We Catholics have had a few days since Thursday to reflect on the appointment of our new leader Pope Leo XIV. The cardinals have flown home, St Peter’s Square is less crowded and tourists will be back in the Vatican Museum surreptitiously photographing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The election was mercifully quick, Cardinal Robert Prevost chose a significant Papal moniker. Reflecting one of our greatest popes who established a significant aspect of Catholic social teaching with Rerum Novarum (1891) on the proper relationship between capital and labour, his demeanour and mode of address when he appeared on the Vatican balcony were encouraging.
However, all we can really conclude so far is: habemus quendam (we have someone). Time will tell what Pope Leo’s agenda is. Of course, reformists wish for more reforms of the kind Pope Francis was instituting. These were mainly around greater acceptance of people formerly marginalised by the Church such as gays and divorcees, an emphasis on social justice and an obsession with climate change.
Those of us at the traditional end of the spectrum (many would consider us to be ‘on the spectrum’) are mainly concerned about the future of the pre-1969 traditional Latin Mass. While there is evidence that he is a reformer in the mould of Pope Francis – who appointed him cardinal – we are yet to learn what he thinks about the traditional Latin Mass which his predecessor was so eager to wipe out.
Like recent popes and nearly every bishop across the world, he will have to run the gauntlet of accusations about ‘turning a blind eye’ to evidence that priests under his authority were engaged in child abuse. It remains to be seen how much such accusations will dog him. Undoubtedly, Catholic bishops have often managed such accusations badly. But it is also the case that even when dealt with it is never soon enough or harsh enough for the victims. I imagine he will survive such accusations, as did Pope Francis.
Another major plank in the thinking of the previous incumbent was migration. Not, as should be the case, concern about such migration, but a seemingly unquestioning belief that all migrants are equal and all must be met with kindness, hospitality and a fast track to citizenship wherever they choose to land. Over the weekend, articles emerged in the media and in political magazines revealing Pope Leo’s overt criticism via his X feed of Donald Trump and his co-religionist, J.D. Vance. The criticism was related to their attitude to mass migration and their desire to tighten border security.
Vance’s riposte was that there was an order in which we should show care and concern (ordo amoris). Ordo amoris, formulated by St Augustine, suggests a concentric approach to love. One where “our love for God should be supreme, followed by love for our family and then outwards to our community, nation, and ultimately, the rest of the world. It’s not about loving some more than others, but about prioritising our love in a way that reflects God’s will and the nature of our relationships”.
This cut no ice with Bishop Prevost, who said: “J.D. Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” Reluctant as I am to contradict a bishop, especially one who is now Pope, I think that Pope Leo will find that, while ‘rank’ may not have been the best word for J.D. Vance to use, he may be wrong. To invert the ordo amoris surely verges on hypocrisy. After all, we all know social justice warriors, religious and social reformers who will take to the streets or enter a debate while their families are neglected.
I wonder if we can expect a relaxation in the rules about who can enter the Vatican City and an opening of the gates and the Vatican coffers – estimated between $10-15 billion – to refugees under our new Pope? I expect not.
Nobody, J.D. Vance included I am sure, would say that we must hate, ignore or persecute migrants. And none but the most xenophobic would say that we must never accept anyone within our borders who is genuinely fleeing persecution or death. But, just as the ordo amoris should prioritise our concerns, surely also there is an order in which we should show our concern for migrants. Those genuinely seeking asylum should be our priority; those simply looking for a better life should be considered. But if it is to the detriment of our society – culturally, socially or economically – then there must be a limit.
Our recent and present popes seemed incapable of such nuanced thinking, instructing the faithful to accept migrants in their midst unquestioningly, without apparent limit and without considering the consequences. Well, popes past and present, that was precisely the attitude we took in the UK for decades, with disastrous consequences for many cities and communities. One tangible outcome has been the industrial levels of rape of young, mainly white, girls by predominantly Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs.
Nevertheless, something must underlie the senior churchmen’s uncommon emphasis on a passive approach to migration and an active, loving approach to migrants. It is noticeable that, while much has been made of Pope Leo’s US birth and citizenship, both Pope Francis and Pope Leo have strong roots in South America. While a large proportion of migrants to the US – legal and illegal – come from Mexico and other countries such as India and China contribute many migrants, a large proportion of undocumented (i.e., illegal) migrants arrive from South America.
Could it be that our popes have a vested interest in seeing mass migration from south to north on the American continent? While declining, Roman Catholicism remains, at 54%, the majority religion across South America. In Mexico the proportion of Roman Catholics is 78%. Perhaps their unquestioning approach to migration and attacks on those who try to limit it is part of a hope to turn the US, currently only 22% Roman Catholic, into a Catholic country.
While there may, therefore, be some method in their madness regarding mass migration, popes clearly need to observe what is happening in the UK and across Europe. There is certainly a religious ‘revival’ of sorts. But it is one that is to the detriment of Christianity generally and may have consequences for Roman Catholicism. I am referring, of course, to the Islamification of our society. If Pope Leo XIV is content to overlook that, then he is either not listening to or not being properly informed by his Bishops.
However, our popes are not alone in advocating on behalf of migrants. This includes some bishops close to home. Former Archbishop Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster advocated for undocumented migrants and current incumbent, Cardinal Nichols, has criticised the government over its response, which he considers inadequate, to migrants and refugees. Of course, this may well be a sentiment driven by Christian compassion. But compassion is cheap, especially when other people are paying for it.
Dr Roger Watson is Professor of Nursing at Saint Francis University, Hong Kong SAR, China. He has a PhD in biochemistry. He writes in a personal capacity.
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The crucial point is surely this: “compassion is cheap, especially when other people are paying for it”
I’m not at all Christian or charitable, but those who are genuinely so are free to behave like this. But they want to impose it on us.
Compulsion is not compassion. Compelling people to be drowned in a flood of immigrants is not compassionate to them, and being coerced to accept people is not a voluntary act so it isn’t compassion
Indeed. I believe Christians believe that God leaves us all free to choose salvation or not.
I guess the Pope could urge voters to vote for “compassionate” parties in elections, always assuming that you believe it’s not immoral to use the coercive power of the state to force people to accept policies that have been “democratically agreed to”. As I’ve said before I believe the state should have very limited powers, deciding to let a new population in without the overwhelming support of the existing population should not be one of them.
How about some compassion for our fellow citizens who will see their taxes rise or even lose their jobs as a result.
Indeed – again if you want to be “compassionate” to people then do it with your own resources and don’t steal mine to do it.
^This.
Charitable giving by our government is not charity. They’ve taken our tax money and spent it so as to make themselves look good on the international ‘stage’.
I wouldn’t mind government coordinating charitable giving (though I’d rather they concentrated on the day job first), but the donations from us should be entirely voluntary.
DOGE was right to eviscerate USAID.
This is worth watching, on this subject: Antonin Scalia, Is Capitalism or Socialism More Conducive to Christian Virtue? 09/06/2013
The Italians gave a splendid expression: it’s easy to be gay with someone else’s arse.
Ah, I’d not come across that. What’s the Italian? I thought I was fluent especially in swearing. Maybe it’s regional?
È facile essere finocchio con il culo qualc’uno altro.
Bello!
Can the Pope tell us how many refugees there are staying in his palace?
Leo XIV is a globalist apparatchik appointed to advance the destruction of the West via mad mass unlimited immigration (MMUI). Notice that the globalists only ever advocate MMUI for white-majority countries. Notice that the globalists make no distinction between good immigrants and bad immigrants. Notice that when we protest about the rape and murder of our country’s children as a result of MMUI, then we become “racists” (according to the globalists). Notice that only white people can be “racist”. And so on.
Indeed. The CC is paid for open borders. Multi millions in every state at play. They cover it with various nice words, but it is big business.
Same with the Rona Fascism. CC was paid to play along. So they did.
I am a Catholic and have no time for Frank, and probably none for Leo, though I will give him a chance. The fact that he was chosen pretty quickly likely gives the globalist game away.
“Why Are Popes so Soft on Migration?”
Because they have a wall around their Country and an army of mercenaries to keep people out?
‘More caring’ should mean countries taking care of their own populations, rather than exporting them into foreign cultures, where freedom of expression, freedom to disagree, and freedom to offend is accepted as part of a civilised society.
No it isn’t but the Anglo-American empire is about to go down and there are global food shortages coming in the next few weeks. A combination of the collapse of the Soviet Union with the Irish Great Famine. If the Yanks didn’t go down then there is no way that they would allow two warring factions in a country where they have so many military assets. They would bomb your arse off. In the Soviet Union they went through this period of entropy and doldrums for 15 years before the collapse they wrote about it and made films about it. The first sign of the final stage is when goverrnment workers, already demoralised, don’t bother going to work because inflation means it isn’t worth the candle. Government pay is usually set once a year and it is very difficult to adjust outside of this. The inflation will be week on week. You can drive your horse and buggy to the supermarket but by the time you get there your currency will have depreciated ten fold. After a while people start going out on the streets. This usually leads to the police and army being called in. At this point they are similarly demoralised and switch sides and then it’s all over baby.
You’re always full of encouraging news, aren’t you?
Soldi, pecunia cash whatever, what they can see from their pulpit is long empty pews. They don’t care what colour posterior sit on them as long as there is someone there to fill up the empty alms plate.
The previous Leo, the 13th, identified the errors of the late 19th century. Laissez-faire capitalism and class war socialism. He proposed that the state should be the guarantor of justice. This was beginning to take shape in Gladstonian liberalism and in the German Empire.
Leo just didn’t live long enough to see what the state would later do in Italy, Russia and Germany. What are the errors of today? Mass migration is part of globalism. It is part of Third Way liberalism, a whole-of-society approach, which exploits low-skilled, low-wage workers. It advances the power of the international corporations. Bond markets have power to bring down elected governments. None of this reflects Christian love of neighbour as oneself.
As for Jesus’ example, He told his followers not to go among the Gentiles or enter the villages of the Samaritans. He told His disciples to buy swords. No one disputes that Peter used one in the fight in Gethsemane. It was usually argued by clergy that the other was used by Mark.
Not only that but in the Wilderness temptation Jesus rejects the offer of the Roman Empire as an instrument through which to inaugurate His kingdom on earth. When Christianity became the official state religion of the later Roman Empire, the bishops became officers of the state; a role wholly alien to their calling.
And it was the later Western Roman Empire that had a policy of accommodating large numbers of people who would now be called immigrants or migrants, often under their own leadership: a sort of forerunner to multiculturalism and diversity. Whereas the Eastern emperors resisted this change to their demographic.
Dr. Roger Watson is absolutely right to point out the vindictive desire of the Vatican to flood the Protestant nations of the West with Catholic immigrants, fulfilling the Jesuit Dream of Destroying the Protestant Reformation and dragging the world back into the Blasphemous Worship of a Human Woman, the Impostor “Goddess”, the Baby Thief who stole newborn Jesus from his mother Elizabeth and twin brother John the Baptist at Ein Karem, where they were born. The Impostor deceived the world for 2000 years, but The Time of Evil is Over.
Ollie Bye did two brilliant map videos showing how the different forms of Christianity spread around the world year-by-year. The music he chose is the perfect accompaniment.
The Spread of Christianity: Part 1 (30-1000) – YouTube
The Spread of Christianity: Part 2 (1000-2016) – YouTube
Hard to see why this religion prays to Mary as if she were Isis…. She is not God as far as Christianity is concerned. A woman in Luke 11/27 said to Jesus “blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked” and Jesus replied “yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it”. And what is that ancient obelisk doing in front of the Vatican – guiding refugees into its sanctuary? No, I thought not.
Excellent points! The woman in Luke 11/27 was no doubt sent by Mary to do that, to draw attention to herself and the cult she intended to set up after Jesus was gone.
Neither Jesus nor his Apostles ever told people to worship his mother, nor to pray to her, nor to him, nor to crawl on their knees before statues of her holding him as a baby, nor to slobber over her icons. Once when she came with her other kids to pester him as he was in the middle of teaching a large crowd, didn’t he say “Who is my mother?”
The whole point of the Trinity Lie was to elevate human Mary ABOVE Almighty God, by claiming she was the “Mother of God”, which Jesus never said, nor did he claim to be Almighty God, Creator of Heaven & Earth, himself, but always referred his disciples to his Father.
When they asked what God looked like, he told them God looked like him. He didn’t say he was God.
Did not God say that He created man in HIS OWN IMAGE?
Genesis 1:27
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
There were no “trans”.
Different reasons on different levels. Background and just the face the the elite are isolated from the most miserable aspects of immigration. Also there is a tendency among some spiritual people to attempt to bring the world of the spirit into the world of politics. Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. The Greek word used is ‘cosmos’ which means not just the world or planet but the whole ordering of things. They believe that they can make another world manifest via government decisions. It is absurd but an easy temptation. If your government promised to feed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes you would hopefully treat this with suspicion. It is this curse of carnal Christianity that seems to have become orthdoxy and ideology.