Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared in slightly different form on AMAC’s “Newsline” and is reposted here with kind permission
Just as liberal elites are currently attempting to drive a wedge between Catholics and Evangelicals, they are also attempting to open up a rift between Catholics and the Republican Party–specifically, President Donald Trump.
The ongoing public spat between Trump and Pope Leo XIV over U.S. immigration policy and the war in Iran has provided the perfect opportunity for the Left to sow anti-GOP sentiment among the all-important Catholic voting bloc ahead of the midterm elections. But what conservatives–and Catholic conservatives especially–must realize is that the Left does not suddenly care about defending the Pope or Catholic teaching. Rather, they hope that by pretending to be on “Team Pope”, they can manipulate Catholics into voting against their own interests–and undermine President Trump in the process.
This hypocritical attempt to get Catholics to move left, however, presents both hilarious dark humor and a dangerous situation.
That there is–or can be–a real tension between religion and politics is not unusual. No Catholic (or any other Christian) thinks that earthly politicians do all things well or even correctly. Thus, the disagreement over the Iran War, with Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio (both Catholic) supporting American military strikes and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and various individual bishops supporting Pope Leo’s comments that are critical of the conflict.
The debate over the wisdom and justice of American military action in Iran is natural and indeed a good thing. The canons of just war theory, which have long been accepted in Catholic, Protestant, and even some secular circles, are not simple, connect-the-dots rules. They require interpretation.
The USCCB posted a summarized version of those canons taken from The Catechism of the Catholic Church. While many simply take the papal opposition to the Iran strikes as dispositive, that is not the end of the question. Catholics believe (a hard claim, to be sure, for other Christians) that popes can speak infallibly, meaning without error, on certain occasions. But those occasions are rare and carefully defined. They rarely include prudential decisions about complicated applications of moral reasoning that might be decided in different ways.
In fact, even among Catholics, there are different applications of just war theory. The eminent Catholic philosopher Edward Feser has argued, for reasons he spells out, that the Iran War is unjust. The eminent Catholic philosopher J. Budziszewski’s argument, on the other hand, concludes that “it seems to me that this war is just.”
It is worth noting here that the Catechism states: “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy [of war] belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.”
Of course, even that is part of the debate. Professor Feser thinks the Iran War requires a Congressional declaration to be just, while Professor Budziszewski argues that, “Despite claims to the contrary, the administration has followed the provisions of America’s War Powers Act.”
Some believe (and this writer is among them) that the Iran debate among Catholics is not the real issue. For Pope Leo and the American anti-Trump bishops, the real dispute is over questions of immigration, welfare, and globalization more generally.
These, too, however, are issues of prudential judgment about policy that are still delegated to public authorities and not churchmen, even if it is perfectly reasonable that churchmen be able to offer their own opinions on matters of public record.
Catholics know that the Catechism doesn’t merely encourage wealthy nations to be generous to those seeking security or prosperity in a different country. It also outlines what countries may do legally and what immigrants must do in the countries to which they wish to immigrate. “Political authorities,” it teaches, “for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption.”
In other words, we are not obligated to make immigration easy, especially for those who disregard American law. The Catechism adds, “Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”
There is, then, a very solid case for our restrictive immigration policy even from a Catholic standpoint—whether or not Catholics agree with every single aspect of the policy. Of course, there are many other issues on which Catholics will take issue with the Trump administration and Republicans more generally. That is not surprising. As G.K. Chesterton observed, Catholics are bound to agree on a few things and bound to disagree on the rest. And that goes especially for issues so complicated as national policies about a country with the size and complexity of ours.
Also unsurprising is the attempt to exploit these internal Catholic disagreements for the benefit of Democrats. As demographer Ryan Burge has noted, Catholics have turned red since 2008, when they voted 50/50 in the presidential election. In 2024, they voted 56-42 for Trump over Harris. Republicans have a 2-1 advantage over Democrats in the white Catholic vote. Among non-white Catholics, while only 24 percent voted for Trump in 2016, 40 percent did so in 2024.
One may not be able to speak of a unitary “Catholic vote” anymore, but one can say that Catholics have leaned increasingly right in recent years.
The reasons for that leaning are pretty obvious. Democrats have become the party of abortion absolutism, LGBTQ+ ideology (including gender-mutilation for kids!), and even euthanasia. All of these go directly against Catholic teaching. While Republicans have not always done the best job of opposing Democrats on these issues, it’s still a no-brainer which party more closely aligns with biblical values.
The absurdity of Democrats claiming that they are “on Team Pope,” as did Senator Ed Markey, famous for wearing a pin that reads “ABORTION” on his jacket, would probably be considered too implausible for fiction.
Equally absurd is Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker posting a picture of himself shaking hands with Pope Leo, who vainly begged the politician to veto a physician-assisted suicide bill. Even more outrageous, the caption to that photo read, “The Pope lifts his voice as part of a higher calling–one centered on peace and the preservation of human life.” One wonders how Pritzker squares that praise with his own personal support for radical abortion policies and the state-sanctioned murder of the sick and elderly.
Catholics are famous for taking a realistic approach to politics. While nobody thinks Donald Trump or Republicans are perfect on every prudential issue, they know that the Democrats are “not on Team Pope”–except perhaps when they can cynically exploit the papacy to hurt President Trump.
With regard to the black-and-white issues on which no Catholic (or indeed any sane person of any faith) can disagree, the Democrats have no intention of even considering listening to the Pope–or any other biblical authority, for that matter.
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Thank you for this essay Mr. Deavel. The US should follow the example of the Pope’s Vatican:
Vatican Promises Stiff Penalties for Illegal Aliens Crossing its Border
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/01/16/vatican-promises-stiff-penalties-for-illegal-aliens-crossing-its-border/
These characters know how to make a mockery of themselves.
Why the Left now loves the preent-day Catholic Church:
Spain’s Church-State Collusion Clears Path for 30,000 Jihadis To Enter Europe
Bishops Back Leftist Government’s Mass Regularization of Mainly Muslim Illegals
April 21, 2026
Jules Gomes
Spanish Bishops Celebrate Newcomers
The Migration Department of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Caritas, the Spanish Conference of Religious (CONFER), and the Network of Entities for Solidarity Development (REDES) explained in a press statement issued on April 14 that the “church entities consider the extraordinary regularization of migrants a measure of political, ethical, and social responsibility.”
“For the Church, welcoming, protecting, and dignifying migrants is an inherent requirement of its mission. It is not merely a pastoral choice, but also a human rights imperative and therefore a coherent expression of the Gospel in public life,” the statement stressed.
Catholic authorities released the statement on the same day that Spain’s left-wing coalition government, led by the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos, approved an extraordinary royal decree to grant legal status to roughly 500,000 illegal aliens.
According to Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, authorities detected over 30,000 entries of illegals from 2020 to 2025 from countries with high jihadist presence, such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, and Egypt.
“One in nine illegal immigrants entering Spain came from areas with a high risk of jihadist activity,” Spanish daily La Gaceta, which obtained and analyzed the Frontex data, reported. By 2022, these profiles accounted for around 18 percent of total detections, rising to 30 percent in 2024.
Italian Bishops Call for Italy to Embrace ‘Spanish Solution’
A day later, the Spanish division of Vatican News announced that the bishops were “celebrating” the decree regularizing half a million migrants. At the same time, the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire published an op-ed piece urging Italy to adopt the Spanish “solution” to its illegal aliens crisis and to reject recent calls for “remigration” from conservative Italian politicians.
Spanish Episcopal Conference Backs Mass Migration Petition
Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) asked the Spanish Episcopal Conference to respond to concerns that its support of the regularization was paving the way for jihadi infiltration and posing a threat to Europe.
https://www.meforum.org/fwi/fwi-news/spains-church-state-collusion-clears-path-for-30-000-jihadis-to-enter-europe.
The war now going on is not new for the U.S. It has been in this sort of war since its younger days as a Republic. See this reminder:
“We forget, most of us, that Americans have always been in this fight.
The first Marines in the Hymn were the Marines on the shores of Tripoli, sent by a young republic [by President Thomas Jefferson] to stop the [Islamic] Barbary corsairs who were selling American sailors into slavery in North Africa. That was 1805. The banner that went up the pole at Derna was the first American flag raised in victory on a foreign continent. The men who carried it were not there for oil. They were there because a ransom had become a principle, and a principle had become a cause, and American boys had been kept in chains because their country was too young and too far to come for them. Until it wasn’t.
They were there because a ransom had become a principle, and a principle had become a cause, and American boys had been kept in chains because their country was too young and too far to come for them. Until it wasn’t.
The line runs from Derna to Beirut, where two hundred forty-one U.S. service members were killed in October 1983 by a suicide bomber whose ideology was the direct grandfather of the ayatollahs’ proxies. It runs from Khobar Towers to the Pentagon. From Fallujah to Abbottabad. From the hangar deck of the Cole to the rooftop in Kabul where the last C-17 lifted off. And it runs, too, through the olive groves of the Galilee, where a West Point colonel named David Marcus, “Mickey” to his men, fell on the tenth of June 1948, shot by a young Jewish sentry whose challenge he could not answer in Hebrew. The cease-fire took effect six hours later.”
https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/in-the-same-trench-an-american-reflection-for-yom-hazikaron-5786
The Democrats are obviously not on “Team Pope”. Nor are the Republicans, and it is they who are in charge and bear responsibility. The Pope has his reasons for denouncing the war and the arrogance of power. They ought to be taken seriously.
MC:
The problem of the current and previous pontiff, and the ecclesial establishment under their “governance,” is that they have compromised themselves by their deliberate political actions, among which are their appalling and shameful secret accord with the Communist Party Regime running China, and their public declaration (by Excellency Sorondo speaking on behalf of the Pontiff Francis) that the Communist Regime of China is the highest example of a just society; their eager participation with the political open borders establishment in western Europe and (until Trump) the US; and the naked political act by the Pontiff Leo of having a his recent meeting with Barack Obama’s political strategist Davis Axelrod .
And because of their political behavior, it is perfectly reasonable to set aside the prior assumption of a well-intentioned Catholic citizen that our Pontiff and his ecclesial cohorts are motivated by the principles of our faith, and recognize that the Pontiff and Church establishment have compromised themselves, and emptied out the store of trust that was justifiably granted to, for example, the two prior pontiffs Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paull II.
Since 2013, the Church establishment has compromised itself. And because of their own actions, they have forfeited an otherwise reasonable assumption of trust.
Yes. Indeed.
Specifically regarding Leo and Trump: It was reasonable to hope that the pope would have proven himself the better man. He should have spoken to or met with Trump prior to denunciation, which made it all worse for Leo. No one has high expectations for Trump toning down his rhetoric. But Leo’s hypocritical preaching has sharpened divisions among American Catholics. Then he audaciously preaches “dialogue” to resolve problems. He should have taken his own advice and talked to Trump privately instead of through MSM. He has proven himself of lesser character than those who are invincibly ignorant. He is the pope, for God’s sake.
Excellent observation Meiron.
Caesaropapism is alive and well.
Agree Chris,
In the two recent pontificates, we’ve had both Leo and Francis, who instead of simply reaffirming divinely endowed immutable moral truth, have chosen to tell the world that moral precepts are subject to change, thus enabling a very probable net increase in the world’s aggregate of evil. Both Leo and Francis have expressed a belief in moral relativism. Both Leo and Francis have downplayed the intrinsic evilness of socialism, particularly CCP tyranny, thus increasing the suffering of the world’s impoverished. Both Leo and Francis have praised the work of some of the world’s most notorious abortion advocates, practitioners, and political architects. Both Leo and Francis have downplayed Islamic terrorism. Francis equating the Muslim beheading of children as no worse than his reading of the alleged domestic abuse he read in an Italian newspaper when he presumed the man must be Catholic to assert “Catholics” are equally bad. It turned out the man was Muslim.
When will there be an end to the pragmatic reality of natural law among never criticize a pope Catholics? Right is right no matter who is right, even if no one is right, and wrong is wrong no matter who is wrong, even if everyone is wrong.
After decades of bankrupt theology seldom called out by prelates who should have cared to discipline the offenders, a culture of pseudo-Catholicism metastasized to where two men lacking in Catholic formation, actually managed to rise to the top.
In centuries past, fist fights would actually break out in conclaves. If only we can return to such a time when men were men.
Very well said, thank you for this!
People have seen through the lies of Republican Party sir. For 40 years we endured pro-life propaganda only to find yet again another politician telling us it’s god’s will to bomb an elementary school. As the song goes.
When der Fuehrer says we ist de master race,
We heil (pffft) heil (pffft) right in der Fuehrer’s face,
Nazi references are incredibly clever and rare. Nicely done. (#Sarcasm)
If the only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail.
Spi.. kind of reminds of another SP LC.
He likely gets lots of practice or has the issued format for brevity’s sake.
The intention was not to bomb and elementary school. It was collateral damage, and to a building next to a legitimate target. Given the Islamist terrorist tactical book it was surely an intention of theirs. Gaza has given us ample example of this manuever…and yours a perfect example Democrat mendacity.
Ninety-percent of Iran’s targets in the UAE were civilian targets of no military value at all.
Yes, the GOP lies. But if you think the party that pushed Adam and Steve, Boys can have periods too and St. George Fentanyl, you need a reality check.
Your selection, and it is a selection, not a choice is between a party that’s guaranteed to do the wrong thing, and one that usually won’t do the right thing.
Trump promised to drain the swamp and the swamp drained him. He was the last chance to stop Hobbesian Leviathan. He had a mandate for principally domestic action and instead completely focused on international matters.
ERRATA:
But if you think the party that pushed Adam and Steve, Boys can have periods too and St. George Fentanyl is some sort of paragon of the virtue of truth.
Followed by your independent clause of, you need a reality check.
I’m glad I’m not the only one with oversights when posting half asleep.
I think the closed border argues against your point.
Spi: Calling pro-life advocacy “propaganda” is the complete distillation of a Nazi mindset.
Spi;
For years I have been waiting for Spike Jones to make his way to these hallowed pages, and now, thanks to you, he is finally here.
Thank You,
Beetlebomb
Peace could readily be secured the world over if everyone just converted to Islam.
See how easy that was?
EZ PZ. All religions are the same anyway.
Surely the implication, though erroneous, of the Bergoglian pontificate, thought the ground for the notion well tilled since the mid-century council.
I hope I might have qualified for God’s mercy if He took me to accounting during my years of atheism, but I wouldn’t recommend the indifference towards atheism that Francis implied.
Well, not exactly. The Sunni and Shia have been gleefully murdering each other for centuries.
It’s curious that one side will blow up a mosque filled with worshipers from the other side and believe they are doing “God’s will.” Insanity.
“Liberal elites”. Can you describe exactly who that is, please ?
Not a vague description of some “they”, Age group, economic category, religion, education, old money, new money, good looking, who are we talking about here ? I sincerely have no idea who you think that is.
I clicked the links to the philosopher. The inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and flat out deceptions contained in that article are inexcusable. That shpukd not be your a source.
In yours, you mischaracterize groups and speculate on motives and make declarations that are false, unsubstantiated, dishonest, fiction, without any journalistic integrity,acceptable sources, linear logic.
There is zero chance this is a site sanctioned by any body within the Roman Catholic church.
Plus you should NEVER state exact numbers that are incorrect. Those voting percentages ?
Nobody is trying to drive a wedge. Very, very few realize the association between the Heritage Foundation the Church splinter you are with.
Not the point. Trust me, the left is doing no such thing.
You are missing the forestt for the trees.
Your vehement and kind of…lack of meaningful analysis, just regurgitating talkimg points then slapping a label of religion, as though we’ll forgive the inferior ingredients.
Your eagerness to minimize the Popes infallibility, is kind of cringy. Lord of the Flies stuff. Too eager. Like a weird blood lust/hysteria, just, dang. Look I didn’t comment on everything I read, but you aren’t a lot different than the NYPost, PissyDork, bigotry, hate and ignorance
Seriously, nothing personal. Don’t know you. But the side yiu picked, this world you are hoping for ? It’s not going to happen.
And the near weapons-grade uranium ?
Say I want to have Pete Hegseth sit on a thumbtack. I’ve got the thumbtacks but no car, train fare, no way to get there ? That was Iran and theor rocket dostance capabilities. Years. That is a WHOLE different matter. Enriching uranium is just centrifuging ir for months. Simple.
The technology of a delivery system ???
Has to be tested by leaving and returning into the atmosphere for one. That can’t be kept secret. They were FAR from that. Likrle me building a car from scratch.
But that doesn’t matter to you this isn’t what this is about. It’s just the rattle. We know what the snake is.
I just wanted you to know that you won’t prevail. Not mad or angry at you lot.
I’ll end on an up note and tell you a secret. When I worked for the City of Old Jerusalem I spent a lot of time on the roof of the Church of the Sepulchre. ( Ethiopians live up there, there are offices, etc. The last station of the cross was right below. The site of the crucifixion. ( one of them…)
American church groups came thru daily. Esp. around Easter.
When the guide turned around, as they always did,people in the group would steal a handful of gravel and shove it in their pocket.
They thought it had the blood of Christ on it.
Every week and a half we had to spread fresh gravel because it goes down 2-3 inchesafter all the theft. So, if anyone ever tells you they have a pocket full of special pebbles ? Its from the road construction for out Damascus Gate.
That is real but serves as an analogy for…this.
There can be no defense of leftists. They are morally corrupt. That’s all anyone needs to know.
Hi! Leftist here who would love you to call me morally corrupt IRL, oh internet warrior.
If you are a leftist, you are morally corrupt, just like the sky is blue.
And what is a “Leftist?” I’ve read some rather expansive definitions of leftist. Some might even call Ronald Reagan a leftist. I’ve seen posters classify Bush the elder as a leftist. If everybody is a leftist, then nobody is.
William: No reply below your comment, so I’ll define leftism for you here. Anyone who believes truth is manmade and not exclusively sourced in the mind of God, including the very meaning of existence and humanity’s unending conflict between virtue and vice, is a leftist.
Human vanity, implicitly rejecting God as the source of all truth, also penetrates the souls of those essentially opposing leftism and they’re also prone to silly notions of an ability to alter human nature for all time yielding endless political confusion and the fiction of a “right wing,” which does not exist. It is a fiction has been promoted as a means to associate minimally different systems of tyrannical solutions for humanity as opposed sides in a spectrum of ideology. Authentic conservatism recognizes the permanent imperfectability of the human condition and thus promotes bonds of faith, family, and respect from the patrimony of past wisdom, free from manipulations of government and academia, as divinely endowed.
Atheistic presuppositions, implicit or explicit, with or without self-awareness, is the essence of leftist thought, even when practiced by the religious. Belief systems often originates less from what we think we believe about God than what we decide to believe about the nature of evil.
When we understand evil is viewed as personal, as authentic religion makes clear, we can only hope to inspire individual reform. Viewing evil as determined by the tides of history, possibly to escape confronting personal reform, leads to siding with the principalities of elites who demand submission to understanding evil as a management problem, which they promise to eliminate once they are allowed to impose their self-anointed vision on the rest of humanity. Why acknowledge personal sin and real consequences when you’re busy “saving the world” and redefining criminality.
@William
“And what is a “Leftist?” I’ve read some rather expansive definitions of leftist.”
We all know you are being purposefully obtuse, because you are a leftist.
There are many attributes, or more precisely presenting symptoms of leftism.
One, persistently exhibited is:
Statism: A leftist sees the state as an answer to all matters of things and an arbiter of all disputes and disparities and in extreme forms, this degenerates into idolatry, where the individual imputes god-like qualities to the state, specifically omniscience, incorruptability and benevolence. Almost never does the leftist not think that the state will ever err or become corrupt. Anybody who questions the canon of statism is dismissed as a moral degenerate or a civic heretic.
Other symptoms include atheism, authoritarianism, collectivism, nihilism, libertinism (it’s useful to offer the counterfeit of relaxed sexual mores when one incrementally intrudes authentic ordered liberty).
As people are not all the same, the typical leftist doesn’t have all these deficiencies and not all in the same proportion. Your numerous screeds against billionaires indicate a high degree of envy.
Before you protest the idea that you are not afflicted by behavioral pathologies: Read WebMD’s article Signs of Jealousy (Envy)
“Malicious envy, on the other hand, could spur you to be hostile toward people who have what you don’t.”
The mere mention of the word “billionaire” sends you into paroxysm.
Bush the elder was a plutocrat and a globalist and his philosophical corelessness was best illustrated by “read my lips” and after being personally savaged by Clinton, treating him like the son he really wanted. His sole redeeming quality, outside military service was not being on the Epstein list.
Susanne: If you believe morality is fungible, a core presupposition of leftism, you can not avoid moral corruption. A saving grace might be that you do not know what leftism really means.
Spot on. No need for fluff.
Really? I have visited the site of the crucifixion in Old Jerusalem just a few years ago. The site of the crucifixion is INSIDE the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as is the tomb of Jesus which is not many steps away. At the site of the crucifixion there is a hole in the floor UNDER an altar. You may kneel and place your hand inside the hole and touch the stone beneath. There is no gravel there, it is smooth stone. If there WERE gravel there, a person taking it would be fully visible doing so by the many people waiting on the line behind them for their turn to place their hand inside the hole in the floor. Some of whom would likely raise an objection to stealing the gravel. Nor would a person outside the church on the roof(????) have ANY view of the site of the crucifixion INSIDE the church. The church ceiling appeared to be 40 feet high and I am dubious they would allow anyone, even employees, to walk on such an ancient surface. And who, except for an order of monks or priests, ever be allowed to LIVE on the roof of a church?
And, I doubt anyone who picked up a stone imagined it was still lyoing there 2,000 years later having the blood of Christ on it. Maybe indeed they just wanted a stone to take home as a memento, since the stone WAS in fact from Jerusalem, gravel or not. For example, I know people who like to bring home a small vial of sand from beaches around the world that they visit.
You seem a little too eager to cast Americans as villains in your little story. Americans have no monopoly on bad behavior and yet, in fact are well known for friendliness, generosity, and willingness to help those in trouble, even if those traits are only admitted to grudgingly by foreigners who don’t care for our trademark outspokenness. Blunt is not the same as stupid.
Congratulations. You’re the last man standing on the face of the earth who does not know the meaning of liberal elite. Have you decided to be deaf and blind to all the organized political and social movements, ever since the French Revolution, that have come into existence by shared pandering ideologies of reengineering humanity among the self-anointed? Do you fail to recognize the appeal among intelligence challenged intellectuals gravitating towards grand operas of human conceit, so twisted, that it can’t figure out what woman is, or that small children should not be subject to degenerates describing their sex lives, or that human life is not to be considered unworthy of life if functionality is compromised? Are you simply indifferent to the mountains of corpses and rivers of blood engineered by elites trying to “perfect” humanity? Do you gloss over the meaning of Satan’s primordial temptation: You shall be as gods?
And as a physicist I can assure you that a nuclear test explosion is not absolutely necessary to build an effective nuclear bomb. The cat has been out of the bag for years on how to design such a weapon. And the recent random ballistic attacks by Iran demonstrate such bombs, with their existing missile technology, are very close to being able to annihilate Israel, and most of Europe. Not to mention that even superior missiles that are obtainable from blackmailed oil clients.
My comment here was directed to Bannister James.
Sure, the Democrats are on Team Pope. So are the media, suddenly.
“Just as liberal elites are currently attempting to drive a wedge between Catholics and Evangelicals, they are also attempting to open up a rift between Catholics and the Republican Party–specifically, President Donald Trump.”
I read the official Vatican website to stay up to date on what Pope Leo is saying and doing. I follow Mr. Trump on Truth Social account to stay up to date on what he is saying and doing. Unless either of these sites is operated by “liberal elites” (whoever/whatever that is), the wedge being driven between me “and the Republican Party–specifically, President Donald Trump” is owned and operated by the current Whitehouse administration.
Neither party is the party of the Pope. Voters are forced to select the lesser of two evils. No politician is the messiah.
“Voters are forced to select the lesser of two evils.”
No one was forced to vote for either Trump or Harris. There was the Solidarity Party. The lesser evil is still evil.
I wish we Americans were not so predisposed to conceptualize the world through a republican-democrat binary. It hobbles our Catholic imagination.
There are some rather unique comments for this article.Just saying…
Why should we care whether the GOP wins or loses? The GOP has pandered to faithful Catholics for years without delivering any major legislative victories for them on any issue they care about. Most mainstream conservatives are pro-gay and care very little about abortion. No matter how liberal you are an these issues, you will be welcomed in the conservative movement as long as you are pro-Israel. Any pro-life, anti-sodomy Catholic who opposes Israel, however, is immediately ostracized from the conservative movement. It is time for Catholics to leave the GOP plantation. Republicans don’t care about us. They only care about Israel. We need to vote on an individual candidate basis, not a partisan basis.
“The GOP has pandered to faithful Catholics for years without delivering any major legislative victories for them on any issue they care about.”
All we ever got was Dobbs, which really hasn’t changed much and has the potential to become irrelevant if do-it-yourself chemical abortions become common, with pills mailed across state lines so that even state regulations become irrelevant. As long as people keep voting for Republicans because they’re “the lesser evil” they never have to deliver– ever. They can just keep paying us lip service and say “we’re not Democrats.”
Leftists have found god 🙂
We never lost Him.
Which one?
The god leftists do worship is not God suzanne.
Now, now “susanne” (novel new name, sock puppet post?) your use of the pronoun “him “assumes gender and a good leftist would never assume gender.
Long before Ariana Not-So-Grande, the indiscernibility of the divine gender was settled 30 years ago with Counting Blue Cars by Dishwalla “Tell me all your thoughts on God, cause I’d really like to meet her.”
Team Pope is, as critiqued by Deavel, an insidious, fake alliance. They simply loathe Trump more than they do Leo, and all that a Catholic leader represents. Clever those vipers.
But who would trust vipers anyway except those who pretentiously claim to be Catholic?
As you infer, Team Pope is simply one of convenience and not unlike that between Iran with Russia, China and North Korea — the Red-Green Axis. Mendacity is the substance of them all.
Lifelong Democrat, cradle Catholic here. I am firmly and forever on “Team Pope”. Also, no “liberal elites” are required to separate Evangelicals from Catholics. Heretics from Luther to Falwell and Graham have already done it.
Typical leftist elitism
Democrats are pro-Pope??? Democrats?? Really? The ones who will now support abortion PAST the day of birth and support the sexual mutilation of kids? Of having drag queens perform for kids at the library on the taxpayer dime, and whose union teacher friends want to hide kid’s transitioning at school from parents? The ones who are manipulating the congressional districts in Virginia so that some 40% of Virginians get NO governmental representation? THOSE “pure as the driven snow” democrats?? The ones facilitating the embezzling of BILLIONS in federal taxpayer funds in blue states like Minnesota and California (and likely elsewhere)?? Well, the Pope should recall the old adage that a person is judged by the company they keep. And hanging with democrats, who lie as often as they breathe, are a bad look for a Pope.
As far as concern about the so-called just war theory: My question is, does your country have enemies who are threatening you? Have they kidnapped your citizens? Have they spread and funded active violent terrorism around the world which impacts civilians? Are they armed with the materials for nuclear weapons and have they threatened to deploy the weapons? Have they murdered their own citizens without cause? Are they fanatics? If the answer to any of those questions is YES, I don’t care WHAT the Pope thinks, nor do I care about any theoretical discussions about “just wars”. It is not intelligent to WAIT until your enemy does precisely what they have promised, and your citizens are dead, to act. Or until New York and Washington DC is nuked. Hit your enemies hard and make sure they don’t get back up. Period.
Why the left now loves the present-day Catholic Church:
Spain’s Church-State Collusion Clears Path for 30,000 Jihadis To Enter Europe
Bishops Back Leftist Government’s Mass Regularization of Mainly Muslim Illegals
April 21, 2026
Jules Gomes
Spanish Bishops Celebrate Newcomers
The Migration Department of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Caritas, the Spanish Conference of Religious (CONFER), and the Network of Entities for Solidarity Development (REDES) explained in a press statement issued on April 14 that the “church entities consider the extraordinary regularization of migrants a measure of political, ethical, and social responsibility.”
“For the Church, welcoming, protecting, and dignifying migrants is an inherent requirement of its mission. It is not merely a pastoral choice, but also a human rights imperative and therefore a coherent expression of the Gospel in public life,” the statement stressed.
Catholic authorities released the statement on the same day that Spain’s left-wing coalition government, led by the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos, approved an extraordinary royal decree to grant legal status to roughly 500,000 illegal aliens.
According to Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, authorities detected over 30,000 entries of illegals from 2020 to 2025 from countries with high jihadist presence, such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, and Egypt.
“One in nine illegal immigrants entering Spain came from areas with a high risk of jihadist activity,” Spanish daily La Gaceta, which obtained and analyzed the Frontex data, reported. By 2022, these profiles accounted for around 18 percent of total detections, rising to 30 percent in 2024.
Italian Bishops Call for Italy to Embrace ‘Spanish Solution’
A day later, the Spanish division of Vatican News announced that the bishops were “celebrating” the decree regularizing half a million migrants. At the same time, the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire published an op-ed piece urging Italy to adopt the Spanish “solution” to its illegal aliens crisis and to reject recent calls for “remigration” from conservative Italian politicians.
Spanish Episcopal Conference Backs Mass Migration Petition
Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) asked the Spanish Episcopal Conference to respond to concerns that its support of the regularization was paving the way for jihadi infiltration and posing a threat to Europe.
https://www.meforum.org/fwi/fwi-news/spains-church-state-collusion-clears-path-for-30-000-jihadis-to-enter-europe.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of irregular immigrants in Spain come from Catholic, indeed Spanish-speaking countries. Legal migration is similar. The demographic outlook in southern Europe (Spain Italy Portugal) is markedly better from a civilisational point of view than in northern Europe.
Our Churchmen push prudential judgement much more so than dogma. What a shame.
Margarita,
You identified a critical flaw in today’s hierarchy.
The bishops ignore deviations from dogma and focus on deviations (from their views) of prudential judgement. Except for a few orthodox bishops, what they say about current events has no value to me. Its always the same. Yet, if I have a (D) after my name, I can support gender mutilation, baby killing, euthanasia and law breaking. By the time pope Francis died, the only thing I needed to know is if he was speaking “Ex Cathedra”. If not, I have other things to do. He was worse than useless. May God have mercy on him.
The Bergoglian Calculus:
The imperative is prudential and the prudential is imperative.
The real problem is war. Pope Leon XIV is completely right to denounce war and those who use war as a primary tool to control world events (just as all the other previous popes of the 20th century did). Let us look at the position of the 16th-century Dominican theologian, Francisco de Vitoria, who is considered the father of international law. He closely follows Saint Thomas Aquinas, who in turn was influenced on this subject by Saint Augustine. For a war to be just, the following requirements must be met:
1. It must be declared by a legitimate authority.
2. Just cause: a) Grave or very serious. b) Morally certain. c) Necessary or a last resort. d) With hope of victory. e) Proportional to the evils unleashed.
3. There must be right intention.
Let us briefly examine each one to see whether or not the conditions are met for the war Trump unleashed against Iran to be considered just.
1. DECLARED BY A LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY
There are serious doubts here; after all, is it not the responsibility of Congress to provide the final authorization?
2. JUST CAUSE
A) GRAVE OR VERY SERIOUS
What grave aggression did Iran commit against the United States? None. Iran has done absolutely nothing to them. Rather, for decades, the United States has heavily sanctioned Iran’s economy and frozen a great deal of its money. Iran is the one that has been gravely aggressed upon by the United States since long before 2026.
B) MORALLY CERTAIN
Those who argue that Iran was close to having the atomic bomb (which also does not constitute a grave aggression against the sovereignty of the United States) lack proof and evidence. They relied on hypotheses and narratives that have been heard for more than 20 years… There are even serious organizations that deny that Iran was working directly on building the bomb: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN, Tulsi Gabbard, the CIA, and the ODNI, as well as the intelligence agencies of allied countries, such as the German BND or the French DGSE. And, as we know, Joe Kent (by the way, he is Catholic) resigned as NCTC director in March 2026, explicitly stating that Iran posed no imminent nuclear threat and denouncing the war as a result of misinformation and external geopolitical pressures.
This is an argument similar to the illegitimate invasion of Iraq in 2003: all the specialists and agencies of serious countries (including many allies) said that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
C) NECESSARY OR A LAST RESORT
Was the UN consulted? Was the mediation of countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia requested? Were diplomatic instances exhausted? Rather, on the two occasions when Iran was attacked, in 2025 and 2026, it occurred in the midst of diplomatic negotiations. Therefore, it ius clear it was not the last resort to avoid terrible bad things to humanity. And, was it necessary to restore justice and peace around the world? How many wars has Iran initiated in the last decades? In the 80´s it only defended itself against the illegitimate invasion of Sadam Hussein (by the way, armed and supported by the US). Iran is fundamentally a peaceful country.
D) WITH HOPE OF VICTORY
This is not the strongest argument from a moral point of view, but how many wars have been won in recent decades through aerial bombardments without a ground invasion? None.
E) PROPORTIONAL TO THE EVILS UNLEASHED
We are now on the verge of entering a global economic crisis because of these decisions… Furthermore, for what purpose do the bombings of the US and the IDF destroy schools, hospitals, and universities? Additionally, civilian installations such as oil wells, desalination plants, bridges, and power stations are being threatened… Is that morally correct?
Let´s remember some of the evils unleashed because of the Irak war of 2003. According to The Costs of War Project of Brown University, around 300,000 Iraqi civilians died directly, and another 300,000 indirectly, almost 5 million civilians displaced that had to leave their homes, a terrible two year civil war between Sunnis and Shia Muslims, and it cost US taxpayers more than 2.5 trillion dollars, not to mention 4,500 US soldiers and marines killed, 32,000 wounded and 30,177 of active duty and veterans (including from the Afghanistan war) that have died by suicide after the war, and many thousands with PTSD. It´s a complete tragedy!!! Can we not see the terrible and long-lasting consequences of war!! Not to mention the 500,000 Iraqi children that died because of lack of medicines and health care as a direct consequence of the 1990-2003 embargo (according to UNICEF and The Lancet). By the way, John Paul II strongly condemned this embargo and the 2003 war, he sent Vatican diplomats, tried to mobilize the UN and made public speeches against this unjust war.
3. RIGHT INTENTION
Did Trump truly act in good faith, or perhaps was he heavily influenced by other Middle Eastern countries that have their own geopolitical agenda? Why does the United States have such a great desire to change presidents, carry out coups d’état, provoke civil wars, influence elections, and wage so many unnecessary wars? Take a look at the book “Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War”, written by Professor Lindsey A. O’Rourke and published by Cornell University Press in 2018, in which she documents how between 1947 and 1989 (during the Cold War), the United States attempted to change the regime of other countries on 72 occasions: 66 covertly and 6 overtly. She based her work on declassified archives and Presidential Libraries: she investigated documents from the CIA, the State Department, and the minutes of the National Security Council, as well as other serious historians and researchers.
According to the Military Intervention Project (MIP) at Tufts University, the United States has had over 500 military interventions since its independence in 1776. It is the most bellicose country in the world; there is not one that comes close to it… Countless interventions have been defended at the time using a mix of illegitimate arguments, fallacies, and deliberate, massive manipulation.
Thus, in conclusion, it seems evident to me that the recent war against Iran is not just on the part of the United States. It’s pretty evident. Instead, it is, once again, one of many unjust, unnecessary wars that cause needless deaths, debt for taxpayers, numerus widows and orphans, and disastrous consequences all over the world… Are we so blind that we cannot see this?
Thank you, but nevertheless, please comment further on “UN inspections of Iran nuclear sites.”
The premise that Democratic Party voters have to fake support for the Holy Father is a strange one and one I don’t see the author has bothered to prove at all in this lengthy article.
That’s your premise, not the author’s.
Sad, that people divide the people in their life as left or right, conservative or liberal, democrat or republican—–we are all brothers and sisters.
Dr. Deavel,
Great analysis incorporating prudential arguments concisely distinquishing the important circumstantial elements in the just war interpretations needed for an informed opinion. You have a rare insight in this culture where surfacy ideological arguments are almost the norm. I see them from surprising people that I have great respect for on this topic.
In Christ,
John