How Well Does Pope Leo Know Pope Leo?

I know it is early in the pontificate of Pope Leo XIV, and maybe it would be a bit too hasty of me to claim any miracles have resulted from it, but something seemingly miraculous happened recently during Pope Leo’s audience with the Eastern Catholic leaders. No, I am not speaking of something like levitation or a miraculous healing but something much more subtle, albeit as improbable as anything given the context.

You see, Pope Leo did something that I didn’t think we would ever see again; he quoted a pope from before Vatican II. I couldn’t believe it. Not only that, but he didn’t quote the Second Vatican Council. How refreshing that a pope seemingly doesn’t feel the need to write and speak as if Catholicism began in 1965.  Pope Leo did something that I didn’t think we would ever see again; he quoted a pope from before Vatican II. I couldn’t believe it. Tweet This

Now, I am sure if I were to comb through the works of the post-conciliar pontiffs, I would find pre-conciliar citations, but we must all admit that the scale has been overloaded in favor of post-1965 Catholicism in the writings and speeches of every pontiff since Vatican II. I am under no illusion that Pope Leo will reject or ignore Vatican II and the post-conciliar corpus, but it was refreshing, to say the least, to witness something other than the self-referential post-conciliar echo chamber we have become accustomed to.

In any event, he quoted Pope Leo XIII in his address to the Eastern Churches, stating: 

Over a century ago, Leo XIII pointed out that “preserving the Eastern rites is more important than is generally realized.” He went so far as to decree that “any Latin-Rite missionary, whether a member of the secular or regular clergy, who by advice or support draws any Eastern-Rite Catholic to the Latin Rite” ought to be “dismissed and removed from his office.”

What is fascinating is that not only did Leo XIV lead with Leo XIII, but he chose a strikingly strong quotation that happily seems out of place in our effeminate and modernist milieu. It is one thing to compliment the Eastern Churches—every post-conciliar pope has done that—but it is quite another to speak of dismissing and removing clerics from their offices if they step out of line and then to say, “We willingly reiterate this,” directly after quoting the 19th-century pope.

I was under the impression that only Traditionalists were removed from their offices in the post-conciliar Church, although maybe Pope Leo has other ideas.

In any event, we know that the pontiff chose his name as an homage to Leo XIII especially because of Leo XIII’s encyclical on Catholic Social Principles, Rerum Novarum, but it seems evident that Pope Leo XIV is aware of more of his namesake’s corpus.

So, the question to be asked is, “How well does Pope Leo know Pope Leo?”

Leo XIII not only wrote about modern social and economic issues, but he also wrote massively against Liberalism, Freemasonry, and the errors of modern philosophy—which are all trends and ideologies that thrive in the post-conciliar Church environment.

Pope Leo XIII began his encyclical on Freemasonry by stating: 

The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, “through the envy of the devil,” separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God.

And from whence did Leo XIII receive the inspiration to write about the warring forces fighting for supremacy on earth? From St. Augustine. Leo XIII added: 

This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: “Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.”

Does our new Leonine pope who is also an Augustinian hold the same view as his namesake on the matter of the City of God versus the City of Man? I sure hope he does. Leo XIV said in his words to the Eastern Churches, “Today more than ever, the splendour of the Christian East demands freedom from all worldly attachments…”

Freedom from worldly attachments sounds similar to Augustine and Leo XIII’s appeal that Christians reject the earthly city which leads to contempt of God.

In his address, Leo XIV also stated, “Let us reject the Manichean notions so typical of that mindset of violence that divides the world into those who are good and those who are evil.” He made this statement in the context of an appeal to peace. It makes sense an Augustinian pope would reference Manicheanism, considering St. Augustine, a former Manichean, dismantled the errors of Manes.

Inherent in Manicheanism is a dualistic notion that pits matter and spirit against each other. While modern philosophers such as Descartes, Hegel, and Kant do not explicitly cite Manes as their inspiration, we see in their works the same bifurcation of reality into the interior and exterior realms—matter and spirit, physical and psychological.

Leo XIII eviscerated modern philosophical trends, especially those of Kant, when he wrote: 

We renew our condemnation of those teachings of philosophy which have merely the name, and which by striking at the very foundation of human knowledge lead logically to universal skepticism and to irreligion…thus sacrificing to a radical subjectivism all the certainties which traditional metaphysics, consecrated by the authority of the strongest thinkers, laid down as the necessary and unshakable foundations for the demonstration of the existence of God, the spirituality and immortality of the soul, and the objective reality of the exterior world. (Depuis le Jour, 1899)

Is Pope Leo XIV well-versed in Leo XIII’s condemnation of modern philosophical trends that resurrect ancient errors? Let us hope he is.

Let us hope Pope Leo knows the corpus of Pope Leo very well.