Who’s suspicious of the new pope? MAGA

And lo, it came to pass that non-Catholic Americans with little or no theological training have absurd opinions about Pope Leo XIV.

Yea, verily, these are the times in which we live.

In the beginning, U.S. President Donald Trump offered a comedic prequel when he injected himself into the papal election. He mused about how much he would love to be pope, posted an IA image of himself as pope, and even received — perhaps joking? — backing from Sen. Lindsey Graham, always a dependable Trump stooge.

Not one to live in modernity, Trump this time set course for the fifth through the 11th centuries. In the last part of the fifth century, Symmachus and Laurentius, candidates for pope, bribed King Theodoric the Great. This was the first documented case of papal simony. Symmachus must have offered the most money, because he was appointed pope. Numerous kings under the auspices of the “divine right of kings” selected popes until 1079, when the Conclave was created to eliminate secular interference.

Trump’s ham-fisted longing for the papacy may have been one of his awful jokes, but MAGA lacks even a rudimentary ability to tell fact from fiction. Thus, when Trump received no votes, U.S. Cardinal Timothy Dolan (a conservative Catholic favorite) didn’t win, and Pope Leo XIV was elected, the outrage of MAGA was predictable.

MAGA adherents raised at least $1 billion prior to the election of a new pope and suggested the money would be donated to the Catholic Church if an appropriate conservative candidate were elected.

That didn’t happen.

So American conservatives pulled out some favorite words from their dictionary of insults and called the new pope a “Marxist.”

Here are some highlights:

• Charlie Kirk, a college dropout with no theological training, has suspicions: Leo “has some … not-so-great tweets about having some willingness for open borders. … I hope that he will be a strong advocate for strong borders and for sovereignty.” Kirk doesn’t seem to understand the American-born pope is now the leader of a world church of Jesus, not a national church, political organization or branch of MAGA.
• Christian nationalist troubadour Sean Feucht wrote, “They chose a globalist and woke pope from the West ON PURPOSE to stand up and criticize the leaders of the Free World.”
• Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist who makes Marjorie Taylor Greene look like Mother Teresa, posted on X: “The new Pope @drprevost supports illegal aliens and open borders. He retweeted tweets in support of ‘dreamers’ aka illegals and attacked President Trump’s use of the phrase ‘bad hombres’ to describe violent illegal aliens. He thinks it’s a ‘racist’ phrase.”
• Steve Bannon: “It is shocking to me that a guy could be selected to be the pope that had had the Twitter feed and the statements he’s had against American senior politicians.”
• “This guy has been massively embraced by the liberals and the progressives,” said Ben Harnwell, a journalist who led Bannon’s efforts to establish a “gladiator school” for the “Judeo-Christian West.”
• Conservative provocateur Jack Posobiec: “This choice of the American cardinal was done as a response, as a message to President Trump.”

It’s absurd that MAGA treats Pope Leo by overlaying the grid of Trumpian ideology on his actual fitness for being pope. They are not judging whether he is theologically sound according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. They are using a different measure.

“They are not judging whether he is theologically sound according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.”

In truth, MAGA understands neither Christianity nor Marxism. What MAGA calls far left turns out to be mere Christianity.

MAGA fails to comprehend Jewish, Christian and Islamic understandings of our responsibility to care for strangers. Islam has a more generous treatment of the poor and the stranger than MAGA. According to the Quran, “It is righteousness to give of your wealth out of love for Him, to your kin and orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves.”

The problem here is not Pope Leo, but Trump’s followers. It’s not that the pope’s views don’t align with MAGA but that MAGA’s goals don’t align with the Bible. And to call the pope “political” is an absurd accusation from the most “political” Christians on the planet.

Pope Leo is political because all Christians are political. Politics is the discussions people have about the values we will live by in our nation. It is impossible to be apolitical. MAGA is political.

MAGA now judges Pope Leo on political grounds and not biblical or theological grounds.

In their world, Trump — and not the Bible or Jesus or the pope — is the only authority. Having long denied Jesus was political, they now demand the Vicar of Christ make the kingdom be of this world.

A wise Jewish leader of the Sanhedrin, Gamaliel, spoke words of crucial bearing on MAGA outrage in Acts: “If this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them — in that case you may even be found fighting against God!”

And remember this: When Jesus told the Nazarenes God loves foreigners, they tried to kill him.

Pope Leo feels like a ray of sunshine, a moment of hope. After the political elections in Canada and Australia, there’s something in the wind suggesting people are tired of malice, lies, anger and outrage. They are looking for someone with a grip on the reality of truth.

Pope Leo could at least stem the tide of this suspicion and rejection of truth.

 

Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.