Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.
Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.
“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
That sounds like something that an envoy of Sauron would say. Does Colby really think he’s one of the good guys?
Smells like weakness to me.
I’m kind of waiting for: God has decided to back Trump for now but patience wearing thin or some such similar ridiculousness in this reality.
Leo better be careful, when the US wanted a Polish Pope to support strikers and disrupt Poland, CIA just murdered John Paul I to get a Polish Pope.
LOL
It’s fascinating that the Pope gets threatened for being critical of Donald, and not, you know, facilitating an international child trafficking ring.
there can be only one
Time for the Pope to start using the excomunicato hammer again.
MAGA has no concept of soft power. They just don’t get it, do they?
“Might makes right” authoritarianism has no use for it. Why bother with getting people to like you when you have all the guns? Besides, these troglodytes are a pretty unlikable bunch in the first place - it’s simply not how they navigate the world.
“You can do anything you like with bayonets, except sit on them” Talleyrand, circa 1815
Well, they’re clearly aware enough to feel threatened by it, given that that’s all the power the Vatican holds
The idea seems to be to use the hard power to make the soft power go away.
It doesn’t work like that of course, but fascists are gonna fascist.
The Church started/was named by a global empire. By the time of Constantine, who would preside over Church commandment debates from the Pope’s throne, Jesus’s peace/humanism was erased from the church in favour of old testament’s divine right of emperor to kill and steal. Heresy laws applied to interpreting bible as humanist Jesus instead of the blessing of warmongering.
Pope really needs to undo the pre dark ages warmongering changes to Christianity. Jesus was a reformer. Yahweh a demon son that usurped his father El. Jesus’s father god was El not Yahweh.
So, it’s time to attack to Vatican?
this reminds me of that Bogdanoff twins meme
How many divisions does he have?
Time for the Pope to call a crusade. Deus Vult.
Maga Yanks are total nutters
If a side-effect of Trump’s idiocy is having the Vatican bombed out of existence, as a Roman, I’ll take it.
Why do Romans wish for the Vatican to be bombed out of existence? Honest question, and I’m not religious or anything.
Because for true Romans the Vatican will always represent the last bit of the temporal power that Popes exercised on the population for centuries and that keeps being exercised de facto true the corruption and continuous ingerence of the Catholic Church in Italian political affairs, local and national.
Not that they are better or worse than all other priests of any confession or religion, but the Catholic Church is the one we have a quite fresh memory of.
If that happens you’d be getting another Duce
Nah, those need a Pope to stay in power in Italy.
It’s cool. None of this really matters anyways with the whole separation of church and state.
