(LifeSiteNews) –– John-Henry Westen’s observation on social media this weekend helps us understand how the upcoming conclave is unlike any other in Church history:
From inside the pre-conclave meetings with Cardinals it is suggested the Cardinal Robert Prevost is the moderate of choice. Think about this . . . As the head of the Congregation of Bishops he presided over the removal of America’s best bishop @BishStrickland and the elevation of the heretic Cardinal Robert McElroy who is now posted to Washington D.C.
What truly sets this conclave apart from all others? Never before has it been so obvious to Catholics who have a firm understanding of the Faith that many of the cardinals do not believe what the Church teaches. In healthier periods in Church history, many of these cardinals would be censured for their heresies. Today, though, they find themselves on the cusp of being recognized as pope by the world.
To better conceptualize how staggering this is, we can contemplate how the 1958 conclave might have reacted to cardinals such as McElroy, Aveline, Tagle, Parolin, Tolentino, or Zuppi. It does not seem even remotely possible that the cardinals in 1958 would have accepted that any Catholics, let alone clerics, could promote the errors so common among many of the cardinals: an openly pro-LGBTQ agenda, active support and praise for non-Catholic religions, a practical eradication of the concept of mortal sin, opposition to trying to convert non-Catholics, and openness to the Synodal process for continuously rediscovering Christian truth by “listening to” Catholic, and even non-Catholic, laity. It hardly seems like at exaggeration to suspect that the cardinals of 1958 would have considered that a significant portion of the cardinals of 2025 are ineligible for the papacy because they are, so obviously, not Catholic.
We know that we did not reach this dire situation overnight, so what happened? In simplest terms, it appears that Catholics gradually forgot the warnings that Pius XII issued in 1950, with Humani Generis, his encyclical condemning “false doctrines threatening to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine.” Once those false doctrines were accepted, it was only a matter of time before the foundations of Catholic doctrine were undermined, which allowed the profound demolition that we witnessed with Francis. We can see this clearly if we consider two versatile and lethal weapons used by the Church’s enemies: historicism and false ecumenism.
Historicism that overthrows the foundation of all truth
Pius XII did not devote many words to his condemnation of historicism:
There is also a certain historicism, which attributing value only to the events of man’s life, overthrows the foundation of all truth and absolute law, both on the level of philosophical speculations and especially to Christian dogmas.
Pius XII condemned many other errors, but this historicism truly “overthrows the foundation of all truth” because it holds that dogmas can evolve based on historical circumstances. St. Pius X had already condemned the basic concept, without assigning it the name of historicism, in his Oath Against Modernism:
I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously.
If truths of the Faith can evolve to mean something inconsistent with what they once meant, then the entire concept of immutable truth is lost. At that point, the measure of what truth can be today is no longer what it has always been, but whether it has evolved in a gradual enough manner for enough Catholics to accept it. If Catholics would reject this absurd historicism, then all of the unholy innovations of the past sixty years would be exposed as illegitimate.
Seeking unity by diminishing Catholic teaching
Pius XII devoted much more attention to illegitimate attempts to seek Christian unity, which we often refer to as false ecumenism:
In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents. Moreover, they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries. It is evident from what We have already said, that such tentatives not only lead to what they call dogmatic relativism, but that they actually contain it.
This has become so widely accepted today that one could strip Pius XII’s statement of all hints of condemnation, and what he denounced would be accepted as perfectly orthodox. Thus, if one of the cardinals were to stand up and announce to the conclave that “we need a pope who will free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church,” he would surely be met with near universal approval for his “holy wisdom.”
Pius XII continued by referring to his 1943 encyclical, Mystici Corporis:
Some say they are not bound by the doctrine, explained in Our Encyclical Letter of a few years ago, and based on the Sources of Revelation, which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. Others finally belittle the reasonable character of the credibility of Christian faith. These and like errors, it is clear, have crept in among certain of Our sons who are deceived by imprudent zeal for souls or by false science. To them We are compelled with grief to repeat once again truths already well known, and to point out with solicitude clear errors and dangers of error.
Vatican II essentially took the path condemned by this statement; and the Synod on Synodality brought it to its natural destination: today all baptized Christians are considered members of the Synodal Church. If that is the case, though, then why would anyone choose to adhere to the more onerous aspects of Catholic teaching? As we know from the past sixty years, many Catholics have reached this rather obvious conclusion and either abandoned the Church altogether or else become cafeteria Catholics. If Catholics would reject this false ecumenism, then many of the unholy innovations of the past sixty years, especially those related to Christian unity, would be exposed as illegitimate.
Whereas historicism undermines the foundations of Catholic dogma from the bottom up, false ecumenism undermines Catholic teaching through the weight of its preposterous contradictions. Nonetheless, these errors have been subtle enough to escape detection by the greater portion of Catholics. We have seen their fruits — such as widespread apostasy and the unchecked spread of errors — but few Catholics have grasped the root causes.
Pius XII helped us understand why this is the case. As he explained, the evil involved in the false doctrines includes not only the ideas themselves but the way in which their proponents spread them:
These new opinions, whether they originate from a reprehensible desire of novelty or from a laudable motive, are not always advanced in the same degree, with equal clarity nor in the same terms, nor always with unanimous agreement of their authors. Theories that today are put forward rather covertly by some, not without cautions and distinctions, tomorrow are openly and without moderation proclaimed by others more audacious, causing scandal to many, especially among the young clergy and to the detriment of ecclesiastical authority. Though they are usually more cautious in their published works, they express themselves more openly in their writings intended for private circulation and in conferences and lectures. Moreover, these opinions are disseminated not only among members of the clergy and in seminaries and religious institutions, but also among the laity, and especially among those who are engaged in teaching youth.
This is precisely the process we have witnessed for many decades, but now the enemies of the Church no longer need to conceal much because the foundations have been effectively destroyed.
Arguably, Francis’s most important legacy will be the fact that he began waking up more Catholics to the root causes of the evils condemned by Pius XII, which have plagued the Church since Vatican II. Yet, more work remains to be done in teaching Catholics that the Faith is immutable and therefore incompatible with the errors condemned by Pius XII and his predecessors.
And so this brings us to the conclave, with the great likelihood that the cardinals will elect a man who Pius XII would have immediately recognized as a formal heretic. God can certainly intervene to bring us a pope who would extinguish the errors Pius XII condemned, but such intervention would surely rank among one of the greatest miracles in Church history. In absence of a pope who will truly eradicate these errors, we are left with two real possibilities: a claimant who will pacify the general resistance to the anti-Catholic revolution by pausing or reversing Francis’s policies; or one cut from the same cloth as Francis, who will do even more to wake Catholics up to the real evils undermining Catholic doctrine.
God can cure the cancer that plagues the Church today in any way He desires, but the ordinary way would be for sincere Catholics to awaken to what has been going on for the past sixty years and decide to fight it with all their might. We have not reached that point today, which would seem to make it more likely that God will permit a heretic to be presented to the world as pope, who may ultimately be bad enough to wake more souls up to the need to understand what Pius XII taught in 1950. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
