You cannot serve two masters, but many "Christian" Trump supporters, in this particular instance Catholics, are being asked to choose: Do you stand with the guy who posts an image of himself as Jesus and attacks the Pope, or do you stand with the leader of your church?
Considering the track record of both the Catholic church and Trump, it seems best to avoid both.
ROME — After white smoke in the rafters of the Sistine Chapel signaled the rise of a new pope last May, President Donald Trump heralded the first U.S.-born leader of the Catholic Church by declaring the choice “a Great Honor for our Country.”
But now the two most influential Americans on the world stage — Trump, the leader of 340 million Americans, and Pope Leo XIV, with a global flock of 1.4 billion Catholics — are locked in a struggle for hearts and minds that harbors risks for both men.
After a pair of Trump posts Sunday on Truth Social — one, a rambling attack describing Leo as “terrible for Foreign Policy” and “WEAK on crime,” and the other, a Christ-like depiction of the president — Leo responded Monday onboard a papal flight to Algeria, telling journalists he had “no fear of the Trump administration.”
“I don’t want to get into a debate with him” the pope said before appearing to do just that by adding: “I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing.” Later, reflecting on one of Trump’s missives on Truth Social, he said: “It’s ironic — the name of the site itself. Say no more.”
Veteran observers of the Catholic Church say an open war of words between a pope and a U.S. president is unprecedented.
“You have to jump back to the Middle Ages when kings and emperors were shouting against the pope in Rome and calling him false,” said Marco Politi, a longtime Vatican watcher and author. “There is just no other recent example like this.”
The Catholic Church’s moral authority has declined substantially after decades of clerical abuse scandals, and the weight of a pope’s words is not what it once was. But the risk of a direct confrontation with a sitting pope, observers say, is perhaps greater for Trump — who is taking on not only the first pope born in the United States, but a spiritual touchstone for an important, core group of Republican voters: conservative White Catholics. And he is doing so in a midterm congressional election year.
The pushback on Monday included conservative Catholic leaders such as Bishop Robert Barron, who serves on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, and called on the president to apologize to Leo. “The statements made by President Trump on Truth Social regarding the Pope were entirely inappropriate and disrespectful.”
WaPo
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