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A Little Perspective on Pope Leo XIV

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JMJ

By Edgar Beltrán / The Pillar - https://x.com/edgarjbb_/status/1920590815472108021, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=165004058


The Catholic Church has a new Vicar of Christ.  

As discussed in my short series "Who's in Charge?", we know that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost has been elected as Vicar of Christ in the recent conclave, taken the name Pope Leo XIV, and been accepted by the moral unanimity of Bishops and faithful in union with the Catholic Church.

Roberto de Mattei has written an article for Rorate Caeili (RORATE CÆLI: Leo XIV and the Future of the Church - by Roberto de Mattei) that delves into some aspects of this major event in the life of the Catholic Church.

The Pope has addressed the Cardinals and made clear some of his thoughts:

In this regard, I would like us to renew together today our complete commitment to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis masterfully and concretely set it forth in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, from which I would like to highlight several fundamental points: 

  1. the return to the primacy of Christ in proclamation (cf. No. 11);
  2. the missionary conversion of the entire Christian community (cf. No. 9);
  3. growth in collegiality and synodality (cf. No. 33);
  4. attention to the sensus fidei (cf. Nos. 119-120), especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, such as popular piety (cf. No. 123);
  5. loving care for the least and the rejected (cf. No. 53);
  6. courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities (cf. No. 84; Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 1-2).

I assume that many will ... basically point at this phrase and say, "See ...", not understanding what they are reading or even seeing. 

My response is 'so what?'.  

We've been enduring the identity crisis of the Catholic Church for over a hundred years.  I've traced its earliest days to the times of Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII. The fact that Pope Leo XIV has taken the name of the one of the earliest Popes to fight this particular battle, makes me wonder if his name successor will signal the beginning of the end.

Sensing myself called to continue in this same path, I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.

I believe that the present crisis of the Catholic Church was birthed as "Liberalism" and that Modernism is simply the child and Neo Modernism its grand-child.

How Pope Leo XIV will address this crisis will be clear in his actions and I believe that clarity on this will take some months. 

So, watch and wait to see how he treats:

  • Diocesan Traditional Catholics
  • Former Eccelsia Dei congregations
  • The Fraternal Society of St. Pius the Tenth
  • The Tridentine Mass
  • The Dogmas and Doctrines of the Catholic Church
His actions will speak far louder than his words.

P^3


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