WHAT ARE THE PRESSING ISSUES THAT POPE LEO XIV NEEDS TO ADDRESS?

Wisely, Pope Leo is taking His Holiness’ time to decide how he will steer the Barque of St. Peter. It’s a huge barque that from bow to stern reaches the ends of the earth.

It is wise for His Holiness to take about a year before he addresses the major issues facing the Church and the World, the two inextricably linked as is the humanity and divinity of Christ. 

So, in my most humble way, let me offer some suggestions of what needs to be addressed:

1. World peace is crucial as it seems we are heading to a kind of piecemeal 3rd World War. Because of the abortion industry and lack of empathy for the most innocent of human life, all life is in jeopardy due to the idea that killing the innocent and guilty is a good thing. We are numb to it perhaps because we feel helpless to do anything so big and wide as is the abortion industry and linked to that in terms of profits, the war industry. 

2. Unity in the Church, in particular the Latin or Roman Rite is needed. But first, it must be acknowledged that the cause of the great polarization in the Church is the misrepresentation and misinterpretation of the Second Vatican Council by the heterodox left in order to create a different Church disconnected from what preceded the Second Vatican Council. Pope Leo needs to acknowledge this, apologize for it and continue the great agenda of Pope Benedict XVI to interpret the Second Vatican Council in continuity with what preceded that Council and linked to all other Ecumenical Councils. Everything that a “liberal/political” approach that has touched institutional aspects of the Church from the priesthood, to religious life to the Mass and evangelization has been a complete failure. And apology for that, or a sign of repentance and a new path in continuity with the past are necessary.

3. Traditionis Custodis was and is a mistake. First, it is completely unpastoral. Second, it is poorly written. Third it contains lies and deceit. It enabled and enables spiritual abuse of Catholics who became attached to the Older Rites of the Church through the liberal permission of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Thus, forth, it contradicts two great popes in terms of their Liturgical Magisterium. Pope Leo should apologize to those unjustly treated by TC, first, the two great popes it contradicts and second to all those who embraced the Older Rites while still respecting the proper celebrations of the newer rites. Schismatic tending Catholics on the heterodox right or left should be called out and called to orthodoxy within the Church and in union with the pope and bishops in union with him. 

4. Synodality is misunderstood by 99% of Catholics throughout the world. They not only don’t know what it is, they could care less. The 1% who understand it know what they are doing—the continued deconstruction of the Roman Catholic Church into something different, liberal and Liberal Protestant-like, aka, the Anglican Communion’s disfunctions and debacles. Pope Leo needs to clarify what synodality is and what its goals are, heterodoxy or orthodoxy, Christ-centered or worldly-centered?

5. The development of doctrine and the Sense of the Faithful, will the Church take Saint John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church approach or the way of the heterodox left’s desire to change doctrine and dogma and call this development rather that reversal? Fiduccia Supplicans is touted as a development of the the theology of blessings but it is a nonsense document pertaining to non-liturgical blessings, but it is also the nose of the camel in the tent to change the sexual morality of the Church leading to the blessing of illicit sexual unions by a variety of ideological ways in which people embrace sex and use people for it.