Christopher Hale: ‘Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.’ The great Benedict XVI wrote those words in Truth and Tolerance more than twenty years ago, and they hang over recent days like a warning finally come due.
On April 12, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social and mocked the Successor of Peter, calling Pope Leo XIV ‘terrible on Foreign Policy’ for the Pope’s opposition to the widening wars in Iran and Venezuela. Hours later, the president posted an AI-generated image of himself depicted as Christ the healer. Evangelical pastors erupted – among them Doug Wilson, whose parishioners include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, along with the podcaster Riley Gaines. Within a day, the Christ image came down. The post mocking our Holy Father stayed up.
There is one honest reading of that sequence. The president heard his evangelical base and hit delete. The Catholic outcry that followed his mockery of Peter did not move him at all. One post was a political problem for him; the other was not.
I write as a brother, not as an opponent. For more than a decade in Time and elsewhere, I have written about the failures of my own party – its condescension towards working-class believers, its reflexive secular gaze, its long habit of treating Catholic voters as a constituency to be managed rather than a people to be honoured. I have not spared the Democrats, and I have no intention of starting today.
But we are in a moment of peril, and I would betray the Gospel if I stayed quiet. The coalition many of you joined in good conscience did not lift a finger in recent days to defend your Pope. Vice President JD Vance, the administration’s most senior Catholic, said nothing while his commander-in-chief belittled the Successor of Peter. The men you helped elevate to power would not spend a dollar of political capital on Leo XIV. Consider what that silence reveals about how much your voice actually matters inside that coalition.
I understand why so many conservative Catholics made the alliance in the first place. The causes are real and rooted in the magisterium. Protecting life from womb to tomb sits at the foundation of the Church’s social teaching. John Paul II called the family the primordial cell of society, and a reverently celebrated liturgy is doctrine made visible.
I grant every one of these commitments without caveat, and I believe they deserve a political home willing to defend them – not a host that tolerates them when convenient and ridicules their highest earthly shepherd when the mood strikes.
Pope Leo XIV has given us a motto to carry through this season: In the One, we are one. It is his Augustinian inheritance, his pastoral gift and his summons to a fractured Church – communion that refuses to flatten the particular gifts each tradition brings to the altar.
Pope Francis liked to repeat a line from Paul VI: that politics is one of the highest forms of charity because it serves the common good. That instinct is precisely what Truth Social lacked in recent days.
Charity does not ridicule the man in the white cassock who begs the world to lay down its bombs, nor does it flirt with blasphemous imagery and then plead confusion when caught. A political movement that cannot summon that baseline of reverence for the Vicar of Christ cannot credibly claim to be a Catholic home. At best, it is a place where Catholics rent the furniture.
So let me say to my conservative Catholic friends the thing I have wanted to say for a long time. Your movement has been hijacked by a celebrity populism that puts evangelical grievance ahead of Catholic conscience, and only you can take it back. The faithful who built the American Catholic conservative tradition – who prayed the rosary outside clinics, fought for school choice, defended the reverence of the Latin Mass when bishops would not – those faithful did not sign up to be silent partners while the Pope is insulted.
You do not owe fidelity to men who will not defend the Holy Father. Your fidelity belongs to Christ and to the Church he founded upon Peter.
For my part, I promise this. Those of us on the other side of the aisle must earn your trust back through deeds, not slogans – through policies that honour the unborn and the immigrant alike, the family and the worker, the reverence of the sanctuary and the dignity of those living on the street.
Changing your convictions is not what I ask. I ask only that you refuse a bargain that requires your silence while your Pope is treated as a punchline.
Benedict warned us what happens when politics tries to do the work of God. We saw it in recent days on a small screen – a man portraying himself as Christ while treating the Vicar of Christ as a fool. That, in Benedict’s exact word, is demonic. The hour for conservative Catholic silence has passed.
Before we are Republicans or Democrats, we are Christians – siblings in the Lord. And in the One, we are one.
Fr Robert Sirico: The Successor of Peter does not speak into public life as a private commentator, much less as a politician, but as the Vicar of Christ, a pastor entrusted with a universal responsibility that includes reminding nations and their leaders of the moral limits of power. When the Pope addresses, for example, matters related to war, the protection of vulnerable human life or the ethical boundaries governing the use of force, he is in effect acting within his job description – even when political leaders find his words inconvenient or difficult to receive. Still, as is generally known but sometimes forgotten, not every papal judgement about concrete matters of foreign policy, policing or military strategy rises to the level of definitive doctrine. Catholic social teaching itself recognises that applying moral principles to complex political realities allows room for serious and faithful disagreement, so debate, dialogue and the expression of various perspectives are to be expected. Holding these two truths together is essential for a healthy and mature Catholic engagement with public life.
Recent tensions in this regard have made clarity about this balance more necessary. The President of the United States – particularly one elected with a mandate to restore order and stability – should demonstrate the respect owed to the spiritual shepherd of more than a billion Catholics around the world, whom the faithful regard as a father. Publicly dismissing Pope Leo XIV as ‘weak’ or ‘terrible’ or ‘soft on crime’ does little to advance the moral credibility, let alone the prudential temperament, of American leadership. Strong national defence, effective border enforcement and fidelity to the rule of law are not opposed to Catholic teaching; they arise from long-standing principles such as justice, responsibility and subsidiarity. But these commitments are strengthened, not diminished, when expressed in a tone of seriousness and respect.
At the same time, the present moment would benefit from additional clarity about how the Church understands the continuing role of the just war tradition. For centuries, that framework has served not as a justification for conflict but as a restraint upon it – a moral structure designed to protect civilians, limit escalation and preserve the possibility of peace even in tragic circumstances. If Pope Leo, a spiritual son of one of the saints who helped define the theory, intends to suggest that just war reasoning no longer forms part of Catholic moral teaching, it would be helpful for him to say so explicitly. If, however, he is underscoring how rarely contemporary warfare can satisfy its demanding criteria – a point emphasised by several recent popes – then his words can be read as a deepening of the tradition rather than a departure from it.
In any event, there is broad agreement across the Catholic moral spectrum that rhetoric suggesting the destruction of an entire civilisation falls outside the boundaries the just war tradition has always sought to maintain. To do so on Easter morning, laced with expletives, might understandably raise a papal eyebrow. The purpose of the just war tradition has never been to sanctify war, but to discipline it – to remind political leaders that even necessary force must remain morally limited and directed towards peace rather than annihilation.
I am a priest who has argued consistently that the Church must defend those whose voices are easily overlooked, including migrants and refugees, even while acknowledging that governments possess the authority – and indeed the obligation – to regulate borders and preserve public safety. A nation that cannot enforce its laws risks undermining the very common good it exists to serve. Yet a nation that forgets the human dignity of those affected by its enforcement policies risks losing sight of the moral purpose of law itself. The Church’s witness is meant to hold these realities together, not drive them apart.
It is often said in response to papal interventions that the Pope should avoid entering ‘politics’. Versions of this concern have been expressed recently by J D Vance and others who worry that ecclesial authority can be stretched beyond its proper limits. There is wisdom in the caution. The Church does not design military operations, write crime legislation or administer immigration systems. Those responsibilities belong to elected officials and the institutions of the state.
But the objection cannot be applied selectively. If the Church is expected to remain silent whenever moral teaching intersects with public policy, would the same expectation hold in the case of abortion? Most who urge restraint in one area would hesitate to accept silence in the other. The reason is obvious: questions about the protection of human life inevitably involve both moral conviction and political decision. The boundary between theology and public life is not a wall; it is a meeting place. When the Church speaks about the dignity of the unborn, the poor, migrants or the victims of war, she is not entering someone else’s territory. She is fulfilling her own mission. And the violators are really the ones doing the overstepping.
The real question, then, is not whether the Pope should speak at all, but how such teaching is best received and interpreted within a democratic society. The Church serves the common good most effectively when she articulates enduring moral principles while recognising that their practical implementation can legitimately differ across contexts. Political leaders, in turn, serve the same common good when they respond to moral guidance with seriousness and respect – even when prudential responsibilities lead them to different conclusions about policy.
This reciprocal posture reflects a longstanding Catholic understanding of the relationship between spiritual authority and political responsibility. The Church illuminates conscience; the state governs temporal affairs. Each has its own competence, and both contribute to the flourishing of the human person when they remain faithful to their proper roles. Confusion arises when either institution attempts to absorb the other’s mission. Cooperation becomes possible when each recognises the limits of its authority as well as its obligations.
For this reason, it is entirely fitting for the Holy Father to call nations towards peace and to warn against the moral dangers posed by modern warfare. It is equally fitting for American leaders to fulfil their duty to defend the country and uphold the rule of law within the framework of the Constitution. What is needed now is not mutual suspicion but mutual clarity – clarity about the continuing place of the just war tradition, clarity about the Church’s moral voice in public life and clarity about the respect owed between spiritual and political leadership.
The Pope must continue to proclaim the Gospel of life and peace, setting before the world the horizon towards which all peoples are called. The President must govern according to the responsibilities entrusted to him under the Constitution and before God. These vocations are distinct, but they are not opposed. When exercised with humility and mutual respect, they serve the same ultimate end: the protection of human dignity and the pursuit of a just and lasting peace.
