Leo XIV's recent speech has been praised for its treatment of natural law, but it downplays the Gospel, denies the Church's teaching role, and embraces UN’s condemned vision of religious liberty.
Leo appears to be tending in the direction of this unbelievable quote from Francis in January, 2016:
“I am glad to express the Church’s esteem for the National Committee on Bioethics, established by the President of the Council for Ministers in Italy 25 years ago,” Francis said. “Everyone is aware of how sensitive the Church is to ethical issues but perhaps it is not clear to everyone that the Church does not lay claim to a privileged voice in this field; in fact it is a source of great satisfaction for the Church when civic responsibility at different levels is able to reflect, discern and act according to a free and open way of thinking and inspired by integral human and social values. This mature civic responsibility is a sign that the seed of the Gospel – which has been revealed and entrusted to the Church – has produced fruits, successfully fostering the search for truth and good in complex human and ethical questions.”
How many years of Papal vacancy would it take for you to realize that this entire thing is just ridiculous?
your sedevacantist Church is utterly indistinguishable from a Church that has defected.
this is a problem because the indefectibility of the Church isn't an abstract concept defended in theory, it should be visibly manifested.
but I don't see it visibly manifested in your ecclesiology, it honestly sounds like Satan found a big loophole in Christ's promise.
"oh I can't make the Church defect under a true Pope, BUUUUUT I can make a vacancy period as long as I wish and do as much damage as I want and Jesus won't stop me because 'technically' the Church isn't defecting as there is no true Pope"
there are supposed bible contradictions that are harder to reconcile than any supposed Vatican II contradiction.
it's time for you to let this ridiculous nonsense go and just accept the fact that you need to do the hard work and embrace the hermeneutic of continuity just like theologians do the harder work of solving bible contradictions.
Thank you for your concern but the virtue of faith forbids this course, as does common sense.
As for your example. Apparent contradictions in the Scriptures must be resolved or explained, as it pertains to the inspired word of God, and neither pole of the apparent contradiction can be false. The situation here is not the same, because a vacancy is indeed possible.
An extended vacancy might be unlikely, but not as unlikely as the self-styled Conciliar/Synodal Church being the Church of Christ.
//Apparent contradictions in the Scriptures must be resolved or explained, as it pertains to the inspired word of God//
and Magisterial contradictions must be resolved as they pertain to the Church's indefectibility
look at this argument
P1) Pope Vigilius and his successors are true Popes. (reductio Ad Absurdum)
P2) Pope Vigilius and his successors infallibly Ananthematized Agnoetism
P3) Scripture teaches Agnoetism (Matthew 24:36 , Mark 13:32)
P4) a true Pope cannot infallibly contradict scripture
C) Vigilius and all his successors are anti-Popes
this argument uses the same ecclesiology as you do
As you can see, if your Sedevacantist thesis is correct, the Magisterium becomes useless even for fellow Catholics because anytime Catholics don't like the teaching they can just say the Pope is invalid
Nice try, but you destroyed your own point by mentioning Protestantism in a negative way. You need to pay more attention to what how your Conciliar/Synodal religion treats protestantism.
Toward the end of Si Si No No #81 from May 2008 article on Religious Liberty which you can reach by search engine is the best explanation of the difference between Protestantism and private judgment vs understanding contradiction of the extraordinary magisterium that I have seen. It may avail you to read it to understand why it is not Protestanism to recognize such as a denying an article of faith, which when obstinate and with full knowledge allows the average Catholic to recognize someone corrupting their faith and outside the Church.
You aren't providing evidence that a certain bishop is a heretic so therefore his election as Pope is invalid
You are finding issues with the teaching and then you say "Ah he must have been a public heretic before his election Even though there is no evidence of this public Heresy"
The former approach is valid and Catholic, the latter one is just Protestantism with extra steps
Mainly : an authority only has power insofar as it agrees with your private opinion.
The point is that the explanation of exactly what happened to make the pope invalid isn’t critical to the conclusion.
In your description, you say one approach is Catholic and the other is not, but both approaches simply rely on the faithful being able to recognize heresy. The only difference is the time frame. In one case it occurred before election; in the second case, after election. That doesn’t make one “private opinion” and the other not.
Notwithstanding the other answers here that explain the validity of human reason in being able to judge acts contrary to the faith, I thought I would point out that your P3 is false - Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32 do not support Agnoetism in any way. They simply state that no man knows the hour of the second coming of our lord (because it has not happened yet, and God has not revealed it). But after it has happened, we will all know when it happened.
In any case, no one is arguing directly from scripture, that isn't necessary here. We already have the teachings of previous popes with which to compare the acts and teachings of Leo XIV (and other recent alleged popes) to see if they are in conformity with the Catholic faith.
You are confusing a logical argument and an opinion.
An opinion is a point of view or a conviction that you hold with no or little argument to support or prove it. I.e. Something that is intuitive rather than logical. For example it's my 'opinion' that you have misunderstood me, I can't know for sure.
A logical argument on the other hand is one that can be proven by reasoning on the truth of the propositions that it contains, like how you began earlier. If the logic is not sound, or the earlier propositions are false, the conclusion cannot be true.
The point that you have not understood or are ignoring, is that human reason is a valid method of arriving at the truth by using logic. If this wasn't the case, theology (the reasoning on the truths of revelation) would be entirely impossible and we would not be able to conclude anything at all beyond taking the passages of scripture at face value in a purely literal sense.
In the case of the scriptural passages I explained, the meaning is quite plain and easy to explain logically through reason. If the passage was obscure one could have recourse to the traditional interpretation of the church, such as any number of scriptural commentaries by the church fathers, who also - guess what? - used their reason to understand the right meaning of Holy Scripture based on the teaching they received and the accordance with other parts of Scripture. But I guess you would call it 'opinion'.
Your approach gives no recognition to the teaching of the Church’s magisterium, exactly the same way as the Protestants argue.
Pope Vigilius properly exercised his megisterial authority to condemn an erroneous private interpretation of Scripture. It's odd (and very Protestant) that you would choose this as an example of “papal error” when he didn’t contradict Church teaching at all. V2 didn’t anathematize any false scripture interpretation, rather it taught doctrines previously condemned by the magisterium.
Your analogy fails because you're not pitting the magisterium against the magisterium but the magisterium against a faulty private interpretation of scripture. Pope Vigilius properly anathematized Agnoetism, which was never taught by the Church.
Vatican II directly contradicts prior teaching from the Church. It’s not the same thing at all.
Fr Fahey would probably be silenced today by the fake church hierarchy which embraces false ecumenism, even religious indifferentism as with the present papal pretender. His 5 fake predecessors were all Judeo-Masonic assets as well, as novusordowatch.org explains.
On the topic of invalid 'popes', regarding an invalid Mass said by a pretend-pope.
"At the ordination Mass offered on May 31, 2025, Leo prayed the Italian version, per voi e per tutti. See below. [NOTE: Notice the newly ordained social workers… I mean, priests, doing the concelebration thing with the new boss. Talk about starting out on the wrong foot!]"
Thw fact that your ignored my argument shows how powerful it is
Also, How the Church authorities function in practice is different from the official fundamental teaching (which remains the same even after Vatican II)
But I will warn you that this combox is not a platform for you to write multiple messages that are not relevant to the post (which did not affirm sede vacante at all). You can use substack notes for that. Spamming up this combox will result in a no-hard feelings ban, as I don't want dozens of notifications.
As long as those who hold the recognise and resist position keep recognising and resisting they're merely prolonging the days of this antichrist sects existence. They are recognising the errors of the same and instead of abandoning this cesspool of error and leading otherwise faithful (though misled) catholics to do the same they only succeed in undermining the efforts those faithful priests, bishops and laity who are engaged in these efforts already. They recognise error and at the same time refuse to do what faith and reason dictate. Have they themselves been so infected by concilliar double-mindedness that they can't see the obvious.
"In order to have a shared point of reference in political activity, and not exclude a priori any consideration of the transcendent in decision-making processes, it would be helpful to seek an element that unites everyone."
Given the audience, I don't mind drawing on one of the secular traditions of Catholicism — Classical Philosophy — to find common ground on which to promote peace.
As for the Le Sillon criticism, I would agree with it if this had been a speech to Catholic politicians, but again, it is a speech for an organization whose mission is to "promote democratic governance, institutions and values, working with parliaments and parliamentarians to articulate and respond to the needs and aspirations of the people."
Having made the audience argument twice, let me say that the IPU looks like it is a pretty liberal organization, it works for "peace, democracy, human rights, gender equality, youth empowerment, climate action and sustainable development" (all liberal buzzwords), that the Pope should have given them a speech...perhaps not.
Practically speaking, what does the church say in regards to a country where Catholic are a minority? Would the church support law based on natural law while working for conversions to become a majority to take political power? I just want to make sure I understand the distinction between what the church teaches in that scenario and what Leo XIV teaches
I think the Church doesn't want to take power. She wants states to recognise the truth of the Gospel, for its laws to be in conformity with natural and divine law, and so on. There is an extent to which it is legitimate to make ad hominem arguments based on the principles of one's opponents (e.g., liberals and secularists) but if one isn't clear what one is doing, it seems it can be both scandalous and dishonest.
Okay, that makes sense. I appreciate you reframing it as the Church doesn’t want to take power but rather for States to conform to Catholic principles (divine and natural). I guess the impetus is on the hierarchy to speak boldly and for us lay Catholics to take up space in the public square.
Leo appears to be tending in the direction of this unbelievable quote from Francis in January, 2016:
“I am glad to express the Church’s esteem for the National Committee on Bioethics, established by the President of the Council for Ministers in Italy 25 years ago,” Francis said. “Everyone is aware of how sensitive the Church is to ethical issues but perhaps it is not clear to everyone that the Church does not lay claim to a privileged voice in this field; in fact it is a source of great satisfaction for the Church when civic responsibility at different levels is able to reflect, discern and act according to a free and open way of thinking and inspired by integral human and social values. This mature civic responsibility is a sign that the seed of the Gospel – which has been revealed and entrusted to the Church – has produced fruits, successfully fostering the search for truth and good in complex human and ethical questions.”
Awful stuff. Leo said something similar recently about social doctrine:
https://www.wmreview.org/p/leo-xiv-popes-ii
I appreciate your work. Most of it is very very good. But I simply can’t afford $10 a month. I am sorry to have to say that.
How many years of Papal vacancy would it take for you to realize that this entire thing is just ridiculous?
your sedevacantist Church is utterly indistinguishable from a Church that has defected.
this is a problem because the indefectibility of the Church isn't an abstract concept defended in theory, it should be visibly manifested.
but I don't see it visibly manifested in your ecclesiology, it honestly sounds like Satan found a big loophole in Christ's promise.
"oh I can't make the Church defect under a true Pope, BUUUUUT I can make a vacancy period as long as I wish and do as much damage as I want and Jesus won't stop me because 'technically' the Church isn't defecting as there is no true Pope"
there are supposed bible contradictions that are harder to reconcile than any supposed Vatican II contradiction.
it's time for you to let this ridiculous nonsense go and just accept the fact that you need to do the hard work and embrace the hermeneutic of continuity just like theologians do the harder work of solving bible contradictions.
Thank you for your concern but the virtue of faith forbids this course, as does common sense.
As for your example. Apparent contradictions in the Scriptures must be resolved or explained, as it pertains to the inspired word of God, and neither pole of the apparent contradiction can be false. The situation here is not the same, because a vacancy is indeed possible.
An extended vacancy might be unlikely, but not as unlikely as the self-styled Conciliar/Synodal Church being the Church of Christ.
//Apparent contradictions in the Scriptures must be resolved or explained, as it pertains to the inspired word of God//
and Magisterial contradictions must be resolved as they pertain to the Church's indefectibility
look at this argument
P1) Pope Vigilius and his successors are true Popes. (reductio Ad Absurdum)
P2) Pope Vigilius and his successors infallibly Ananthematized Agnoetism
P3) Scripture teaches Agnoetism (Matthew 24:36 , Mark 13:32)
P4) a true Pope cannot infallibly contradict scripture
C) Vigilius and all his successors are anti-Popes
this argument uses the same ecclesiology as you do
As you can see, if your Sedevacantist thesis is correct, the Magisterium becomes useless even for fellow Catholics because anytime Catholics don't like the teaching they can just say the Pope is invalid
it's Protestantism with extra steps
This is essentially Lutherans agreeing with Catholic Justification theory
Why would I reconcile that?
This is an L for Lutherans.
No, if you actually read the document, its basically Lutherans agreeing to the Catholic position
This is why Classical Lutherans don't like this document.
Nice try, but you destroyed your own point by mentioning Protestantism in a negative way. You need to pay more attention to what how your Conciliar/Synodal religion treats protestantism.
Toward the end of Si Si No No #81 from May 2008 article on Religious Liberty which you can reach by search engine is the best explanation of the difference between Protestantism and private judgment vs understanding contradiction of the extraordinary magisterium that I have seen. It may avail you to read it to understand why it is not Protestanism to recognize such as a denying an article of faith, which when obstinate and with full knowledge allows the average Catholic to recognize someone corrupting their faith and outside the Church.
Except that's not what you are doing.
You aren't providing evidence that a certain bishop is a heretic so therefore his election as Pope is invalid
You are finding issues with the teaching and then you say "Ah he must have been a public heretic before his election Even though there is no evidence of this public Heresy"
The former approach is valid and Catholic, the latter one is just Protestantism with extra steps
Mainly : an authority only has power insofar as it agrees with your private opinion.
The point is that the explanation of exactly what happened to make the pope invalid isn’t critical to the conclusion.
In your description, you say one approach is Catholic and the other is not, but both approaches simply rely on the faithful being able to recognize heresy. The only difference is the time frame. In one case it occurred before election; in the second case, after election. That doesn’t make one “private opinion” and the other not.
Notwithstanding the other answers here that explain the validity of human reason in being able to judge acts contrary to the faith, I thought I would point out that your P3 is false - Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32 do not support Agnoetism in any way. They simply state that no man knows the hour of the second coming of our lord (because it has not happened yet, and God has not revealed it). But after it has happened, we will all know when it happened.
In any case, no one is arguing directly from scripture, that isn't necessary here. We already have the teachings of previous popes with which to compare the acts and teachings of Leo XIV (and other recent alleged popes) to see if they are in conformity with the Catholic faith.
They don't support agnoetism IN YOUR OPINION just like it is my opinion that Vatican II and kater Magisterium doesn't contradict previous ones
In the end, your entire approach is protestant
The authority only has authority insofar as it agrees with you
There is no visible marks for this authority
You are confusing a logical argument and an opinion.
An opinion is a point of view or a conviction that you hold with no or little argument to support or prove it. I.e. Something that is intuitive rather than logical. For example it's my 'opinion' that you have misunderstood me, I can't know for sure.
A logical argument on the other hand is one that can be proven by reasoning on the truth of the propositions that it contains, like how you began earlier. If the logic is not sound, or the earlier propositions are false, the conclusion cannot be true.
The point that you have not understood or are ignoring, is that human reason is a valid method of arriving at the truth by using logic. If this wasn't the case, theology (the reasoning on the truths of revelation) would be entirely impossible and we would not be able to conclude anything at all beyond taking the passages of scripture at face value in a purely literal sense.
In the case of the scriptural passages I explained, the meaning is quite plain and easy to explain logically through reason. If the passage was obscure one could have recourse to the traditional interpretation of the church, such as any number of scriptural commentaries by the church fathers, who also - guess what? - used their reason to understand the right meaning of Holy Scripture based on the teaching they received and the accordance with other parts of Scripture. But I guess you would call it 'opinion'.
Your approach gives no recognition to the teaching of the Church’s magisterium, exactly the same way as the Protestants argue.
Pope Vigilius properly exercised his megisterial authority to condemn an erroneous private interpretation of Scripture. It's odd (and very Protestant) that you would choose this as an example of “papal error” when he didn’t contradict Church teaching at all. V2 didn’t anathematize any false scripture interpretation, rather it taught doctrines previously condemned by the magisterium.
Your analogy fails because you're not pitting the magisterium against the magisterium but the magisterium against a faulty private interpretation of scripture. Pope Vigilius properly anathematized Agnoetism, which was never taught by the Church.
Vatican II directly contradicts prior teaching from the Church. It’s not the same thing at all.
Excellent article.
Thank you! Yours is bookmarked for later reading BTW.
Thanks!
I see your post, and restack....every.time.
Thanks Katie, that really helps. Visibility is really important on these algorithm-based platforms.
An excellent book (ebook here) on the world's need for the social reign of Christ the King, as well as on its Judeo-Masonic enemies, is The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism by Fr Denis Fahey (d. 1954): https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/ITOPL_OCR-layer-only/15.%20Supplementum%20-%20Dogma%20&%20Moral/Moral/Fahey%20-%20The%20Kingship%20of%20Christ%20and%20Organized%20Naturalism_OCR.pdf
Fr Fahey would probably be silenced today by the fake church hierarchy which embraces false ecumenism, even religious indifferentism as with the present papal pretender. His 5 fake predecessors were all Judeo-Masonic assets as well, as novusordowatch.org explains.
A man of slimey-speech is Prevost. What does 'natural law' mean to a man who appointed a supporter of abortion and euthanasia?
Good question!
On the topic of invalid 'popes', regarding an invalid Mass said by a pretend-pope.
"At the ordination Mass offered on May 31, 2025, Leo prayed the Italian version, per voi e per tutti. See below. [NOTE: Notice the newly ordained social workers… I mean, priests, doing the concelebration thing with the new boss. Talk about starting out on the wrong foot!]"
https://akacatholic.com/the-pro-multis-scandal-the-revolution-goes-on/
Thw fact that your ignored my argument shows how powerful it is
Also, How the Church authorities function in practice is different from the official fundamental teaching (which remains the same even after Vatican II)
No, it shows that we are not interested in engaging with such tired old arguments. But we can't help what inferences you draw from that.
But I will warn you that this combox is not a platform for you to write multiple messages that are not relevant to the post (which did not affirm sede vacante at all). You can use substack notes for that. Spamming up this combox will result in a no-hard feelings ban, as I don't want dozens of notifications.
As long as those who hold the recognise and resist position keep recognising and resisting they're merely prolonging the days of this antichrist sects existence. They are recognising the errors of the same and instead of abandoning this cesspool of error and leading otherwise faithful (though misled) catholics to do the same they only succeed in undermining the efforts those faithful priests, bishops and laity who are engaged in these efforts already. They recognise error and at the same time refuse to do what faith and reason dictate. Have they themselves been so infected by concilliar double-mindedness that they can't see the obvious.
"In order to have a shared point of reference in political activity, and not exclude a priori any consideration of the transcendent in decision-making processes, it would be helpful to seek an element that unites everyone."
Given the audience, I don't mind drawing on one of the secular traditions of Catholicism — Classical Philosophy — to find common ground on which to promote peace.
As for the Le Sillon criticism, I would agree with it if this had been a speech to Catholic politicians, but again, it is a speech for an organization whose mission is to "promote democratic governance, institutions and values, working with parliaments and parliamentarians to articulate and respond to the needs and aspirations of the people."
Having made the audience argument twice, let me say that the IPU looks like it is a pretty liberal organization, it works for "peace, democracy, human rights, gender equality, youth empowerment, climate action and sustainable development" (all liberal buzzwords), that the Pope should have given them a speech...perhaps not.
I hear what you are saying but this is definitely too far.
Practically speaking, what does the church say in regards to a country where Catholic are a minority? Would the church support law based on natural law while working for conversions to become a majority to take political power? I just want to make sure I understand the distinction between what the church teaches in that scenario and what Leo XIV teaches
I think the Church doesn't want to take power. She wants states to recognise the truth of the Gospel, for its laws to be in conformity with natural and divine law, and so on. There is an extent to which it is legitimate to make ad hominem arguments based on the principles of one's opponents (e.g., liberals and secularists) but if one isn't clear what one is doing, it seems it can be both scandalous and dishonest.
Okay, that makes sense. I appreciate you reframing it as the Church doesn’t want to take power but rather for States to conform to Catholic principles (divine and natural). I guess the impetus is on the hierarchy to speak boldly and for us lay Catholics to take up space in the public square.