Did Trump’s Pentagon Really Threaten the Vatican?

I wanted to speak more about the president’s threats against Iran and his subsequent surrender today, and I will soon. But there’s no time for that just now, because we’ve got another political bombshell to talk about.

It’s now being reported that in January, the Pentagon threatened the Vatican.

It has been reported, and confirmed by a few different outlets, that in January, Cardinal Cristophe Pierre, then the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States, was summoned to the Pentagon for what’s being referred to as a “bitter lecture.” Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of War for Policy, a Trump appointee and himself a Catholic, lectured the Cardinal about the Pope’s state-of-the-world address, which they found to be insulting to the United States and to Donald Trump. They were most angry that the Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, said “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”

Colby reportedly menaced the Cardinal with the statement, “America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

It was also reported that the Pentagon went so far as to make references to the Avignon Papacy, when the French crown used its own military power to control the Pope. This was viewed as a threat that the Trump Administration was willing to annex the Vatican and install their own puppet pontiff. Cardinal Pierre seems to have sat in stunned silence through this tirade. The meeting is now presumed to be one of the reasons that Pope Leo won’t be coming to the United States to celebrate our 250th anniversary with us in July, and I don’t blame him a bit.

By the time I read the astonishing news, social media had already exploded. Secular pundits were expressing their shock. Catholic influencers were flabbergasted. People not terribly familiar with the Vatican were writing “the Holy Sea” instead of “the Holy See.” There were a lot of silly memes circulating, with pictures of Marco Rubio dressed up like the Antipope. Others were suggesting that Bishop Barron would make a good Antipope. My own suggestion was that Bishop Strickland might fit the bill. Someone started a rumor that J. D. Vance may be excommunicated and I suggested that that would be a fun way to spoil the release of his new book about converting to Catholicism.

We were all joking, though there’s nothing really funny about any of this. It’s extremely serious. 

First of all, aside from any other concerns, Pope Leo is an American citizen. For his safety and right to serve his role in the Church to be threatened because he spoke out, is a grave violation of his First Amendment rights as an American. It’s disgusting for the Pentagon to single out one American in this way.

Secondly, the Vatican is a foreign country. It’s the smallest country on earth, but it’s still a country, and Pope Leo is the head of that country. A foreign country shouldn’t have to fear violence from the United States for saying the wrong thing. In light of the president’s attempts to menace the president of Ukraine in his first term, his menacing of Denmark, his actions in Venezuela earlier this year and in Iran just the past month, it’s obvious that Mr. Trump thinks of himself as emperor of the entire world and of all other world leaders as his vassals. That is despicable.

Thirdly, for the Pentagon to attempt to shake down the Vatican, endangers the First Amendment rights of every American Catholic. All of us in America have the right to practice our religion and to speak our minds. Where our faith tells us the government is wrong, we have to talk about it. Whether it’s attending the March for Life or protesting an unjust war, Catholics are supposed to speak out for what we believe and be involved in American politics. If the government starts threatening the Church, they’re threatening all of us individually as well. If the Pope can’t preach a sermon on just war, then none of us has any religious freedom.

I think American Catholics have forgotten the position we occupy in American history.

Since about halfway through the Nixon administration, American Catholics, or at least white American Catholics like me, have had the luxury of assuming we’re as respectable and “American” as white Protestants. I don’t think most American Catholics realize what a new and strange phenomenon that is.

Historically, we’d always been seen as suspicious people loyal to a strange foreign cabal, and a danger to the country. The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Senior, referred to anti-Catholicism as “the deepest bias in the history of the American people.” Anti-Catholicism was prominent in America from Colonial times until about the 1970s. The Anglican and Puritan colonists had little in common except for their hatred of Catholics. Virginia and Massachusetts both had laws banning the practice of Catholicism before the American Revolution.  John Adams ridiculed us. John Jay wanted all office-holders in New York to renounce the Pope. Protestant leaders in the 19th Century used anti-Catholicism as their dog whistle to spread bigotry against immigrants from Germany and Ireland. Books of lies about Catholic nuns were bestsellers in the 1830. The Nativist movement fomented riots that burned churches and convents and murdered Catholic Americans in the 1840s.  I could show you Catholic churches here in Appalachia that were bombed by Protestant terrorists who wanted the local mining jobs for themselves and viewed the Irish Catholics as a menace in the early 20th century. The Ku Klux Klan spread propaganda and violence against Catholics, particularly in the 1920s in the Midwest. This bigotry was a normal part of American culture until the Nixon administration deliberately pitted Catholics and their old enemies, the Baptists, against the feminist movement to solidify his support from American Christians. Now, it seems, the hoods are off again.

Since about the Reagan administration or a little before, American Catholics have often found ourselves bedfellows with the Republican party because the Republicans claim to be pro-life (never mind that generally, abortion rates tend to fall faster under Democratic presidents). Historically, Catholic often voted Democrat, but that all changed in the late twentieth century. Now a Republican administration, with a Catholic vice president, a Catholic Secretary of State, a Catholic press secretary and I don’t even know how many other Catholic members, is trying to shake down the Vatican for being Catholic in the wrong way.

The Republican party does not own the Catholic Church. They’ve appropriated the Catholic Church. They’ve spent countless hours and a whole lot of money courting conservative Catholics, while smearing any Catholic who doesn’t toe the Republican party line as a heretic and a fake.  They’ve convinced a huge number of American Catholics that it’s a sin not to support everything they do. But we don’t belong to them. They can’t have the Vatican, and they can’t have us individual American Catholics either.

I’m the first person to criticize the Church’s hierarchy. I’ve been very public about my struggle with some Catholic teachings, and with the shocking and inexcusable history of abuse that the hierarchy has covered up. But I admire Pope Leo. I admire him twice as much now that I know that his staunch support of immigrants and condemnation of war continued unabated after he was threatened by his own country’s military. His courage is exemplary.

I am an American, and a Catholic. Because I am an American, I love our Constitution and our right to practice whatever religion we like, whether the president likes it or not .Because I am Catholic, I support Pope Leo’s witness. Both of those things put me at odds with the Trump Administration.

I don’t know how the United States is getting out of the mess we’re in. But American Catholics need to realize that we’ve been used, and it needs to stop now.