EWTN News portal reports on a March 30, 2026 press briefing where White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended military prayers after “Pope” Leo XIV stated that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” This exchange is not a mere policy dispute but a profound manifestation of the post-conciliar apostasy, where both the conciliar “papacy” and the secular state operate within a naturalistic framework that entirely rejects the Social Kingship of Christ as defined by the immutable magisterium before 1958. The complete silence on supernatural realities—the state of grace, the authority of the Church, the final judgment—exposes a shared theological bankruptcy that reduces prayer to utilitarian ethics and the state to a pagan entity.
The “Pope’s” Error: A “Peace” divorced from Christ’s Kingship
In his Palm Sunday homily, “Pope” Leo XIV declared: “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” While superficially appealing, this statement is theologically vacuous and dangerously ambiguous. It fails to distinguish between just and unjust war, ignores the Church’s perennial teaching on the duty of rulers to defend the common good, and most critically, omits any reference to the Social Kingship of Christ. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), instituted the feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularist error that removes Jesus Christ and His law from public life:
“This plague [secularism]… began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations; the Church’s authority to teach men, to issue laws, to govern nations… was denied… When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
Leo XIV’s homily, by focusing solely on the “suffering of people in conflicts” without calling nations to recognize Christ’s reign, participates in the very error Pius XI condemned. The pope’s silence on the duty of states to publicly honor Christ and enact laws in conformity with divine law reveals the modernist hermeneutic that reduces the Gospel to a vague humanitarianism. This is precisely the “evolution of dogmas” and “democratization of the Church” decried by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), which condemned propositions such as: “Christian doctrine was initially Jewish, but through gradual development, it became first Pauline, then Johannine, and finally Greek and universal” (Proposition 60). Leo XIV’s statement is not a development but a corruption—a retreat from the explicit teaching of Pius XI that Christ’s kingdom “encompasses all men” and that rulers must “publicly honor and obey” Him. The pope’s failure to mention the necessity of the conversion of nations to Catholicism, a cornerstone of pre-1958 papal teaching, aligns with the “ecumenism project” exposed in the Fatima file as a tool for religious relativism and the dilution of Catholic identity.
The White House’s Naturalistic “Judeo-Christian” Paganism
Karoline Leavitt’s defense—that the U.S. is “a nation founded… on Judeo-Christian values” and that urging prayers for troops is “a very noble thing to do”—is a quintessential expression of the naturalistic religion condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864). Error 77 states: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” Leavitt’s “Judeo-Christian values” is precisely the indifferentist synthesis Pius IX anathematized. It reduces supernatural revelation to a generic moralism, stripping prayer of its supernatural end—the worship of God and the salvation of souls through the Church. The White House’s position is fundamentally Pelagian: it trusts in human virtue and civil religion without necessity of grace, sacraments, or the hierarchical Church. This is the “cult of man” that St. Pius X identified as the core of Modernism. Leavitt’s claim that prayers for troops are “noble” ignores the Catholic doctrine that prayers must be ordered to the ultimate end of man—the vision of God—and that any prayer offered in a state of mortal sin (as most modernists are) is an abomination (Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 83, A. 1). The lawsuits against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s prayer services, alleging violation of “separation of church and state,” are based on the same secularist error condemned in Syllabus Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” The Catholic State, as taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas, must recognize Christ as King and protect the Church’s rights. The current U.S. government, by enforcing a strict separation, promulgates the very error Pius IX condemned. Leavitt, as a Catholic, thereby publicly adheres to a condemned doctrine, placing herself in spiritual danger.
Symptomatic of the Conciliar Apostasy: The Silence on Supernatural Realities
The most damning aspect of this exchange is the complete absence of supernatural categories. Neither “Pope” Leo XIV nor the White House mentions: the state of grace, the necessity of the sacraments, the authority of the Church to govern consciences, the final judgment, or the eternal destiny of souls. This silence is the hallmark of the post-conciliar church, which has exchanged the Ecclesia militans (the Church militant) for a humanitarian NGO. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili, condemned the proposition that “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” (Proposition 25)—precisely the probabilistic, feeling-based religion implied by Leavitt’s “noble thing to do.” Leo XIV’s homily, while invoking Christ as “King of Peace,” divorces peace from the supernatural order: true peace, according to Pius XI, can only exist when “all willingly accept the reign of Christ and obey Him.” The pope’s failure to demand the conversion of nations and the explicit recognition of Catholicity as the sole path to salvation (Syllabus Error 21: “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion”—which is condemned as an error) demonstrates his adherence to the “ecumenism project” exposed in the Fatima file as a tool for religious relativism. The conciliar sect has replaced the salus animarum (salvation of souls) with a vague “solidarity” that is, in reality, a surrender to the world.
From the Perspective of Integral Catholic Faith: A Manifest Heresy
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith—the unchanging doctrine before the 1958 rupture—the errors here are manifest and deadly. “Pope” Leo XIV, by teaching that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war” without defining the just war conditions established by St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 40) and without subordinating all political order to Christ the King, promotes a heresy that undermines the Church’s social doctrine. This is compounded by his consistent promotion of indifferentism (e.g., his calls for “dialogue” with all religions). According to St. Robert Bellarmine, a manifest heretic loses office ipso facto: “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head” (De Romano Pontifice). Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law states that an office becomes vacant if one “publicly defects from the Catholic faith.” Leo XIV’s teachings, which align with the errors condemned in Lamentabili and the Syllabus, constitute such a public defection. Pope Paul IV’s bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio declares that if a cardinal or pope has defected from the faith before promotion, his elevation is “null, void, and of no effect.” The White House, for its part, upholds the secularist state condemned by Pius IX, thus placing itself in opposition to the Social Kingship of Christ. Both entities, therefore, are active agents in the “great apostasy” foretold by St. Pius X: the former by corrupting the Church from within, the latter by enforcing the “separation of church and state” that Pius IX called an “abomination.”
The Missing Just War Doctrine and the Duty of the State
Catholic just war theory, as taught by the Angelic Doctor, requires that war be waged by a legitimate authority, for a just cause (e.g., defense of the common good or the Church), and with a right intention (e.g., to secure peace, not for aggrandizement). Leo XIV’s blanket statement ignores this nuanced doctrine, reducing a complex moral issue to a simplistic pacifism that aligns with Modernism’s rejection of hierarchical authority and objective moral norms. More importantly, he fails to remind temporal rulers of their supreme duty: to recognize Christ as King and to order all laws and institutions to the supernatural end of man. Pius XI in Quas Primas explicitly states: “Let rulers of states therefore not refuse public veneration and obedience to the reigning Christ, but let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people, if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate and contribute to the increase of their homeland’s happiness.” The pope’s omission is not accidental; it is the logical outcome of the conciliar church’s abandonment of the Social Kingship. The White House, meanwhile, operates on the naturalistic principle of “Judeo-Christian values,” which has no binding force in Catholic theology and is explicitly condemned by Pius IX’s Syllabus as a form of indifferentism (Errors 15-18). The state’s primary duty is not to promote a generic “nobility” in prayer but to publicly profess the Catholic faith and protect the Church’s rights—a duty both parties ignore.
Conclusion: The Only Remedy—Return to Immutable Tradition
The solution to this dual modernist assault is not a “dialogue” between the conciliar sect and the secular state. It is the restoration of the Social Kingship of Christ over all nations, as taught by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “all power in heaven and on earth is given to Christ the Lord… there is no power in us that is exempt from this reign.” This demands that the state recognize the Catholic Church as the sole true religion, that laws be conformed to divine law, and that the Church enjoy full freedom from state interference. It also demands that the conciliar “papacy” be rejected as a usurpation by manifest heretics, and that the faithful adhere to the true Church, which endures in those who profess the integral faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments ordained before 1968. The prayers of the faithful must be ordered to this end: the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the restoration of all things in Christ—not the vague “nobility” of civil religion or the pacifist indifferentism of a “pope” who has lost the Faith. The current “Pope” Leo XIV, by his persistent errors, demonstrates that he is not the Vicar of Christ but a member of the “synagogue of Satan” (Apoc. 2:9), and the White House, by its naturalistic religion, serves the same globalist agenda that Pius IX identified as the work of Masonic sects. The faithful must flee these modernist structures and seek refuge in the traditional Catholic faith, outside of which there is no salvation.
Source:
White House defends praying for U.S. troops after pope condemns using prayers to justify war (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 30.03.2026