress) and having their center transferred to Russia where the hierarchy became the victims of the Caesaro-Papism of the Czars. (One of the "Errors of Russia" bewailed by Our Lady of Fatima, the other being Schism from the Holy Unity of the Chair of Peter, but, again, I digress.)
If Vatican II had any Silver Lining whatsoever, it was that the Triumphalist, Imperial Medieval Church was finally forced to look in the Proverbial Mirror, and acknowledge its sins. Contrary to the Piuses, Louis XVI, for example, was not a Most Catholic King and truly deserved what he got. He was about as much a victim as Caligula.
That, of course, is to take nothing away from this excellent article, which points out that Rome is no longer the Church of Truth- however impaired it might have been in days gone by- but rather the Church of Accompanyment. Where we are heading, of course, is the Reign of the Antichrist, and if people cannot see that handwriting clearly on the wall in a world full of creeping tyranny, dumbphones, social "credit", and Central Bank DIgital Currencies-, well, God help them, because this Wolf cannot.
Our Lady of Fatima of course has the only solution- the Collegial Consecration of Russia by the APostolic College and excommunication for those bishops that fail to comply in the exercise of the Full and Sovereign Authority of the Successor of Peter of Holy Mother Church. And if some of the Orthodox Bishops wish to comply, so much the better.