EWTN News reports that Toronto “Cardinal” Frank Leo has written to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and members of Parliament, urging them to support Bill C-218, which would block the expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAID) to those whose sole underlying condition is mental illness. The “cardinal” frames his appeal in terms of “choosing life over death,” expresses “disappointment and anguish” at the expansion of MAID, and calls for investments in palliative care and mental health support. He also requests a free vote for Liberal MPs on the bill, acknowledging that it “raises profound questions of conscience.” The Archdiocese of Toronto is leading the “Help Not Harm” campaign, which has generated approximately 5,000 letters to MPs. While the “cardinal’s” opposition to the expansion of euthanasia is noted, his approach reveals the fundamental impotence and theological bankruptcy of the post-conciliar structure when confronted with the systematic legalized destruction of human life.
The Language of Mere Preference, Not of Divine Law
The most immediately striking feature of Mr. Leo’s letter is its tone: cautious, diplomatic, and framed entirely within the categories of secular liberal democracy. He urges parliamentarians to “choose life and not death” — as though this were a matter of political preference rather than of divine commandment. The Fifth Commandment, Non occides (Thou shalt not kill), is not a suggestion to be weighed against competing policy considerations; it is an absolute, immutable precept of the natural law, engraved by God Himself in the conscience of every man, and binding upon all nations, legislatures, and sovereigns without exception.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught with unmistakable clarity that Christ the King’s authority extends over all nations and all spheres of human life, and that rulers who refuse to recognize this authority undermine the very foundations of their own power: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” Mr. Leo’s letter, by contrast, operates entirely within the framework of a secular state that has already expelled Christ from its laws. He does not — and, given his position within the conciliar sect, cannot — invoke the binding authority of Christ the King over the Canadian state. He does not remind Prime Minister Carney that his authority is derived from God, that he will be judged by God for the laws he enacts or permits, and that the legalized killing of innocent persons is not merely a “policy disagreement” but a crime against the Divine Majesty.
Instead, Mr. Leo employs the language of secular moral suasion: he speaks of a society being “rightly judged” by how it cares its most vulnerable, of Canadians being “increasingly troubled,” of “profound questions of conscience that transcend partisan alignment.” This is the language of a lobbyist, not of a successor of the Apostles. The true Church, when she speaks on matters of faith and morals, does not request; she commands. She does not ask for a “free vote”; she declares what is true and what is false, what is lawful and what is gravely sinful. The Council of Trent, in its Sixth Session, Canon 21, anathematizes anyone who says that the commandments are impossible to keep: “If anyone says that the commandments of God are impossible to keep for the justified, let him be anathema.” The Church has never hesitated to pronounce moral truth with absolute certainty. Mr. Leo’s timid, bureaucratic appeal is a symptom of the conciliar sect’s abandonment of its divine mission to teach, govern, and sanctify with authority.
The Omission of the Supernatural Order
Mr. Leo’s letter is entirely devoid of any reference to the supernatural order. There is no mention of the state of grace, of mortal sin, of the eternal destiny of souls, of the reality of hell, of the necessity of repentance and confession, of the infinite merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ applied through the sacraments, or of the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints. His appeal is framed exclusively in naturalistic terms: “dignity, compassion, and love,” “palliative support,” “mental health resources,” “accompanying those suffering.”
This silence is not accidental; it is structurally inevitable within the post-conciliar framework. The conciliar sect, since the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 under the usurper John XXIII, has systematically reduced the Church’s mission to one of humanitarian service and dialogue with the world. The supernatural realities — the salvation of souls, the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence of Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament, the necessity of baptism, the reality of original sin — have been progressively obscured, relativized, or denied outright. Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “the civil government, even when in the hands of an infidel sovereign, has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Proposition 41) and that “the entire government of public schools… may and ought to appertain to the civil power” (Proposition 45). The entire thrust of the Syllabus is that the Church’s authority is supreme in her own domain and that the state has no right to exclude God from public life.
Mr. Leo, by contrast, does not challenge the legitimacy of a state that has legalized the killing of its own citizens. He does not declare that a law permitting euthanasia is null and void before God and that no Catholic is bound to obey it. He does not remind Canadian Catholics that cooperation with the expansion of MAID — whether as medical professionals, legislators, or voters — constitutes formal or material cooperation with grave evil and places their immortal souls in peril. He does not invoke the teaching of Pius XI in Casti Connubii that the life of an innocent person is sacred and that no human authority has the right to destroy it. Instead, he asks for “measures that restrict any further expansion” — as though the problem were one of degree rather than of kind, as though the existing legal framework for MAID (which has already ended nearly 100,000 lives) were somehow acceptable and only its further extension objectionable.
The Heresy of Democracy Within the Church
Perhaps the most revealing passage in Mr. Leo’s letter is his request that Prime Minister Carney allow Liberal MPs a “free vote” on Bill C-218. He writes: “This legislation raises profound questions of conscience that transcend partisan alignment and touch on deeply held moral, ethical, and spiritual convictions.” This statement, while superficially reasonable, contains within it the seed of one of the most destructive heresies of the modern era: the democratization of moral truth.
The Catholic Church has never taught that the objective moral law is subject to a vote — whether of parliamentarians, of bishops, or of the faithful. The Church teaches, and has always taught, that certain acts are intrinsically evil — that is, evil in themselves, regardless of circumstances, intentions, or consequences. The deliberate killing of an innocent human being is such an act. It is not a “question of conscience” on which sincere people may disagree; it is a violation of the divine law, and those who formally cooperate in it commit mortal sin. The Council of Trent, in its Fourteenth Session, Chapter 4, teaches that the sacrament of penance is necessary for the forgiveness of mortal sins, and that those who deny this are anathematized.
By framing the issue as one of “conscience” and “deeply held convictions,” Mr. Leo implicitly concedes the modernist premise that moral truth is subjective — that what matters is not the objective law of God but the sincere belief of the individual. This is precisely the error condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, where he exposed the modernist doctrine that “faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities” (Proposition 25 of Lamentabili Sane Exitus). The modernist does not deny the existence of moral truth; he simply relocates it from the objective order to the subjective conscience. Mr. Leo’s appeal to “conscience” is a textbook example of this modernist maneuver.
The Structural Apostasy of the Conciliar Sect
It is necessary to situate Mr. Leo’s letter within the broader context of the conciliar sect’s systematic apostasy. The legalization and expansion of euthanasia in Canada did not occur in a vacuum; it occurred within a political and cultural framework that the conciliar sect has done nothing to challenge and everything to accommodate. The same structures occupying the Vatican that now express “disappointment” at the expansion of MAID are the same structures that, since 1962, have:
- Promoted the heresy of religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae, 1965), which denies the Church’s traditional teaching that the Catholic Church is the only true religion and that the state has a duty to profess and protect her (Proposition 77 of the Syllabus of Errors);
- Embraced false ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio, 1964), which treats schismatics and heretics as separated “brethren” rather than as enemies of the faith;
- Replaced the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with the Protestantized Novus Ordo Missae, which obscures the propitiatory nature of the sacrifice and opens the door to sacrilegious communions;
- Systematically dismantled the Church’s traditional teaching on the social reign of Christ the King, the necessity of Catholic education, the indissolubility of marriage, and the reality of hell;
- Elevated to positions of authority men who publicly deny defined dogmas, promote moral aberrations, and manifestly lack the Catholic faith.
Mr. Leo is a product of this system. He was appointed “archbishop of Toronto” by the antipope Francis in 2023, within a structure that has been in a state of formal heresy since at least the promulgation of Dignitatis Humanae in 1965. The “Help Not Harm” campaign, while directed toward a laudable end (the restriction of euthanasia), operates entirely within the framework of secular political advocacy. It does not call Canadians to conversion, to repentance, to the sacraments, to prayer and penance. It asks them to write letters to their MPs. This is the religion of naturalism — the very naturalism that Pius IX condemned in the Syllabus of Errors as the first and most fundamental error: “There exists no Supreme, all-wise, all-provident Divine Being, distinct from the universe” (Proposition 1).
The True Remedy: The Social Reign of Christ the King
The true remedy for the evil of euthanasia — and for every other evil that afflicts modern society — is not political lobbying, not letter-writing campaigns, not appeals to the “conscience” of secular legislators. The true remedy is the social reign of Christ the King — the recognition, by individuals, families, and states, that Jesus Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords, that His law is the supreme law of all nations, and that all human authority is derived from Him and subject to His judgment.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” And further: “The state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations, both male and female, who are indeed the most valiant helpers of the Pastors of the Church and contribute most to the expansion and establishment of Christ’s Kingdom.”
The annual celebration of the feast of Christ the King, instituted by Pius XI in 1925, was intended precisely to remind states that “not only private individuals, but also rulers and governments have the duty to publicly honor Christ and obey Him.” The conciliar sect, by contrast, has systematically emptied this feast of its content, transforming it into a celebration of Christ’s “universal love” rather than of His sovereign authority over all nations and all aspects of human life.
Until Canada — and every other nation — recognizes the kingship of Christ, repents of its apostasy, and submits its laws to the divine law, no amount of letter-writing campaigns will avail. The legalization of euthanasia is not an isolated policy failure; it is the logical and inevitable consequence of a society that has rejected God. As Pius XI wrote: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” A state that kills its most vulnerable members is not merely “unhappy”; it is in a state of formal rebellion against God, and no Catholic who understands his faith can cooperate with it without endangering his immortal soul.
Conclusion: The Impotence of the Conciliar Sect
Mr. Leo’s letter, while expressing opposition to the expansion of euthanasia, is a perfect illustration of the conciliar sect’s fundamental impotence. It operates entirely within the framework of a secular state that has rejected Christ. It employs the language of secular moral suasion rather than the language of divine authority. It omits all reference to the supernatural order — to sin, to grace, to the sacraments, to the eternal destiny of souls. It frames moral truth as a matter of “conscience” rather than of objective divine law. And it proposes as a remedy the very political process that produced the evil in the first place.
The true Church — the Church of all ages, the Church that produced the martyrs and the confessors, the Church that anathematized heresies and conquered empires — does not write polite letters to prime ministers. She proclaims the truth, commands obedience to the divine law, and anathematizes those who violate it. She does not ask for a “free vote” on whether innocent human beings may be killed; she declares, with the full weight of her divine authority, that the deliberate killing of an innocent person is always and everywhere a grave crime against God, and that those who formally cooperate in it are guilty of mortal sin and will suffer eternal damnation unless they repent.
Until the structures occupying the Vatican return to this uncompromising proclamation of the truth — until they repudiate the errors of Vatican II, restore the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and once again teach, govern, and sanctify with the authority of Christ — their appeals to secular governments will remain what they are: the impotent gestures of a counterfeit church in a dying civilization.
Source:
Canadian cardinal calls on prime minister to support legislation limiting euthanasia (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.04.2026