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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
The Catholic Church has had the great misfortune of having elected two modern popes who identify with Latin America.
Francis, who was Italian, identified as Argentinean and embraced Latin American liberation theology, a Marxist doctrine posing as concern for the poor and the “oppressed” while circumventing the Church’s primary mission concerning the salvation of souls.
Because cantankerous Francis liked to make a show of his humility, he opted to forgo living at the official papal residence, the Apostolic Palace, instead taking a so-called modest apartment in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a building where cardinals stay during papal conclaves. This move enhanced the myth of the man’s humility although this fact was recently revealed to be a lie.
Catholic podcaster John-Henry Westen’s interview with Rome professor, theologian, and mariologist Dr. William Anthony Thomas, sheds light on Francis’s decision to not live in the Apostolic Palace as having nothing to do with humility but everything to do with his hatred of former popes and long-standing papal traditions.
Ironically, Francis’s “humble” apartment, according to Thomas, contained an entire floor of the building – larger space than the Apostolic Palace – and his move there prevented anyone else from living in the building. Thomas also recounts that by the end of his papacy, some $26 million dollars had been spent on this special living arrangement.
The theologian also reported that the only publication Francis read on a daily basis was a Communist publication – this alone is pretty shocking – and that his vision and obsession of a new Synodal Church came from Justin Welby, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury from 2013 to 2025. The Synodal Church idea, says Thomas, was concocted when Welby met Francis for a special meeting.
That meeting caused a bit of a scandal among real Catholics when Francis knelt before the Anglican archbishop and asked for his blessing, in effect canceling out what the Catholic Church has always believed: that Anglican religious orders are invalid.
In other words, Francis received a fake blessing from a fake archbishop as the two of them came up with an even bigger fake idea: a Synodal Church based on conversations, listening, and feelings rather than the old biblical notions of sin and personal accountability.
When Francis was Cardinal-Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he waged a holy war against many forms of traditional Catholicism, while simultaneously posing as a peoples’ bishop who rode the subway to work every day. In Latin American liberation theology, the concept of the worker-priest meant less emphasis on being a priest and more emphasis on working to improve the conditions of the impoverished; one thinks of Peace Corp volunteers although many worker-priests ditched priestly cassocks for worker costumes and a cocked beret reminiscent of Che Guevara.
Fast forward to Leo XIV, the first American pope, educated at a minimalist Catholic university, Villanova, noted for its obsession with sports teams and weekend frat parties. Leo, once known as Robert Prevost, had a long tenure as a missionary in Peru and, from what I can see, returned to the United States a changed man.
When Catholic clerics spend any time in Latin America they almost always come back radicalized to some degree. This is no reflection on the people of Latin America. What it reflects is the ideological component of the Church’s mission there, when fighting poverty and for social justice replaces the greater message of the gospel.
This perversion eats away at the ‘Catholic’ soul and gives birth to what one might call the quasi-Catholic priest with a soft spot for communism.
Leo is definitely a quasi-Catholic of the new Synodal Way. This is the new Catholic Church slowly being built from the Anglican template promulgated by Justin Welby. The Synodal Catholic Church is not the Catholic Church of history and apostolic times, but a new worm-filled creation, divorced from tradition and the Church Fathers. It is a new religion based on feelings and sentimentality where the concept of personal sin is minimized or ignored.
Robert Prevost was brought to power by a cabal of progressive cardinals bent on carrying forth the heresies of Pope Francis. Immediately after his election, Prevost-as-Leo declared he was going to continue the mission and reforms of Francis, or the new Synodal Way: Papa Bergoglio would be his lord and master, not Jesus Christ. Leo would be a copycat pope with no vision of his own.
Would Bergoglio approve? What would Bergoglio do?
Bergoglio idolatry has come to define Pope Leo XIV’s papacy and most Vatican bureaucrats.
Note, also, that the cardinals who elected Leo came under scrutiny recently when Msgr. Marco Agostini, who for more than 16 years served as the Vatican’s pontifical master of ceremonies, described them in an off-moment before a hot mike: “They are faggots, all together.”
The contested hot mike moment was captured by a progressive, rainbow-bracelet wearing Catholic blogger who then published the comment on the Italian blog, Silere Non Possum. The publication resulted in the removal of Msgr. Agostini, who served under three popes.
It was Pope Francis who set a precedent regarding the use of that slur. He said the word while commenting that there were too many liberal priests in the Church and then apologized. While he was “forgiven,” Agostini was fired. The so-called Holy See has not commented on Agostini’s removal; it’s also doubtful that the weak Villanova grad on the Throne of Peter will say anything about it, either.
The disposal of Agostini is a valuable lesson when it comes to knowing who’s in charge at the Vatican.
It’s been estimated that up to 70% of Catholic bishops and cardinals are gay, and while gay may not be a “bad” thing when it comes to the general population, when it’s a building block of the Catholic hierarchy it becomes politicized and merges with a progressive agenda that has only one aim: the creation of the new Synodal Catholic Church, the fake Catholic Church that many Catholic mystics of old predicted would eclipse the historic Church.
While the dismissal of Msgr. Agostini didn’t generate a lot of publicity – it was a main feature on the Catholic podcast, Return to Tradition – Pope Leo’s comments on President Trump’s capture of Venezuelan dictator Maduro and his wife went viral.
They went viral because the media loves him when he challenges President Trump. In many ways, Leo the mega-mouth won’t shut up. He gives too many off-the-cuff interviews. His lips start moving automatically whenever a microphone is thrust in his face.
About that capture, Leo said:
“The good of the beloved Venezuelan people must prevail over every other consideration and lead us to overcome violence and to undertake paths of justice and peace, safeguarding the country’s sovereignty, ensuring the rule of law enshrined in the Constitution, respecting the human and civil rights of each person and of all, and working to build together a serene future of collaboration, stability, and concord, with special attention to the poorest…”
‘Overcome violence’ can be read as a reference to Trump for taking Maduro out by force; ‘safeguarding the country’s sovereignty,’ can be read as giving respect to a dictator not democratically elected; ‘ensuring the rule of law enshrined in the Constitution,’ makes no mention of the Monroe Doctrine, “once ranked with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the pantheon of American reverence,” according to historian, Gaddis Smith.
Notice Leo’s choice of empty words like “collaboration, stability, and concord,” which would never apply to a dictatorship. Then there’s the big Francis-Leo-worker-priest obsession: “…With special attention to the poorest who suffer….”
Yet not one word on how President Trump saved Venezuela and gave it a second chance to become the great democracy it once was.
Hey Nickels. You’re on the right track. Cullitomi tutti insieme is the new war cry. And it is a war.
So the Globalists have now ideologically captured the Pope ? Why would anyone be surprised as their long march through the institutions included the Vatican – why wouldn’t it as the liberal zeitgeist affects virtually everyone
The new bishops of this “open, walking-together-with, and empathetic” Synodal church are closed minded authoritarian bullies who RELISH trampling upon the sensitivities of traditional Catholics. They harbor a hatred of the Tridentine Mass that rivals the abhorrence felt for it by the early Protestant leaders.
I knew the church was being ruined when they change the words at mass all the time after they stayed the same for centuries. No longer have prayer books.
What else could or should be expected from a counterfeit Christian church of modern day Pharisees.
If the Catholic Church was ever the Church of Jesus Christ, it was very long ago. It has been a theocracy for over a thousand years and wants nothing to do with the Gospel of Christ. The Pope is totally political and has nothing to do with God.
It is not, and never has been or they would not be praying to Mary.
Actually, it’s been a theocracy since the Council of Nicea. That’s when Catholicism really started.
My memory goes back to the 60s or 70s, I can’t place the date and I’m too old for the research that is needed. However about that time we suddenly had dropped on us by the Bishop’s in Australia the concept of “social justice.“ This bears almost no relation to Christ message. The practical result of this Alice in Wonderland excursion is that they set the prayers of the faithful each Sunday. And each Sunday we get a load of cobblers about the suffering poor of Palestine etc. The bishop’s conference really got a kick along with the election of Francis.
The problem for the bishops was that Christ proved himself by the curing of the sick and the raising of the dead. The Bishops knew that they couldn’t do anything individually about curing the sick, they couldn’t do anything about mechanical progress in manufacturing, their grounding in particle science is nil, but workers rights is a free for all where no actual knowledge is required. The previous Pope Leo’s message was directed against the sin of hypocrisy when he annunciated the principle that you cannot give in ‘charity’ what is due in wages.
Thom Nickels has done a service by pulling no punches regarding the “synodal” Church, which I as a traditional Catholic, would call the Jacobin Church of Satan. The fanatical Robespierre and his murderous associates used the guillotine to try to bring about a Rousseau-inspired godless utopia on earth. The Jacobins like Robespierre failed, of course, just as the Vatican II gang of prelates and popes will fail. Since the 1960s, the hierarchy of the Vatican has been chopping away sound Catholic doctrine and the Tridentine Latin Mass to form a one world “new” global fake religion which will be of this world, and not of God.
I don’t know any traditional Catholic who regularly attends the largely suppressed Latin Mass who doesn’t strongly suspect that we are now well into The Great Apostasy leading up to the appearance of Antichrist. In the end, however, Christ will triumph and the synodal church and its leaders and adherents will be pitched into hell.
I recall Catholic Mass and education from the 1950s forward. The Latin Mass was reverence defined. Later in life I had the incredible experience of meeting Pope/Saint John Paul II, holding his hand one-on-one and – for my part – babbling for about a minute. It remains the most incredible, spiritually uplifting experience of my 80+ years of life. Lest we sweep all post-WWII pontiffs into one basket.
He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind!
I don’t know who you are or where you came from. I don’t even know if you are Catholic. I suspect that you aren’t or if you are you are very poorly catechized. Filled with innuendo and upsubstantiated comments. It’s a waste of my time to read it and go any further.
All the Catholic educational facilities and churches which I grew up with in southern New England are gone, with the exception of St. Anselm’s College, Manchester, NH, which is my alma mater. The President’s Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt is a graduate. The church and family, as we knew it, a great generation of folks with the same American and religious ideals is dead. In 2023, Jose Antonio Ureta of Chile and Julio Loredo de IzCue of Peru wrote a 100 page dissertation: The Synodal Process is a Pandora’s Box.. Synodality has no history in the doctrine of the Church. Renewal of the Church requires adherence and faith in the Apostolic Tradition. The Synod called by Pope Francis, a communist, in my opinion, called for reform of Holy Mother, the Church which would subvert its very foundations, using the term “conversion” as if the Church had been on the wrong path. Francis’ objective was to make the Church a democratic and decentralized community. . Sin and accountability were the messages of Jesus Christ, Not so with Pope Leo. He was more influenced by his missionary stay in South America than he is by the Declaration and the Constitution. he is an historical illiterate.
Never a Roman Catholic, and I converted from Protestantism to eastern Orthodoxy without ever considering RC.
FAR too many bad popes.
Roman Catholicism is not Christianity. And their Jesus is not the Biblical Jesus. And Mary was just a human being with all the sinful nature as the rest of us, she can never be the C0-Mediatrix of anything or anyone. Trans-substantiation is foolishness, Purgatory is not mentioned once in the Bible, and Indulgences are a scam. Praying to Saints is idol worship, as is the reverence for relics, dead mens bones.
The Roman Catholicism hates Protestantism because it allows ordinary people like me to actually read the Bible in a language I can understand and form my own opinions. Don’t forget, the Papacy has tried for over a thousand years to prevent the peasants, like me, from reading the Bible let alone owning a copy in my own language. Thank God for the invention of the Press and people like Tyndale who printed and distributed the Bible to ordinary citizens throughout Europe.
The history of Roman Catholicism is one of torture and death, often by the most cruel methods. Jan Huss, William Tyndale and others were murdered because they wouldn’t bow down to the Papacy; heresy, which is just like ‘Wrong-Think’ in George Orwell’s book 1984. They killed thousands for wrong-think, and nothing in their doctrine has changed over the past 1300 years. Nothing, it’s just that they haven’t yet regained enough power to begin the Inquisition all over again. But that’s their intention and the Jesuits will never stop plotting to bring it about.
AMEN! I fell away from the Church after reading David L. Yallop’s book “In God’s Name” – his examination into the murder of Pope John-Paul the First. Drove home the point that the Vatican is more a sovereign nation than a faith.
Whoa – if reading a book by a sort-of-Catholic – in which the author “posited” that Pope John Paul I was found dead soon after becoming pope in 1978, had been poisoned by Masons who had infiltrated the Vatican and the Vatican Bank – caused you to change your faith, then such faith seems never to have been anchored in much of anything except perhaps for an envy of some sort of commentorial notariety.
Protestants have how many churches now which makes me wonder what are they searching for.
Catholics believe Mary was of human flesh as we are and chosen by Almighty God to give birth to Jesus Christ who would die for our sins on the Cross. We all sin every day so as sinners we cannot enter the gates of Heaven before our souls are purified hence no matter if you refer to it as purgatory or something else we will all go thru cleansing before entering the gates of Heaven.
Catholics also believe that learned persons should gather to interpret the Holy Bible rather than those who may be very uneducated or want their own watered down version.
Protestants have how many churches now which makes me wonder what are they searching for.
Catholics believe Mary was of human flesh as we are and chosen by Almighty God to give birth to Jesus Christ who would die for our sins on the Cross. We all sin every day so as sinners we cannot enter the gates of Heaven before our souls are purified hence no matter if you refer to it as purgatory or something else we will all go thru cleansing before entering the gates of Heaven.
Catholics also believe that learned persons should gather to interpret the Holy Bible rather than those who may be very uneducated or want their own watered down version.
The denial of the priesthood in the Catholic Church to those who have received the Sacrament of Marriage has resulted in the sexual abuse of thousands of our youth, trauma to their families and the ensuing closures of hundreds, if not thousands of Churches – The Bride of Christ.
For many, celibacy, like liberalism, has become a “mental disease”.
The wives of married priests would have blown the whistle on the perps a long time ago – women don’t miss much.
When Pope Francis’s first encyclical (spelling? I’m not Catholic) was about ‘climate change’ instead of the persecution and slaughter of Christians in more than 1 country in North Africa, is when I started saying, “Is the Pope Catholic?” Answer – NO. And have been saying the same thing about Pope Leo. Tragic.
The Pope is a Catholic. It’s just that he’s not a Christian. Big difference.
No, he’s not a catholic, nor a Christian. He’s the head of the Roman church. There is only one “Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic” church, which clings to the Prophetic & Apostolic doctrine of the Word of God, which the roman church abandoned long ago in favor of rationalism.
One of the things that strikes me about the current church is they go on about Christ forgiving people, so we should too. But the current church leaves out the part where Christ said” go and sin no more” .
To the woman taken in adultery, Christ did not say ” Your sins are forgiven. You do you” He said ” Your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more ” It seems the only sin church recognizes today is the very concept of sin.