Pentagon threatened the pope after he criticized Trump
Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.
Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican's U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.
"The United States," Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, "has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side."
https://newrepublic.com/post/208820/pentagon-threatened-pope-criticized-donald-trumpOpen linkView original on lemmy.world641
Comments87
That context though... Thanks for that!
In this day and age, literally anything sounds like it could be true, so I try to take some especially inflammatory things with a healthy grain of salt.
Also, with a suspiciously generic name like "Free Press", you bet I'm looking at your credentials!
With these fuckers it always seems right though.
You're doing us a solid by posting your findings. You didn't have to do that, but ya did. 🤝
There you have it, if you had any doubts that the US has been taken over by a bunch of crazy people. In their words, they can do whatever they want, but they barely accomplish a thing.
Uh, you think they've been taken over just recently? Trump just exposes what's been going on for decades through his borderline personality disorder.
Yeah, the falacy that over a hundred million of people in the US just suddenly woke up and decided that they wanted their country to be controlled by a derranged multi-millionaire extremelly high on the Narcissist spectrum parroting near-Fascist and outright Fascist ideas, doesn't hold up to even the most cursory logical analysis.
Only tribalist supporters of the "other party", who thus desperatelly want to believe their tribal chiefs are not at all to blame in any way form or shape for America going down the path that led to a double Trump victory, will cherry pick and twist "evidence", and be very selective in the logical explanations they're willing to consider, to create logically-sounding (for the unthinking) theories that exhonerate their own chiefs that are so beyond real Logic that they're akin to using "Magic" as explanation.
The field from were votes for somebody like Trump were a bountiful harvest has for decades been plowed and fertilized by American politicians and by American billionaires using the Press and Think Tanks their own.
Nah, it was Russia.
"It couldn't possibly be the fault of Americans, it must be the fault of foreigners."
-- Both American Fascists and American NeoLiberals
Ah, a "China" man.
"If you're not one of us, you must be one of 'them'"
-- Tribalist simpletons all over
Guys fucking delusional 🤣 we’ve seen how well that works over the last 50 years.
You mean the Pope? I'm yet to see any problems for the US over how they act.
No, Colby.
MAGA has no concept of soft power. They just don't get it, do they?
Well, they're clearly aware enough to feel threatened by it, given that that's all the power the Vatican holds
The idea seems to be to use the hard power to make the soft power go away.
It doesn't work like that of course, but fascists are gonna fascist.
"Might makes right" authoritarianism has no use for it. Why bother with getting people to like you when you have all the guns? Besides, these troglodytes are a pretty unlikable bunch in the first place - it's simply not how they navigate the world.
"You can do anything you like with bayonets, except sit on them" Talleyrand, circa 1815
Soft sounds to girly for the insecure bastards in office
https://catholicvote.org/pew-poll-52-of-catholics-including-61-of-white-catholics-back-trump-over-harris/
Should be interesting to see how that plays with the electorate.
EDIT: Also, I don't have my finger on the pulse of the Catholic Church in the US, but the current pope, Leo XIV, was the first born in the US. I know that John Paul II, Polish, was the first Polish pope and was highly-regarded in Poland, and I can imagine that there might be a similar effect in the US among American Catholics.
Catholics are not the major Christian group, it's 2nd place in the US. 69% of US residents claim to be Christian, 45% of which Christians claim to be Protestant while only 22% of which say Catholic (Gallup 2020). It's regional too, I beleive centered around Italian and Irish immigrant communities, or at least the suburbs around where those city diasporas used to be. Protestants specifically do not give a shit about the pope.
Evangelicals are the most vocal, and they are very much opposed to the Pope.
Are US protestants the same as UK Anglicans? Like is it the same church? I thought for sure most US Christians were nutjob baptists or other what would similarly fringe sects anywhere else in the world. Wait, are baptists protestants?
Anglicanism is sort of Protestantism. It forked off of the Catholic Church after the start of the Protestant Reformation, but wasn't really part of the movement. The king of England at the time specifically had a problem with the Pope and essentially took over the churches in England, keeping the Catholic traditions and power structure but changing the head of the faith from the Pope to the king. The English monarch is still officially the head of the Anglican Church.
Americans are very much not Anglican and many of the people who emigrated to the colonies were religious minorities from proper Protestant groups.
Didn't he essentially found a new religion so he could get a divorce?
Yep.
Calling it now.
The spectrum:
No, we must worship the shoe! The shoe!
Generally yes, but what are called mainline Episcopalians are "in communion" with the Church of England, so they're kinda sorta Anglican. If an observant Anglican were to want to attend church in the US, that's who they would look up.
Some red-state suburban churches broke off a few years back and are in communion with one of the churches in Africa that also broke off because they didn't like the ladies and the gays and whatnot. Very classy of them all.
Now I understand: Mom was devout Christian, & we went to Anglican churches, until Dad ditched us, then Catholic ones..
Finally I understand the 1st Christianity I was brought-up in..
Thank you for your explanation.
It clarifies why Protestantism always seemed .. broken, somehow: I'd only ever known Anglicanism & Catholicism, so my view wasn't as diverse as I'd assumed.
_ /\ _
Alright, so I had to check my understanding. Yeah, that's all Protestantism, but they're all different and all disagree with each other. Baptists are the largest single Protestant group in the US, overlapping to classic original southern US states. Honestly, I thought Protestants were a distinct group but I guess the group I'd assume them to be would actually be Lutherans, assuming they're adherent to the original protesting Martin Luther.
The Episcopalians are the American Anglicans, which is a Protestant denomination. But Baptists, Evangelicals, Presbyterians, Lutherans and lots of others are also American Protestant denominations.
Sorry it's a Yt link, but its germaine...
https://youtu.be/ANNX_XiuA78
I think you're correct: Most of US protestants are nutjob baptists in fringe sects. It seems there was a reason for the religious persecution of the puritans...
The US has a version of Anglican referred to as Episcopal. Both it and Baptist are under the protestant umbrella.
If a Christian is neither catholic nor orthodox they're protestant unless they're in some small middle eastern sect that predates all that
There's also the Coptic Church.
So Catholics are the major Christian group based on that.
Protestants are broken up among several dozen sects and don't often form a single block on issues. Catholics are one group that do often form a voting block.
It's well past time we stop breaking up Christianity into Catholic and Protestant. It's not a useful metric anymore. A Lutheran and a Baptist are just as different as a Quaker and a Catholic. Like come on the reformation was like 4 centuries ago, let's categorize better
OK, but if all Protestants reject the pope, then it's a useful metric for the question about whether or not Americans would generally be upset about threatening the pope
Catholics in America are mid schism and form two voting blocks. But yes, protestants are even more divided
Nice
American catholicism has been on the verge of schism for years. The anti woke side hates Leo, the other side is proud of him, but were also proud of Francis. They (we at the time) were proud to have a pope from our hemisphere and one intent on reform and fighting the far right faction. It's hard for American Catholics of any stripe to be proud for the past few years given the archbishop being excommunicated over schismatism and the fact that that's not even close to resolved.
I'm starting to believe JD isn't a true believer of his religion 🤡
The pope could do the funniest thing rn and call a crusade on the US
Why bother? Just excommunicate the usual suspects, and watch the cognitive dissonance of the ultra-catholics.
Excommunicate JD Vance.
Please, I've been wanting this since he killed the last pope 😭😭😭
In what fucking world does it make sense that i ally myself with the pope. I hate this timeline
Yes, you have lots of guns and bombs and you're very big and strong. But the Pope was offering a moral criticism. You know, about morality, doing the right thing. Have you or your "Christian" colleagues ever heard of it? Turns out it doesn't often align with who is most eager and equipped to kill anyone who looks at them the wrong way. Even Jesus (heard of him?) had a thing or two to say about that.
It's funny:
The end-times prophecies are clear-as-day, now, & they WHO ARE WALKING INTO IT are ignoring the consequences??
Here's the 1st-Seal thing, with the Time of Conquering, & the Conqueror ( Trump's ONLY addiction )
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+6%3A1-2&version=CJB
& here's the prophecy about Trump's "mortal head wound" & pending "miracle cure"..
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+13%3A3&version=CJB
The funny part?
IF their 2nd Coming appears .. he'd be war-incarnate against them ( the guy-on-white-horse-with-double-edged-blade-of-Cutting-True-Speech-projecting-from-his-mouth ), fighting "the beast", which they hold to be "lord"..
they don't even know their own prophecies.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+19%3A11-15&version=CJB
THAT guy would be the LAST thing those abomination-loyal ones would want to see coming into our world!
( caveat: John of Patmos was filtering everything through his unconscious-mind, so the distortions are .. kinda rampant. Jung & I both experienced the same kind of distortions, in our VISION-dreams. I've no idea if that King of Kings guy is 1st-Seal, aka The Great Filter's 1st Yang Stage, XOR if it's later in humankind's "cell-division", splitting between the murder-life-for-authority's-lordhood kind & the LivingSpirit-loyal kind, the WAR stage, which should begin in 7-ish years, after the Regional Consolidation Time is finished, or if it's in the 3rd stage, the no-food-chain-left stage, where people are living off of greenhouses like Silent Running ( movie ) had, but on Earth..
The fundamental point, though, is that anybody doing what Hegseth's doing, to bring the 2nd Coming .. pouring "blood and destruction" into the world .. is warring against that guy in the 3rd biblical-reference, above. )
Interesting Times!
_ /\ _
PS: I'm calling this pope Good Pope Leo, because from what I can see, he is: & I'm not Catholic.
_ /\ _
PPS: I just read the beginning of that chapter, & it looks-like that's the stuff for the 2070's, NOT for this end of "the tribulation"/"armageddon"/The Great Filter, so .. no point in getting our hopes up.
_ /\ _
Time for the Pope to call a crusade. Deus Vult.
"How many divisions does the pope have?"
Joseph StalinPeter HegsethThis fool Hegseth tried to divide by
zeropope 🙄Ok really 2 halves (Europe and Africa) and a whole (South America).
Six of our nine Supreme Court Justices are Catholics.
As catholic as 5 year old croissants left outside in the dirt are
Yeah not the usual breed are they? I’m from a catholics family and the horrors they enable are absolutely alien to the principles I grew up with. They whole of them would be ripe for hell if that was a thing…
They're old catholic breed with fire and brimstone.
Yeah, but at least two are opus dei, which will gladly oppose the pope if they feel he's in their way.
Eh does that mean these been to the island?
Maga Yanks are total nutters
Time for the Pope to start using the excomunicato hammer again.
Ah, the old Might Makes Right mantra!
This one predates humanity itself, or even cellular lifeforms. I wonder why the Cardinal did not know this? Oh well, at least now he has been reeducated, so all should be well!
That sounds like something that an envoy of Sauron would say. Does Colby really think he's one of the good guys?
LOL
It's fascinating that the Pope gets threatened for being critical of Donald, and not, you know, facilitating an international child trafficking ring.
there can be only one
I remember in the last book of the Bible it always talks about the very Christian one world government.
Idiot sub-adolescents thinking they're smart
It's cool. None of this really matters anyways with the whole separation of church and state.
Smells like weakness to me.
this reminds me of that Bogdanoff twins meme
How many divisions does he have?
Leo better be careful, when the US wanted a Polish Pope to support strikers and disrupt Poland, CIA just murdered John Paul I to get a Polish Pope.
Damn arrogant Americans. America, after Israel, is home to the most disgusting people alive today. Zero respect for their piss-poor culture that produced these monsters.
I'm kind of waiting for: God has decided to back Trump for now but patience wearing thin or some such similar ridiculousness in this reality.
So, it’s time to attack to Vatican?
The Church started/was named by a global empire. By the time of Constantine, who would preside over Church commandment debates from the Pope's throne, Jesus's peace/humanism was erased from the church in favour of old testament's divine right of emperor to kill and steal. Heresy laws applied to interpreting bible as humanist Jesus instead of the blessing of warmongering.
Pope really needs to undo the pre dark ages warmongering changes to Christianity. Jesus was a reformer. Yahweh a demon son that usurped his father El. Jesus's father god was El not Yahweh.
Totally forgot they assassinated the last one. What exactly did they gain from that?
Pope Leo XIVPope BobIf a side-effect of Trump's idiocy is having the Vatican bombed out of existence, as a Roman, I'll take it.
Because for true Romans the Vatican will always represent the last bit of the temporal power that Popes exercised on the population for centuries and that keeps being exercised de facto true the corruption and continuous ingerence of the Catholic Church in Italian political affairs, local and national.
Not that they are better or worse than all other priests of any confession or religion, but the Catholic Church is the one we have a quite fresh memory of.
These Romans are crazy!
If that happens you'd be getting another Duce
Nah, those need a Pope to stay in power in Italy.