This, in a word, is repugnant.
If you are a person of faith, particularly Christian faith, it smacks of the idolatry the Protestant denominations denounce the Catholic Church for.
And if you’re a Catholic, it’s theoretically a double whammy, since President Asshole has been spending a good chunk of his weekend slagging the pope.
That slagging the pope business is nothing new since dictators and autocrats, along with kings and emperors, have been attempting to exert pressure on the pope, any given pope, to see things from their point of view. It’s been going on for centuries.
But Donald J. Trump is not Henry VIII. This is not 1538. This is not Pope Paul III or Clement II. This is Pope Leo IV, none other than Robert Francis Prevost, and this is 2026. Ironically, the current pope is an American.
Donald Trump is not Catholic so fears no excommunication by the Holy See. But it wouldn’t surprise me if, like Henry XIII, Asshole moves forward with his very own church. For Henry XVIII, it was the beginning of the Church of England. But make no mistake, Asshole will have his name all over his new church, if it ever comes. And make no other mistake, hundreds of thousands of Americans, now resplendent in their new official role as citizens of the world’s most powerful third-world nation, will join.
To be honest, I have no idea if Trump plans to start his own church. I find it difficult to believe that a man that can hawk bitcoin, trading cards, bibles, athletic sneakers, and even $11,000 electric guitars (ostensibly signed by him with his magic marker) could possibly forego the opportunity to shamelessly take advantage of a hopelessly ignorant chunk of the population. How can this grifter possibly look at the millions brought in by Evangelical churches and not think that there was room to shoulder himself in.
Many Christians view this lunatic as the guy God sent to usher in the final days, the Rapture as they refer to it. It’s just proof that the lunatic in the Oval Office is not the only one.
Let’s be clear here. The Protestants and Evangelicals and many of the fire-breathing Christians out there take no offence to the attack on the pope. It’s the fact that he presented himself in a meme on his stupid social media account as a Jesus healer. My God, look a the thing. Healing light emanating from his hands, adoring Americans surrounding and praying around the man suffering on the bed, clearly at death’s door, all of them with expressions of devotion. Even soldiers are in the frame completely enraptured (that word again) by their hero, their devotion obvious. The Statue of Liberty is in the background, and so are some other American icons.
And nothing completes the Man of Peace image more than a fly-past of war planes in the background. The kind of shit a lot of Christians really go for.
Donald Trump as the new Jesus Christ.
Most American evangelicals voted for Trump, overwhelmingly so from what I understand.
According to news reports that admittedly I have no means of verifying, 55% of American Catholics voted for Donald Trump in 2024. I’m surprised, if not shocked.
I thought that percentage would have been much higher.
Well now he just shit on their pope.
Some people out there think this is some kind of turning point, but it’s not, and it never is. People think Catholics are going to engage in deep personal reflection to assess where their personal loyalties lay. Will it be in their church and their pope? Or in that charlatan that has taken their fear, anger, and social bitterness and fashioned it into personal power and riches?
No such catharsis is afoot, and if it is, then I’m gonna call bullshit.
I’m profoundly hoping I’m wrong, but I don’t see too many Catholics outside of the sack cloth crowd losing much of their sleep and appetite over this. In their own way, learned through experience, these people all know that soon this will be water under the bridge.
And it will be because they want it to be.
Fidelity of faith is a pretty significant concept. In a perfect world, you go to church, celebrate the love and beauty of Christ, and then go forth to do your good works in the world.
But that doesn’t jibe with the social anger, bitterness, resentment, and outright hatred that some of these people demonstrate towards their human brothers and sisters. Decidedly non-Christ-like I believe.
For these people, it will never come down to a choice between the pope and Donald Trump. And it’s a good thing too, because I believe the pope would get shit on again, only this time by his own “people.” Robert Prevost from Chicago, you don’t stand a chance. There’s too much hate sitting in the pews of your congregations.
Hate around abortion, same-sex stuff, all the sex stuff. And more than anything, hate for everyone who doesn’t look like them. In my mind, you can’t be a racist and a follower of Christ, with fidelity, at the same time.
But these people will make it work. Mostly because their fidelity to Christ is weak. They go to church to secure promotions or business opportunities. They go to be seen going. They go because a certain school board demands a pastoral reference for hiring and promotion. They go for temporal reasons, personal reasons, indeed selfish and self-serving reasons. Sorry, but with people like this, I just don’t see the God there.
They sit in church, nod their heads at the homily to convey understanding and personal illumination, accept the Eucharist, and then many promptly go out and revert to their default position, to hate everyone and everything who lives life in a manner not consistent with how they remember it back in the glory days of 1972.
I know Christians are imperfect, and that’s why Catholics believe in Reconciliation, something most Catholics would know simply as Confession.
Few Catholics visit the Confessional these days, a comment admittedly based upon my own observation, and so in no way scientific, but nevertheless probably pretty uncomfortably close to the truth.
But to be a serial violator of the basic tenets of the Christ you profess to believe in and love? To me, no Confession in the world covers that. Nor should it. Reconciliation is not a get out of jail free card. Nor should it be.
So, now that Asshole has had the weekend of weekends, managing to piss off most Christians to a degree, don’t expect anything meaningful to come from it.
If Catholics faced a choice between Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV, don’t be surprised if they don’t make the choice at all. And the reason for that is simple. I fear most of them will support the Asshole, because he changed the abortion conditions ( he doesn’t give a shit about abortion, it means nothing to him, one way or the other ) and his energy in going after the so-called Radical Left and the “woke” aspects of society.
In exchange for that, many Catholics will gladly give up core teachings of their faith. And they will vote for a grifter, a serial liar, a convicted felon, and an outright crook. They will put up with all his other un-Christ-like behaviours, comments and treatment of others.
And they will do so because their hearts have been darkened with hatred. They have been rendered blind to what it is that makes a good Christian, or a good Catholic. They have been made mere political pawns for a man who, over and over again, for years and years, has demonstrated unequivocally that he is the farthest thing from a Christian or believer in God. They will sacrifice the core teachings of their faith to support a guy who beats the fuck out of the people they hate.
These are American Catholics.
They sit in their pews on Sunday morning. They listen to the priest and the homily. They kneel, pray and sing. Then they go out and hate.
They all hear you, Father, and by extension Leo.
But sadly and tragically, I bet they listen to Trump.
Are Canadian Catholics much different?
NEWSMAGRENFREW 