Every few years, conservative influencers discovers incense. They stumble into a Latin Mass, hear the chanting, see the lace vestments, and suddenly decide that Roman Catholicism is the last fortress of Western conservatism. The TradCaths beam with pride. “See,” they say, “even Candace Owens knows what’s up.” Michael Knowles at the Daily Wire wags his finger and speaks glowingly of the Pope, warning the faithful that if they want to be serious about fighting cultural rot, they need visit the confessional booth and tell an ecclesiastical incel about all the naughty thoughts you’ve had. Even B-list celebrities announce their “crossing of the Tiber” as though they’ve rediscovered the Ark of the Covenant. Evangelicals are painted as soft, effeminate, and jelly-spined while Rome is painted as the last stronghold of men with spines, churches with teeth, and traditions with backbone.
And then along comes Pope Leo XIV, with a rainbow flag in one hand and a Jubilee proclamation in the other, announcing to the world that sodomy deserves its own Holy Year. The supposed heir of Peter has announced free plenary indulgences for any homosexuals who take a pilgrimage to march through the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica. And that they did, 1400 of them, with raised rainbow flags and pride banners lifted high above them on their way in. If St. Peter’s Basilica wasn’t already a house of idols, it would be fair to say it had been profaned. And so, so much for the fortress. It turns out the fortress has a gift shop, and the Vatican is more than willing to stock it with Pride merch if it helps the brand.
THE JUBILEE TRADITION
Before we dive into Leo’s rainbow parade, we need to understand what a Jubilee actually is. In Scripture, the Jubilee was a sacred year. Every fifty years the land was reset. Debts were canceled, captives were freed, slaves were returned home, and families were restored to their inheritance. It was the great leveler, a trumpet blast of God’s justice echoing across Israel. The Jubilee was not a party thrown by men but a holy decree from God himself, reminding His people that He owns the land, He forgives debts, and He restores the broken.
To take that sacred pattern and slap it on a celebration of sodomy is not just poor taste. It is blasphemy of the highest order. It is calling evil good and good evil, dragging God’s symbols of mercy through the gutter of rebellion. The very year that should have symbolized the release of captives from sin is instead turned into a year of chaining men to their lusts. The biblical Jubilee shouted God’s freedom. Leo’s Jubilee shouts Satan’s bondage.
LEO XIV: THE RAINBOW POPE
TradCaths want to act as if Leo is some kind of iron-spined defender of moral order. But in reality, he is a continuation of the Francis line. Before his election, Leo was already cozying up to the LGBTQ lobby. He was known for his “open and welcoming” language as a cardinal, dropping hints that while doctrine would not change, the tone would. In Catholic speak, that means “we’ll keep the words on paper but ignore them in practice.” The gay Jubilee is not an aberration. It is the logical conclusion of his trajectory.
When he approved an official LGBTQ pilgrimage for the Holy Year, letting over a thousand rainbow-draped pilgrims march through the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica, that was the moment the mask fell. Rome can dress it up as “pastoral sensitivity,” but the reality is plain: the Vatican is blessing rebellion and calling it a sacrament. TradCaths who want to thump their chests about “eternal Rome” need to explain why Rome is throwing the doors open to rainbow processions while scolding evangelicals for being too soft.
What makes Leo’s Jubilee so grotesque is not just that it panders to the culture. It is that it twists God’s own symbols. Imagine declaring a year of liberty and then using it to chain children to confusion, parade men in drag, and baptize the very sins that Scripture calls abomination. That is not merely compromise. That is mockery of the Almighty. The Jubilee was meant to be a foretaste of Christ’s redemption, the year when debts are erased and slaves go free. To turn that into a carnival for the LGBTQ lobby is the religious equivalent of using the Ark of the Covenant as a beer cooler at a frat party.
TradCaths may puff their incense and quote Aquinas, but they cannot erase the fact that their pope has canonized rebellion with a smile. The very institution they brag about as the “last conservative stronghold” is dancing with the same devils evangelicals are accused of tolerating. The difference is that Big Eva whispers compromise, while the Vatican sings it from the balcony of St. Peter’s Square.
THE IMAGE VERSUS THE REALITY
Why then do so many conservative seekers get seduced by Rome? The answer is branding. Rome knows how to market itself. It parades its ancient liturgies, its Latin chants, and its aesthetic gravitas. It knows that evangelicals are tired of fog machines and skinny-jean pastors, so it offers marble altars and centuries of tradition. It looks conservative because it looks old. But age is not the same as fidelity. What is the point of chanting Latin if the sermon is rainbow theology? What is the use of ornate vestments if the pope underneath them is blessing sodomy?
This is the game Rome has always played. It sells itself as the bastion of tradition while adapting itself to whatever spirit of the age will keep the crowds coming. Today that spirit is the rainbow. Tomorrow it may be something else. But the reality is unchanged: Rome bends, Rome bows, and Rome rebrands.
So here we are, with TradCaths crowing about their supposed growth. They love to point to disillusioned evangelicals crossing over, waving incense and quoting Chesterton. They laugh at Protestant disunity while ignoring their own house burning down under a rainbow flag. And now, just as they start their victory dance, Pope Leo hands them a gay Jubilee. It would be funny if it were not so tragic.
Their fortress is a façade. Their tradition is marketing. Their pope is not Peter but Balaam, blessing what God has cursed and cursing what God has blessed. TradCaths may seethe at this, but they cannot deny it. Their church, their pope, their vaunted conservatism is parading down the Via della Conciliazione draped in rainbow banners. If that is the fortress of tradition, then the gates are wide open, the walls are made of paper, and the only thing standing guard is a pope with no shame.
THE LONG RAINBOW ROAD TO ROME
Rome has perfected the art of double-speak. On the one hand, they insist doctrine cannot change. On the other hand, the last two popes have been busy turning that “unchanging doctrine” into a wet noodle with “pastoral sensitivity.” The trick is simple: say the words that sound conservative, then immediately neuter them with words that make the liberals clap.
Leo was already a master of this before he put on Peter’s hat. As a cardinal, he was famous for that squishy phrase: “The Church must be more open and welcoming.” Catholics hear that and sigh in relief, because “doctrine remains intact.” Liberals hear it and grin, because “pastoral application” means anything goes. That is the Catholic con. They never repeal doctrine. They just smother it under mountains of soft language until it is meaningless.
So when Leo blessed an LGBTQ Jubilee, he was not breaking tradition. He was fulfilling it. He was carrying Francis’s torch.
Even Rome’s own shepherds have admitted that homosexuality is deeply entrenched in the priesthood and especially in seminaries. Pope Francis himself acknowledged in 2018 that “homosexuality is a very serious issue” in seminaries, and that “in consecrated life and the clergy it is already fashionable” (a stunning admission that far from being a fringe problem, homosexual behavior had become normalized among men training for the priesthood). Studies back this up: multiple sociological surveys of American clergy have estimated that anywhere between 15–30% of Catholic priests identify as homosexual, vastly higher than the population average. Former seminarians have testified to entire cultures of secrecy and coercion in which homosexual liaisons were winked at by superiors or even leveraged in power dynamics.
This would be shameful enough, but the rot metastasized into some of the most grotesque scandals in modern history. The John Jay Report, commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, found that more than 80% of victims of clerical sexual abuse from 1950–2002 were boys, not girls, and overwhelmingly young teens, making the crisis not merely a matter of pedophilia, but of homosexual predation.
High-profile cases like that of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who for decades preyed on seminarians while climbing the Vatican ranks, exposed how abuse was protected at the highest levels. Even as Francis struck a softer tone toward homosexuality, critics pointed out that his inner circle contained men with open reputations for covering up abuse. The result is that the “conservative fortress” Catholics boast about has been one of the world’s largest incubators of homosexual vice, shielded by centuries of secrecy and hierarchy.
WHO AM I TO JUDGE?
Everyone remembers the line. It was 2013, and Francis was asked about gay priests. His answer detonated like a nuclear bomb in the cultural imagination: “Who am I to judge?” Those six words rebranded Roman Catholicism overnight. Gone was Benedict XVI with his dour orthodoxy and warnings about the dictatorship of relativism. In came Francis, the smiling grandfather who told the world that the Vatican was open for business, rainbow customers welcome.
The media swooned. Secular progressives who had despised Rome for centuries suddenly began calling it “compassionate.” Liberal Protestants who had long ago folded on sexuality praised the pope as “prophetic.” And young conservatives, burned out on effeminate evangelicalism, squinted at Rome and thought, “Well, at least they sound serious.” But they weren’t paying attention. Francis was not serious about resisting the sexual revolution. He was serious about repackaging Catholicism so it could ride the wave of cultural approval instead of getting crushed by it.
Francis went further. He endorsed civil unions for same-sex couples. He told the faithful that gay atheists can go to heaven. He oversaw documents like Amoris Laetitia, which gave bishops cover to bless divorced-and-remarried couples. He applauded the 2023 Vatican statement allowing personal blessings of same-sex couples, which was nothing more than a rainbow Trojan horse rolled through St. Peter’s Square.
And let’s not forget his other obsessions. Francis was a Marxist in cassock. His encyclical Laudato Si’ turned the papacy into the mascot of climate alarmism. He thundered about “environmental justice” and preached carbon repentance to peasants in the developing world while the Vatican swam in gold. And make no mistake: climate alarmism is not neutral. It is anti-natalist at its core. If you convince people the planet is dying, the first step is to convince them to stop having children. The real gospel of Francis was not “be fruitful and multiply” but “reduce, recycle, and sterilize.” He was the green pope, the Marxist pope, the rainbow pope, the globalist dream in white robes.
So now comes Leo, but the truth is he is just Francis 2.0. Within months of his election, he sat down with James Martin, the Jesuit cheerleader of the LGBTQ cause. He smiled, shook hands, and told the world he would continue Francis’s legacy of “welcoming.”
The genius of Catholic PR is that they can do all this while convincing naïve conservatives that they are still the last conservative institution standing. Francis spoke with pastoral warmth while liberals got their way. Leo dresses it up in Jubilee language while the LGBTQ lobby gets its festival. It is not betrayal. It is strategy. Rome knows how to sell itself to every market.
THE WEATHER COCK POPE
The papacy has always been a weather vane. In the Middle Ages, popes blessed crusades. In the Renaissance, they blessed orgies. In the Counter-Reformation, they blessed inquisitions. In the 20th century, they blessed ecumenism. Now, in the 21st century, they bless Pride. The office has never been the rock of ages. It has always been a windsock flapping whichever way the cultural gusts are blowing.
Francis and Leo are not anomalies. They are the pattern. The papacy survives by shifting tone, changing emphasis, and rebranding itself every few decades. The TradCaths love to chant “semper eadem” always the same. But the reality is “semper aliter” always something else. Francis was the climate pope. Leo is the rainbow pope. Tomorrow’s pope will probably be the AI pope, baptizing algorithms with holy water. The only thing consistent about Rome is its inconsistency.
And this is why the Protestant confessions were right. The pope is Antichrist. He is not the cartoon villain with a pitchfork. He is something far more dangerous. He is the religious leader who tells people they can have their sin and God’s blessing in the same breath. He is the master of pastoral loopholes, the dealer of indulgences, the rainbow priest with a Latin chant. He is the man of sin dressed as a man of God.
THE TRAD-CATH LIE AND POPES BEHAVING BADLY
The TradCaths love to lecture Protestants about their “historic continuity.” They brag about their two thousand years of tradition, their unbroken line of succession from Peter, their lace-draped conservatism. They act as though history is a shining cathedral, while Protestantism is a run-down strip mall church plant with folding chairs. But history is not on their side. History is on ours. Because when you pull back the velvet curtain of Rome, you don’t find a fortress of holiness. You find a carnival of perversion. You find popes who make Joel Osteen look like John Knox. You find a papal palace that was less the Rock of Ages and more the world’s oldest drag bar.
Then you have Julius III in the 1550s, who elevated his adopted “nephew” Innocenzo del Monte, a teenage beggar he had pulled off the streets, to the rank of cardinal. Innocenzo had no qualifications. He was barely literate. But he was very pretty. The scandal was so obvious that even Catholic chroniclers blushed. Julius kept Innocenzo at his side day and night, parading him around the Vatican as if to dare anyone to object. Rome wants to tell you it is the bastion of traditional family values. In reality, the pope was shacking up with a teenage boy and calling him “His Eminence.”
Roll the tape back further to Benedict IX, who was shoved onto the papal throne at the age of 12 thanks to his family’s mafia-like influence. He reigned three separate times because he sold the papacy like a used car, quit to marry a girl, and then came back for a sequel. Chroniclers accused him of homosexuality, bestiality, and turning the Lateran Palace into a brothel. His contemporaries called him “a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest.” That’s not Jack Chick tracts talking. That’s Catholic historians. TradCaths brag about apostolic succession. I call it apostolic prostitution.
Then there’s John XII, a teenage tyrant who reigned in the 900s. He was accused of sleeping with his mother and sisters, consecrating bishops in horse stables, and invoking pagan gods during dice games. He died in bed with a married woman, reportedly beaten to death by her husband. This was not the defender of the faith. This was the Jerry Springer Show in papal vestments.
Or take Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, whose papacy in the late 1400s makes HBO’s Game of Thrones look like VeggieTales. He openly kept mistresses, fathered children, and was widely rumored to be in an incestuous relationship with his daughter, Lucrezia. He used the papacy as a personal fiefdom, selling offices to the highest bidder and throwing orgies in the Vatican. This is the man Catholics hold up as the vicar of Christ. If he was Christ’s vicar, then Judas Iscariot was the first deacon.
We could go on. Paul II was accused of keeping a harem of page boys. Sixtus IV was whispered to have bedded his “nephews.” The tenth century was literally called the Pornocracy, when noblewomen like Marozia used their lovers and illegitimate sons to control the papacy. Time after time, the papacy has not been the bastion of morality but the brothel of Europe. The history is not an unbroken line of fidelity. It is an unbroken line of fraud.
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