Which Side Are You On?
The neo-Popesplainers and the pressure to choose a side on Leo XIV
Picked a side yet in the Pope Wars?
Pope Leo XIV is now two weeks into his pontificate and has started making appointments, meaning the odd period of suspense where just about everyone can claim him to be “the Pope of our side” will soon be over.
If, of course, this brief period of peace isn’t already over. Now that Leo has made decisions and given more than an address or two as Pope, the battle lines are being set as commentators—and all of us—feel forced to choose a side. Pope Leo XIV removed the very scandalous Francis-appointee Archbishop Paglia from heading the John Paul II Institute, even as he has made several sketchy appointments to Vatican dicasteries while confirming a liberal supporter of “female priests” as the bishop over a Swiss diocese.
The Camps
The Neo-Popesplainers are already a recognizable camp, possessing an explanation for every sketchy decision yet made by Pope Leo1 as well as a goal to prove that Pope Leo XIV is the “most based Pope ever” or a “secret rad-trad who’s been hiding in the shadows for decades.”
Dr.
, Dr. Taylor Marshall, and Anthony and Rob of the Avoiding Babylon podcast urge moderate positions, such as to give the Pope time and manage our expectations, recognizing that he is probably going to be more like a John Paul III but that we should praise him where he is an improvement over Pope Francis.
But meanwhile, commentators like
of The Remnant, looking at the last two weeks as a whole, argue that it’s already clear that Leo XIV is not substantially different from Francis, and that already, “the masks are off”:
For Chris, the fact that the many Catholics who openly and publicly opposed Pope Francis’s actions are mostly silent and seem to have turned into Popesplainers or at least supporters of “let’s wait and see” as a strategy is proof that they’ve been threatened or bought off. Tim Gordon of Rules for Retrogrades holds a similar position to Chris Jackson, with the two being the only mainstream Catholic commentators who’ve been consistently negative on Leo from day one.
I can see what both are thinking, seeing as not much has changed in the Vatican over the last two weeks, other than a little more reverence, a little more vestments, and a tiny bit more Latin. Perhaps these two are the only reasonable commentators out there, and everyone else in the Catholic world has fallen into a cult of Popesplaining where nice vestments and a little incense will shut up any criticism of doctrinal heterodoxy and unaddressed scandals in the hierarchy.
I hope Chris is wrong, but the more days that go by, the harder it is for me to hope this, and the claim that Leo is a secret rad-trad becomes ever more hilarious by the day.
But why have so many people who were harsh on Francis been so easy on Leo? Have they, like Chris posits, been paid off?
Possibly, but I think most of the pressure that has pushed people to their current positions is self-inflicted.
Faithful Catholics Have Been Psychologically Traumatized
Honestly, the last decade has been a weird one psychologically for Catholics trying to seriously live the Faith. Many of us, after the death of Francis, feel a sort of guilt over our rebellious (but very often justifiably so) feelings. In our conscientiousness and scrupulosity, we worry, as I certainly do, that we pushed too hard or too far against Francis, and our schismatic in our tendencies or lacking charity in our hearts.
After the trauma of the last decade, we're LARPing2 the reality we want into existence and trying to play act and manifest the perfect pontificate we want into reality as compensation for subtle guilt over being "an opposition" to the Pope.
The reason for this is that the whole last twelve years were so stressful that many of us couldn’t—and still can’t—process them reasonably or normally.
The truly prudent middle ground of loyalty to the Church and to the Vicar of Christ out of charity and submission to Christ, even while opposing any heterodox statements, ambiguities, imprudent or immoral actions of the Pope and of the hierarchy is such a hard place to be in psychologically, like trying to love a family member while fighting with them, that many of us can't take it.
Some take the "easy route" in the rightward direction of angrily flipping off the Pope (and to some degree the papacy indirectly) of sedevacantism.
Others flip out to the left into "Popesplaining" or should I say "neo-Popesplaining"?
The middle ground prudent position exemplified by St. Catherine of Sienna's charitable resistance to the errors of the Popes of her time, is hard to stay in for anyone not as holy as she was. But it's also where we're called to be.
We are, in the refrain that I turn to again and again, mimetic creatures. Our desires are influenced by the crowd. The psychological pull to choose one side or another is very strong right now.
The Danger of Grifters
Chris is right, there is a temptation to grift and choose one side for shallow reasons of peer-pressure and material gain. However, it’s probably mostly an unconscious, self-imposed, and mimetic one. Because we want to be accepted, we follow the crowd formed by the majority of our friends or those we want to respect us, and craft our opinions based on their views.
This tension is especially strong within me right now. The pull to merely criticize and end run into some sort of denial of Pope Leo XIV's validity would allow me easy writing, easy readership growth, and many more friends in Trad-World. I’d get a similar boost from fully joining the Popesplainers. I have many friends and contacts in both worlds. In my own life, I span the chasm between these groups.
But this question for me is not choosing a favorite team or even a preferred political policy. It’s profoundly a moral one. How much can I criticize the Pope or direct people to those who do? I feel equally guilty at times both for “Popesplaining” (and therefore denying or diminishing the very real problems in the Church today) as well as for “Trad-Maxing” (and therefore potentially leading people out of the Church, into schism, sedevacantism, and paranoia). Am I, on my parallel satire site, allowed to satirize the bad decisions of the Pope? How far?
If I judge that someone is “going too far,” as some of my more Popesplaining friends claim to be the case with Dr. Kwasniewski, can I direct people towards their work? Can I, on the other hand, morally engage in Popesplaining or directing people to those, like Christian Wagner or Damian Thompson, who do a lot of it?
Choose the Path of St. Catherine of Sienna
At our Judgement Day, we all hope we’ll be right as to our particular response to the troubles in the Church. But we will be judged for our response alone and for where we led others, not for the sins or the failure of our peers to discern the crisis perfectly.
We must begin by ensuring that our own response is our own and is a response that retains charity and love of Christ and of his Church. We must ensure that we are preaching our position, not just because it’s the one our friends want to hear from us, but because it is one motivated out of the deepest charity for others and out of the love of Christ.
This means preaching the truth, of course, which in the circumstances of today means admitting that the Church is, in many of its members, in a crisis of faith. But it also means remembering that the truth does not belong to us, but it is we who belong to Christ, who is Himself the Truth. Our identity and preaching should be as Catholics first and foremost, not as members of a particular sub-tribe, club, resistance, institute, or organization.3
We disagree on what sort of response we must make to this crisis. I think there are errors in the SSPX position, but having had many conversations with their attendees, I’m not going to condemn them, or at least all of them. Neither will I condemn all the Popesplainers, even as I now think many of their efforts are hilarious, counter-productive, and even dangerous. I may continue to disagree with both sides, but our focus must always be ensuring that we are preaching for the sake of the truth and not for our own self-aggrandizement, likes, or pride. “Love covers a multitude of sins,”4 and perhaps even those fellow Catholics who have responded differently than we to the present crisis have hope of salvation as well. We must certainly hope the same for ourselves.
Practically, the middle ground path we must take of “covering our father's nakedness”5 whilst not ignoring it to be a problem, is a hard balance to retain, as there are no easy answers and no easy and simple fix for the Church as a whole, other than of course, whatever you can, beginning with professing truth as publicly as you can. Fixing our own broken, disordered hearts is a big enough problem for most of us.
Dr. Kwasniewski’s advice that we begin with ourselves and those around us first and foremost is probably the best that is out there:
My advice on what it will take for long-term healing and restoration in the Church — namely, a certain decentralization, an attentiveness to cultivating one’s own interior life, and a zeal in restoring tradition locally, in the sacred liturgy as well as in catechesis, homeschooling, fine arts, and everything else — is my advice because I think it’s true, AND because I think that launching daily social media grenades at heretics or lunatics in high places can quickly become a pointless exercise in outrage-generation, since it obviously has no positive effect on those hierarchs themselves (or, perhaps, only the effect of kicking the hornets’ nest and giving them more excuses to crack down on the recalcitrant).6
In short, I’m following his advice and am trying to be “anti-mimetic” and will not blindly choose a “side” in the “Pope Wars” other than to continue to be Catholic and to try, as best as I can with my flawed, failing small ways, to follow the example of St. Catherine of Sienna when I do comment, praising the Pope for what he has done right, while also critiquing him when he fails to be orthodox on important points, neither condemning nor canonizing him.
I’ve picked the side of the Church, and I’ll stay away from choosing any “side” and flying the flag of any particular party within it as long as I can.
So, how’s it all going for you? Please tell me if you’ve picked a side and why you’ve done so, whether I missed something here and need to pick a side, and also where you think we’re headed, and any secret intel that might change the picture.
Technically, the bishop of St. Gallen was appointed by a local commission in accordance with a centuries-old concordat, and the Pope merely confirmed Beat Grögli…
A gamer term that I’ve been told stands for “Live Action Role Playing”
1 Corinthians 3:4
1 Peter 4:8
Genesis 9:21-23
Thanks, James. I suppose what irks me the most is when commentators level accusations of "grifting" against anyone they happen to disagree with, but without any possible way of knowing for sure if there are financial motives for holding their positions. As I said in my post the other day, I have never taken a position in order to get money for it. I say what I think is true, and other people who think it's true appreciate my work and help fund it. I can say before God as my witness that if I had to change my mind and eat humble pie and lose a bunch of my supporters, I would do it, because my conscience would never leave me alone otherwise.
I think this is a very well balanced piece thank you. Personally I am praying for the Pope constantly and hope that he will be good and true. That’s all we can do. The rest is in God’s hands.