Even though Vice President JD Vance is a convert to Catholicism, relations between the White House and the Vatican may be at the lowest point in modern history, according to a report in The New Republic.
At issue now is the Trump administration’s penchant for war and the pope’s preference for dialogue and peacemaking instead.
This dispute comes on the heels of Vance’s previous mischaracterization of Catholic theology — specifically a teaching known as ordo amoris — that caused the previous pope to publicly denounce Vance’s comments.
Vance is part of a group of converts known as “Trad Caths,” who disregard Catholic moral teaching and want to return the church to a more conservative stance that includes the Latin Mass.
Relations are so bad right now between the White House and the Vatican, The New Republic reports, that Pope Leo has cancelled a trip to the United States to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.
The Trump administration is upset with Leo for comments made in his State of the World speech where he warned “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” and that “war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”
Elbridge Colby
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — who wants to be called “secretary of war” — are pushing a hypermasculine image as warriors as they threaten and bully other countries. The pope will not go along with that idea.
The Free Press reports that days after Pope Leo’s speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to the Pentagon for a harsh lecture.
“The United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side,” Pierre reportedly told the Vatican envoy.
The New Republic summarized: “One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.”
The New Republic claims: “The blatant intimidation tactic is the first of its kind ever made by American officials to the Catholic Church. There are no public records of any previous meetings between Vatican and U.S. officials at the Pentagon, let alone an instance in which the world power suggested that it could force the bishop of Rome into captivity.”
Related articles:
Theologians push back on JD Vance’s view of ‘ordered love’
Catholic leaders and JD Vance spar over immigration doctrine
JD Vance should listen to Pope Leo | Opinion by Tyler Hummel