Leo XIV and the Popes: 'Autocracy' vs. Authority
Once again we have to ask: Is 'Papa Prevost' deliberately aligning himself with errors condemned by Pope St Pius X?
Once again we have to ask: Is 'Papa Prevost' deliberately aligning himself with errors condemned by Pope St Pius X?
Editors’ Notes
In two previous articles (here and here), we have been exploring Leo XIV’s emerging habit of appearing to allude, in a positive way, to errors condemned by the pre-conciliar magisterium.
In this piece, we shall continue this exploration, by looking at comments made by Leo XIV on Sunday 18 May 2025—at his Inaugural Mass. We will see that…
His rejection of the idea of the Roman Pontiff as an autocrat recalls the rejected view of the modernists in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, both in its content and in its use of the relatively uncommon word autocratic
His corresponding caricature and rejection of the exercise of papal jurisdiction, in “commanding, forbidding, and judging” what has been presumed for the the entire history of the Church, and specifically that which was expressed by Leo XIII in Satis Cognitum.
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Leo XIV, Homily for his inauguration
Sunday 18 May 2025
The ministry of Peter is distinguished precisely by this self-sacrificing love, because the Church of Rome presides in charity and its true authority is the charity of Christ. It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did.
The Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus “is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone” (Acts 4:11). Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him (cf. 1 Pet 5:3).
On the contrary, he is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them, for all of us are “living stones” (1 Pet 2:5), called through our baptism to build God’s house in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity. In the words of Saint Augustine: “The Church consists of all those who are in harmony with their brothers and sisters and who love their neighbour” (Serm. 359, 9).
Prevost’s emphasis falls on love, mutuality, coexistence, and a form of shared responsibility within the Church.
The image of Peter “walking alongside” the baptised, rather than governing from above, is central to this text—as is the use of the loaded term autocrat.
A related vision of the Church’s structure was described by Pope St Pius X in his 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, in which he outlined what he saw as the fundamental premises of the Modernist school. The passages below—which use the same terms as Prevost’s sermon—provide one of the clearest summaries of the Modernist conception of the Church and ecclesiastical authority, presented in Pius X’s own words as a description of error:
Pope St Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis
23. A wider field for comment is opened when we come to what the Modernist school has imagined to be the nature of the Church. They begin with the supposition that the Church has its birth in a double need; first, the need of the individual believer to communicate his faith to others, especially if he has had some original and special experience, and secondly, when the faith has become common to many, the need of the collectivity to form itself into a society and to guard, promote, and propagate the common good.
What, then, is the Church? It is [for the modernists] the product of the collective conscience, that is to say, of the association of individual consciences which, by virtue of the principle of vital permanence, depend all on one first believer, who for Catholics is Christ. Now every society needs a directing authority to guide its members towards the common end, to foster prudently the elements of cohesion, which in a religious society are doctrine and worship. Hence the triple authority in the Catholic Church, disciplinary, dogmatic, liturgical. The nature of this authority is to be gathered from its origin, and its rights and duties from its nature.
In past times [the modernists say] it was a common error that authority came to the Church from without, that is to say directly from God; and it was then rightly held to be autocratic. But this conception has now grown obsolete [they say]. For in the same way as the Church is a vital emanation of the collectivity of consciences, so too authority emanates vitally from the Church itself.
Authority, therefore, like the Church, has its origin in the religious conscience, and, that being so, is subject to it. Should it disown this dependence it becomes a tyranny. For we are living in an age when the sense of liberty has reached its highest development.
In the civil order the public conscience has introduced popular government. Now there is in man only one conscience, just as there is only one life. It is for the ecclesiastical authority, therefore, to adopt a democratic form, unless it wishes to provoke and foment an intestine conflict in the consciences of mankind. The penalty of refusal is disaster. For it is madness to think that the sentiment of liberty, as it now obtains, can recede. Were it forcibly pent up and held in bonds, the more terrible would be its outburst, sweeping away at once both Church and religion.
Such is the situation in the minds of the Modernists, and their one great anxiety is, in consequence, to find a way of conciliation between the authority of the Church and the liberty of the believers.
He points out that these same ideas are applied in with regard to the error that “the state must […] be separate from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen”:
Formerly [the modernists continue] it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians.
The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders—nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one’s might.
Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei.
What does this mean, and how does it shed light on the difference between autocracy and true papal authority?
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