Watching Pope Leo school Donald Trump is a blessed sight
Idea
I may have to go back to church. My mother always told me that the Catholic Church was greater than the men who led it.
But while I was covering sexual abuse scandals, I became so frustrated with the men running the place that I couldn’t stand going to services anymore. The church that had helped shape my sense of right and wrong as a child suddenly seemed blind to right and wrong. But Pope Leo XIV, or Papa Bob as he is sometimes affectionately called the first American pope, might win me over.
President Donald Trump is rampaging around the world like Grendel, a greedy, wild creature, does at dinner time. Who could oppose him? Soft-spoken, humble Leo, who strives to unite, challenges the flamboyant, solipsistic Trump who strives to divide. And watching the school of the holy pope, the immoral president is a blessed sight.
I’m sure His Holiness the Dalai Lama watched with astonishment as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth characterized the conflict with Iran as a holy war, trying to put God on America’s side while our troops were being asked to rain “death and destruction from above” on Iranian enemies “apocalyptically.”
In March, Hegseth called for an “overwhelming act of violence against those who do not deserve mercy”, demanding that God “break the teeth of the heathen”.
Last week he read a passage adapted by Quentin Tarantino. pulp Fiction Adaptation of a passage from the Bible: “And I will smite with great vengeance and furious anger those who seek to seize and destroy my brother.”
He also accused the press of being “Pharisees” who planned to harm the Trump administration just as the Pharisees planned to harm Jesus.
George W. Bush was forced to abandon using the word “crusade” to refer to the war on terror, given the offensive resonance of the papal crusaders exterminating Muslims in the Holy Land.
But Hegseth is no historian. The name of his book American Crusade. He carries a Crusader Bible, known for its violent photographs of early Christian wars. He has a tattoo of a Crusader cross and the Latin words “Deus vult,” meaning “God wills it.”
Hegseth could take a lesson from George HW Bush. Bush, a young pilot in World War II, was shot down near a Japanese island. When he was campaigning for president, Bush was asked what he was thinking about swimming in the Pacific for fear of being captured by the enemy. He said he was thinking about “core values” such as “separation of church and state.”
During Easter week, the pope appeared to rebuke Hegseth, saying that the Christian mission is often “distorted by the desire for domination, completely alien to the way of Jesus Christ.”
On Easter Sunday, Trump issued one of his several threats to destroy Iranian civilization, crudely adding the phrase “Praise be to God.” Leo said existential usurpation was “truly unacceptable” and a violation of the moral law.
Trump escalated tensions. He posted a photo depicting himself as a Christ-like figure healing a sick man and attacked the Holy Father with sinful slurs on social media, saying the Pope is “WEAK on crime” and “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s okay for Iran to have Nuclear Weapons.”
Leo, resilient against Chicago, did not back down. “God does not bless any conflict,” he said on social platform
He reminded the authoritarian Strangelovian president that he should promote peace through dialogue and multilateralism.
Leo told reporters: “Too many people are suffering today, too many innocent people have been killed, and I believe that someone needs to stand up and say there is a better way.”
J.D. Vance, a recent convert to Catholicism, dutifully jumped into the fray to push back on the pope and butter up Trump, lecturing Leo to “be careful talking about matters of theology” and prattling on about the “tradition of just war theory.”
When you’re wondering whether this is a just war, the answer is: probably not.
On Thursday, with a childish sense of revenge, Trump cancels $11 million federal contract with Catholic Charities She is in Miami to shelter and feed immigrant children who came to America alone. (Even my Trump-loving sister found this disgusting.)
It’s hard for the president to show the pope the respect he deserves because Trump clearly thinks so he Christ.
Just before Leo was elected, Trump posted a photo showing himself as the pope. He shows off and peacocks, pretending to be everything; a king, a pope, a Jesus.
But the president should read the Grimms’ fairy tale about the poor man who caught a magic fish in the cabin. His wife pressured him to ask for a bigger house, then a mansion, then to become king, then emperor, then pope. Pisces fulfilled all these wishes. But when his wife desired even more and told the man to wish that he were “equal to God,” the fish threw them back into their hut.
Playing God is dangerous unless you are God.
This article was first published on: New York Times.
