Leo XIV’s August 20 general audience on Judas reads like a sentimental Hallmark meditation. He extols Jesus offering the morsel of bread to the betrayer as proof that “true forgiveness does not await repentance, but offers itself first.” The problem is that this is not Catholic doctrine but modernist therapy-speak.
Gulp.
The Catholic faith teaches that forgiveness is tied to repentance. Our Lord told the Apostles: “If thy brother sin against thee, rebuke him: and if he do penance, forgive him” (Lk 17:3).
Clear enough.
Grace is not license, and mercy does not negate justice. Yet Leo twists the scene of Judas into a parable of unconditional acceptance, suggesting God’s love frees the sinner even when he persists in betrayal.
Does he know what he is doing?
This is the same logic that has justified Communion for the divorced and “blessings” for same-sex couples.
Judas is rehabilitated as the patron saint of Vatican II pastoral theology.
From this we gather:
Leo’s “catechesis” is . . . a sermon without the Cross. Evil is acknowledged only as a backdrop for love’s triumph, not as an objective rupture requiring conversion. It is Christ as life coach, not Christ as Judge.
His Aug, 17 sermon?
. . . Our Lord speaks . . . of division, fire, contradiction . . . [what] His coming brings . . . But instead of affirming that Christ came to separate truth from error and sheep from goats, Leo transformed the passage into yet another warm meditation on being “good people” misunderstood by the world.
Martyrs died for the eternal truth of the matter? No, they “simply bore witness to ‘love’ when they shed their blood.”
Parents say “no” to their children, teachers labor honestly, politicians act with integrity: all noble but natural virtues that could be preached by any civic leader.
That’s good people for you.
Leo . . .
. . . manages to evade the entire scandal of the Gospel: Christ came to divide, not to harmonize, to pit truth against falsehood, to call down fire that purges and judges.
In Leo’s gloss, the fire becomes little more than moral perseverance dressed up with a pious bow.
No. Big. Deal.
He had lunch.
After Mass in Albano Laziale, Leo hosted lunch with the poor and Caritas volunteers. Waiters in pressed white shirts served vegetable lasagna, veal, and fruit salad beneath awnings in the papal gardens. The message was simple: break bread, see God’s image in every person, live fraternity.
No Catholic would deny the duty of charity or the dignity of the poor. But here, once again, the supernatural is flattened into sociological pleasantries.
Like a civic leader, he’s allergic to things supernatural.
“To be together is to live with God,” he declared. But grace does not flow from fellowship, but from the altar of sacrifice . . . baptismal regeneration, objective channels instituted by Christ.
It’s as if he’s loath to lay on the papal part, or so it seems . . .
Blithe Spirit 