+LEO'S VISION: A CHURCH WITHOUT TEETH

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 Leo XIV’s Vision of the Church Without Teeth

 

Do traditional Catholics get the feeling they're being wooed? That the first 'Boomer Pope', Leo XIV, is chatting them up? He's looking and sounding so trad (wearing the mozetta, singing the Regina Caeli and the Pater Noster). But how's he acting? Yes, he did lead a Corpus Christi Procession through Rome - but one swallow does not a summer make.

His promotion of the bully +Arthur Roche and assorted material heretics to powerful positions proclaims him as the personalised 'Spirit of Vatican II' - even to exhibiting its chronic effeminacy by tears appealing to the feminised, not to say emasculated, post-Vat II Novus Ordo, Synodal Church. As a Boomer +Leo was brought up with a Mass that had been emptied of all that Protestants might find objectionable, inculcating an idea of 'unity' which eschews any reference the deposit of faith. 

But sooner or later +Leo must address these burning questions: 

•  the Mass of all time (TLM), brutally treated by Jorge Bergoglio and cavalierly implemented by +Roche riding roughshod over the world's bishops https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/roches-gamble-and-the-vatican-law-of-power
• the Consecration of Russia: it's all very well to exhort the faithful to pray for peace, but peace is in the hands of the pontiff and his bishops
• publication of the full text of the Third Secret of Fatima
• permission for the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) to consecrate new bishops for its nearly one million adherents worldwide.

His sincerity is not to be doubted. But what he sincerely intends appears to be the practice of Vatican II's original, fatally flawed vision rather than restoration of the Catholic Faith. 

Cardinal Joseph Zen lets Pope Leo know where he stands on the TLM

In a span of forty-eight hours, Leo XIV addressed bishops, seminarians, priests, Eastern Church donors, drug rehab alumni, and synod bureaucrats. If you want to understand the post-conciliar Church’s ideology in full, its spiritual posture, its rhetorical evasions, and its strategic silences, you couldn’t ask for a better window.

 

On paper, the theme is hope. In practice, it’s accommodation with every force that drains the Church of life.

 

I. The Pastoral Bishop as Therapist

 

Leo’s Jubilee of Bishops meditation reaffirms the now-familiar portrait of the bishop not as a successor of the Apostles defending the deposit of faith, but as a “visible principle of unity” tasked with facilitating dialogue, managing “diverse gifts,” and exercising “pastoral prudence” by overseeing synodality.

 

You might assume “unity” here means doctrinal cohesion. It doesn’t. It means structural harmony: communion without confession. The bishop, we are told, must embrace “dialogue as a style and method.”

 

He must “cherish traditions” while also “promoting new directions and initiatives.” The theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, are redefined through a pastoral lens, not as supernatural habits ordered to truth and salvation, but as tools for emotional uplift and social healing.

 

Any good Proddy or devout Muslim would agree 

Chastity and continence make a brief cameo: Leo XIV insists they reflect the “authentic image of the Church.” But the real pastoral action comes through “dialogue,” “participatory bodies,” and “fraternal love” extended to every living bishop in sight. The bishop, we are assured, should even be “open and welcoming” in his home. Whatever that means.

 

The entire vision reduces episcopal governance to a kind of chaplaincy: the bishop as emotional support mammal.

 

II. The Anonymous Touch of Faith

 

In his General Audience, Leo explores the Gospel account of the bleeding woman and Jairus’ daughter: two miracles traditionally interpreted as signs of Christ’s divinity and salvific power. But in Leo’s hands, the story becomes

 

Saint Augustine’s line, “the crowd jostles, faith touches,” is invoked, but not to call sinners to conversion. Instead, it validates the felt experience of “being labeled,” “kept hidden,” or made to wear “a robe not your own.” 

And that’s the core problem: Leo XIV uses the language of Scripture but flattens its theology into a kind of affective solidarity. Jesus doesn’t confront sin, death, or the devil here, He offers “spiritual nourishment” and “closeness.” The bleeding stops, the child awakens, and the main lesson is… “do we know how to nourish our children spiritually?”

 

The only spiritual death Leo warns against is “the death of the soul,” but he never says what causes it or how to prevent it.

 

III. Formation Without Foundations

 

Addressing seminarians from Triveneto, Leo offers some helpful advice on trust, prayer, and avoiding isolation. He even quotes St. Augustine and Robert Hugh Benson. But again, what’s missing is striking: no admonition to hold fast to the Church’s unchanging teaching, no warning about the dangers of modernism or heresy, and not a word about the liturgy.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u_ueJfk2BU

Instead, the seminarians are told to be “protagonists” in formation (but not “soloists”), to trust their formators, and to maintain “friendship with Jesus,” the central phrase of the entire talk. And what is this friendship? According to Leo (and Francis before him), it’s a feeling of being accompanied and understood. The seminarian’s chief task isn’t to become an alter Christus, but a companionable peer.

 

This relational formation tracks exactly with the goals of the Dicastery for the Clergy, who gathered the next day for the “Priests Who Are Happy” convocation. Priests are called “friends,” not soldiers or servants. Celibacy isn’t an imitation of Christ crucified, but a “sign of friendship.” Leo calls for “caring preparation of formators” to help produce men who are good at “listening, praying, and serving together.”

 

Doctrinal precision? Liturgical integrity? Defense of the faith? Nowhere to be found.

 

IV. The Synodal Steamroller

 

Leo’s brief remarks to the Synod Council provide the clearest summary of how this all fits together. Synodality, he says, is “a style,” not a doctrine. But it has become the governing principle of ecclesial life. Borrowing from Paul VI and perfected under Francis, synodality now acts as the Church’s ecclesiological skeleton: not a means to truth, but a method of process.

 

This is why, across his speeches, Leo XIV doesn’t emphasize proclamation, conversion, or doctrinal clarity. His vision of the Church is administrative and therapeutic instead of militant and apostolic. The bishop listens. The priest accompanies. The faithful journey together.

 

And synodality ensures that no one raises their voice too loudly about anything.

 

V. War and the East: Words Without Consequences

 

Leo’s address to ROACO (the Reunion of Aid Agencies for the Oriental Churches) offers his most impassioned rhetoric; denouncing wars in Gaza and Ukraine, criticizing “merchants of death,” and calling the Christian East a “light” in a darkened world.

 

But like all modern Vatican statements on war, the language is reactive and disconnected from doctrinal judgment. There is no moral condemnation of aggressors, no defense of just war principles, no acknowledgment that error and heresy often fuel these conflicts.

 

Most strikingly, he calls for more exposure to Eastern Catholic traditions in seminaries, not to restore tradition in the Latin Rite, but to help the West breathe with its “second lung.” But this is pure performance. The same Vatican that crushes Latin liturgical tradition turns to the East not out of love, but as a decoy.

 

 

Pope Leo leads a Corpus Christi Procession - wooing the Trads?

VI. Dignity Without Repentance

 

In perhaps the most bizarre speech of the week, Leo addressed recovering addicts and social workers for the UN’s International Day Against Drug Abuse. There were touching moments, to be sure, Leo emphasized the freedom found in recovery and the dangers of marginalization.

 

But again, no mention of sin. No call to repentance. No exhortation to live in grace or avoid the near occasions of evil. Addiction is not treated as a spiritual bondage to be exorcised, but as a social illness to be treated through encounter, inclusion, and the dismantling of unjust structures.

 

The language of the speech could’ve come from a secular humanist. The only references to Christ are abstract: Jesus who says “peace be with you,” Jesus who enters “locked rooms,” Jesus who breathes on you through others.

 

It is the Gospel as therapeutic support group.

 

The TLM appeals to young people - but not to the post-conciliar Vatican 

 

Conclusion:

 

Across these addresses, a single pattern emerges: Leo XIV affirms every spiritual longing while carefully avoiding the demands that give those longings shape.

 

Priests are to be friends. Bishops are to be facilitators. Faith is an emotional movement toward inclusion. Sin, when acknowledged at all, is reframed as social exclusion or “the absence of God.” The Eucharist is barely mentioned. Christ’s kingship is replaced with Christ’s companionship.

There is no doctrinal muscle left in this vision of the Church. Only the shepherd’s costume remains: soft fleece and a smile, worn over a hollow frame.https://bigmodernism.substack.com/p/the-shepherds-costume-leo-xivs-vision

 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for Pope Leo XIV

PM LUXON ALIGNS NZ WITH WAR-MONGRELS

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The awful irony of New Zealand's PM Christopher Luxon taking sides, at the expense of his hard-up nation, with possibly the two most unpleasant characters on the world stage - UK's Keir Starmer and Ukraine's Volodomyr Zelenskyy - will not escape our readers. As the world teeters on the brink of total, global war, Luxon's allegiance to the Deep State of Davos Inc has aligned New Zealand with war-mongrels, while white-anting the peace-making efforts in Ukraine of POTUS Donald Trump.

"New Zealand’s support for Ukraine," Luxon says, "is unwavering." And very expensive. Like nearly $150m expensive. NZ First's Winston Peters is me-tooing and Labour loves Ukraine too. How do Kiwis feel about paying for a war about as far away from here as it can get?New Zealand's government is looking like a uniparty.

Meanwhile Donald Trump bawled Israel and Iran out on Tuesday for breaking the ceasefire. Steve Bannon, Catholic Navy veteran, put it this way: "Trump put his reputation on the line for Israel, and Netanyahu lied to his face. He asked for a stand down, went to sleep, and woke up to betrayal."

If you learned in Sunday School that the Bible commands you to support Israel, it's high time to unlearn it, and on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart to pray for peace.

Luxon cuddles up to Starmer

And Zelenskyy

8842/luxon-says-nz-stands-with-ukraine-no-decision-on-peacekeeping

And now, for a deeper dive into the vexing question of WWIII:

 

The Third World War no longer appears in fragments, but as a unified whole. A war to be seen as the inevitable continuation of the Cold War, which in truth never ended, contrary to what geopolitical scholars have taught for decades.

 Latest from RTV —TRUMP BOMBS IRAN: MAGA Divided, Neocons Delighted, Israel Wins

On June 13th, Israel launched a blitzkrieg that, within a few hours, effectively ensured the near-total victory of the Jewish state not only over Iran, but over the entire Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian war, now evolved into an Israeli-Iranian conflict, represents—quite clearly—only a regional development of a war that, it is pointless to deny or pretend not to recognize, has become global and total.

 

All the major powers of the world are involved (at least by proxy) in this war, and even the vassal states are now aligned, often on the front lines.

 

The Third World War no longer appears in fragments, but as a unified whole. A war to be seen as the inevitable continuation of the Cold War, which in truth never ended, contrary to what geopolitical scholars have taught for decades.

 

The struggle for world dominance between the Soviets and the Americans did not end with the implosion of the Third Rome in 1991, nor with the détente of the preceding period. The Cold War merely shifted its axis—from Moscow to Beijing—while the Fourth Rome, namely Washington D.C., held a temporary global supremacy.

Temporary: meaning lasting about a political generation, roughly 30 years—the time needed to reap in China the seeds once sown in Russia.

 

If Moscow could, in some way, lay claim to being the Third Rome, Beijing cannot pretend to be the Fifth. China is an empire that shares nothing with the so-called Western tradition—not even partially (unlike Russia)—and this makes it a far more effective, yet also incredibly more vulnerable, revolutionary geopolitical actor. Thus, whereas Russia once influenced China, since the 2000s the relationship has gradually reversed: China now influences Russia (above all economically).

 

What binds Iran to Russia and China, culturally?

 

But let’s return to Iran. In recent hours, international affairs observers have been questioning the true intentions of Benjamin Netanyahu. According to official reports, the IDF’s attack was intended to decapitate Iran’s growing nuclear power, but the truth may be something else—far more fundamental: the destruction of Iran itself as a geopolitical center.

 

 

Ministry of Defense Iran

@Govt_of_Iran

·

Jun 24

WE WILL NOT LET ISRAEL CONTINUE ITS GENOCIDAL WAR IN GAZA.

Iran, in fact, is the main reference point for the Shia Islamic world. As is well known, the Islamic world is divided into two major branches: on one side the Sunnis, and on the other the Shiites. From a geopolitical standpoint—beyond doctrinal differences—these represent two spheres aligned with the two main blocs competing for global dominance.

 

The Anglo-Zionist alliance and its European appendage have the Sunni world on their side, orbiting around Saudi Arabia. The Russo-Chinese axis, by contrast, can count on the support of the Shiite world, gravitating around the Iranian ayatollah.

 

Islam is a complex world, and this is not the place to analyze it in depth. However, what makes this religion particularly susceptible to (others') power games is its unique conception of law, right and justice—Sharia. By virtue of this, Muslim theologians and jurists are unable to conceptually distinguish moral authority from civil power, and therefore tend to merge them into a single entity.

 

For this reason, the State as conceived in modernity—founded upon and legitimized by itself—has always appeared particularly “aligned” with Islamic legal sensibilities, as have various political ideologies that are offspring of modern statism; that is, all shades of socialism. In fact, it is within the Islamic world that socialism witnessed the birth of a specific variation that overlaps class struggle with religious struggle (see Gaddafi’s Green Book or the Ba'ath Party in Syria).

 

This element—melding together nationalism and pan-Arabism, mosque and power, proletariat and imamate—is a hallmark of all Arab dictatorships in recent decades, from Hussein, Assad, and Gaddafi to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Khomeini’s Shiite theocracy.

 

The distinction between moral (religious) authority and civil power has been one of Catholicism’s great achievements—an enduring legacy of the philosophical, ethical, and legal traditions of the three great worlds: Greek, Roman, and Germanic. These traditions the Church has wisely welcomed into its fold and baptized.

 

This distinction, without separation, between authority and power has allowed the Church, on the one hand, to remain free from the influence and interference of those who sought to subordinate the salus animarum to the interests of the State, and on the other, to support and guarantee this very freedom—libertas Ecclesiae—through the exercise of private property.

 

Both the popes and the monarchs hostile to the Church have always been aware of this. For this reason, in the East, the Byzantine emperors consistently sought to keep the Church devoid of property—and thus subject to their power. This is the heresy of Caesaropapism, or “Byzantinism” as it is called: the merging in the figure of the political sovereign of both moral authority and civil power, ultimately subordinating the good of the Church to reasons of State.

 

This is one of the two defining characteristics of the so-called Orthodox Churches (the other being episcopal synodality), and it’s no coincidence that these same two elements are shared by the Eastern schismatics and the Churches born from the Protestant Reformation: Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII, and the other so-called reformers all sought to place the king at the head of national Churches, after having dispossessed monks and priests of all their material goods.

 

(To explore further, the reader is kindly invited to consult my article:  “Economic Thought Deriving from the Protestant Revolution and the Catholic Reformation”, in The Angelus, March-April 2025, pp. 18-23).

 

The subjugation of religion to power is a common thread linking the Islamic world to the Orthodox world (which today survives most coherently in Moscow, and certainly not in Constantinople), as well as to China.

 

 

53 hostages are trapped in the dungeons of Gaza.  Up to 22 are presumed alive, at imminent risk of death

The religious situation in China is, of course, quite sui generis. However, it is precisely in this light that one must understand the project Xi Jinping has been pursuing for decades to foster a revival of Confucianism. Xi often cites Confucius in his speeches, presenting himself as a junzi (a virtuous person) and drawing on Confucian values such as social harmony, respect for authority, discipline, and loyalty.

 

Regarding the cultural power of Confucianism in its ability to generate “social consensus” and reduce man to an ant, one need only consider what occurred in China during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike in the West, almost no Chinese citizen thought to rebel in the name of their individual or social rights. And this was not only out of fear of State repression.

 

From this perspective, the revival of Confucianism by the Chinese Communist regime is not merely a cultural or educational undertaking—it is a profoundly political strategy. As in Islamic sharia or Russian Orthodox theology, Confucianism also assigns the figure of the ruler a sacred aura.

 

The Leader of the Chinese Communist Party is viewed as the guarantor of cosmic and moral order, and therefore cannot be separated from—let alone questioned on—the grounds of ethical legitimacy. In this way, ethics is absorbed by the State, and the State becomes the arbiter of good and evil.

 

What unites Iran, Russia, and China today—beyond their different cultures, religions, and histories—is a shared framework in which civil power becomes totalizing precisely because it claims to be moral.

 

 

 

self-explanatory

The New World of Zionism

 

But that is not all. This common thread goes further and connects the East—represented by the Russo-Chinese-Shiite axis—with the secularist soul of the West. Modern secularism, in fact, is based on a false premise: that the State can be “neutral” with regard to the good. Yet, the very moment it rejects any higher moral authority, the modern State sets itself up as the source of good and evil.

 

The West is schizophrenic. It possesses two main principal souls, two clashing and incompatible personalities. On one hand, the secularist soul, which not coincidentally often winks at China and the Islamic world, despite not sharing many of the values they uphold. On the other hand, the more “European” soul—not in a geographic sense, but a cultural one.

 

Properly understood, Europe is the great project built by the Catholic Church upon Greek anthropology, Roman right, and the Germanic model of society. Yet this second soul has been cast aside and placed under siege. This is Revolution.

 

Between these two extremes lie countless gradations and nuances that render the Western world shapeless, weak, and diseased—agonizing. The Anglo-Zionist Alliance, which constitutes the other geopolitical pole opposing the Axis, fully represents neither of the West’s two souls.

 

In this regard, it is worth recalling the appeal made by Pope Leo XIV on June 15, 2025, at the conclusion of the Jubilee Audience: “The commitment to building a safer world, free from the threat of nuclear weapons, must be pursued through respectful encounter and sincere dialogue, to build lasting peace founded on justice, fraternity, and the common good. 

 

No one should ever threaten the existence of another. It is the duty of all nations to support the cause of peace by initiating paths of reconciliation and promoting solutions that ensure security and dignity for all.”

 

These were clearly words addressed both to Iran—which, through the Ayatollah, has long called not only for the disappearance of the Zionist state but even for the eradication of all Jews from the face of the Earth—and to Israel, which does not hesitate to unleash conflict in order to eliminate a nuclear threat that, to this day, might not even exist.

 

Zionism is, ideologically speaking, another form of socialism, and theologically speaking, a case of immanentizing eschatology: it seeks to bring about here and now what, in Orthodox Judaism—and even more so in the Catholic Faith—can only occur with the breaking-in of the Messiah into history (for the former, yet to happen; for the latter, already fulfilled).

 

In this light, Zionism bears strong affinities not only with atheistic secularism, but even with Islamic sharia, Russian nationalism, and neo-Confucian Chinese communism: all are offspring of the same heresy that blurs moral authority and civil power.

 

What divides them is not so much the structure or conception of power, but rather the claim to exclusivity. The Islamic world—particularly Shiite Iran—views Israel not merely as a foreign power, but as a theological usurpation (and vice versa): Jerusalem cannot belong to those who have rejected Muhammad.

 

Zionism, for its part, bases its identity on a concept of peoplehood that refuses to share election with any other nation. Each claims a sacred power—but a sacredness reserved for itself alone, excluding all others.

 

Zionism chose its alliance with the Anglo-American West not out of cultural affinity, but as a matter of strategic opportunism. This becomes particularly evident when confronted with the bizarre pro-Israel apologetics of American evangelical communities, which even regard the Zionist state as a manifestation of divine will and hope for the reconstruction of the Temple as “necessary” for the return of Christ.

 

Zionism, the Islamic world, Russian nationalism, and neo-Confucian communism all claim the final word in history. They are all forms of immanentized eschatology, each viewing its own civilization as the ultimate endpoint of human order.

 

Thus, none of these worlds can truly form a lasting alliance with one another, except in the service of a common negative cause—such as opposition to the (now-vanished) Catholic West or to a competing hegemonic model.

 

Yesterday, Zionism fought against “imperialist Christianity”; today it wages war on the Shiites. Tomorrow, will the open conflict be with the Russians—and why not—with China? There is no righteous side in this conflict, and—of this we can be sure—God will intervene by unexpected means, according to His appointed times and in ways unimaginable, to restore the one true order: the Christian Catholic order.

 

The entire world today is dominated by powers that, though rivals, share the same corrupt root: the gnostic usurpation of the sacred by the political.

 

In an age where the world fights to dominate its neighbor, the Church’s mission remains to struggle and resist so as not to be conformed. And Catholics have the grave duty to speak the truth—about man, about God, and even about power—even when all the powers of the Earth reject that truth. The Remnant Newspaper - Iran and the New World

 

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us