Confirmed in Sin: Leo’s Revolution No Longer Hides Its Face

This week the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan, the Jesuit-minded parish famous for rainbow banners and Broadway Masses, offered a sacrament that would have baffled every catechism before 1962. ABC News anchor Gio Benitez, openly homosexual and civilly “married” to another man, received the sacrament of confirmation with his husband standing beside him as sponsor. If this same priest had said a Latin Mass without permission he would have been suspended. Instead, cameras rolled. Applause followed. Father James Martin, ever the apostle of affirmation, commented beneath the video with a single word: “Welcome!” No one in authority objected. No one questioned whether the rite was valid, licit, or simply insane. In the new ecclesiology, publicity is proof of holiness. Confirmation, by every traditional definition, seals the soul already living in fidelity to the creed it professes. It means renouncing sin and the world, not canonizing them with lighting and applause. Yet the modern …