Interested in working with me directly?

I am now accepting clients for my 90-day one-on-one guided program, The Catholic Rebuild. I created this program for Catholics who are tired of the mental exhaustion of performing certainty, Catholics who don’t want to leave but who also don’t know what it looks like to stay with integrity.

If you’re ready to move from inherited faith to mature discipleship, this is for you.

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Monday’s issue focused on the case of John Mary Foster, a former Catholic priest who was recently excommunicated and laicized for calling Pope Francis (and now Pope Leo XIV) “usurpers” and purporting to deliver special messages from God warning (among other things) of a “poisoned” Church, and urging Foster’s followers to “prepare to separate” from that poison.

I can hardly think of a better example of what John XXIII had in mind in 1962 when at the opening of the Second Vatican Council he decried those “prophets of gloom” who wish to set the Church up as a militant force in opposition to the world. He described them like this:

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Interested in working with me directly?

I’m excited to announce that I am now accepting clients for my 90-day one-on-one guided program, The Catholic Rebuild. I created this program for Catholics who are tired of the mental exhaustion of performing certainty, Catholics who don’t want to leave but who also don’t know what it looks like to stay with integrity.

If you’re ready to move from inherited faith to mature discipleship, this is for you.

Apply for a free one-hour call with me to see if The Catholic Rebuild is a good fit for you right now.

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This priest said he only wanted to obey God, and the Vatican still excommunicated him … why?

On August 14, after a review by a tribunal authorized by the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop of San Antonio Gustavo García-Siller announced the excommunication of a Canyon Lake, TX priest by the name of John Mary Foster. In a two-page letter detailing the tribunal’s findings, García-Siller wrote that “after careful examination of the evidence, prayerful discernment, and having reached moral certitude that Foster was guilty of the delict of schism, a sentence was pronounced by the tribunal dismissing John Mary Foster from the clerical state and declaring his excommunication.”1

Guilty of schism. Excommunicated. Dismissed from the clerical state. So what was this priest's crime, exactly? The Code of Canon Law defines schism as “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” And Foster has been on the record for years now calling Pope, Francis, and now Pope Leo, "usurpers” of the Chair of Peter.

I want to give you a flavor of what this priest and his cohort have been publishing to their community, presenting them as prophetic messages directly from God. TLDR; they’re spooky AF. On February 22, 2024, Foster published a “message” directed at bishops and priests, in which God allegedly says to them, "You have not only let the smoke of Satan infiltrate into My Sanctuary; but you have allowed a whole army of demons to take your places. And you have allowed the usurper [Pope Francis] to sit on the chair of My Peter."2 In another message, this one from earlier this summer, God appears to be priming his “army” for separation from the Church (convenient for Foster, given his impending excommunication). Here’s “God,” via Foster:

The Father’s established order and the Line of Authority He established have now been poisoned.

You must avoid this poison, children.

The poison of lack of Faith, lack of trust and obedience; the poison of pride and rebellion; the poison of relativism and of fear.

Poison invades slowly, gradually, invading tissue, cells, organs.

The Body can tolerate a certain amount of poison before becoming entirely ill and incapacitated.

For a time, it is possible to continue living as before, for the poison has not yet entirely invaded the Body.

My children, once the usurpation of the Chair of Peter took place, the deadly poison has entered the bloodstream of the Body of the Church.

Do you understand what this means?

The poison is now being transmitted throughout the whole Body.

This is why it is necessary now to separate yourselves from this poison – from those who promote it, from those who allow it, from those who, being so asleep, are unable to stop its spread.3

Archbishop García-Siller warned the faithful to steer clear of Foster and the Mission of Divine Mercy, declaring “that participating in the activities and illicit liturgies celebrated by John Mary Foster, or at the Mission of Divine Mercy is a formal act of disobedience. Therefore, I prohibit all Catholics from attending any Mass or any liturgical activity or event sponsored by Mr. Foster or anyone at the Mission of Divine Mercy.”

Foster released a video on the same day as his bishop announced his excommunication, responding to his sentence by saying that he intends to continue acting as a priest: “We believe this sentence and these punishments are unjust,” he said, “but we also believe the Lord is not asking us to appeal them. And we believe that given the crisis the church is facing, God is asking me to continue my priestly ministry.”4

Pope Leo’s no-nonsense approach to schismatics

The Foster affair comes on the heels of Leo’s excommunication of the Society of Pope Pius X in July, after he pleaded with them in a June 29 letter to “please turn back!” on their plan to ordain four bishops without Rome’s permission, and reminding them that “to tear the seamless garment of Christ is a sin of extreme gravity”. His plea went unheeded, and on July 2 the DDF announced the SSPX to be officially declared schismatic and excommunicated. There's a ton of background to the story that I don't have time to get into today, but the bottom line is this was a generational event in terms of ecclesial disciplinary action and marks what some historians are calling the largest schism in the Catholic Church since 1870.

What I find interesting about this is that despite the fact that Leo XIV has already established for himself a reputation of being much more agreeable and harmonizing then Pope Francis was, he is also wasting no time when it comes to dealing with schematics. Rome has been back-and-forth with the SSPX since John Paul II formally excommunicated them in 1988; in 2009 Pope Benedict relieved them of this excommunication, and for all intense and purposes Pope Francis was mostly conciliatory and focused on finding pathways of reunification with them. But the clear and unequivocal nature of Leo's June letter to the SSPX and the DDF's swift action to announce their excommunication seem decisive, as if to say: “you've had plenty of chances to make this work. We're done messing around here.”

When considered in light of this major excommunication, the DDF's move to declare John Mary Foster a schismatic looks a little bit less like an interesting one-off case and more like an emerging pattern.

Leo is intensely focused on church unity. It shows up in pretty much everything he says publicly, beginning with his papal motto, In Illo uno unum (“In the One, we are one”). Where Francis was curmudgeonly, but patient, with groups like SSPX and the mission of Divine Mercy, Leo might be characterized as kind, but extremely firm; he is not messing around when it comes to people and organizations that are actively undermining the unity of the body of Christ with claims, for example, that Pope Francis was never a legitimate pope, or that the reforms of Vatican II were invalid.

What is really dangerous about groups like the mission of divine Mercy is the combination of a charismatic leader who earns himself a sort of cult following plus the willingness of that leader to speak explicitly on behalf of God. When you read these messages that Foster put out there for his community to read—claiming that these were messages directly from God's mouth to his ear, so to speak—you can feel the weight of a sense of authority, of certainty, of special knowledge, not accessible to the average Catholic. The whole Body of Christ is poisoned, but you don't have to be—as long as you follow me and do what I say. These sorts of gnostic locutions tend to appeal to very pious people who desire to be holy and live their Catholic faith with integrity; their zeal makes them vulnerable to a particular kind of cult, dressed up as Catholicism.

A few final thoughts

If I were a betting woman, I'd wager a pretty penny on Leo adopting a zero-tolerance policy for this stuff (or as close to a zero-tolerance policy as the pope can realistically have). Especially in the age of the internet, people like John Mary Foster, James Altman, Joseph Strickland, and Carlo Maria Viganó can gain a massive following and do a tremendous amount of damage in a short time.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more excommunications during Leo’s pontificate, and I’m so here for it. There’s a poison in here, alright, and it’s the poison of “secret knowledge” that promises certainty and safety from the coming wrath of God. For what it’s worth, I’ve never been a big fan of the Medjugorje hype, and this is exactly why. Special messages from Jesus, Mary, or whoever, outside of the already-established channels of grace (the Church, the sacraments, Scripture, etc.) have always had the same effect on me: to scare the shit out of me and make me question whether I’m doing anything right … and the older I get the more I recognize that that doesn’t sound like God—it sounds like an abusive boyfriend. Not for me, no thanks.

Anyway. If you know a priest like John Mary Foster—or if you have one as a pastor, or come across one on YouTube—do not walk, run, in the opposite direction. Block. Mute. Write your bishop. Tell everyone you know to stay away. These are people who make a name for themselves feeding on the good will (and fear) of people who love their Catholic faith magnanimously. We all need to be especially on guard against people spreading alleged special messaged from God—visionaries, “mystics,” etc. who claim they know something that the literal freaking pope doesn’t. Remember Jesus’ promise about his Church: “the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” and take him at his word.

In that motu proprio, titled Traditionis Custodes, Francis established that “the liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.” The document required priests ordained after 2021 who wished to celebrate the TLM to submit formal requests to their bishop (who in turn was required to consult with Rome before authorizing them) and it required priests already celebrating the TLM to essentially reapply for the same authorization.

Francis’s decision to strictly regulate the Latin Mass was seen by many traditionalists, and even by many conservative Catholics, as a disproportionate disciplinary measure against a subset of the Catholic population who (it was argued) were already committed to orthodoxy and therefore had become an unfair target of Rome. Among traditionalist Catholics the prevailing narrative was that Francis, the liberal pope, was bullying conservatives … just because he didn’t like them. What got overlooked all too often was the fact that Francis articulated his own, deeply coherent rationale for curtailing the celebration of the TLM.

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A tale of guitars and pipe organs

At the Catholic parish where I grew up, we did some … funkadelic things when it came to liturgical music. Communion “hymns” during Sunday Mass included “Blackbird” by the Beatles, “You Raise Me Up” by Josh Groban, and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds. I kid you not.

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Welcome to Pope Leo Weekly, your Monday morning 5-minute read on Pope Leo XIV.

Paid subscribers can listen to this issue as a podcast, read by Sarah (and featuring some kid-noise in the background just to prove I’m not a bot!) Free subscribers, keep scrolling to read 👇

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If you have enjoyed this newsletter during the past year, or been helped by it, please consider upgrading your subscription today. I’m offering a one-day only 15% discount on new annual subscriptions as a “birthday” celebration for Pope Leo Weekly.

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Now’s also a good time to let you know that I’m making a few changes to what I offer here. As promised, the Monday morning issue will remain free. That will never change. But instead of publishing excerpts from the Wednesday Audiences plus analysis for paid subscribers, I’ll be publishing a second issue on Wednesday evenings, exclusive for paid subscribers, focused on the Holy Father’s catechesis that week.

With that said, here is the first iteration of the new Wednesday evening issue:

The liturgical calendar: a spiral, not a circle

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Welcome to Pope Leo Weekly, your Monday morning 5-minute read on Pope Leo XIV.

Paid subscribers can listen to this issue as a podcast, read by Sarah (and featuring some kid-noise in the background just to prove I’m not a bot!) Free subscribers, keep scrolling to read 👇

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The divine office, because it is the public prayer of the Church, is a source of piety, and nourishment for personal prayer.

Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 90

In our time, in contexts dominated by an efficiency-driven and consumerist mindset, prayer may seem pointless and trivial. In a world where science and technology claim to provide all the answers, praying may appear to be a form of escapism. Furthermore, even in many Christian families, the tradition of prayer is no longer passed on, whilst many people risk confusing it with just another technique, of a psychological nature aimed at personal well-being. Prayer, however, as a fundamental dimension of our humanity, is worth rediscovering in its true form …

For this reason, Saint Paul VI ardently desired that the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church’s daily public prayer, inseparable from the Eucharist, might deeply permeate, enliven, guide and express all Christian prayer, and effectively nourish the spiritual life of the People of God (cf. Apostolic Constitution Laudis canticum).

For this desire to be fulfilled, the Liturgy of the Hours needs to be more fully embraced and lived out in the daily lives of the baptized and of the communities. To the many people who wish to learn to pray, especially catechumens, it can offer the path and the school of Christian prayer.

Every week and every day, the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours are the breath of the life of the Church, which makes the Holy Spirit circulate through her Body. In this prayer, Christ “joins the entire community of mankind to Himself, associating it with His own singing of this canticle of divine praise” (SC, 83). In this way, day by day, we are ever more united with the Paschal Mystery and conformed to him.

Read the full text here.

What Pope Leo recommends if you’re starting a prayer life

If you’re anything like me, you may find that prayer doesn’t always come naturally. Between the noise and distraction of our technological, information-saturated age and the still, serene contemplation of a monk, there yawns a gap that often feels unbridgeable. How do we get from here—loud, anxious, dissipated—to there—quiet, calm, “tuned-in” to the Divine?

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These are the conversations I wish I had had as a theology graduate student.

and I are hosting a 12-week seminar on the life and teachings of Pope Leo XIV. We’ll be going deep into Leo’s first year as pope: how he is carrying on the priorities of Pope Francis, where he is leading in new ways than his predecessor, and most importantly, what this papacy means for the way you and I live our Catholic faith in the world today.

Along the way, we will linger on the bigger questions. What is the Church? How do we live our mission well in the modern world? What do conservatives and progressives each get right, and what do we do when “left” and “right” can only take us so far?

If you register today, you’ll still have plenty of time read Elise Ann Allen’s biography of Pope Leo XIV for our first session on Sept. 4. And on September 11, Elise will be joining us live for a closed-door Q&A about the pope.

Space is super limited, so register soon if you want in.

Now on to the weekly issue:

Pope Leo XIV calls the Church to urban evangelization

This January, Pope Leo XIV re-launched an ongoing effort to unite the universal Church in prayer for the pope’s specific monthly intentions. Formerly known as “The Pope Video” under Pope Francis, it has been reintroduced as “Pray With the Pope,” a digital initiative of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.

“Pray With the Pope” is a short monthly video featuring Pope Leo XIV and highlighting his prayer intention for that month. The intention for August is “for evangelization in the city.” In an accompanying Instagram video posted August 1, Leo says,

Roughly half of us live in cities. Jesus himself walked city streets in Cana, Jericho, and Jerusalem, and just as in those cities he is present in ours, teaching, praying, celebrating, but also suffering among the poor, the forgotten, the imprisoned. This month let us pray for the courage to recognize him there, and, through our work and witness, to bring the gospel to the streets and homes of our metropolises.

The pope prayed for the Church to be renewed in its efforts to evangelize within urban life, asking God to give Christians boldness and creativity:

Give us a creative and deep faith, that doesn’t remain in words, but becomes flesh through simple and loving gestures. Make us a Church that goes forth, able to reach out to the peripheries, to console those who are lonely, and to sow fraternity and connection instead of giving in to indifference … Make us your witnesses in the city, bold and creative missionaries, who proclaim your Love with their lives— a Love capable of overcoming haste, noise, and anonymity.

You can watch the full “Pray With the Pope” video below, and additional resources for prayer and reflection are available online.

The City of God

There is a busy street near my home with a reputation for reckless driving, visible poverty, and petty crime. A few summers ago I drove past the scene of a tragic pedestrian accident on that street; the fire department was literally hosing off of the pavement what I will can only describe as “bits and pieces” of a woman who was struck and killed in the middle of an intersection. Unfortunately, many such cases occur in the urban core of our cities each year. As a friend of mine once said of this particular street, “there’s a lot of real life going on out there.”

His comment was meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but he is, of course, completely correct. Where the suburbs tend to provide a manicured experience, sequestered from the noisy, smelly, uncomfortable realities of city life, urban life routinely forces one to confront such things as inequality, suffering, social alienation, and the moral rot of consumerism. There, the middle class cannot walk into their local grocery store and enjoy the delusion that everyone else in their community is just like them; they may even have to cope with the homeless woman panhandling outside the Whole Foods where they get their organic blueberries every week or take a number and wait amongst seventy immigrants at the DMV.

The city, being a place of head-on contact with “real life”—a.k.a., the fact of things not being the way they ought to be, can also be something we wish to flee. As I write this, many Christians are embracing an agrarian return to the land a la Wendell Berry and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Tradwife influencers persuade idealistic young people that Christian parents would be better off separating from “the world” both geographically and technologically, thereby exerting more control over their households. There is a growing sense that evacuating the city and relocating to a place where one can raise one’s family without having to navigate the challenges of a secular, pluralistic society, is the moral ideal for those who wish to live the Gospel.

Though there is something genuine in the desire to live simply and in contact with nature (I’m no hater of Wendell Berry!), this is not a Catholic way of viewing one’s relationship to society. It is separatist, sectarian, more in the key of Quakerism or Anabaptist Christianity than the all-embracing, all-redeeming ethos of Catholicism. Catholics are the great builders of institutions—hospitals, schools, universities—they do not eschew politics or public life of any sort but live according to the prophet Jeremiah’s instructions to the exiles in Babylon: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7). The truly Catholic attitude can be summed up in the famous Letter to Diognetus, describing the early Christians in their dealings with the society around them:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country … To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body.

One final point: surely Pope Leo has asked us to pray for evangelization in the city out of his own Augustinian vision of the City of God, understood as the ongoing transformation of the Kingdom of Man, ruled by selfishness and the will to dominate, into a civilization of love—love of God first, and then love of neighbor. Augustine, following the Scriptural writers, does not imagine the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom as an agrarian commune or even a garden but a city, the Heavenly Jerusalem, surrounded by great walls but whose gates stand ever open. In other words, God fulfills his promise to save his people by establishing a mature and robust social life, one entirely determined not by commerce or technological efficiency, but by love. It could be argued, therefore, that for all its glories and benefits, rural life does not image humanity’s heavenly homeland in the same way that urban life does.

Previous issues:

However, many Catholics today feel homeless in their own Church. We sense that Catholicism ought to have something urgent and vital to say to us and to the modern world, but it often seems that all that’s being offered are partisan camps. While each camp claims to speak for the Church, they often speak with their own agenda. Rather than the expansive and liberating love of Jesus, what’s experienced is the confines of an ideology. And few offer the honest, unhurried engagement that helps a person listen carefully, think deeply, and discern well.

and I know this homeless feeling well and have experienced the frustration and isolation that comes with it. But something stirred in us when Pope Leo XIV called the whole Church to a re-discernment of Vatican II and what it means to be the Church in the modern world today. That’s the kind of faith conversation we wanted to have and to invite others into.

We started with our Leo Live series that followed Pope Leo’s ongoing catechesis on Vatican II. But we wanted something with more depth and intentionality. So, with my academic background in theology and Catholic social teaching and Paul’s catechetical and mental-health expertise, we decided to launch The Leo Seminar, a space where people like us could read Pope Leo’s actual words, in community, without an ideological agenda.

About The Leo Seminar

The Leo Seminar is for anyone who wants to step into a process of collective study and discernment instead of consuming “hot takes.” In this seminar, you will spend twelve weeks digging into primary texts, guided discussion, and honestly wrestling with what Pope Leo is actually saying and where he’s leading the Church.

We built The Leo Seminar because we believe that striving for integrity is more important than having the right answers; dialogue and curiosity are more important than ideological purity; unity in diversity is more important than uniformity; “truth is not a territory to be defended, but a good to be shared” (Magnifica Humanitas 25); and “realities are greater than ideas” (Evangelii Gaudium 231).

You won’t leave with a verdict handed to you, but you’ll have the opportunity to form your own conclusions in a community of people who take the questions as seriously as you do. People willing to undertake this kind of slow and serious formation will be agents of renewal in the Church, more equipped to proclaim the Gospel in the modern world.

About the hosts:

Paul Fahey is a professional counselor, writer, retreat leader, and podcaster. He previously worked as a lay minister and catechist in the Catholic Church. He has an undergraduate degree in Theology and a MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. He provides counseling for those who have been spiritually abused and creates resources for Church leaders to better safeguard their communities against abuse.

Paul created the Third Space podcast, the Pope Francis Generation podcast, and co-founded Where Peter Is. He has published articles and resources about spiritual abuse, Catholic social teaching, and pastoral accompaniment.

Paul lives in SW Michigan with his wife and five kids. His favorite saints include Maximilian Kolbe, Dorothy Day, Óscar Romero, Mark Ji Tianxiang, Josephine Bakhita, and the Ulma Family.

Sarah Carter is a writer, teacher, and theologian with a masters degree in Theology and over a decade of experience working in Catholic institutions, including as a policy ghost writer for the Minnesota Catholic Conference (MCC) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Sarah’s work has been focused on an integrated approach to Catholic social teaching and the intellectual formation of both lay and ordained leaders. She has taught several courses and seminars in Catholic theology at both the high school and university level.

Sarah lives in the Twin Cities metro area with her husband and three children. In her spare time she enjoys knitting, exercise, and reading.

Who this seminar is for:

• Catechists

• Teachers

• Clergy

• Parents

• Catholics

• Non-Catholics

• Anyone who wants to better understand the mind and teaching of our new pope

What we’ll be reading together:

• Pope Leo XIV: The Biography by Elise Ann Allen

• Evangelii Gaudium by Pope Francis (programmatic document that has set the stage for Leo’s pontificate)

• Magnifica Humanitas (On artificial intelligence)

• Dilexi Te (On love for the poor)

• In Unitate Fidei (On Christian unity)

• Other selected homilies and addresses form Pope Leo

What you’ll get when you enroll:

• A copy of Pope Leo XIV: The Biography by Elise Ann Allen sent directly to your mailing address

• A 60-minute, live, “closed-door” Q&A with the first and only person to be granted an exclusive interview with Pope Leo XIV, Elise Ann Allen

• The Leo Seminar Reader, a digital reading packet designed for ease of use and note taking

• Twelve 90-minute sessions, with in-depth analysis and discussion

• A community to study and discuss with, and opportunities to stay connected after the seminar ends

When we’ll meet:

• Every Friday from September 4 - November 20

• All meetings from 12:00-1:30 p.m. ET

Cost:

• $1,200 (with options to pay in installments via Stripe)

Enroll now

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to be knowledgeable about the pope and Catholic theology to enroll in this seminar? No. If you want to read and discuss Pope Leo XIV in community with other people, you are welcome to enroll no matter your level of familiarity with Catholicism or your educational background.

Is this seminar for Catholics only? Again, nope! Anyone interested can enroll. In fact, we’d love to welcome some non-Catholics into the conversation!

What if I don’t like the pope or agree with what he’s saying? We don’t see our role as trying to defend everything the pope has ever said or taught. We’re here to help participants engage honestly with Pope Leo’s teachings and his vision, regardless of whether they agree with it or not. In other words, our goal is for you to know what Leo is saying and where he is guiding the Church–whether he’s right or wrong, we leave to you to judge.

Will you offer discounts? At this time, we cannot offer discounts on The Leo Seminar. Stripe (the payment platform) does offer pay-over-time options. Both Paul and I are always trying to balance our desire to make our resources available to anyone while also providing for our families. The income from this seminar helps allow me to continue to offer the Pope Leo Weekly and Leo Live! at no cost.

How many spots are available in this seminar? Since we want this to be a small, discussion-based group, we have decided to cap The Leo Seminar at 15 participants.

I'm in!

I had a chance to ask Salina about her story and personal journey to the Catholic Church, the “sectarianism” that shows up across both Protestant and Catholic spaces, why so many people get accused of not being “real Catholics,” the history of feminism and misconceptions about it, and how progressive and conservative Catholics can come together in an increasingly divided Church.

This chat was awesome. I hope you enjoy hearing from Salina. Make sure to give her a follow!

Salina Bear is a Catholic feminist and lay theologian based on the East Coast. When she’s not filming or editing content for TikTok and Instagram, she’s puttering in her garden, baking sourdough, or sneaking off to adoration. She spends much of her time reading papal encyclicals, theology texts, and vampire romances. She has studied with Notre Dame, Catholic International University, and a few Protestant universities. Her theological work focuses on correcting understandings of women in the Bible, disproving penal substitutionary atonement, helping people break out of dualistic thinking, and reminding fellow Catholics that critical thinking has a place in a life of faith.

Follow Salina: @salina.bear on Instagram and TikTok

Timestamps & Topics

• 00:00 – Welcome & Introductions

• ~02:36 – Salina’s Background

• ~03:53 – On Evangelical “Veneer”

• ~04:21 – The Breaking Point

• ~05:09 – What Was Missing

• ~06:11 – Stepping Away from Chrisianity

• ~06:57 – Finding Catholicism

• ~07:35 – A Mystical Experience at Adoration

• ~08:47 – Abuse in the Catholic Church

• ~12:07 – The Grove

• ~16:33 – Catholic Fundamentalism in America

• ~20:16 – Sectarianism on Both Sides

• ~24:00 – Responding to “You’re Not a Real Catholic”

• ~28:19 – Audience Q&A: What Makes Someone a Theologian?

• ~33:43 – The “Trad Wife” Question

• ~34:29 – Defining Feminism

• ~35:38 – The Feminine Mystique & Second-Wave Feminism

• ~36:43 – What Feminism Actually Won

• ~39:04 – Feminism vs. Capitalism

• ~43:57 – The Fox and the Hound Analogy

• ~46:41 – Progressive vs. Conservative Catholics: Finding Common Ground

• ~52:15 – The “Fence in the Woods” Parable

• ~57:00 – Defining “Progressive Catholic”

• ~58:33 – Q&A: What Parts of Tradition Can Change?

• ~59:34 – Humanae Vitae & Contraception

• ~1:03:42 – The “250 Dogmas” of the Church

• ~1:04:44 – Closing

Books & References Mentioned

• Catholic Fundamentalism in America by Mark Massa SJ

• The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

• Mona Lisa Smile

• The Fox and the Hound

• Humanae Vitae

• Humani Generis

Where to Find Salina Bear

Instagram & TikTok: @salina.bear

There are few more urgent challenges for the Catholic Church today than getting priestly formation right. What’s at stake here is the health and flourishing of priests, the communion of the whole People of God, the credible witness of the Church, the safeguarding of vulnerable children and adults, and justice for those who have experienced irreparable damage at the hands of incompetent, narcissistic, or predatory priests. In short, pretty much everything.

That’s why I found this report so disturbing, and why I want to write about it today. Bishops, rectors, formators, and spiritual directors have clearly still not learned the painful lessons of 2018 and 2002; thankfully and mercifully, we now have a cohort of mental health professionals involved in seminary formation sounding the alarm.

“This disconnect should be alarming.”

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After meeting with Cardinals, Pope Leo XIV signals important development of “just war” tradition

For those who’d like a closer look at the full breadth of what took place at the Consistory, you can check out last night’s “Inside the Issue”, where I walked through Pope Leo’s opening statement, the topics discussed during the four sessi…

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Links:

Pope Leo’s Opening Address for the Consistory

Official Schedule for the Consistory

OSV: “Cardinals reflect on Pope Leo …

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The two parts which, in a certain sense, go to make up the Mass, namely, the liturgy of the word and the eucharistic liturgy, are so closely connected with each other that they form but one single act of worship.

Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 56

Dear brothers and sisters, when we participate in the Eucharist, we are invited to listen to the Word of God and to be nourished at the Lord’s table, where He offers Himself to the Father. These two parts of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, “are so closely connected with each other that they form but one single act of worship” (SC, 56).

With regard to the Word of God, it is important to remember that it is not merely a matter of acquiring intellectual knowledge of the Scriptures, but of receiving the Word that is “living and effective” (Heb 4:12), spoken by God to everyone and at the same time to each individual. This Word nourishes and sustains us together with the Eucharistic Bread and leads us from the decay of sin to new life in Christ. “The Eucharist opens us to an understanding of Scripture, just as Scripture for its part illumines and explains the mystery of the Eucharist.” (Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, 55).

The Second Vatican Council called for the treasures of the Bible to be opened more abundantly, so that a richer fare from the table of God’s Word might be provided for the faithful (cf. SC, 51). The liturgical reform translated this request into the treasure that is the Lectionary, the book that gathers all the biblical readings for liturgical celebrations. This richness has been drawn from the purest source of the living Tradition, which combines fidelity with tradition; with openness to legitimate progress (cf. SC, 23).

Read the full text here.

Homilies matter a lot, actually

We all know a dud homily when we hear one. Most of the time it’s one of those “rip-and-read” pre-written sermons (“Merriam-Webster defines the word love as …”)—though as time goes on we may be subjected to a plague of AI-generated “preaching” as well. Despite the fact that Pope Leo XVI has indicated on multiple occasions that he is none too keen on using AI to write homilies, you can still find online tools created by Catholics that promise to deliver “prayerful preparation, serious scriptural research, Catholic theological depth, and a final homily that still sounds unmistakably like the priest who delivers it.” But hey, if that’s true, who really cares whether a homily was written by Fr. Carl or “Fr.” Claude?

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Pope Leo Weekly exists for busy Catholics who want honest, theologically literate coverage of the pope—without the spin, hot takes, or agenda-driven noise that dominates today’s media.

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Dear Reader,

Pope Leo Weekly exists for busy Catholics who want honest, theologically literate coverage of the pope—without the spin, hot takes, or agenda-driven noise that dominates today’s media.

Paid subscriptions keep this work going. For $50/year ($0.96/week), you’ll help ensure this newsletter stays available for everyone (and unlock weekly extras t…

Read more