There are many people in the orbit of Catholic traditionalism who want to see hope in the pontificate of Leo XIV for the resolution of the very dire problems facing the Church, most obviously the ongoing attempt to wipe out that movement. No doubt, Leo is a much better human being than his predecessor, but as I have written elsewhere, I don’t think he is going to be solving any of the Church’s long-term problems in his pontificate. And if such were to happen, I am pretty certain it will have little to do with him. More to the point, even if he does not share all of his immediate predecessor’s opinions, he seems careful not to do anything to disrupt Francis’ legacy too much. I am aware that he has reversed several decisions made by the last pontiff with regards to the administration of Rome and the Vatican, and that he has recently removed Mauro Gambetti as Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, where he had been since 2021 and who has been an opponent of the Latin Mass, among other things. All this is good and does say something positive about Leo XIV.
But these are largely cosmetic changes, and do not address the very real problem of how entrenched the “Bergoglians” are in the high rungs of the Church hierarchy. Not that I am exactly sure who the “Bergoglians” are other than they all owe their position to the former pope. Not all Bergoglians are progressives necessarily and he didn’t give them everything they wanted while he reigned. But they are definitely allied and they operate much in the same way to undermine the Church’s teachings on sexuality and other fundamental matters, whatever their differences.
I am also not convinced that their assaults on Catholic tradition are the result of fervent modernist conviction. Most people act on short term, immediate desires and designs rather than abstract ideas, and that includes churchmen. Especially with regards to the Latin Mass and the war on traditionalists there is probably a compromise in place with a new pope as Joseph Shaw has pointed out. What Shaw says about the lack of rationale for Traditiones Custodes and the effort to ban the old mass applies to a great deal of what goes on in the Church I would imagine. I have no knowledge of anything in the Vatican, obviously, but it feels like to me the idea is that, since John Paul II and Benedict XVI got their turn to “implement the Council” the progs must have theirs, and this for some reason must extend to two pontificates. But make no mistake, the punishments meted out to the trads (and yes, I include the SSPX in this) are as much about personal score settling as they are about belief. Francis’ pontificate was about score settling in many ways, though that does not seem to be something Leo likes to indulge in. We all know how much some people hated John Paul II for stopping the worst abuses of the immediate post-Conciliar era when he became Pontiff. Italian prelates in particular hated Benedict for liberalizing access to the old mass and therefore undermining the new liturgy, which some Italian clergy see as their great achievement. Don’t get me wrong–I am certain some of these people are quite motivated by progressive theological ideas–but you should never underestimate the role of personal animosity in human affairs.
What is certain is that many of those Francis appointed are well ensconced in the power structures of the Church. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, former housemate of Theodore McCarrick, is still prefect for the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life. Gerhardt Marx is part of the Council of Cardinals and was recently named as head of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, whatever that is. He also reportedly meets with Leo XIV on a weekly basis. Cardinals Cupich and Tobin are members of the Dicastery for Bishops, which means they will be determining what type of bishops the Dicastery will select in the US for the near future. At the Dicastery for Divine Worship, Roche is not a true Bergoglian but his secretary, Vittorio Viola is, and tried to convince Francis to completely ban the Latin Mass toward the end of his pontificate. Meanwhile Cardinal Fernandez is still ensconced at the DDF and planning to assault the Catholic intellectual tradition with a new document on the transmission of the faith. Sister Simona Brambilla is still the head of the Dicastery for Religious, while Cardinal Hollerich is still on the Council of Cardinals, as well as being involved with the never-ending Synod on Synodality, which he insists is now “irreversible.” Cardinal Grech of Malta, who vigorously defended Amoris Laetitia, is still the Secretary General for the Synod of Bishops. Cardinal Robert McElroy, Francis’ pick for the see of Washington D.C., is still pushing to normalize homosexual behavior and promote left wing policies on issues like immigration. Finally, for the moment, Cardinal Parolin is still head of the Secretariat of State, though some have speculated Leo might replace him, as he is only a few years away from retirement. There are so many of these people still in office I honestly have forgotten about some of them and had to look them up.
I am not really sure what to make of Leo XIV at this point, though he is clearly a “post-conciliar” pope who agrees with the basic tenet of most “post-Conciliar” Catholic leaders, which is that tolerating heresy and unbelief is a small price to pay for peace in the Church and with contemporary society. Anything else would risk serious conflicts erupting, and that appears to be why the conclave elected him, to contain any potential conflicts while the progressive faction has its day in the sun. I don’t think Leo is a bad man, but his seminary formation took place in the 1970s just as the post-Conciliar chaos was dying down and that experience forms the basis of his theological vision. Things like praising the Augsburg Confession while treating Latin Mass Catholics as inherently suspect does not appear incongruent to Catholic leaders of that generation and is not something he will think twice about. I am reviewing a book of his homilies and other writings for another publication, and I can say that he is much, much less adventurous when it comes to Church teaching than his predecessor. But he also views everything–and I mean everything–through the lens of Vatican II and the reforms that followed the Council. That is the common ground pretty much every prelate in the Catholic Church shares at the moment, and the very thing which makes traditionalists suspect to the hierarchy, since they reject this (I mean seeing everything through the lens of the Council, NOT the Council itself).
The upshot of this is that the defenestration of the trads and the assault on the Church’s traditions in favor of heterodoxy (or worse) and endless bureaucratic “processes” is not going to end any time soon. The hierarchy is a liberal as it has ever been in some ways and given the kind of men the Church ordained up through the 1980s, that is not surprising. Unfortunately, I think we are just entering the high tide of “the crisis” or whatever you want to call it, and it will not end until the generations of priests who do not owe their position to Vatican II or the reforms that followed it gain positions of authority. The hour of Bergoglians will not last forever and can’t since none of their schemes can attract enough adherents to perpetuate them. But until then, traditionalists are going to have to hold on and cleave to Christ with all their might.