Holy Father, Help Us to Understand
Try as hard as you might to understand him, still Pope Leo leaves us befuddled.
Published in Crisis Magazine on November 11, 2025
Try as hard as you might to understand him, still Pope Leo leaves us befuddled. Even giving the benefit of the doubt to his recent statements, Catholics are still left short of clarity. Faithful Catholics fully understand the bounds of papal teaching. Assent of mind and will is only reserved to the highest reaches of magisterial intention. All other pronouncements obligate Catholics to show respectful attention, nothing more. Even with that, certain of Pope Leo’s statements strain the Catholic conscience.
Tucked precariously between assent and respectful consideration lies a critical distinction lost upon many simple Catholic souls. Some assume every syllable that falls from the lips of the Roman Pontiff bear the same status as the Nicene Creed. Little do these well-meaning Catholics know that they have fallen prey to the perils of papal absolutism (cf. ultramontanism), a parlous and faulty interpretation of papal prerogatives. This very tendency is what caused St. John Henry Newman such concern at the promulgation of Vatican I’s Pastor Aeternus. Pity, for this error leaves them marooned in the regions of doubtful conscience at best and an erroneous conscience at worst.