The recent outburst from Vice President JD Vance against Pope Leo XIV’s measured calls for peace in the disastrous war with Iran is inopportune – for both sides. On the part of the politicians, this ill-advised outburst appears positively puerile and will likely backfire. Not only will the White House not win this ideational power struggle, it could further risk pushing Church authorities leftwards and alienating Catholic voters.
Here is a man who converted to the Catholic Faith as an adult, now lecturing the Successor of Peter on how to ‘be careful’ when he speaks of theology, as if the Vicar of Christ were some novice confusing the domains of altar and sword. Vance’s complaint is that the Pope should stick to matters of morality and leave the wielding of the sword to those who understand just war, but in the context of the Iran war and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon it lands more like a schoolboy throwing his toys from the pram the moment his father corrects him.
