POPE LEO XIV, THE VATICAN BANK, AND CANTERBURY GREETINGS

(Do not forget that the vidchats this month are the 17th and 24th due to western and eastern Good Fridays falling on the 3rd and 10th respectively.)

Today we start out this week's blogs with a bit of a "double-header", in that our blog today is actually about two articles, and the possible connections between them. These articles were shared by K.M. and in the case of the second article, S.D., V.T., M.C., L.G.L.R. and many others, respectively, and I'll just post them and let you read them, before I indulge in today's high octane speculation on what I think might be connecting them:

Pope Leo XIV honors new female pro-abortion ‘Archbishop’ of Canterbury

New Vatican Bank chief sparks 'Illuminati takeover' claims: 'Deep state taking over the Catholic Church' MORE: Billionaire Peter Thiel holds secret 'Antichrist' meetings on the Vatican's doorstep

The first article says it all, at least, as far as any traditional Roman Catholic is concerned (and, let it be noted, any traditional Anglican is concerned too, more of that in a moment):

Sarah Mullally is the first woman to hold the title of Archbishop of Canterbury. She supports abortion. She champions LGBT initiatives. She leads a communion that has broken from Catholic teaching on the priesthood, on marriage, on the sanctity of life. And Pope Leo XIV sent her a congratulatory letter.

John-Henry Westen reports on a Vatican move that has stunned traditional Catholics. The Pope’s letter offers praise, invokes the Virgin Mary as inspiration, and says nothing about the invalidity of Anglican orders. Nothing about the grave evil of abortion. Nothing about the impossibility of a woman receiving Holy Orders. It is ecumenism stripped of truth, unity purchased at the cost of clarity.

Pope John Paul II was clear: The Church cannot approve of women’s ordination. The Catechism is clear: Abortion is a moral evil. But the letter to Mullally reads as if these teachings do not exist. This is not pastoral outreach. It is a scandal. And it leaves the faithful wondering: What does the Pope actually believe?

I tend to agree with the sentiment in the article: this is not "pastoral outreach" nor the mere courteous exchange of pleasantries between church leaders of different denominations, though doubtless there will be those within the Papal church that will attempt to spin things in that fashion.  As far as the lack of any mention of the impossibility of women receiving holy orders (i.e., being ordained a deacon, priest, or consecrated a bishop), one might have expected at least a mild reprimand and reminder from Leo to the "archbishopette" presuming to occupy the cathedra of St. Augustine of Canterbury that traditionalists within her own communion also deny the possibility of women's ordination, and thus have long ago formally broken communion with the "official" Anglican bodies, viewing them as nothing but coopted and apostate institutions having no connection to orthodox Anglican confession or practice. Indeed, this author's own journey to Eastern Orthodoxy began in those traditionalist Anglican bodies that had broken with the American Episcopal Church when they produced in 1977 a very strong statement of principles, The Affirmation of St. Louis, which among other things stated "We disavow the right of any church body to amend, alter, or suppress any of the seven ancient ecumenical definitions of the Faith."  Strong stuff, and an indicator that, as far as the traditionalist Anglicans were concerned, they had not broken from anyone. It was, rather, the "official" church that had broken from them.  What is evident in the article's dismay over Leo XIV's performance is very much the same attitude; so far as a traditionalist Roman Catholic might be concerned, the Pope has broken with them, not they with the Pope.

So what, really, might be going on? To lay the groundwork for my speculative answer to this question, we turn to the second article, and to these statements:

The man named to be next president of the Vatican Bank has sparked wild claims that an ancient conspiracy is taking direct control of the Catholic Church.

François Pauly has been elected to serve as the president of the supervisory board for the Institute for the Works of Religion, the official name for the financial group in Vatican City which manages the church's money, property and charitable works.

Pauly, who has served on the Vatican's board since 2024, will now lead the seven-member panel that supervises the bank's strategic guidelines, makes sure international financial standards are followed and oversees day-to-day operations.

However, conspiracy theorists immediately seized on Pauly's ties to the powerful Rothschild group - one of the most famous international banking families in history that has been alleged to be part of the secret society known as the Illuminati.

Theories about the Illuminati claim the mysterious order is comprised of a shadowy collection of elite bankers, politicians, Freemasons and powerful families worldwide who manipulate governments, wars, economies and even religions.

Pauly, who is set to take over as the Vatican Bank's board president on April 28, previously served as general manager of the Edmond de Rothschild group, a private banking arm of the Rothschild family in Switzerland. (Emphasis added)

Whatever one might make of "Illuminati conspiracy theories", the real significance is the attachment to the Rothschild group. In the 1980s, the well-known Roman Catholic scholar and author, Fr. Malachi Martin, wrote a novel titled, appropriately enough, Vatican. The novel was - for those familiar with the details of modern Roman Catholic history - a tell-all, with characters readily identifiable (in most cases), and their motivations for their policy decisions revealed in contexts that provided sufficient corroborative context that the motivational revelations took on the character of  prima facie arguments. One of the "details" revealed in the novel was that the Vatican Bank was initially established via a secret agreement with "the high financial powers of Europe" to allow the Roman Church to play in that rarefied financial atmosphere. And play it did. According to Fr. Martin, it became a major financial player... with something that most of them with the exception of the Bank of International Settlements did not have: sovereignty.

Somewhat later, in the mid-1990s, this author published a kind of samizdat four-volume "theological tome" titled God, History, and Dialectic, in the very last chapter of which I argued that, by dint of its own extraordinary claims and a long track record of trying to enforce them, the papacy would become unalterably and inextricably entangled with "the world" to the extent that it would no longer be a bulwark against it, but indeed the tip of the spear of the world's penetration into the Roman church. It would, inevitably, become the witness and guardian, not of Roman Catholic tradition and doctrine, but of its undoing, for if it did not do so, it would lose that ability to have access to the world's financial markets, and cease being "a player."  Indeed, those predictions were (as far as I was concerned at the time and still think) already fulfilled at the First and Second Vatican Councils. Leo XIV's "omissions" in his greeting to the "archbishopette pretender of Canterbury" are thus merely yet another logical denouement. The Pope's letter with its telling omissions is no more genuinely Roman Catholic than the "archbishopette" is genuinely Anglican, because the proof is not in the label or wearing the clothes, but in the doctrinal content which is lacking in both cases.

So while Leo's strange omissions in his greetings to the "archbishopette" may seem entirely unconnected to his selection of a Rothschild-tainted manager for the Vatican bank, they are, in the final analysis par for the course because they are manifestations of the same problem: inextricable entanglement with the fads and trends of the world. One may indeed view them as preparation for similar "inclusive measures" in the Papal church, and expect the co-opted jurisdictions of the Eastern Churches to be not far behind. And the result will be the same as it was for the traditional Anglicans: schism, in order to preserve orthodoxy.

See you on the flip side...

(If you enjoyed today's blog, please share it with your friends.)