• This RNS headline reflects just one of the reasons it’s unwise for politicians to pick fights with clergy: “Pope doubles down on peace and unity message as Trump’s criticism continues.”
The political headline cliché just becomes weirdly funny when applied to a pope. The gambling metaphor (“doubles down”) doesn’t really work here given that this is not the first time that Leo specifically, or his many predecessors, have repeated a “peace and unity message.” The “politician not backing down” framing here treats the pope like he was Thomas Massie, the conservative Kentucky Republican representative in Congress who has criticized Trump on the Epstein files and other issues. But all that framing does is underscore how very much the pope, being the pope, is very much not at all like Massie.
Oh, the president is turning the full power of “the bully pulpit” toward bullying Leo? Well, how many pulpits has the pope?
The opposite political cliché headline — “Pope backs down on peace and unity after Trump’s criticism” — is unimaginable. And it would be unimaginable even if Leo were the relatively powerless pastor of some small nondenominational congregation — at least when it comes to such basic, almost generic, core religious values as “peace and unity.”
You can think of it as a matter of home-field advantage. When clergy stray from core themes like “peace and unity” and wade into political matters far afield from that — as some right-wing US Catholic bishops like to do — they’re playing on the politicians’ home turf. But politicians have nothing to gain from picking a fight on religious leaders’ home field of “peace and unity.”
And Trump very much chose to have this fight on Leo’s turf and according to Leo’s terms — the broadest possible terms of “peace and unity are Good Things” vs. “No, they’re not.” The president is going to lose that fight with the pope for the same reason he lost his fight with the king of Latin trap. When Bad Bunny said “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” Trump chose to respond as though this were an attack on him personally. He chose sides — choosing “hate” as his own personal side in the generic contrast of hate vs. love. That doesn’t mean that Bad Bunny is “doubling down” every subsequent time he affirms the goodness of love, it just means that Trump made the foolish choice of framing this fight in a way that makes it impossible for him to win.
The same thing has happened here. Pope Leo spoke of “peace and unity,” condemning war as a carelessly chosen and carelessly conducted first choice. Trump chose to frame that as a personal attack because, according to Trump, it is obvious that anyone advocating “peace and unity” is opposing him and because, according to Trump himself, his own war was started and is being conducted carelessly. Now — because of Trump’s own choice to frame the dispute this way — every time anyone, anywhere speaks positively of peace and unity, they’re “doubling down” against him, defying his power and exposing his powerlessness.
It seems unlikely he’ll ultimately win this argument by tweeting his way through it, but it seems he’s determined to try.
• Evan Hurst responds to comments from Lauren Boebert. Hurst notes the important distinction between “horny” and “predatory,” That distinction seems to elude Boebert, even though it should be personally important to her because it explains why the behavior of men like Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez merits their expulsion from Congress but her behavior at that performance of Beetlejuice doesn’t.
This is example number eleventy-billion of the “conservative” inability to comprehend the essential importance of consent in any discussion of sexual ethics. This, again, tends to be expressed as hostility to any mention of it, in a move that’s so obtuse that it seems suspiciously like deliberate bad-faith.
Any Normal Person: Consent is necessary. Without consent, no sexual behavior can be ethical.
Conservative: So you’re saying consent is sufficient — that as long as there’s consent, “Anything goes”?
ANP: No, I said “necessary,” not suff–
Conservative: “Anything goes!” This is why we must never mention or allow anyone to think of consent.
They have been doing this forever. Either they are afflicted with some defect that prevents them from comprehending elementary truths or they are arguing in bad faith because, for whatever reason, they personally prefer a world in which consent has no consequence.
• The title for this post comes from Prince’s “Pope” (lyrically NSFW), which makes amusingly filthy, sexually swaggering use of an extended metaphor. I mean, yes, Joëlle Rollo-Koster, professor of medieval history and chief editor of the Cambridge History of the Papacy, has some helpful historical context on the question of “What Happens When Sacred and Secular Power Collide?” But you can’t dance to it.
We could spend some time pondering how Prince’s song might speak to those in right-wing MAGA world for whom “cuck” has become the most frequently invoked insult, but that would probably spoil the man’s joke. So instead let’s just ponder how the rapping on this 1993 track is light-years beyond, say, the break in “Alphabet Street” from 1988, and then we can enjoy a round of the impossible argument about what genre best describes Prince’s music.
The image above comes from the other song I thought about referencing in the title — “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love & Understanding?” That image is from Elvis Costello’s version, but here’s the Postmodern Jukebox arrangement.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In