The Holy See Who Won’t See

Anti-American animus and domestic self-hatred are all the rage nowadays—not just from foreign nations and homefront progressives, but it now seems from the Pontiff of Rome, too.

That’s right: the Pope. And it, actually, makes sense. After all, long before the College of Cardinals elected him to the papacy, Leo XIV was a mere priest from Chicago—that notorious sanctuary city of political corruption, organized and unorganized crime, and the worshipping of a vicar by the name of Obama.

When addressing throngs of his own flock at St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pope speaks in Italian and Latin. English, apparently, is reserved for his hypocrisy in judging America’s war in Iran, and the contempt he harbors for conservatives in his native land. Isn’t the Pope supposed to be conservative?

This is a progressive Pope, however. Catholic charities receive hundreds of millions in federal funding for refugee and asylum programs. Fighting Islamic terror apparently cuts into its business. The Pope is more worried about dead mullahs than global security. Despite the thousands of churches Islamists have torched and Christmas markets they have plowed through, this Pope seemingly has nothing to fear from Muslims.

He apparently doesn’t remember that in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI was pilloried with the chant “Death to the Pope!” from of all people, Iranians! His offense? Quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who made the obvious connection between Islam and violence.

This Pope insists that nations may not preemptively strike aggressive neighbors. That’s not what Jesus would do. Americans should sit back and await the arrival of intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads.

This is Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount about turning the other cheek on crack!

How else to understand some of the theologically flawed and flatly wrong statements that recently have emanated from the Vatican?

He has called America’s hostilities toward Iran the “delusion of omnipotence,” which violates “international law.” He has warned that “God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ … is never on the side of those who … today drop bombs.” Stability and peace depend on “reasonable, sincere, and responsible dialogue.”

In which war was that true, Your Holiness? The Red Coats, Confederacy, Nazis, Al-Qaeda and ISIS couldn’t be talked into peace. There were 21 wasted hours of doomed ceasefire talks in Pakistan last week demonstrating how “responsible dialogue” is a catechism without a clue.

Where has the Holy See been these past 47 years? Did he not have cable in Chicago; did he never pick up a copy of the Chicago Tribune, which surely didn’t paper over the crimes committed by the Iranian regime?

Where has the Holy See been these past 47 years? Did he not have cable in Chicago; did he never pick up a copy of the Chicago Tribune, which surely didn’t paper over the crimes committed by the Iranian regime?

People who should know better seem to know absolutely nothing when the stakes are at their highest. The Pope, who is the final arbiter on Catholic teachings, appears to be only vaguely familiar with both Christian and papal history.

The doctrine of “Just War Theory”—essentially, the ethics surrounding the right to go to war, and to wage the conflict honorably—has a long history rooted in Catholic tradition and military doctrine.

The doctrine of “Just War Theory”—essentially, the ethics surrounding the right to go to war, and to wage the conflict honorably—has a long history rooted in Catholic tradition and military doctrine.

America’s war in Iran is unquestionably just—under both Christian and international law.

Israel’s most recent war in Gaza presented identical justifications. The United Nations, global media and shrieking Muslim mobs living in the West skipped over Just War Theory and went straight to the genocide charge. Palestinians are the only people allowed to start wars without ever becoming casualties of those wars.

But St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and multiple catechisms of the Catholic Church teach that opposing aggressors in self-defense is always just—even if it results in mass casualties.

Was Pope Leo XIV asleep at the seminary? Did he somehow miss fundamental teachings of the religion he would someday lead? And does he not realize that nearly all wars under Christian banners were fought against Muslims who sought to forcibly export Islam to Europe?

The war the United States and Israel are fighting is for the survival of Christendom and Western Civilization!

There would be no Christianity at all if the Pope’s reading of Catholicism is correct. The Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the year 312, the Battle of Tours in 732, the Siege of Vienna in 1529, the Battle of Vienna in 1683—all involved fighting off invading Muslim armies.

Prior Popes, in fact, blessed armies. Some, actually, led them—including namesakes Pope Leo IX and Pope Leo X. How do you think the Crusades against Islam got started? Armies were mobilized and deployed at the behest of Popes Urban II, Paschal II, Calixtus II, Innocent III, Honorius III, and Gregory IX.

But today’s Pope is misdirecting his followers toward perpetual passivity. He’s saying that Christians don’t fight wars—especially not against Muslims, because Islam is the “Religion of Peace.” (He hasn’t exactly pinpointed where that is true, however.)

This revisionist history is nothing but sophistry. The very thing Europe accomplished for 2,000 years—fighting wars to establish a bulwark against Islam—is now under assault with open borders and mass migration hostile to Judeo-Christian traditions.

The Pope received support from an unexpected source. Political commentator and LGBTQ activist Andrew Sullivan, once an anti-terrorism stalwart, has in recent years had a change of heart. Surely, he knows that gay intellectuals don’t fare very well in Muslim societies—especially not in Iran. But like the Pope, he appears to have a soft spot for ayatollahs.

Because Jesus Christ was tortured and murdered without protest, Sullivan believes that all Christians must do the same. Just wars are a rarity, and human beings are never entitled to just deserts. Christianity and Islam both reserve a special place in paradise for martyrs.

Sullivan writes, “War is unthinkable for Christians unless utterly necessary in self-defense against an imminent threat, after all other options are exhausted.” The degree of intellectual dishonesty and moral naivety in that sentence is breathtaking.

Aside from botching Catholic doctrine, the Pope and Sullivan do have another thing in common: Neither is a lawyer. President Trump did not need congressional authorization to initiate military operations in Iran. Approval from the United Nations and NATO were similarly irrelevant in fighting a just war.

Sullivan laughably wrote that Iran’s nuclear threat was nullified by Obama’s Iran Deal. He should ask the International Atomic Energy Agency whether its efforts to verify Iran’s compliance left them satisfied that Iran had abandoned weapons-grade enrichment.

The fact that they still possess fissile uranium that could be readily deployed to launch missiles, and insist that they have no intention of ever relinquishing their nuclear aspirations, makes one wonder why Sullivan is so confident that Iran poses no imminent threat to anyone.

Similarly, both the Pope and Sullivan seemingly have little sympathy for the 40,000 Iranians this regime has eliminated in order to remain a threat to the West—or, for that matter, the body count Hamas left behind on October 7, 2023. Christians are being asked to passively watch such suffering from their own precarious distance.

Where’s the Christian virtue in that?