You have surely seen it by now: the AI-generated meme of Donald Trump as pope which the president posted on social media this past weekend. And you’ve heard the harrumphs of outrage from a long list of people who might not be the obvious defenders of the Faith:
Darwinian materialists who think that Jesus was a fuzzy-headed social reformer whose bones now rot in the ground.
Secularized apostates from Judaism who consider both testaments of the Bible to be collections of fairy tales only slightly less gruesome than the Grimms’.
Leftist politicians with Irish or Italian last names who style themselves as “Catholic” and ostentatiously receive Holy Communion on major feast days when they’re not busy funding millions of abortions in the ghetto or fighting to chemically or surgically castrate children — and buying off bishops with billions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded contracts to help wealthy nonprofits like Catholic Charities traffic kids into the country via drug cartels.
Democrats who’ve said nothing about the new Washington state law that profanes the sanctity of the confessional, demanding priests violate their solemn vow not to reveal whatever sinners tell them — or face potential jail time.
NeverTrump secular “conservatives” who hate the president for refusing to launch stupid wars and creating a populist party, eager to find one more piece of poop to throw at the wall.
Pro-LGBTQ activists inside the church who spent the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI demanding the ordination of women, same-sex marriages at the altar, and a long list of other “reforms” that would make the world’s largest church the grinning, lobotomized chaplain of the Sexual Revolution.
I could go on, but you get the idea. To my mind, the greatest profanation of the papacy in my lifetime was the tenure of Pope Francis. He didn’t just misgovern the Catholic Church; he persecuted it from within.
Even those who don’t hold to papal authority will agree that the bare minimum for any religious leader entails protecting the vulnerable from sex abuse by clergy. Catholic journalist Damian Thompson has done a yeoman’s job documenting in The Daily Mail how Francis actively protected sex abusers, gaslighting and trash-talking victims. Go read it if you have a cast-iron stomach.
But let’s address the more general question: Should Donald Trump’s tongue-in-cheek gesture offend sincere Catholics and friends of the Church? Should those who don’t hate Trump for corrupt or ideological reasons, who aren’t blatant hypocrites, shake their heads and cringe?
Not at all. Here are five reasons why.
1. The Papacy Has Also Been a Political Office for at Least 1,500 Years
As recently as 1870, the pope was the ruler of a nation, the Papal States. It had an army, courts, police, and an executioner. (Even the truncated sovereign city-state of Vatican City had the death penalty in its law books until the late 1960s.) The papacy had acquired much of central Italy after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) took over de facto control of Rome to preserve it from chaos, and set about saving its famished citizens from starvation.
Dozens of subsequent popes spoke powerfully about the need for the Papal States as a kind of Catholic Zion to keep the church from becoming the plaything of secular rulers. Indeed, when the popes became militarily weak, they often did end up as puppets of nearby kings. The “Babylonian Captivity” of the Church is what historians call the period from 1309-1377 when the popes weren’t even in Rome, but lived in the gilded cage of Avignon in France–whose king exerted control over who got elected and how they ruled.
Pope Pius IX fought several wars to defend the Papal States from the conquering armies of a unifying Italy, in 1870 calling Catholics from around the world to volunteer and fight to defend his sovereignty. When Italy’s armies triumped, Pius declared himself a “prisoner of the Vatican,” excommunicated the entire Italian government, and forbade Catholics from even voting in its elections. It wasn’t until 1929 that the Vatican made its peace with Italy, and became the sovereign microstate of Vatican City — which still has police, courts, prisons, and its own (severely restricted) citizenship. It also practices a draconian immigration policy: even Pope Francis didn’t let Rome’s gypsies flood the Vatican, demand voting rights, and redistribute the church’s wealth into their own bank accounts.
2. Popes Meddle in Politics as Part of Their Job
While Catholics don’t practice theocracy and see the job of government as wielding Caesar’s sword in defense of justice, popes have repeatedly invoked their higher authority as Vicars of Christ to correct, excommunicate, even try to depose secular rulers whom they judged to be tyrants. Pope Pius V excommunicated and formally deposed Queen Elizabeth I for her savage persecution of Catholics — a move that backfired, making out English Catholics to be not just religious dissenters but traitors, so the persecution worsened. Much later, Pope Pius XII aided German conspirators who were trying to assassinate Adolf Hitler and replace his regime — when neither the British nor the U.S. governments would help.
Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland in 1979 helped spark the success of the Solidarity movement, which brought down the Iron Curtain and put Soviet Communism out of its misery. The U.S. government routinely seeks Vatican help as an intermediary in trying to avoid wars or end them.
On the other side of the scales, Pope Francis meddled directly with U.S. elections during Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, denouncing those who would “build walls” to control immigration (like the Vatican’s in Rome, but never mind) as “not Christian.”
3. The Presidency Isn’t Profane
It’s easy for prissy people who don’t understand theology to pretend that ruling the church is somehow an inherently noble calling, while governing a country is grubby and “worldly.” To people like this, Trump’s funny meme is inherently sacrilegious, tainting a sacred calling with the muck and mire of politics. This is an easy error to make, but it’s profoundly and dangerously wrong. God’s authority extends through every atom of the universe and every sphere of life. While being a pastor (at any level, from bottom to top) is a godly vocation, so is justly governing the people made in the image of God, seeking justice and the Common Good, enforcing godly laws, and keeping the peace. If you watched the coronation of King Charles III, you’d have seen that it was as elaborate and religiously charged as the installation of any pope.
You don’t need to live in a (nominally) Christian monarchy such as Great Britain to realize this. We surround the inauguration of presidents with pomp, circumstance, and prayer. Many Protestant homes that wouldn’t put up pictures of Virgin Mary or the Apostles will proudly display pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and other American leaders. That’s not idolatry. It’s a recognition that patriotism is a moral virtue, good government comes from God, and that those who hold Caesar’s sword have the duty to obey the Natural Law. Those leaders who do that successfully, we rightly venerate — and sometimes carve their faces onto the sides of mountains like Rushmore.
4. Evil Governments Are Already Trying to Influence the Papal Election
So far, we’ve seen credible rumors that two wicked, anti-Christian governments are trying to influence who gets elected as the successor to Pope Francis. France’s President Emmanuel Macron is said to be quietly trying to block the election of Cardinal Robert Sarah, a brilliant and faithful theological conservative, while China is using its vast financial and blackmail power to promote the election of Cardinal Pietro Parolin. That’s the prelate who sent sex abuser Cardinal Theodore McCarrick to negotiate a secret deal with the Chinese Communist Party, which amounted to an alliance against Donald Trump’s America, and gave the Communist Party control over the Chinese church.
5. So Why Shouldn’t a Good Government Try to Counteract That Influence?
Let’s say you believe that the papacy is a divinely instituted office, meant to guard the church from slipping into error or becoming hopelessly worldly. Even if you believe that, why would you object to men of good will, who see the Catholic church as a key defender of Western Civilization, trying to counteract the efforts of France, China, and other bad actors to promote a secular sellout pope? Do you think it’s nobody’s business to meddle, since the Holy Spirit picks the popes? No pope ever taught that, and if he had, he would have been forced to explain why in the Renaissance God always seemed to pick the cardinals who’d paid the highest bribes. That’s actually blasphemous, far worse than Trump’s silly meme.
The U.S. Catholic church has been engaged in U.S. politics for decades — mostly pushing for the Left. The outcry of U.S. bishops against any effort to enforce our immigration laws completely drowned out their occasional pro-life, pro-family squeaks. The U.S. bishops collected some $3 billion in 15 years via their nonprofits, such as Catholic Charities, mostly from work with immigrants. Saving babies earned them nothing.
I will go further. I hope and pray that someone on Trump’s team, perhaps his ambassador to the Holy See, Brian Burch, is wielding U.S. influence to warn the cardinals that another politicized, anti-American, and open-borders pope would bring dire consequences. The Trump administration has already, via DOGE, begun to cut off the bishops’ nonprofits from lucrative contracts. But Trump could go further, and if another pro-Beijing, America-bashing pontiff gets elected, he should. As I wrote here back in January:
The Emperor Otto the Great saved the papacy from the control of local aristocratic gangs, who chose the popes via street fights and violent intrigue, in a period that historians soberly call the “Pornocracy” since at one point powerful prostitutes were actually choosing which men got to serve as pope. Otto invaded Rome, forced a corrupt pope to resign, and oversaw the election of an honest one. The result was a period in Church history widely called the “Ottonian Renaissance,” whose pontiffs served the Church and not local criminal gangs.
Now I hope that of all men Donald Trump might be able to serve America’s interests by putting powerful pressure on the Roman Catholic Church, which would have as its happy side effect saving the Church from its current leaders.
Currently the U.S. Catholic bishops and the Vatican are protected from full legal liability for their sex abuse coverups by a convenient legal fiction: that every diocese is an independent corporation, solely responsible for paying its own legal judgments and protected by bankruptcy laws. The Vatican can’t be sued by American victims of sex abuse, even if they can prove Vatican policies enabled their abuse, because of this legal fiction…
In reality, American dioceses operate as branch offices of a global corporation, like British Petroleum or Tesla. [The Vatican] dictates their policies on sex abuse, hires and fires their CEOs (bishops), and ought to bear full legal liability for their actions, including their decisions to shuffle sex abusers or smuggle immigrants.
Trump’s team should explain all this, slowly and calmly, to one or more American cardinals. And they should tactfully make clear that implication of electing another leftist, political pope.
If [the Vatican] wants to fight the American voters and stop them from enforcing their just, democratically enacted laws against sex abuse and illegal immigration, Trump should direct his Justice Department to start dismantling the legal fiction and support plaintiffs who wish to sue the Vatican in U.S. courts. I’d hate to see all that great art go on the auction block, but justice must be done, though the heavens fall.
Perhaps only a Church stripped of assets, denuded of wealth, and exposed as powerless would return to its mission of preaching the Gospel rather than pimping for globalism, abortion-tainted vaccines, and chaotic open borders.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.
The post 5 Reasons Why Getting Offended by Trump’s ‘Pope’ Meme Is Foolish … Or Worse appeared first on The Stream.
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