“Lay down your weapons now.” - Pope Leo As Israel was blowing up villages on the Lebanese border and Trump was bragging that the United States was “locked and loaded,” Pope Leo called out these actions as breaches of international law. War crimes. This is unprecedented language from a world religious leader. But he went one step further. Pope Leo called on American Catholics to get politically active in the fight to stop the escalating war in Iran:
Pope Leo is speaking with an urgency, not simply to stop the killings by the United States/Israel war machine but to awaken democratic resistance. Donald Trump has responded with a bizarre rant accusing the Pope of being “WEAK on crime” and that the Pope shouldn’t criticize him because he created the “greatest stock market in history.” He then posted a second meme portraying himself as Jesus Christ.
It is totally unhinged and disgraceful. But Trump’s hate rant at the Pope is not just about Donald. It is an indictment of the entire political, military, legal, media power structure that threw their lot in with the criminal narcissist from Mar a Lago. As the Israel/Trump war in Iran goes south the whole lot of them are standing without any credibility before a religious leader who dares speak truth to power. As Bob Dylan said, “Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.” And this is why the United States has turned to threat. In January, the Pentagon demanded a meeting with the Pope’s ambassador, Cardinal Christophe Pierre. Such a meeting was also without precedent. The notion of generals demanding to meet with ambassadors or religious leaders highlights a dangerous moment in the dying American democracy. The Pentagon was enraged that Pope Leo called out Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” which claims the unilateral power to control sovereign nations in the Americas – including Canada. During the meeting, the Under Secretary for War, Eldridge Colby, put a brutal either/or on the table:
When that threat didn’t work, the Pentagon threw a direct physical threat against the Pope. They suggested that they would use the lessons of the Avignon Papacy to teach the church a lesson. In 1303, the French King Phillip attacked Pope Boniface. French soldiers beat Boniface to death, and then the military dragged the church leaders off to Avignon, France, where they were held in captivity for 70 years. Needless to say, the church took these shouted threats by Pentagon officials as a direct attack on the life of Pope Leo. If Washington thought it could spook Pope Leo with a dark historical reference, it was mistaken. The Vatican is taking their history from the more recent past — the 1933 Reich Concordat between the Nazis and the Vatican. When Hitler took power, he had a big problem with Germany’s Catholic community. They weren’t enthusiastic about the Nazis, and some key Bishops were denouncing the rising level of threats. Hitler needed to bring the Church into line. He met with Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) and offered a deal — if the Church kept its nose out of politics, the Nazis would lay off the German Catholic Church. Pacelli signed the Reich Concordat in 1933, which forced the silence of the one institution that could have called out the Nazis. It was a disaster for the people of Germany and Europe. Bishops were warned not to speak up about the attacks on the Jews. The threat to German Bishops was clear:
The Reich Concordat has been a stain on the Catholic Church ever since. Thomas Merton, the monk and Catholic thinker, summed it up:
There is no way that in this new age of fascist threat, the Church is going to forget the lesson of the Reich Concordat. This is why Pope Leo denounced Pete Hegseth at the Palm Sunday celebrations, declaring, “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” Over Easter, the top Catholic Chaplain in the US military, Archbishop Broglio, called on U.S. military personnel to refuse to obey unjust and illegal military orders. Among the MAGA influencers, there is a great deal of manufactured rage against the Pope. Typical was the claim by white racist Laura Loomer that Leo is a “woke Marxist pope.” Given the spleen venting by the right-wing MAGA Catholics, some have wondered if a schism is coming within the American Catholic Church. I doubt this will happen. MAGA is driven by a gong show of loudmouths who attempt to define the political debates of the nation. The far-right of the American Catholic Church is driven by a small group of so-called “trad” Catholic converts like JD Vance, who joined the Church believing they would be able to go back to the good old days of the 1500s. They bristle at Church teachings on feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, visiting the prisoners and helping refugees. This group of MAGA Catholics rallied around a few visible American clerics who supported the far-right agenda. But under the leadership of the previous Pope Francis, the Church began removing such figureheads. They took out the outspoken Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Joseph Strickland. Both Pope Leo and Pope Francis have been looking into the role of the far-right Opus Dei group. Polling of Republican and Democratic Catholic voters shows a remarkable level of support for the Pope across the American political spectrum. Picking a fight with a young charismatic prelate from Chicago is not a winning strategy. This explains the rage in the Pentagon. Trump and Hegseth’s antics might play well with the likes of Laura Loomer, but they will go nowhere with people in the pews. When Leo denounces the “delusion of omnipotence,” everyone knows who he is talking about. Trump can’t stand to be ridiculed. But Leo is doing something different. He is calling out the immorality of Trump’s self-personification of wealth and power.
We should expect the Trump administration to continue to escalate pressure on the American Catholic Church. But we can also count on the Church to increase its resistance to the administration’s unjust and illegal actions. They have learned a hard lesson from 1933. If any photos or images on this site are under copyright please let us know and we will give appropriate credit. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting.Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance. If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
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