Pope, Pentagon, and Imperial Impiety

So much chaos erupted on multiple fronts with the Trump Administration in the last 10 days that it’s easy to lose sight of the astonishing Free Press report that in January, Pentagon officials issued a veiled threat to the former papal nuncio that the Vatican had better side with the President on foreign-policy issues—or else.

This news item should concern all Americans, but especially Roman Catholics, one of the key electoral swing groups of the Trump era. (An estimated 56% of American Catholics voted for the President in 2024.)

Although it can be problematic to ascribe a single motive to a demographically diverse group like Catholics, GOP officials have surely been pleased that the church’s hierarchy emphasized so-called cultural issues like abortion and LBGTQ.

It encouraged voters to put in the background matters of relatively secondary interest to the archbishops, such as the rights of labor, economic justice, international peace, and humane treatment of immigrants—to say nothing of a return to power by the lone Presidential candidate since the Civil War to contest election results and foment a domestic insurrection.

I wish but don’t expect that archbishops and parish priests will use their sermons to address the disquieting report about the Pentagon meeting with the papal nuncio (a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See, in effect an ambassador).

Administration officials and voters still in their thrall have predictably dismissed it as—take your pick—“fake news,” “uncorroborated” or “highly exaggerated.”

Those terms cannot be applied to what has happened since Sunday, however, including:

*Trump’s remarks to a reporter that he was “not a big fan” of Pope Leo XIV, adding “He likes crime, I guess”;

*The President’s lengthy, deranged—and, of course, spectacularly self-centered—Truth Social post claiming, among other things, that Leo “wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”;

*A later Truth Social post—equally demented, but this time blasphemous—depicting Trump as Jesus ministering to the sick (the image accompanying this post);

* A subsequent news conference in which the President ludicrously declared that this latter AI-generated meme didn’t show him as Jesus but as a doctor.

A confession here: I have never voted for Trump, and it would not be hard to find posts of mine that have criticized him. 

At the same time, accepting at face value any report that confirms one’s biases—including those that, like this one, cited anonymous sources— damages a writer’s credibility and persuasiveness. 

So, when I first heard the Pentagon meeting news in fragmentary form, I wanted to know how much, if any, of it could be validated.

My conclusion, after reading the initial Free Press story, follow-up accounts, and other reports on the principals involved, is that, while not all details are demonstrably true, enough are verifiable that they should prompt soul-searching among past and present Trump-leaning members of the American hierarchy and the faithful who followed their electoral cues.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni has issued a formal statement declaring that “the narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting is completely untrue.”

“Completely untrue”? Not so fast. 

Possibly, despite what the Free Press article claimed, Pope Leo XIV had other reasons for not visiting America on July 4 than anger or fear over the threat. Even if he might now be reluctant to come while Trump is still President, he could be persuaded otherwise eventually.

In addition, the provenance of the publication may, in this case if few others, underscore the report’s credibility. 

The Free Press cannot be dismissed as a progressive news outlet like MS-NOW or CNN, given that it remains true to the editorial philosophy of co-founder Bari Weiss, who now runs CBS News. It has no motive for publishing a story in which the Trump administration appears bullying.

Moreover, the meeting did take place. While not characterizing the encounter’s tone, the Vatican Embassy, or apostolic nunciature, in Washington told Catholic news and information service OSV News, that the meeting occurred. In addition, there’s a picture of the then-nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, with Defense Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, issued by the Religion News Service, a credible outlet.

The Financial Times has an article about what seems to have happened:

An American present—not Colby—alluded to the Avignon papacy, infamous in European history as the site of a “Great Schism” between pontiffs who had returned to Rome and “anti-popes” who remained in France, subject to state pressure and corruption.

Other Americans at the meeting, who had hoped to smooth-talk Cardinal Pierre and the pope into taking a gentler tone toward the “Dunroe Doctrine” towards Latin America, were aghast over the effect of the remark. 

That’s why an initial anonymous Pentagon source, while deriding the report as “just absurd,” did admit the meeting included “a frank exchange of views”—a diplomatic euphemism for a tense or even storm encounter.

At this point the Vatican doesn’t want a nasty fight with Trump; hence, Bruni’s disclaimer that offers no further details about what did happen.

While the Vatican Embassy termed meetings with government officials as “standard practice” for the nuncio, neither it nor the Pentagon explained why the meeting occurred in the Defense rather than State Department.

Was it an accommodation to Colby, whose grandfather William, as CIA head and a Catholic, interacted with Rome extensively in the Cold War? Or was the venue an attempt at intimidation?

If the latter, it should come as no surprise. Trump has sought to bully the press, large law firms, universities, corporations, and other non-governmental institutions. 

Why should a major religion fall outside his reach—particularly since Trump whisperer Laura Loomer has derided Leo as a “woke Marxist” for interfering with Trump’s mass deportation program?

If the allusion to the Avignon papacy is true, it would conform to a pattern in authoritarian regimes: the thuggish initiatives taken by a midlevel flunky, sure that his bosses would approve his move or, if not, cover it up.

Though MAGA influencers expressed shock about Trump’s vile actions and language over the Easter weekend, there is little sign yet of a re-evaluation among his base. There should be.

In particular, when his Catholic supporters consider Pope Leo’s increasingly sharp, direct criticisms of the President’s trigger-happy tendencies, they should bear in mind that he is merely conveying the consensus of the 1965 Vatican II document, “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”:

“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”

In an Atlantic Monthly essay published after remarks by Pope Leo last week, Francis X. Rocca confessed that, like many observers, he had mistakenly thought that, in comparison with Trump and even Pope Francis, Leo would be a “quiet” pontiff. But I’m not sure that Leo has stopped being “quiet” even now.

A ruthless authoritarian may prompt stances previously unthinkable under ordinary circumstances, as Thomas More, a government official who loved life, found no alternative to opposing Henry VIII. Extreme situations lead some to cowardice but others to courage.

What unites the Tudor-era saint and the American-born pontiff is an inner strength that seems confounding in a time of toadies.

More’s silent refusal to assent to Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn contrasted dramatically with courtiers and counselors who meekly went along, just as Leo’s steadfast opposition to Trump positions on immigration and national security diverges from the President’s allies within the American hierarchy (whose complicity with administration outrages I discussed in this post from last Christmas).

More of that is needed as the President breaches new moral boundaries. Will his followers take the lead of Leo, or follow Trump into ignominy?

The President’s actions over the last 10 days is forcing Catholic allies, within the administration and the American Church hierarchy, to choose sides.

J.D. Vance said the pope should stick to “morality” and not involve himself with “politics”—without explaining why a pontiff denouncing abortion is "moral" but one calling for peace is “political.”

On the other hand, Bishop Robert Barron, such an administration favorite that he’s a member of the Religious Liberty Commission established by the President, called the anti-Leo comments “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful” and urged him to apologize—a move that Trump predictably refused.

Before long, we may well find that whatever happened at the Pentagon in January is a mere dust-up compared with the unholy war that Trump now appears set on mounting against the Vatican.

This Day in Irish-American History (James Forrestal, Self-Made Man and Cabinet Casualty, Born)

Feb. 15, 1892—James Forrestal, who earned riches on Wall Street and acclaim as one of the architects of the national security state before succumbing to despair brought on by his workaholic style, was born in the upstate community of Beacon, N.Y.

Given what I have just written, you might wonder why my headline, instead of using the phrase “military history” or even “business history,” referred to “Irish-American history.” 

But Forrestal, the son of an Irish immigrant father and American mother of Irish descent, spent much of his adult life in near-total rejection of his background—not just Roman Catholicism but even his ethnicity and family.

This all-stops-out attempt at assimilation represented one means by which Irish-Americans of his time could fit into America and attain success. But it exacted a terrible cost: a lack of a home life or roots, culminating in a suicide that haunted his lofty social-cultural set and powerful figures in Washington, D.C. for generations to come.

Forrestal grew up in a time when the Ivy League was a WASP bastion, when Jews were excluded by quotas, and Catholics—particularly those of the lower-middle-class—were often looked down upon.

Initially rejected by Princeton, he was at last accepted, then shone so brightly, in academics and on the school paper, that the Class of 1915 voted him Most Likely to Succeed. Then, a few weeks before graduation, he dropped out, for reasons that remain unexplained.

The inability to get a degree, after the various sacrifices he and his parents had made to get him through school, appears to have led him to cut off contact with his family. (A tentative attempt to reconcile with his mother--who had originally wanted him to become a priest--by buying her a house a decade later went nowhere: she didn't move into the house.) 

Then, after a brief stint as a clerk/handyman—quite below what his classmates had been making—he took a job with William A. Read and Co., a New York investment banking firm that later became Dillon, Read and Co.

The resulting career there—interrupted only by service as a naval aviator in WWI—was astonishingly successful. He made partner at age 31, and by 1932, the heart of the Depression, he made $5 million—more than $82 million in today’s currency.

Although he wore the map of Ireland on his face, Forrestal continued to shed his heritage, becoming an Episcopalian, giving up on contact with his family, and refusing to refer to himself as Irish-American.

That denial allowed him to “pass” in WASP society, contract an advantageous marriage to a Vogue columnist beautiful enough to be photographed by Cecil Beaton, and advance on Wall Street.

In 1940, Forrestal left Dillon, Read to become one of the “dollar-a-year” businessmen who, forgoing their normal much larger private-sector salaries, helped the Roosevelt administration fulfill his desire to make America “the arsenal of democracy.” 

He worked seven days a week as undersecretary of the navy, so he was the natural choice to became secretary of the department itself in 1944 when his boss Frank Knox died.

So successful was Forrestal—first for FDR, then for Harry Truman—that he was tapped to spearhead the reorganization of the armed services into a single Defense Department; so exhausted was he in that effort by the dawn of the Cold War and constant political infighting, and so forlorn about being trapped in an unhappy marriage to his now-alcoholic wife, that he suffered a nervous breakdown.

After leaving the Defense Department, a depressed Forrestal, confined to Bethesda Naval Hospital for exhaustion, asked to see a Roman Catholic priest so he could confess. His request was denied. Not long afterward, he threw himself out the window of the 16th floor at the hospital. 

His death haunted his literary friends Philip Barry and John O’Hara, inspiring, respectively, the play Second Threshold and the sprawling novel From the Terrace.

Quote of the Day (Jeff Goodell, on Climate Change as National-Security Threat)

“Nearly every naval and Air Force base on the East Coast is vulnerable to sea-level rise and storm surges, including Eglin Air Force Base, the largest Air Force base in the United States, which is on the low-lying Florida Panhandle, and Patrick Air Force Base on Florida's Atlantic Coast. In the West, the problem is often drought and flash flooding. Fort Irwin, a seven-square-mile Army base in Southern California, on the edge of the Mojave Desert, has troubles with both. California's epic drought has put the base's long-term water supply into question. Fort Irwin is one of the only bases in the U.S. with the space and the isolation to allow full-scale mock tank warfare. At the same time, the base has been pounded by extreme rain events. In August 2013, when a year's worth of rain fell in 80 minutes, flooding caused $64 million in damages on the base.” —Jeff Goodell, “The Pentagon and Climate Change,” Rolling Stone, Feb. 26, 2015

So now the right wing of the GOP, upon hearing Pope Francis’ views on the moral urgency of climate change, dismisses it as the musings of a man not entitled to view the hard world of public affairs. But how do they dismiss the profound unease and actions taken by the longtime object of their ardor and government largesse, the Pentagon, as it struggles with this direct threat to national security?

Answer: They make believe it'll go away as they hide away in the sand. The same sand they hope doesn't erode.

Quote of the Day (David Remnick, on the Pentagon and Climate Change)

“In 2010, the Pentagon declared, in its Quadrennial Defense Review, that changes in the global climate are increasing the frequency and the intensity of cyclones, droughts, floods, and other radical weather events, and that the effects may destabilize governments; spark mass migrations, famine, and pandemics; and prompt military conflict in particularly vulnerable areas of the world, including the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The Pentagon, that bastion of woolly radicals, did what the many denialists in the House of Representatives refuse to do: accept the basic science.”—David Remnick, “Comment: No More Magical Thinking,” The New Yorker, November 19, 2012

(Photo of David Remnick taken by Martin Schneider at the New Yorker Conference, May 9, 2008.)