The Excusing of Rome & the Gossip Machine: "Conservative" Catholicism as the Most Dangerous Position, Part II

We will state our thesis clearly—while Montagna (see here) is right to correct La Razon as their conclusion certainly exceeds what the evidence proves, their correction becomes an excuse for Rome—where a sixty-year-old crisis is presented as a question still awaiting sufficient consultation, while procedural technicalities and favorable interpretations prevent the accumulated evidence from governing judgment.

Montagna’s article argues that La Razón mistook a consultation document for a declaration of papal policy. They maintain that the report’s circulation, Pope Leo XIV’s review of it, and his failure to alter it do not establish his agreement, while his audiences and official letter instead suggest a Pope still listening, discerning, and undecided.

A note to the reader: The detailed analysis that follows is necessary only because Catholics continue to be misled by these procedural distinctions, anonymous sources, and speculations about the Pope’s mind. Readers who do not wish to enter another round of the gossip machine may skip directly to the final paragraph, “When We Strip Off the Noise.”

Note too: We are not here to defend La Razón. Our goal is simply to put the Cartesian enclosure out of commission to allow reality to come into full view, and hence, close those loops of entropy that simply mislead and waste time (see here and here).

Montagna does not demonstrate a “woeful lack of accuracy,” still less that La Razón is the real cause of the faithful’s distress. The report may have triggered alarm, but let’s be intellectually honest about the conditions that made it plausible: Rome—through decades of ambiguity, reversal, restriction, non-response, and interpretation upon interpretation (see here and here).

Indeed, Montagna’s own headings announce what their article is attempting to do: “Dampening media furore” and “Why all the noise?” But Montagna ignores and obscures the reality underneath and fails to ask why such reports are capable of producing this degree of alarm in the first place. In doing so, their article contributes to the very noise it claims to dampen and, worse, extends the entropic time loop—leading the reader from one complicated tangent to another over procedural details that are absurdly disproportionate to the fundamental crisis. At this point, the entire exercise has become reckless, absurd, and ridiculous.

In Part I, we argued that “conservative” gatekeepers admit enough truth to gain credibility, then prevent it from governing the conclusion. Montagna’s article performs that structure in journalistic form.

We need to stress: This is not an investigation into Montagna’s intentions, but an examination of what their article objectively does. Where they argue, we will examine the argument; where they merely assert, we will not mistake assertion for demonstration.

For context, Roche’s report was a short dicastery document defending Pope Francis’ position and Traditionis Custodes, distributed to the cardinals as a consultation text. Montagna’s article does not explain its substantive arguments. This is already revealing because the discussion becomes less about whether Roche’s report is true and more about what its circulation supposedly tells us about the Pope’s mind.

The narrow truth Montagna reveals is that Leo XIV’s authorization to distribute Roche’s report does not, by itself, demonstrate agreement with every proposition or every specific detail. Certainly, La Razón cannot move automatically from permission to circulate the document to absolute knowledge of the Pope’s entire mind. But neither does the contrary follow. Absence of conclusive proof is not absence of evidentiary weight. The fact that Leo XIV requested the document’s distribution, reviewed it, made no alterations, and allowed Roche’s position to stand before the cardinals is not meaningless, as it establishes at minimum that the report was accepted as an admissible representation of a position to be placed before the Sacred College. While this does not prove complete endorsement, Montagna overstates the case when they treat the Pope’s review of the document and failure to “change a comma” as though they mean nothing.

Montagna argues that Roche’s report was not uniquely distributed as a signal of Pope Leo’s position. Because the cardinals had time to discuss only two of the four proposed subjects, the reports on the two subjects not selected—the liturgy and the reform of the Curia—were both circulated instead. Cardinal Baggio’s report on the Curia, Montagna notes, received the same treatment as Roche’s. From this, they conclude that Roche’s document was simply a consultation paper distributed according to normal Vatican procedure, not a declaration of papal policy.

The comparison matters in one limited sense: if both reports were circulated because their subjects were not selected for discussion, distribution alone does not establish a declaration of papal policy. But La Razón makes two claims, not one. First, it infers from the circumstances that Roche’s report reflects Pope Leo’s position. Second, it attributes to Vatican sources the more specific claim that the report was circulated in order to make that position visible. Montagna’s procedural explanation weakens the first inference. But it cannot settle the second, which depends upon whether the sources were in a position to know the Pope’s intention and reported it accurately. Without confirmation from the Pope or someone with direct knowledge, the source-based claim remains unverified. So Montagna cannot call it “without foundation” merely by describing normal procedure.

The same problem appears when Montagna declares it “a matter of fact” that the cardinals did not regard the report as expressing Pope Leo’s position. No testimony from those cardinals is supplied and La Razón’s source-based claim is dismissed as foundationless, while Montagna’s contrary interpretation is promoted to fact without its foundation being shown. Montagna therefore proves only that La Razón’s conclusion does not necessarily follow from distribution alone. They do not prove the contrary and have instead replaced an adverse interpretation with a “reassuring” one. This is obfuscation. We are being taken on a joy ride through procedural tangents, only to be dropped off at another unproven conclusion, where speculative “reassurance” is dressed up as fact.

Montagna writes that the liturgy was not discussed “simply because it was not on the agenda.” But that explains the procedural mechanism, not the reason for the exclusion. Their own next statement says the liturgy was removed because of the impending SSPX consecrations. The word “simply” therefore converts a substantive institutional choice tied directly to the crisis into a scheduling detail!

The subject nevertheless arose in free interventions, showing that it was pressing enough to enter the discussion despite its formal exclusion. Nor does “normal Vatican procedure” answer the disproportion: a process may be normal while its application to a sixty-year crisis is absurd. Another consultation cannot be treated as though the question had only recently emerged. This is ludicrous! The Cartesian enclosure erases the accumulated history, resets the clock, and sends the same unanswered question back to the beginning as though it had only just arrived.

This dispute was publicly and forcefully presented by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre beginning in the 1970s. It concerned the texts and operative principles of Vatican II, the new liturgy, doctrinal continuity, priestly formation, the preservation of the Faith, and eventually the existence of a state of necessity.

Rome responded, but in another register. The SSPX raised questions concerning doctrine, form, causality, continuity, and necessity. Rome answered with obedience, papal authority, canonical status, reconciliation, communion, prohibition, and punishment (see here and here). Simply put, Rome sent a message, that went off on a tangent, back. More technically, the reply never joined issue with the argument it purported to answer (see here). The messages crossed, but the arguments never met.

Since 1988, the juridical arrangement surrounding the problem has repeatedly changed: the declarations of excommunication were lifted; Summorum Pontificum expanded the space available to Tradition; Traditionis Custodes contracted it again; and in 2026 episcopal consecrations returned (see here and here). But the underlying question was never adjudicated. The repetition is itself evidence: the cause remains, the conflict returns, and Catholics are sent back to the beginning of the entropic time loop.

Rome has not lacked time, documents, arguments, meetings, or opportunities to listen. What it has lacked is an answer. Apparently, after sixty years, the question is still new enough to require more listening, but never old enough to deserve an answer!

And because the object has never been adjudicated, discussion collapses into the reconstruction of the mind of authority through indirect signs: who asked Roche to write the report; why was it distributed; did the Pope alter a comma; what did anonymous Vatican sources say; what did the cardinals privately think; why was the matter absent from the agenda; whom has the Pope received; did he listen attentively; is he studious; has he made up his mind; are journalists trying to pressure him? This is, quite frankly, gossip: the object remains unadjudicated while the mind of authority is endlessly reconstructed through indirect signs.

And here we should stop and see how absurd this has become. This article was initially 5,000 words—page after page critiquing Montagna’s critique of La Razón, parsing procedure, anonymous sources, the distribution of a document, a failure to “change a comma,” and competing reconstructions of the Pope’s mind. It had become ridiculously long. Fortunately, we were able to reduce it to its present length of just over 2,600 words.

Yet these distinctions become necessary because Catholics are continually invited to be misled by precisely this kind of procedural obfuscation. Of course, we need to maintain a high standard of scholarship and level of reasoning, and we cannot merely assert. But quite frankly, it has become intellectually infuriating and exhausting to keep having to critique the absurd! And the necessity of making these distinctions is itself evidence of the disorder. While the fundamental crisis grows more visible and brazen, Catholics remain trapped discussing signals, audiences, sources, and possible intentions.

Even when we recognize the entropic time loop, the Conciliar settlement surrounds us with its products. We must pass through the noise to expose it, but the purpose is to get out—to return judgment to the object from which it was displaced.

This is not merely poor journalism. It is the epistemic result of the Cartesian enclosure: because public judgment of the object is continually deferred, Catholics are left examining signals, personalities, meetings, gestures, sources, and possible intentions.

For instance, the audiences with Cardinals Burke and Sarah and Bishop Schneider, which Montagna invokes, establish only that Pope Leo listened to proponents of the traditional Roman liturgy. They do not establish that the Pope remains undecided. Montagna moves from a fact—the Pope listened—to a conclusion that does not necessarily follow: therefore, he probably has not made up his mind. That does not follow.

And discerning is not better than adjudicating. After sixty years, another assurance that authority is listening and discerning does not answer the object that has stood before Rome all this time. The problem is not that Rome has lacked sufficient opportunities to hear. The problem is that it has never actually answered.

Montagna therefore answers interpretation with interpretation and speculation with more “favorable” speculation (see here and here). The irony becomes complete when Montagna asks whether the recent media noise may itself be “a form of pressure.” An article condemning La Razón for speculation ends by speculating about the strategic purpose behind the timing of media reports. And just like that, Montagna moves from merely adding noise to feeding the entropic time loop itself—which is much worse, because the speculation becomes another reason not to judge—and the gossip machine is launched.

To clarify: interpretation is not illegitimate in itself. But it becomes the gossip machine when it substitutes for judgment because the operative framework keeps the object outside adjudication. The gossip machine is therefore what the Cartesian enclosure produces.

Montagna’s own evidence shows the hierarchy treating the Mass as a means of managing the SSPX. Cardinal Müller proposes an Ecclesia Dei-like commission to facilitate the reception of clergy and faithful leaving the SSPX. The unnamed Asian cardinal argues that fewer restrictions on the TLM would make it easier to attract faithful ready to leave the Society. These interventions do not begin with the traditional Roman liturgy according to what it is—its sacred form, theological end, inheritance, or normative place in the Church. The Mass enters the discussion according to its usefulness in moving, receiving, attracting, or managing persons in relation to the SSPX.

We need not infer anyone’s private intentions. The structure of the arguments is sufficient, and the operative end of these arguments is managerial and anthropocentric. Clearly, the TLM is invoked as a variable in institutional strategy. The fact that the liturgical topic was reportedly removed from the agenda because of the impending SSPX consecrations reinforces the same pattern—the liturgy is approached through the management of the Society rather than the Society being understood as an effect of the unresolved liturgical and doctrinal crisis.

The cart remains before the horse: the SSPX is treated as the problem to be managed, while the crisis that produced the SSPX is not judged. Montagna’s strongest official evidence concerning Pope Leo’s position does not escape this structure. The letter they cite speaks of a “painful wound,” the “generous inclusion” of those “attached” to the Vetus Ordo, and fidelity to the liturgical orientations of Vatican II. But if this letter is indeed the clearest official expression of Pope Leo’s mind, it is devastating to Montagna’s “reassurance” as it does not present the traditional Roman liturgy as the received norm by which the post-Conciliar settlement must be judged. It presents people “attached” to the Vetus Ordo as a group to be “generously” included, while the orientations of Vatican II remain the governing boundary. This is not neutrality awaiting discernment as it already reveals the operative framework.

That is precisely the framework we analyzed in A Wound Misdiagnosed: the problem is treated relationally and managerially, while Vatican II remains unquestioned and the traditional Mass becomes something accommodated within it. The real question—what the Mass is, and which form possesses normative priority—is never reached.

La Razón overstates what the public evidence proves. Montagna does something worse: they turn uncertainty into “reassurance,”, as the report, the restrictions, the exclusion of the liturgy from the agenda, the official letter, and sixty years of non-response are acknowledged, then dissolved into favorable possibilities—perhaps Pope Leo disagrees with Roche, perhaps listening means indecision, perhaps delay means prudence, perhaps another consultation will finally answer what Rome has never answered. This is not charity. It is accumulated reality neutralized by speculation, taking the reader on yet another joy ride from tangent to tangent along the road of perpetual arrival.

This is the “conservative” mechanism described in Part I: enough truth is admitted to gain trust, then procedural qualifications prevent it from governing judgment. Clear error can be confronted. Obfuscation keeps the intellect moving from detour to detour and calls the failure to arrive prudence.

Look at what the Conciliar settlement has reduced Catholic discourse to: La Razón reports, Montagna critiques La Razón, and this article must then spend pages critiquing Montagna’s critique. The entire chain is structurally absurd. Rome has replied for sixty years without answering the fundamental questions, and Catholics are therefore reduced to arguing over anonymous sources, agendas, audiences, commas, and guesses about the Pope’s mind while the crisis grows more visible and brazen. The fact that this article had to spend pages distinguishing one inference from another is itself evidence of the disorder. La Razón overstates; Montagna excuses and obfuscates. This is the gossip machine and the entropic time loop, where Rome refuses to judge the object, and “conservative” Catholicism turns that refusal into another reason to wait—taking Catholics on another joy ride.