[Catholic Caucus] What Do We Make of the Rainbow-Colored Signs of Apostasy in Rome?

In a December 10, 2024 article about the Vatican’s inclusion of “an LGBTQ+ pilgrimage event during the upcoming Jubilee Year of 2025,” the pro-LGBTQ New Ways Ministry reflected on how much LGBTQ initiatives had advanced in recent years:

“While 2025’s event may seem like a small step, when compared with how the Vatican reacted to the presence of gay people in Rome during 2000, we can see what a sea change has taken place in terms of responding to LGBTQ+ people. This development did not happen overnight, but has many small steps which paved the way for it: VIP seating for New Ways Ministry pilgrims at a papal audience in 2018, Pope Francis personally greeting LGBTQ+ pilgrims from England’s Westminster diocese in 2015, the pope greeting leaders of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics in 2023, the Vatican synod office listing New Ways Ministry’s resources on their website, the pope greeting transgender women and men in 2024, the 2023 and 2024 meetings Pope Francis had with New Ways Ministry staff and friends–and indeed so many more such gestures too numerous to list here.”

The author could have listed many other pro-LGBTQ developments from the past few years — notably the 2023 issuance of Fiducia Supplicans (authorizing the blessing of same-sex unions) and numerous promotions of pro-LGBTQ individuals to high ranking positions in Francis’s Synodal Church. In the most recent consistory, for example, Francis made Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. a cardinal, which caught the attention of some observers due to Radcliffe’s 2013 statement comparing gay sexuality to Our Lord in the Eucharist:

"How does all of this bear on the question of gay sexuality? We cannot begin with the question of whether it is permitted or forbidden! We must ask what it means, and how far it is Eucharistic. Certainly, it can be generous, vulnerable, tender, mutual and non-violent. So, in many ways, I would think that it can be expressive of Christ’s self-gift. We can also see how it can be expressive of mutual fidelity, a covenantal relationship in which two people bind themselves to each other forever.” (from the article accompanying Michael Haynes’ recent interview of Radcliffe)

Even if one believed that “gay sexuality” was morally permissible, this would still be a tremendously blasphemous comparison. As discussed in a recent article, though, Radcliffe served as one of the primary spiritual guides of the Synod on Synodality sessions, leading retreats for the Synod participants, many of whom are also openly pro-LGBTQ.

Although false ecumenism remains a key component of Francis’s Synodal Church, the pro-LGBTQ movement and the anti-Catholic movement are arguably the two driving forces of the Synodal religion. Almost every week, we hear reports of some persecution of Traditional Catholicism along with some promotion of the pro-LGBTQ movement.

The relationship between these two trends hardly seems accidental, and we can even find a scriptural explanation in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In that Epistle, St. Paul described a rebellion against God, which we can liken to the rejection of the true Faith:

“Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified Him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” (Romans 1:21-25)

Because men knew God and should have glorified Him, they were punished when they “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man.” In recompense for their sins, God “delivered them up to shameful affections”:

“For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.” (Romans 1:26-27)

So, according to St. Paul, the “gay sexuality” praised so lavishly by Radcliffe was actually a punishment for infidelity. Given that Radcliffe is one of the primary spiritual directors of the Synod on Synodality, we can reasonably conclude that “gay sexuality” is a central component of the spirit animating Francis’s new Synodal Church.

Even though St. Paul did not write that every instance of a group of people turning to these behaviors represents a punishment from God, there is no sense whatsoever in which we could read his words as anything other than an absolute condemnation of same-sex relations. If we take St. Paul seriously, we must conclude that it is never a good sign that people who purport to follow Christ turn to same-sex relations.

Here we must make the distinction between sinners trying to do God’s will and those who openly advocate for sinful activities. We are all sinners in great need of God’s mercy. It would be blasphemously preposterous for any of us to tout our sinful weaknesses as virtuous, and make a “Catholic movement” of promoting them. Just as serious Catholics decry special LGBTQ pilgrimage events, we would object to special events for adulterers, burglars, or abortionists. Far from being “hateful” to oppose pro-LGBTQ initiatives in the Church, our only charitable response is to calmly point out that the Church cannot endorse, honor, bless, glorify, or support any sinful activities — there is no special exception for “gay sexuality.”

And yet it is painfully obvious that Francis’s Synodal Church does indeed endorse, honor, bless, glorify, or support sins that were specifically condemned by St. Paul as punishments from God for falling away from true religion. What are we to think about this? Stepping back, the sins promoted by James Martin and Timothy Radcliffe are probably not the worst sins emerging from Rome today; but those sins are the most visible to many ordinary people who have at least some sense of Christian morality. Many laity may not be able to explain why false ecumenism, religious liberty, and Synodality are evil, but they can “see with their own eyes” that it is vile for the putative representatives of the Catholic Church to go around promoting “gay sexuality.”

In this sense, the Vatican’s ostentatious support of the LGBTQ movement is a sign that transcends theological arguments such that its basic significance should be apparent to all men of good will. Our Lord told us to judge a tree by its fruits (Matthew 7:16-20), and the rainbow-colored fruits of Francis’s Synodal Church are unmistakably evil. It appears that God is allowing these evils so that even the uneducated will take notice and see that Rome has lost the Faith.

When did Rome lose the Faith? While it does not definitively answer the question, it is noteworthy that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre referred to the prospect of Rome losing the Faith in his 1988 sermon for his consecration of the four Society of St. Pius X bishops:

“We turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary. You well know, my dear brethren, you must have been told of Leo XIII's prophetic vision revealing that one day ‘the See of Peter would become the seat of iniquity.’ He said it in one of his exorcisms, called ‘The Exorcism of Leo XIII.’ Has it come about today? Is it tomorrow? I do not know. But in any case it has been foretold. Iniquity may quite simply be error. Error is iniquity: to no longer profess the Faith of all time, the Catholic Faith, is a grave error. If there ever was an iniquity, it is this. And I really believe that there has never been a greater iniquity in the Church than Assisi, which is contrary to the First Commandment of God and the First Article of the Creed. It is incredible that something like that could have ever taken place in the Church, in the eyes of the whole Church—how humiliating! . . . Of course, you well know the apparitions of Our Lady at La Salette, where she says that Rome will lose the Faith, that there will be an ‘eclipse’ at Rome; an eclipse, see what Our Lady means by this.”

Archbishop Lefebvre already saw signs that Rome was losing the Faith, and he believed there had “never been a greater iniquity in the Church” than John Paul II’s interreligious prayer meeting for peace at Assisi in 1986. We have grown so accustomed to seeing similar spectacles today that we may forget that Pope Pius XI specifically condemned them in his 1928 encyclical on religious unity, Mortalium Animos:

“For since they hold it for certain that men destitute of all religious sense are very rarely to be found, they seem to have founded on that belief a hope that the nations, although they differ among themselves in certain religious matters, will without much difficulty come to agree as brethren in professing certain doctrines, which form as it were a common basis of the spiritual life. For which reason conventions, meetings and addresses are frequently arranged by these persons, at which a large number of listeners are present, and at which all without distinction are invited to join in the discussion, both infidels of every kind, and Christians, even those who have unhappily fallen away from Christ or who with obstinacy and pertinacity deny His divine nature and mission. Certainly such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.”

Pius XI wrote that interreligious “conventions, meetings and addresses” are based on a “false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy.” Those holding this opinion — which today appears to include almost everyone in the Vatican — end up abandoning the Faith.

Today, it appears that Pius XI was correct: little by little, Rome has lost the Faith because it has embraced the false opinions condemned in Mortalium Animos. It would have been far better for Catholics to recognize this in 1986, and join with Archbishop Lefebvre in calling a spade a spade. Now where are we, after decades of tacit approval of the condemned errors? The rainbow colored signs of apostasy popping up every week at the Vatican show us that Rome has lost the Faith. As both Pius XI and Archbishop Lefebvre warned, several decades of apathy about the great evil of false ecumenism have led to this unparalleled disaster.

God has not abandoned His Catholic Church, but we could understandably doubt this were it not for His promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18). Many of those who think the Church has defected now probably would have thought it had defected during the Arian heresy if they had been alive during the time of St. Athanasius. But St. Athanasius and those who kept the unadulterated Faith left us lessons which we need to recall today. Michael Davies highlighted some of the most important lessons in his Saint Athanasius: Defender of the Faith:

“What this history of this period proves is that, during a time of general apostasy, Christians who remain true to their traditional faith may have to worship outside the official churches, the churches in communion with their diocesan bishop, in order not to compromise that traditional faith; and that such Christians may have to look for truly Catholic teaching, leadership, and inspiration not to the bishops of their country as a body, not to the bishops of the world, not even to the Roman Pontiff, but to one heroic confessor whom the other bishops and even the Roman Pontiff may have repudiated or even excommunicated. And how would they recognize that this solitary confessor was right, and the Roman Pontiff and the body of the episcopate (not teaching infallibly) were wrong? The answer is that they would recognize in the teaching of this confessor what the faithful of the fourth century recognized in the teaching of Athanasius, the one true faith into which they had been baptized, in which they had been catechized, and which their confirmation gave them the obligation of upholding. . . . Faithful Catholics have a duty to divide themselves from schismatic or heretical bishops, and where division is a duty it is not a sin.” (pp. 42-43)

All of this is both more necessary, and less controversial to do, now that it has become so clear that Rome has lost the Catholic Faith. God will overcome the heresies spewing from Francis’s Synodal Church. Our task in the meantime is the same as it has always been for Christians: we must remain faithful to the immutable truth of the Catholic Church and strive to become saints. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

But St. Athanasius and those who kept the unadulterated Faith left us lessons which we need to recall today. Michael Davies highlighted some of the most important lessons in his Saint Athanasius: Defender of the Faith:

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[Catholic Caucus] What Do We Make of the Rainbow-Colored Signs of Apostasy in Rome?

The pro-LGBTQ movement and the anti-Catholic movement are arguably the two driving forces of the Synodal religion. Almost every week, we hear reports of some persecution of Traditional Catholicism along with some promotion of the pro-LGBTQ movement.