(LifeSiteNews) — Joining me on this episode of The John Henry Westen Show is Catholic YouTuber and former LifeSite journalist Kennedy Hall. We discussed Pope Leo XIV, whether the new pontiff will work with the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), and more.
I began the episode by asking Hall what his first impressions were of the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV. He noted that, like many Catholics, he had never heard of Prevost before the conclave, but when he looked into him, he at least gave off the “aura” of being a decent man.
“I looked into him and I thought, ‘Okay, he seems like a nice man. As the kids say today, his vibe or his aura seemed to be like, ‘Hey, you don’t seem like a jerk,’ which is a plus,” Hall said. “And I thought, ‘We’ll just give him the benefit of the doubt and see what happens.’”
A bit later, Hall stressed that given how deeply modernism is seeped into the Church today, the best traditionalists can reasonably hope for in a pope is one who allows them to exist.
“This whole atmosphere of modernism is kind of just the official framework for how theology is done in the Church today,” he said. “So I think traditionalists who have been plugged in for a long time, it’s not that they don’t recognize that, ‘Hey, Benedict was way better than Pope Francis.’ That’s obvious. It’s just that there’s a deeper problem at the root that’s still there.”
“So it’s more of a realistic thing (to say), ‘Okay, let’s hope for a Pope who will do his best to give tradition its rights, so that in this sort of war for the soul of the Church, the true Catholic apostolic tradition will have the ability to overtake the counterfeit.”
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Turning to the SSPX, which is now led by just two bishops after the death of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais last year, I asked Hall what comes next in terms of consecrating new bishops and obtaining Vatican approval for these consecrations. Hall underscored that, while he has no inside information, he believes the Society will seek Pope Leo XIV’s approval before consecrating any bishops.
“There’s going to be no middle of the night consecration … It will be something where (the SSPX) will present themselves to the Holy Father and they will say, ‘This is our intention and we would like your blessing to do so,‘” he said.
“The only way they would go through with (the consecrations) without permission is if they’ve exhausted all the options and then it becomes clear that for the preservation of the traditional priesthood, there’s no other way, the state of necessity, so to speak,” he added.
READ: French SSPX district superior says it is ‘necessary to consider’ consecrating new bishops
Hall further stressed that he believes Pope Leo XIV will give the SSPX his blessing to consecrate bishops because traditionalists now make up a much larger percentage of the faithful than they did when the 1988 consecrations took place.
“Tradition at the time was like this very niche, seemingly rebellious thing. Now it’s like the ‘bee’s knees,’ and the biggest pilgrimage in the Church is the traditional Catholics walking in France,” he said. “(Tradition) is making the mainstream media, for goodness’ sake.”
“And the 1988 fallout was very confusing because canonically, it was a very specious or dubious decision, which canon lawyers had been yelling at each other about for the last 37 years,” he added. “And Pope Leo is a canon lawyer.”
Hall emphasized that, as a canon lawyer and not wanting to divide the Church with similar fallout to 1988, the new pope will work to find a real solution.
“My gut tells me he’ll want to find a solution. I don’t know what that’ll be, but my speculation is that there will be permission for at least a couple (of) bishops,” he said.
To hear more from Kennedy Hall, tune in to this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show.
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