Many religious and secular pundits, including most humble bloggers like me, have been touting Pope Leo as a breath of fresh air after the papal chaos of the last 12 years.
Nearly 100 days as the Supreme Pontiff, a term His Holiness does not askew, we pundits are trying to predict what Pope Leo’s papacy will be when he starts making real decisions about his Curia, encyclicals he will write and if pastoral theology will trump defined dogmas and doctrines by using the synodal way to deconstruct the Deposit of Faith and Morals or return the synod to true Catholicity and orthodoxy.
Pope Leo has visually brought back to the Church the proper look of the papacy, the formality that is needed for so great an office and unashamed of the papal protocols that Leo is recovering.
Yet, like Pope Francis, Leo maintains a common touch even though far more formal than Francis.
Faithful Catholics who love the papacy, are happy to see that Pope Leo XIV refers back to so many of his predecessors in his homilies and speeches. He has certainly quoted many popes of the pre-Vatican II period and constantly refers to St. Augustine.
But Pope Leo refers to Pope Francis often in his homilies and speeches. That is a good thing. We need popes to be in agreement with previous popes and not contradict them or overturn them. This will be a delicate task for Pope Leo in regard to Pope Francis who acted as though the Church began with him and often quoted himself in important written texts.
We know that Pope Francis contradicted so much of the two previous papacies before him. This was horrible as well as contradicting the look of the papacy and the formality of papal protocols.
Pope Leo is not a far right heterodox and he certainly isn’t a far left heterodox. He is orthodox and thus Catholic and accepts all the ecumenical councils of the Church, including Vatican II, as all orthodox Catholics do.
Right now Pope Leo has brought calm to the papacy and the Church.
But the honeymoon will soon be over. Pope Leo will have to make hard decisions and sometimes he will have to discipline bishops for their heterodoxy. The biggest headache that Pope Leo has isn’t from the heterodox right, but those on the heterodox left in Germany, which includes bishops, some cardinals, and large swaths of clergy, religious and laity. Even calling this part of the German Church heterodox left is weak. They have become post-Catholic, something neither Catholic nor Protestant, something pagan.
A calm pope doesn’t mean a strong pope. In the Church today, we need a strong pope, who can demand that the heterodox left and the heterodox right become orthodox and accept the Magisterium of the Church and her ancient Scripture and Tradition as well as the ancient Deposit of Faith and Morals.
The development of doctrine and dogma is always orthodox and never contradicts those doctrines and dogmas.
Pastoral theology that doesn’t call for repentance, conversion and unity with the Church, meaning the pope and bishops in union with him, even in a synodal way, is not orthodox, its heterodox. Pastoral theology that doesn’t warn the sinner of the consequences of loving their sins and sinful lifestyles more than God and His Church is heterodox.
Are we going to be heterodox or orthodox under Pope Leo’s pastoral care and theology? I’m placing my money on orthodoxy.
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