Bp. Eleganti’s commentary, sent to Per Mariam for publication, addresses the prohibitions placed on the Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage by the Vatican last weekend. Details of the restrictions can be found here, with a response fro…

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On October 19, Leo XIV appointed a new roster of members to the International Theological Commission (ITC) – which operates under the auspices of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith – thus forming the body of theologians who will serve there until the duration of their five-year term concludes in 2031. The 24 new members of the ITC are very much demonstrative of the style of the Church today, coming from a wide variety of countries and being both clerical and lay, male and female.

So also is their theological orthodoxy similarly mixed: while some are heralded as respected and even esteemed theologians, others have a history of dissenting from Catholic teaching and of activism against said teaching.

The irony now is that some of the ITC’s new members directly contradict what the ITC and the DDF have taught.

One such figure is Sara Parvis, who currently serves as an associate professor at the University of Edinburgh’ School of Divinity. She has joined the activist cause for female deacons, arguing in favour of ordaining women to the diaconate – which thus contradicts the Church’s infallible teaching on Holy Orders.

Writing in the UK’s “The Tablet” in 2024, Parvis opined “that an office in the Church called ‘deacon’ was filled by women from earliest times is not in doubt.” Such is a commonly utilised argument by advocates of the female diaconate, who attest that the Church would not be breaking with tradition by ordaining women, but rather returning to the practices of the early Church.

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She added:

“Women deacons would strengthen the public witness of Catholic women, which in turn would strengthen the faith of other Christian women and men, and offer the light of faith in new ways to the world…

“The restoration of the diaconate to women would offer a new and particularly ecclesial vocation, whether or not it was coupled with the vocation to religious life.”

The Church teaches firmly and clearly that the three-fold sacrament of Holy Orders – bishop, priest, deacon – is reserved to men. In his 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II wrote, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

Then in 2018, the prefect of the DDF, Cardinal Ladaria Ferrer S.J., defended the teaching of Ordinatio sacerdotalis as bearing the mark of “infallibility,” with John Paul II having “formally confirmed and made explicit, so as to remove all doubt, that which the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium has long considered throughout history as belonging to the deposit of faith.”

But even more than this, Parvis’ argument that the early Church had an ordained female diaconate has been firmly debunked by the very commission which she has just joined. In 2002, the International Theological Commission wrote after much study that:

The deaconesses mentioned in the tradition of the ancient Church – as evidenced by the rite of institution and the functions they exercised – were not purely and simply equivalent to the deacons;

The unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders, in the clear distinction between the ministries of the bishop and the priests on the one hand and the diaconal ministry on the other, is strongly underlined by ecclesial tradition, especially in the teaching of the Magisterium.

Parvis’ inclusion in the ITC for the next five years is theologically bizarre and self-contradictory. The ITC is not a large organisation where all schools of thought can be found by virtue of its sheer size. It is a carefully selected group of no more than 30 people, who are on-tap to advise the DDF on theological matters. As such, there can be no room in its membership for those who question Church teaching – and yet that is the reality the Church now faces.

But Parvis is not alone in her dissent. There are more figures in the new intake whose theological positions are of concern to long-time Vatican analysts.

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Claudia Leal Luna is a consulter at the DDF, and a professor at the Pontifical “John Paul II” Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences – which was famously gutted by Pope Francis, alongside the Pontifical Academy for Life, to undermine its pro-life and pro-family integrity. Luna will join Parvis at the ITC, despite her own record dissenting from documents which the DDF has published.

In March 2021, the DDF issued the famous Responsum which stated that the Church could not bless same-sex unions. The document caused an instant backlash among many of the more heterodox episcopal bodies, such as in Germany and Belgium, who had already broken with Church teaching on this point.

Luna was among the dissenters. The DDF’s text “has left a bitter taste in many people,” she said at the time.

Continuing her critique, Luna expressed the opinion that the Church’s moral theology must keep lockstep with society in order to remain relevant:

“The sexual morality of the Christian tradition needs to take some steps with philosophy, psychology, sociology, even with the biology of recent decades.

On the other hand, within institutions, there is always a core that protects the interpretation of the law and that tends to fight for a more exclusive interpretation.

What we as Catholics can demand is that we be told not only what is excluded, but also what is included. I have no doubt that the current sensitivity of Catholics in the world experiences an epistemological shock when reading this [the DDF’s Note prohibiting blessing of same-sex unions].”

Here, therefore, are two members of the ITC who directly contradict the teaching of the ITC and the DDF. (More could be named but these two are enough).

They have DDF prefect Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández to thank for their new position, since it is he who presents the names to the Pontiff for approval. It is not known how much knowledge Leo had of their personal theological opinions when he gave his permission for them to join the ITC. Yet their membership of the commission is emblematic of the theological rot which has been allowed to take heart at the core of the Church and of the Roman Curia, and which must be exposed if an authentic evangelisation is to be hoped for.

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The Pontiff landed in Paris early on Friday morning for a brief trip which will conclude on Monday evening. Its very existence points to the importance he placed on making the voyage. Leo’s diary was already too full and it was Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline – president of the French bishops’ conference – who lobbied the papal household to squeeze it into an already packed autumn calendar. Leo agreed and thus the trip began to take shape.

But it comes at a notably awkward time, just weeks after France legalised assisted suicide and euthanasia. Papal visits are normally timed to avoid the appearance of siding with any individual politician, such as just before or after an election. Such visits would also normally not take place so soon after the passing of legislation so directly aimed at attacking the Church’s moral teaching.

The visit was announced in May, prior to the bill being passed: but Leo had already raised the matter with President Emmanuel Macron during their private audience at the Vatican in April. Cdl. Aveline revealed recently that Leo’s arguments against the bill fell on deaf ears during that meeting.

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This set the tone for the trip. It was always to be a celebration of French Catholicism and an act of homage to two great centres for European Catholicism – Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Shrine of Lourdes. Now, in the context of the end of life bill, the papal voyage has had to also operate under the shadow of this direct attack by the state on the Church’s teaching.

So far, Leo has exceeded expectations on this front. The Holy See was polite but firm in refusing any offers by Macron for extra one-on-one time with the Pope, thus ensuring that Macron was not treated with any extra warmth than was strictly necessary for the visit. To do otherwise would have given the impression that the Church was not bothered by the bill’s legalisation. In response, Macron declared he would not attend any of the papal liturgies.

The first day of the French voyage would see Leo tested on the entire purpose of the trip, as he would meet privately with Macron, then address Macron and the full assembly of politicians, before soon meeting with the Catholic community in Notre-Dame. It was the day in which his role as Pope would be under scrutiny: both in the ‘external’ stance he presented to the world and the inward facing countenance on display for the Church.

Naturally, no details were given of the private encounter between Leo and Macron at the Elysée Palace. But his speech directly after their 50-minute conversation was forthright. As often happens during Leo’s foreign travels thus far, the speech to politicians was poignant, striking and largely well written.

The Pope praised France for its great history, and linked its prowess to the work of individual Catholics and the Church over centuries. France is great only insofar as it stays true to the spirit and ideals which made it that way, he said – namely Catholicism and the principle “that the world may have life.”

Indeed this phrase was repeated many times throughout his first speech of the trip, leaving the politicians in no doubt as to the Pope’s real message. Nor would Leo’s words have been lost on Macron, who sat on the same stage. In no uncertain terms, Leo emphasised the importance of protecting the sanctity of life at all ages, particularly in latter years: “I firmly reiterate that the protection of the right to life constitutes the indispensable foundation of every other human right.”

He further cautioned that technological advancements can aid man only when at the service of the good – another dig at the materialist society which pushes euthanasia and assisted suicide as the swift solution to troublesome old age.

The Pontiff also schooled Macron about the proper relationship between Church and state by using the president’s own words from a prior speech. The smartly dressed members of parliament leaving the glistening halls of the Elysée Palace were thus firmly informed that French Catholics are a blessing to the state, and that the nation itself is only great when it adheres to the Catholic values which made it that way.

Even stronger themes were employed by Leo when he addressed the UNESCO headquarters shortly afterwards. In a swift summary of certain elements of Catholic social teaching, he based everything in the ultimate meaning of a human being and the purpose of human life. From this premise, Leo discoursed on the importance of protecting life and the manner of building a just society around this principle.

“The touchstone by which we can assess our commitment is the care we show for the littlest and for the poor: children in their mothers’ wombs and in the various theatres of war, persons with physical and intellectual disabilities, the elderly, migrants, refugees, and all those arrogantly excluded as unproductive,” he said.

Pope Leo’s discourses to the political bodies is markedly different to those which have been heard coming from the pontiff in recent years: there is once again Catholic content in such addresses, rather than simply being speeches which any UN secretarial staff member could have drawn up. The ‘external’ side of the trip was decidedly in defence of the sanctity of human life and for the re-Christianisation of society.

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Leo has made his regular appeals for peace in the world one of the most regular and recurring elements of his pontificate, starting from his first moments emerging onto the Vatican loggia in front of the world.

This was re-iterated in Magnifica Humanitas as Leo decried the “normalization of war” and the manner in which war is becoming a normal part of common parlance and international policy.

{For a full roster of different analyses on the encyclical by this correspondent, interested readers may find them on Pelican+, The Catholic Herald, Ad Vaticanum, The European Conservative.}

“We are witnessing a real paradigm shift in public discourse and in decisions regarding rearmament, with a troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics, while the very ethical principles that had previously limited its use are being eroded,” he wrote.

But as part of this, Leo took aim at the Church’s teaching regarding a just war:

It is in this context that humanity is slipping into a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts.

Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. (182) Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness. The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.

Footnote 182 adds further information and a quotation from the catechism regarding just war:

“The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the possibility of legitimate defense by means of military force, which involves demonstrating that certain ‘rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy’ have been met. Yet it is easy to fall into an overly broad interpretation of this potential right. In this way, some would also wrongly justify even ‘preventive’ attacks or acts of war that can hardly avoid entailing ‘evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.’”

This footnote appears to clearly be aimed more directly at President Trump’s administration and his joint preventative strikes with Israel against Iran. Leo passionately decried the instigation of fresh hostilities at the time, something which drew the repeated ire of Trump who accused the Pope of defending Iran.

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7 months ago · 12 likes · 4 comments · Michael Haynes

So great was the public tension from the White House that the US bishops weighed in. Indeed it was only just over a month ago that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a number of clarifications over the Just War teaching under the headline “Just War Doctrine.” Bishop James Masa, chairman of the USCCB doctrine committee, noted in mid-Aril that “for over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war.”

The Catholic teaching on the just war is often referred to as a “theory” but the Church’s own texts note it as a “doctrine.”

“As long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed,” reads the catechism, before proceeding to outline the precise element which must be met in order to constitute a just war:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. the gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

3. there must be serious prospects of success;

4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the ‘just war’ doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good. (CCC 2309)

The Church’s Just War Doctrine has, as the USCCB noted, been in force for centuries and owes a great part of its makeup to Saints Ambrose, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (ST II-II, Q40).

Leo’s comments regarding the Just War are by no means a novel development in the Vatican. In doing so he was not breaking fresh ground by any means. Pope Francis argued similarly, as did Cardinal Ratzinger before he became pope.

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