Msgr. Stuart Swetland, president of Donnelly College, wrote a commentary for the *National Catholic Register* (June 25, 2026) extolling the “Christian humanism” of the conciliar figure occupying the Vatican. The article describes enthusiastic crowds in St. Peter’s Square and massive gatherings in Spain for the June 2026 “Corpus Christi” event, where 600,000 young people kept vigil and 1.2 million processed in Madrid. Swetland recounts a private audience on June 3, 2026, during which he presented Leo XIV with a signed Chicago White Sox baseball, and he quotes the conciliar text *Magnifica Humanitas* extensively. The commentary attributes the alleged popularity to a longing for “authentic human encounters,” the “passion for truth,” and the “dignity of the human person,” culminating in the assertion that Leo is radiating “Christian humanism.” This piece is not a defense of the Faith but a full-throated advertisement for the very soul of the post-conciliar revolution: the cult of man dressed in Christian vestments.
The Medium Is the Apostasy
The title of the commentary itself reveals the core of the deception: “the medium is the message.” In Catholic preaching, the message must be the unchanging deposit of faith, with the preacher a mere vessel. Here, the person of Leo XIV is the message. The article is a personality cult, focusing on baseball, shared hobbies, and “humble joy,” while systematically omitting the supernatural mission of the Church. This is the very essence of the conciliar revolution: the replacement of the propitiatory sacrifice and the call to conversion with a naturalistic, horizontal “humanism” that leaves the world undisturbed in its rebellion against God’s law.
The Omission of Supernatural Truth
Swetland’s entire narrative is a study in what is absent. There is no mention of the state of grace, the necessity of the true sacraments, the reality of mortal sin, the eternal damnation that awaits those who die outside the true Church, or the social reign of Christ the King over nations. The “truth” Leo XIV proclaims is a vague, horizontal concept: “the Truth that is Christ himself” is immediately operationalized as a tool to overcome the “fragmentation of knowledge” and connect “information with deeper knowledge.” This is not the divine Truth that saves souls; it is a naturalistic, humanistic principle of intellectual coherence, a parody of the scholastic unity of truth.
The article quotes Leo’s Angelus on the Trinity, which reduces the mystery to a formula for social harmony: “The Trinity helps us to love everyone and everything: We discover that every creature is made for communion, relationship and encounter.” This is a direct contradiction of the dogma that many are damned and that the primary purpose of the Incarnation is reconciliation with the Father through the sacrifice on Calvary, not a universal communion of creatures. The Trinity is not a lesson in diversity and inclusion; it is the ineffable mystery of three divine persons in one God, to whom alone adoration is due.
The Cult of Man and the Dethronement of Christ
The central thesis of the article is the proclamation of “Christian humanism.” This is the very heresy condemned by St. Pius X in *Pascendi Dominici Gregis*, which describes Modernism as the transformation of the Church into a philosophical society for the betterment of human life. The “dignity of the human person” is extolled without any reference to man’s fallen nature, his absolute dependence on redeeming grace, or the necessity of dying to himself to live in Christ. It is the dignity of autonomous, fallen man, enthroned as the measure of all things.
This is the direct antithesis of the teaching of Pius XI in *Quas Primas*: “The kingdom of Christ embraces all men… His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The article’s vision is a horizontal kingdom of man, where the “great mission” of youth is to “Be human! Men and women of flesh and blood.” This is a blasphemous reduction of the vocation to sanctity and the evangelical counsel of perfection to a naturalistic program of social justice. The true mission of a Christian is to be a saint, to be “another Christ” (*alter Christus*), not simply to affirm one’s own humanity in a worldly sense.
The False “Corpus Christi” and the Idolatry of the Crowds
The article describes massive crowds processing in Madrid for a “Corpus Christi Mass” with Leo XIV. This is the liturgical expression of the conciliar church: a spectacle of human assembly centered on a human figure, not the adoration of the true Body and Blood of Christ in the unbloody sacrifice of the Mass. The post-conciliar “Corpus Christi” is a procession of the natural man, celebrating his own communal power, not the propitiatory sacrifice of the God-Man for the remission of sins. The 1.2 million people processing are not worshipping Christ the King; they are following the celebrity of the moment. This is the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place, a parody of the true procession of the King of Kings.
The article’s reference to *Gaudium et Spes*, 22, is a classic modernist proof-text: “it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.” In the mouth of the conciliar church, this means that the mystery of Christ is only understood through the lens of human self-awareness, not that man is only understood through the lens of Christ’s divinity and sacrifice. It is the hermeneutic of the *Nouvelle Théologie*: the human subject is the starting point, and Christ is the illustration of human potential, not the Redeemer from sin.
The Baseball Idol and the Destruction of Sacred Symbolism
The most revealing anecdote is the gift of a signed baseball. The article describes how Leo XIV “lit up” when he saw the signatures of Nellie Fox and other players. This is not a trivial detail; it is a profound symbol of the conciliar spirit. The sacred space of the papal audience, which should be reserved for matters of the faith and the salvation of souls, is profaned by the exchange of a sports trinket. The successor of St. Peter, who should be holding the keys of the kingdom and the monstrance containing the true Body of Christ, is depicted with the same joy as a child receiving a toy. This is the iconoclasm of the conciliar church: the replacement of sacred symbols with profane ones, the reduction of the papal office to a role of cultural and humanitarian significance.
The article’s closing line, “we should give thankful praise to our loving God who has sent us this ‘son of St. Augustine’ as a successor of St. Peter,” is a blasphemous lie. The true successor of St. Peter is the one who holds the integral faith of the pre-conciliar Church, who condemns the errors of Modernism, and who demands the conversion of all nations to the Catholic faith. Leo XIV is not a successor of St. Peter; he is the occupant of the Vatican by the forces of the revolution, a figurehead of the paramasonic structure that has emptied the churches and filled them with humanistic sentiment.
The Verdict of Catholic Doctrine
The entire commentary is a synthesis of the very errors condemned in the *Syllabus of Errors* and *Lamentabili Sane Exitu*. It promotes the “progress of sciences” and the “reform of the concept of Christian doctrine” (condemned propositions 64 and 65 of the *Syllabus*). It reduces the Church’s mission to the “development of moral guidelines for new technologies” and “access to essential realities necessary for human flourishing,” which is the indifferentism and naturalism condemned in proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.”
The “Christian humanism” of Leo XIV is the synthesis of all heresies: the exaltation of man without the abasement of the creature before the Creator, the proclamation of truth without the definition of dogma, the celebration of communion without the necessity of the true Church, and the reign of Christ without the submission of nations to His law. It is the religion of the Antichrist, which denies that Jesus is the Christ come in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3) by denying His propitiatory sacrifice and His exclusive, divine kingship over all creation.
The crowds in Madrid and St. Peter’s Square are not a sign of the Holy Spirit; they are the echo of the world’s applause for a church that has become the world. The true Church, the unchanging Ark of Salvation, is small, despised, and persecuted by the very structures that Swetland celebrates. The baseball is the perfect symbol of the new religion: a plaything for the masses, a distraction from the eternal truths, and a tool to bind the hearts of men to a man, not to Christ the King.
Source:
Pope Leo Speaks to the Heart, and the World Is Listening (ncregister.com)
Date: 25.06.2026