EWTN News reports that U.S. bishops have rushed to defend “Pope” Leo XIV’s anti-war statements against Vice President JD Vance’s criticism, reaffirming just war theory while carefully avoiding any mention of the Church’s true social teaching on the Kingship of Christ. The article exposes the fundamental bankruptcy of the conciliar sect’s approach to peace — reducing the Gospel to a mere moral framework while ignoring the supernatural order and the Church’s divine mandate to govern all aspects of human life.
The Usurper’s Gospel: A Modernist Reduction of Divine Truth
The article presents “Pope” Leo XIV’s remarks claiming that “anyone who is a disciple of Christ” is “never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” This statement, while cloaked in the language of peace, represents a profound distortion of Catholic teaching. The Church has never taught that the use of force in defense of justice is inherently incompatible with discipleship. As Pope Pius XI declared in Quas Primas, Christ the King possesses “all power in heaven and on earth” and His reign encompasses “all men — whether individuals, families, or states.” The Church’s just war doctrine, far from being a mere “moral framework” as Bishop Massa suggests, is an application of the divine law to the temporal order — an order that Christ the King rightfully governs.
The conciliar sect’s obsession with “peace” divorced from justice is a hallmark of Modernism. As Pope St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the Modernists “reduce the whole of religion to a mere sentiment” and “deny the supernatural origin of the Church.” When Leo XIV speaks of peace without reference to the Kingship of Christ, the necessity of conversion, or the eternal consequences of sin, he preaches not the Gospel but a naturalistic humanism that the Church has consistently condemned.
Bishop Massa’s Theological Confusion: Just War Without the King
Brooklyn Auxiliary Bishop James Massa’s statement is a masterclass in modernist obfuscation. He claims that “just war theory sets strict moral limits on the use of military force” and that it is “not a political endorsement of war but a moral framework.” This language reveals the conciliar sect’s fundamental error: the reduction of Catholic doctrine to a set of abstract principles divorced from the supernatural reality of Christ’s Kingship.
The true teaching of the Church is not merely that war must meet certain “moral limits” but that all authority — including the authority to wage just war — derives from God through Christ the King. As Pope Leo XIII wrote in Immortale Dei, “the Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each supreme in its own order.” When Massa speaks of just war as a “moral framework” without reference to the divine origin of authority, he implicitly denies the Church’s teaching on the relationship between the two powers and reduces the faith to a system of ethics accessible to natural reason alone.
Furthermore, Massa’s claim that “Christians are obliged to critically evaluate claims made in favor of armed conflict rather than assume moral legitimacy” is a subtle but dangerous inversion of the proper order. The Church has always taught that legitimate authority — including the authority to wage just war — is ordained by God. The obligation of the Christian is not to “critically evaluate” the decisions of lawful superiors from a position of autonomous reason but to “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29) when human commands contradict divine law. Massa’s language reflects the modernist error condemned in the Syllabus of Errors: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil” (Proposition 3).
Vance’s Error: Confusing the Usurper with the Vicar of Christ
Vice President JD Vance’s response, while containing a kernel of truth, is fatally compromised by his recognition of the usurper on Peter’s throne. His question — “How can you say God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?” — correctly identifies the theological problem with Leo XIV’s statement. However, Vance’s subsequent remarks reveal his fundamental confusion about the nature of the Church and the papacy.
Vance’s assertion that “it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology” implicitly denies the Church’s teaching on papal authority. While a true pope can err in his private opinions, when he speaks ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, he is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit. The problem with Leo XIV is not that he is “careless” in his theology but that he is not the pope at all. He is a usurper occupying the See of Peter, and his teachings — whether on war, peace, or any other matter — carry no more authority than those of any other heretic.
Vance’s call for the Vatican to “stick to matters of morality” and let the president “dictate American public policy” is a perfect expression of the liberal error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Proposition 55). This is the very error that the conciliar sect has embraced since Vatican II, and it is the reason why figures like Vance can simultaneously profess Catholicism and deny the Church’s authority over public life.
Bishop Flores’s False Dilemma: The Usurper Teaches, the Faithful Obey
Bishop Daniel Flores’s statement on X is perhaps the most revealing of the article’s modernist assumptions. He declares that “the successor of Peter teaches. This is his office” and that “if what he teaches doesn’t sound like what we want to hear, we should admit the likelihood that the problem is in what we want to hear and not in what he teaches.”
This argument is a textbook example of the hermeneutic of continuity — the conciliar sect’s preferred method of neutralizing criticism. By framing the issue as a conflict between the faithful’s desires and the “pope’s” teaching, Flores obscures the fundamental question: Is Leo XIV the successor of Peter? If he is not — and the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that he is not — then his teachings carry no authority whatsoever, and the faithful have not merely the right but the duty to reject them.
The true teaching of the Church is clear: a manifest heretic cannot be Pope. As St. Robert Bellarmine taught, “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” The conciliar sect’s leaders — from John XXIII to Leo XIV — have repeatedly professed heresies condemned by the Church’s authentic Magisterium. Their teachings are not merely “difficult” or “challenging”; they are objectively heretical and must be rejected by all who wish to remain in the true Church.
The Omission That Condemns: Silence on the Kingship of Christ
The most damning aspect of this article is what it does not say. Nowhere in the bishops’ statements, Vance’s comments, or the article’s own analysis is there any mention of the Kingship of Christ, the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ, or the duty of nations to publicly recognize and obey Him.
This silence is not accidental. It is the defining characteristic of the conciliar sect. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” He warned that “when God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
The conciliar sect has systematically rejected this teaching. The Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae — a product of the same modernist revolution that produced the new “Mass” and the new “catechism” — proclaimed the right to religious freedom, directly contradicting the teaching of Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors and Pope Leo XIII in Immortale Dei. This is why the bishops can speak of “peace” and “just war” without ever mentioning Christ the King: they have rejected His Kingship and replaced it with the liberal gospel of human rights and international cooperation.
The Iran War: A Test Case for Conciliar Bankruptcy
The article’s reference to the Iran war highlights the practical consequences of the conciliar sect’s apostasy. When Leo XIV criticizes military action without reference to justice, the natural law, or the authority of Christ the King, he reduces the Church’s teaching to a vague pacifism that serves the interests of the globalist agenda. The true Church has always taught that war can be just when waged by legitimate authority, for a just cause, and with right intention. The Catechism of the Council of Trent — not the conciliar sect’s counterfeit — teaches that “the use of force in defense of justice is not contrary to the Gospel” when the conditions of the just war doctrine are met.
The conciliar sect’s inability to articulate this teaching — or worse, its active opposition to it — is a direct consequence of its rejection of the Church’s supernatural mission. As Pope St. Pius X warned, the Modernists “desire to reform the Church by adapting it to the modern world” rather than “reforming the world by subjecting it to the Church. The result is a “Church” that can offer no resistance to the forces of secularism, globalism, and war — because it has already surrendered to them.
Conclusion: The True Church Endures
The spectacle of modernist bishops rallying to defend a usurper’s anti-war statements is a powerful reminder of the depth of the current crisis. The conciliar sect has so thoroughly absorbed the errors of Modernism that it can no longer distinguish between the Gospel and the ideology of secular humanism. Its leaders speak of “peace” without justice, “morality” without the supernatural, and “theology” without the Kingship of Christ.
The true Church — the Church of all ages, founded by Christ on the Rock of Peter — endures in the faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith and are led by bishops with valid sacraments and validly ordained priests. These faithful know that peace is only possible in the kingdom of Christ (Pius XI, Quas Primas) and that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). They reject the conciliar sect’s counterfeit teachings and remain faithful to the immutable Tradition of the Church.
Let us pray for the conversion of those ensnared in the conciliar sect — including figures like Vance who, despite their errors, show some signs of seeking the truth. And let us remain steadfast in the knowledge that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18) — not the conciliar sect, but the true Church of Jesus Christ, which will endure until the end of time.
Source:
Bishops reaffirm just war limits amid Vance’s pushback on pope’s peace stance (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 15.04.2026