Every revolution opens a wound in the natural order of things. It presents itself as a liberation, but in reality introduces an inversion of the principle: where truth once reigned, will is installed; where there was hierarchy, horizontality emerges; where obedience existed, autonomy is exalted.
And, after that earthquake, history offers only two exits: the counterrevolution that restores order or the crystallization of the revolution, which becomes a new dogma and hardens its dominion under the appearance of normality.
The irreversible logic of revolutions
The revolution does not last: it consolidates. Its strength is not in the initial cry, but in the custom it leaves behind. What is truly dangerous is not the chaos of the first moment, but the institutionalization of disorder, when the heirs of the rupture learn to live off it.
The longer time passes without reaction, the harder it is to distinguish deviation from the norm. What began as a pastoral exception becomes custom; what was abuse becomes praxis; and what was tolerated error ends up seeming like progress. We see it in communion in the hand, to name but one example.
Every year that passes without counterrevolution turns the revolution into inverted tradition, into a religion of perpetual change. History teaches that there is no more stable regime than the one that manages to consolidate its revolution without resistance.
Francis and the pastoral triumph of the process
The pontificate of Francis represented the pastoral revolution that replaced orthodoxy with moral elasticity, magisterium with dialogue, liturgy with event. It did not need a manifesto: it was enough to alter the balance of priorities.
Over time, that change became a system: structures adapted, seminaries transformed, obedience weakened, and doctrinal language became sentimental. The revolution had crystallized, not because it advanced, but because it no longer encountered opposition.
That is its deepest victory: not the rupture, but the habituation. When the people of God assume disorder as normal, the revolution has ceased to be a novelty and has become culture.
Leo XIV and the test of restoration
In this context, Leo XIV does not receive a Church in crisis: he receives a Church reeducated by the revolution. His task is not to contain a fire, but to break the ice. It is no longer a matter of stopping a process, but of reversing a consolidation.
If his pontificate limits itself to restoring external order—composure, solemnity, discipline—without reestablishing the disfigured principles, there will be no counterrevolution, but a Napoleonic peace: the order of the mature revolution.
But if his voice dares to say again that truth is not negotiated, that mercy does not substitute for conversion, and that liturgy is not a stage but a sacrifice, then the true restoration can begin. It will not be quick or spectacular, but it will have the seal of the irreversible, because it will be founded on the eternal.
Between the custom of error and the courage of truth
History teaches that every revolution solidifies in the absence of resistance. The longer it is left without counterweight, the more subtle its dominion becomes. That is why counterrevolution cannot wait: every year of silence is a year of cement that hardens the new order.
Leo XIV faces the dilemma of all restorers: either he governs over the ruins without touching them, or he dares to rebuild from the root. Because what undoes a revolution is not apparent order, or forced unity, but truth reenthroned.