November 2025
Via Media in a White Hat
Sometimes editorials write themselves. No sooner had our October edition landed, in which we treated the Holy Father's accommodation of homosexuality and his associated embrace of the subjective "Seamless Garment," than he undermined the objective permanence of Catholic doctrine and effectively waved away the gravity of mortal sin — all the while sounding more like Basil 2.0 than Francis 2.0, as we posited.
Apropos sodomy, during two interviews with Crux magazine, conducted in July and publicised in September, Pope Leo said that "any issue dealing with the LGBTQ questions is highly polarising within the Church", and that he is "trying not to continue to polarise or promote polarisation in the Church." Rather, he wishes to promote the attitude adopted by Pope Francis that, "Everyone’s invited in, but I don’t invite a person in because they are or are not of any specific identity. You’re all welcome, and let’s get to know one another and respect one another."
Already getting fidgety? It gets worse. The Crux piece of 18 September went on:
Pope Leo noted that many people want the church to change its doctrine on the issue of homosexuality, but voiced his belief that, “we have to change attitudes before we even think about changing what the Church says about any given question.”
“I find it highly unlikely, certainly in the near future, that the Church’s doctrine in terms of what the Church teaches about sexuality, what the Church teaches about marriage, [will change],” he said.
Needless to say, homo activist Father James Martin immediately praised Pope Leo’s approach as "very much along the lines of Pope Francis’s response, which I find very hopeful."
But as the former personal assistant to the late Cardinal Gagnon, Father Charles Murr, bluntly remarked:
"The teachings of the Church, doctrine, dogma and morals, they don't change. It's very simple. So maybe he could've inserted the word "impossible" — impossible to change? Change your attitude to receive something that is never going to change. That would've been better. He says things in a way ... they sound at first hearing very sophisticated. They're not. [repeats] They're not. Some of them are simply untrue. I think he's trying to placate every side. Not just both sides, any side that he can see. And this is what's going to eventually get him in a lot of trouble. No side is going to accept that."
He is acting, in other words, like a white-hatted version of England's via media in a red hat: the late Cardinal Basil Hume. A self-professed "General of both sides," Hume's quintessentially Anglican outlook brought with it relentless moral and doctrinal decay, and a Catholic identity indistinguishable from the zeitgeist.
The stench of Basil's sulphurous "middle way" was further detected in Leo's stance on female ordination: "I, at the moment, don't have an intention of changing the teaching of the Church on the topic," he said. Fr Murr again:
"It's very misleading because not "at the moment", it can never be changed. It's very simple. Why is he afraid of saying that? [repeats] Why is he afraid of saying that? It's already been said. If he wishes he could blame someone else for having said it before him. And that's where we're going. It's not confusing. He's trying to be elusive. And it's not working so well."
Indeed it's working very badly: serving not only to further the polarisation of the faithful that Leo claims to deplore, but to undermine the faith of millions.
The Durbin affair
It didn't get any better when Leo leap-frogged the fervent lifelong promotion of abortion by a notorious 'Catholic' Senator in order to accentuate his contribution to the field of immigration, for which efforts Cardinal Cupich of Chicago was about to honour him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. And of course Leo threw in his usual death penalty error/distraction for good measure. Strewn with Weasel Words, here is his painful response to the EWTN journalist who asked for his thoughts about granting the Senator an award:
I think that it is very important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during … 40 years of service in the United States Senate. I understand the difficulty and the tensions but I think, as I myself have spoken to in the past, it is important to look at many issues that are related to what is the teaching of the Church.
Someone who says I’m against abortion but says I’m in favour of the death penalty is not really pro-life. Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.
So, they are very complex issues, I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them, but I would ask first and foremost that there would be greater respect for one another and that we search together both as humans beings, in that case as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois, as well as Catholics to say we really need to look closely at all these ethical issues and to find the way forward as Church [sic].
The Church teaching on each one of these issues is very clear.
Dear Holy Father, it was very clear before your excruciating seamless garment-whitewash! Like a character from the The X Files, you advert that the truth about life is out there somewhere but so "complex" that the Vicar of Christ and a pro-abort Senator must "search" for it "together." Diabolic disorientation on steroids!
Truly, as explained last month, neither Bernadin, Bergoglio nor Basil could have rationalised sin and subverted Catholic teaching more seamlessly (pun intended). Indeed, Leo's via media sellout epitomised the marginalisation of innocent pre-born life that Bernadin sought to effect by his deceitful "ethic of life" proposal: positing moral equivalence between the abortion holocaust and other 'life' issues like the execution of convicted criminals and deportation of illegal migrants.
On the contrary, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his 2004 memo on Communion and pro-abortion politicians: "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia.… There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."
That such Catholic clarity and conviction escapes Pope Leo speaks directly to the neo-Modernist formation that left him such easy prey for Bernadin and his "new way of thinking" that so captivates him. Little wonder he finds pristine Catholic teaching complicated, or that Archbishop Viganò is indignant.
"Contrary to what Leo claims," tweeted the mercifully plain-speaking Archbishop, "there is nothing 'complex' about any of this, except for his refusal to affirm the Truth and his concern not to delegitimise Cupich, a powerful heir and disciple of Joseph Bernadin and Theodore McCarrick, along with other prelates still in office."
To place the attitude of Leo and Cupich towards Senator Durbin in its full unholy context, consider that during the vast majority of his time in the Senate his voting record has earned him zero per cent pro-life scores and one hundred per cent pro-abortion scores from the National Right to Life Committee and Planned Parenthood. Moreover, as a result of his votes, in 2004 the self-proclaimed Catholic was prohibited from receiving Holy Communion in his home diocese of Springfield, Illinois.
So, where is the "complexity" here?
Could there be a more cut and dried history?
Even Durbin himself appears to have appreciated the absurdity of the situation.
Commenting specifically on Leo’s defence of the honour, he exclaimed: "It is amazing to me. It’s quite a moment. I didn’t expect it. I didn’t know it was gonna happen."
Mercifully it did not happen. Cupich was forced to back off. Even before Leo made his controversial remarks, nine US bishops had spoken up to denounce the award. A pathetically small number that speaks volumes about the current state of Catholic play, it was nonetheless a relief to hear — and effective.
Bishop Paprocki of Springfield told The Pillar he was "shocked" by the effort to honour Durbin. "[It] risks causing grave scandal," he fumed, "confusing the faithful about the Church’s unequivocal teaching on the sanctity of human life."
Oremus!
At this early point in the pontificate we need to ask ourselves: are we all suitably and dutifully alarmed, and prayerfully engaged on Leo's behalf? Because the moral and doctrinal whitewashing facilitated through via media fuzziness, now embodied in the Pope, knows no bounds. In recent times it has even effaced sodomy from the Bible: specifically the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition, which the U.S. bishops list as an approved translation. Therein, instead of "liers with mankind" or "sinners against nature" one now reads "men who engage in illicit sex" (1Cor.6:9) — for us, satanic deception; for Leo, godly 'inclusion.' Pray for him.