Pope Leo XIV in Bamenda, Cameroon, April 16. Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
In the 1950s the Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen had a half-hour prime-time TV show on Tuesday nights called "Life Is Worth Living." It addressed the issues of the day through the lens of Catholic thought. To everyone's surprise, its ratings frequently beat its competitor, Milton Berle's No. 1 variety show, originally known as "Texaco Star Theater." Sheen won an Emmy for Most Outstanding Personality and in his acceptance speech famously thanked his writers, "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." That was a subtly unifying note for Catholics and Protestants.
It is said that when Berle teased Sheen about his high ratings, Sheen replied it was because he had a better sponsor. Berle told a reporter he didn't mind the competition. "After all we're both using old material."
I just thought I'd share that as our president, who grew up on Milton Berle and the great comics of early television, continues verbal war with a different prelate, Pope Leo XIV. Leo had been pointedly critical of the war in Iran, and the president responded with fury on social media, calling him "WEAK on Crime and terrible on foreign policy." As Damian Thompson noted in the Spectator, with appropriate wonder, "not once in the 250-year history of the United States has a Commander-in-Chief launched a personal attack on the Supreme Pontiff."
How odd to go to war, while already in other wars, with the head of a vast and ancient institution, a man whose job titles include vicar of Christ, head of the Holy See and Bishop of Rome, and who is the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics and the biggest Christian denomination in America. The pope, you might say, has a certain moral standing. In any case, popes don't cheer wars, which are always a calamity -- a result of failure and a killer of the innocent.
The president's comments speak of something disordered in the administration's relationship to faith.
On April 1 at a White House Easter lunch, with the president standing behind her, Paula White-Cain, head of the administration's Faith Office, compared President Trump to Christ: "Jesus taught so many lessons through his death, burial, and resurrection. . . . And Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It's a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us."
It was quite something. If you really believe in Christ, as a Christian preacher should, you wouldn't compare him to any leader of this world. That wasn't an act of misdirected reverence but a refusal of reverence.
What is going on with this administration and its use and abuse of Christianity? Shouldn't the great churches of America be thinking about this, and at this point talking about it publicly, thoughtfully?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, earlier in the Iran war, stood in the Pentagon and issued a call for a wartime prayer: "Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches," the American people should pray "in the name of Jesus Christ."
On Thursday, he compared mainstream media reporters to the enemies of Christ -- "the Pharisees" who "held counsel against him . . . to destroy him." The press, he said, is "just like these Pharisees." He clarified he meant "the legacy, Trump-hating press."
American presidents during war have always called on God for help and guidance, deliberately not the Lord of one faith, but of all. And none have ever used the story of Christ to undermine a president's critics.
I am becoming shocked by what I'm seeing here, and as a registered pundit my response to shock tends toward counter-rudeness.
A reader sent a note this week saying he'd been following the president's attack on the pope and his follow-up posting of the artificial-intelligence image depicting him as Christ healing the sick, and it sent him to the Sermon on the Mount. Consider what Jesus said, the reader urged, and the things Trump says. I did.
Christ: "Blessed are you who are poor."
Mr. Trump: "Part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich." "My whole life I've been greedy, greedy, greedy. I've grabbed all the money I could get."
Christ: "Blessed are the meek."
Mr. Trump: "It has been stated by many that the first month of our presidency . . . is the most successful in the history of our nation." "You know who No. 2 is? George Washington."
Christ: "Blessed are the merciful."
Mr. Trump: "I am your retribution." "Why are we having all these people from s -- hole countries come here?”
Christ: "Blessed are the peacemakers."
Mr. Trump: "A whole civilization will die tonight." "He died like a dog." "He died after running into a dead-end tunnel whimpering and crying and screaming."
Christ: "Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you."
Mr.Trump: "I love getting even with people." "I hate my opponent,and I don't want the best for them,sorry."
Some common subject matter,but rather different approaches!So different that Mr.Trump's statements seem photographic negative Sermon Mount.
I used word hick last week;not one people use much anymore but one should be redefined reoriented because it's growing public style.Old meaning hick:hayseed,rube,ill-educated person.But modern hickdom doesn't have anything geography,class,profession,circumstances birth.It has character disposition.You can be Harvard hick;Palm Beach hick.
What all hicks have common is that they lack respect.They lack shown courtesy toward people or things that deserve measure homage.They don't have bandwidth know what should respected world or what and who helps it turn.They aren't skeptical but cynical.They think they're wised-up but lack something essential,broad sympathetic imagination.And they are all over Washington.
A hick picks a fight with a pope.
Vice President JD Vance is a man of fairly frequent conversions -- from fiercely anti- to fiercely pro-Trump, from Silicon Valley mover to Midwestern populist, to Catholicism -- and you can't expect a 41-year-old man who moves with such speed to keep perfect track of all his latest convictions. But Mr. Vance admonished the pope before an audience at the University of Georgia this week, saying if Leo was "going to opine on matters of theology," he should be "anchored in truth." In the same way that the vice president must "be careful" when talking about public policy, it's "very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology."
Well, yes. But wow. "Be careful"? "Opines" on theology? Talking down to the leader of a great church from your height of seven years as a member? Who died and made you pope?
Leo can take care of himself. His X post on Thursday: "Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth."
To the extent anyone ever wins these things, he will. He has a better sponsor, and better writers.