While President Donald Trump raised Catholic ire for his rant against Pope Leo XIV’s call for peace, it is the vice president, a Catholic convert and the highest-ranking Catholic in American politics, whose anti-pope statements signal a reckoning over right-wing acceptance of Catholics.
The United States isn’t just a Protestant nation numerically. The tenets of individualism, sobriety, decentralisation, thrift and personal investment in faith are baked into the American psyche.
Catholicism feels new to us, exotic and historically feared the same way Jews and Chinese were also eyed suspiciously when they came to our shores.
“Rum, Romanism, and Ruin” was the 1928 anti-Catholic call against Al Smith, a Democratic candidate for president from New York. Catholics are ethnic–Irish and Italian–and concentrated in those gritty dens of iniquity like Chicago and New York City rather than the Anglo lands of pastoral cleanliness and simplicity.
Globally, Catholicism has been integrated with reactionary movements. Think the Falangists. But Protestant hegemony has contributed to American Catholics being historically associated with mainstream Democrats–they were a crucial voting bloc ushering in the New Deal.
For a multitude of reasons that have shifted, and despite Protestantism’s deep roots in conservative politics, anti-papism has waned on the right.
Protestants accepted Catholic voters as allies in the fight against social liberalism, especially on the issue of abortion. Endless culture wars and Democratic abandonment of working-class politics have made Catholic voters ripe for the picking by the right.
At the same time, there has been a steady march toward liberalism within the church since Vatican II. The last two popes have promoted reform and social justice.
That has spawned a traditional backlash within the church, and so-called integralists–those who’d replace republican democracy with canonical governance–have come out of the woodwork in North America and Europe.
Many of those conservative Catholics, uneasy with the church’s evolution and a contempt for modernity, are unsurprisingly interested in authoritarian politics.
The ascendant alliance between Catholic and Protestant political extremists on the right has stirred controversy inside the church since the first Trump Administration.
Indeed, the MAGA movement has worn Catholic support as a feather in its cap.
The nation’s two Catholic presidents–John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden–were Democrats, and with Vance in the number two spot, the Republicans have signalled to the Catholic world that they are now in the top tier of the party.
Two of Trump’s Supreme Court appointments are practising Catholics. Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s most infamous strategists, is Catholic.
Enter Trump’s reckless attack on the pope, who pleaded for peace during the Israeli-American war on Iran and Lebanon.
“President Donald Trump was elected in 2024 with support from a majority of Catholic voters, but a poll shows his support from Catholics dipping below 50% amid the U.S. war against Iran,” the National Catholic Register said.
“Criticism of Trump came from Archbishop Paul Coakley, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and from Minnesota-based Bishop Robert Barron, who only a few days ago was applauding Trump as an Easter guest at the White House. Barron called the president’s remarks ‘entirely inappropriate and disrespectful’ and urged him to apologize,” the Associated Press (AP) reported.
“The dismay extended into an even more solid base of Trump support–conservative Christian evangelicals. Many were appalled that Trump followed his Truth Social attack on Leo by posting an image depicting himself as a Christ-like savior, ” AP added.
And it goes deeper. The president’s feud with the pope erupted after reports that the White House threatened the Vatican, demanding it fall in line with its sadistic hegemonic agenda.
According to the Miami Herald, the “Trump administration has abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. alone, ending a relationship between the Catholic Church and the U.S. government dating back to the first arrivals of Cuban exiles in South Florida.”
This certainly feels like electoral suicide. It’s one thing for Trump to pick a fight with the pope. No one seriously believes this narcissistic geezer cares about anything but himself.
However, Vance’s Catholicism is part of his persona and his brand of ideology called National Conservatism, which is “heavily Catholic, definitely anti-woke, skeptical of big business, nationalist about trade and borders, and flirty with” the now ousted “Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban”, The Washington Post wrote.
Vance is smart enough to know that in Trumpland it’s better for his regime tenure to side with his boss over the Vicar of Christ. But it’s an impossible situation for Vance.
Yes, the vice president is a heartbeat away from nuclear launch codes. But in the church, he is a layperson who, beyond political differences with Rome, is now barking theological orders to the man in charge.
Catholicism is unique in having a head honcho to whom allegiance is necessary. “I’m a Catholic, but he’s not my pope” is schismatic, not a mild difference in religious flavour. There’s no equivalent of the pope in Protestantism.
Eastern Orthodoxy, dwarfed by Catholicism in size and geographic influence, has more than a dozen patriarchs. The pope doesn’t need to make a case for his credibility, but J.D. Vance, who has presidential aspirations, absolutely does.
“Vance’s approval rating has fallen sharply, hitting what CNN data analyst Harry Enten says is the lowest point for any vice president at this stage in office,” said Newsweek. The pope doesn’t worry about campaigning at the next conclave.
Worse for Vance, his cynicism shows that this Catholic MAGA conservatism is skin-deep; it cares not for theological constituency but is a cheap ploy to win voters. The papal feud is ruining this charade of national conservatism’s religious commitment.
This spat has the potential to weaken the bonds between the Republicans and Catholic voters that the party has worked hard to build.
If Democrats put their minds to it, they can exploit this in the midterms and perhaps in the next presidential election, too.
Photo courtesy of the Catholic Church England and Wales. Published under a Creative Commons license.
