Naturalistic Reductionism Masquerading as Pastoral Concern
The Catholic News Agency portal reports (November 7, 2025) on a video message from antipope Robert Prevost (“Leo XIV”) to Italy’s National Conference on Addictions, where he identifies compulsive gambling, pornography, and internet abuse as consequences of excessive digital use. The article quotes him framing these behaviors as symptoms of “mental or inner distress” and “social decline in positive values,” particularly among youth. He calls for “spiritual and moral values” to be instilled through educational institutions and community prevention efforts, urging society to perceive a “cry for help” from young people.
Omission of the Supernatural Order: A Betrayal of Catholic Doctrine
The so-called “pope’s” analysis operates entirely within a naturalistic framework, reducing grave moral evils to psychological and social phenomena. Nowhere does he identify pornography as a mortal sin that “defiles the body, the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 6:19) or gambling as a violation of the Seventh Commandment. This evasion mirrors the modernist heresy condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), which reduces religion to “a mere sentiment” divorced from objective truth.
The text speaks of “forming consciences” and “moral limits” while carefully avoiding terms like sin, grace, or eternal punishment. Contrast this with Pius XI’s encyclical Divini Illius Magistri (1929), which insists that education must be rooted in “the supernatural life, the gift of grace, which elevates man to the dignity of a son of God.” By replacing the lex divina with therapeutic language about “emotional instability,” the conciliar sect perpetuates the very “social decline” it pretends to lament.
The Heresy of Immanentism in “Pastoral Solutions”
The proposal to combat addictions through “positive relationships” and “dialogue with adults” constitutes a denial of the Church’s ex opere operato sacramental power. True liberation from vice requires sanctifying grace, obtained through the Sacrament of Penance and a life of prayer—means entirely absent from Prevost’s prescriptions. His appeal to “educational agencies” like parishes neglects to specify that these structures, under conciliar control, routinely promote the same relativistic morality he superficially decries.
When he urges institutions to “boost self-esteem” among youth, he inverts the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin, which holds that man’s wounded nature requires redemption, not mere psychological adjustment. As the Syllabus of Errors (1864) declares: “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” when they oppose divine revelation (Proposition 57). Prevost’s therapeutic moralism aligns precisely with condemned proposition 58: “The rectitude of morality is placed in the accumulation of riches and the gratification of pleasure.”
Silence on the Apostate Roots of Modern Addiction
The article’s uncritical reproduction of Prevost’s rhetoric ignores how the conciliar sect itself fuels the crisis it describes. Where is the condemnation of Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae, which enshrined religious indifferentism and liberated pornography through its “right to misinformation”? Pius IX’s Quanta Cura (1864) anathematized the idea that “liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right” (Proposition 15). Prevost’s call for “solidarity” and “dialogue” merely echoes this condemned error.
Moreover, the text omits how antipopes since John XXIII have dismantled Catholic discipline. The 1983 “Code of Canon Law” abolished mandatory Index of Forbidden Books adherence (Canon 823 §1), enabling pornographic content’s ubiquity. Prevost’s predecessors like Bergoglio (“Francis”) praised the blasphemous film “La Vita è Bella,” which trivialized the Holocaust—a far cry from Pius XI’s encyclical Vigilanti Cura (1936), which mandated “a holy crusade against indecent cinema.”
Conclusion: A Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing
This performance exemplifies the conciliar sect’s modus operandi: diagnosing societal ills while withholding the only remedy—integral submission to Christ the King. As Pius XI declared in Quas Primas (1925), “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony.” Prevost’s naturalistic moralizing, severed from the Cross and the throne of Peter, serves not to convert souls but to normalize the apostasy Vatican II inaugurated.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV warns about new addictions: pornography and internet abuse (catholicnewsagency.com)
Article date: 07.11.2025