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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   13159 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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It turns out Greenland/Denmark and Canada aren't the only friendly countries that the US has been threatening, the Vatican's ambassador to the US (according to The Free Press and Letters from Leo a Catholic focused blog) was given both explicit and coded threats of military force against the Holy See.

In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture.

“America,” Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

As tempers rose, one U.S. official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.

JD Vance, a Catholic himself, has done a pretty rare thing for the Trump admin and said they're gonna get to the bottom of it first, instead of immediately dismissing it as fake news.. This doesn't confirm it as real, but that it wasn't immediately denied and dismissed like the typical M.O. is quite interesting.

This could help explain why Pope Leo has felt so emboldened to speak up against Trump's war efforts in Iran, cause the administration officials have been warmongering against them behind the scenes. The chance that the admin actually pulls the trigger and attacks the Vatican is obviously low, but that they keep threatening many of our allies both publically and privately seems quite concerning to me. It also opens up a new thing to consider, how many other allies are they threatening behind closed doors too?

This is incredibly based. A USG-sanctioned breakaway hierarchy might be our only shot at getting real Catholicism back. Once we've conceded that "Eternal Rome" means something different from, "the guy currently running The Vatican," then there is absolutely no reason that "Eternal Rome" can't be located in Dillwyn Virginia.

In historical reality, the threat of government-backed antipopes was the last line of defense against Rome's temporal power. The Avignon Papacy was a direct reaction to the papal bull Unam Sanctam, which is still on the books, and which declares the papacy as strictly superior to temporal rulers. Technically, the pope could order JD Vance to end the war, under penalty of excommunication and eternal damnation.

Technically, the pope could order JD Vance to end the war, under penalty of excommunication and eternal damnation.

You do not seem to understand either how Catholicism works or how the United States government does. The Pope does not have the ability to just order random Catholics to do whatever he wants for the very obvious reason that 1. religions schism all the time so people would just schism over that and 2. Vance if he really wanted to bomb Iran would just metaphorically say fuck off like he does about plenty of other topics already, and papal infallibility is extremely limited. But even if he did, it would be meaningless as the VP position does not hold power in that way.

You talk of wanting "real Catholicism" back and yet don't even understand what you are criticizing to begin with. As the other comment pointed out, you also don't even know where SSPX headquarters even are, the thing you're apparently supporting. Your understanding of Catholicism seems to be that of a tourist attracted to the vibes rather than genuine knowledge.

Once we've conceded that "Eternal Rome" means something different from, "the guy currently running The Vatican," then there is absolutely no reason that "Eternal Rome" can't be located in Dillwyn Virginia.

As if the SSPX has a history of playing ball with secular governments wanting political cover for whatever mindless anti-Catholic thing(the SSPX still believes in just war theory because it is Catholic doctrine) the secular government wants to do. Or as if the current(or any forseeable future) US government actually wants to give the kinds of concessions the SSPX would demand in return for being state-sanctioned(and end to the Iran war being one of them). Indeed, their willingness to suffer legal consequences for doing politically incorrect shit is probably part of why the Vatican is relatively conciliatory towards their loose-canon antics; it's simply useful to have a ready supply of priests willing to receive converts in Islamic theocracies and hold funerals for Nazi war criminals so the official hierarchy can keep its hands clean.

Their headquarters is also not located in Virginia(it is, literally, located in Rome- and their motherhouse is in Switzerland). They are a Francophone(and France is still a plurality of membership) fundamentalist organization which expects to outlast everyone who disagrees with them and so sees no need to compromise for temporal advantage.

Technically, the pope could order JD Vance to end the war, under penalty of excommunication and eternal damnation.

No he can't. JD Vance does not have the ability to end the war. The pope can yell all he wants, sure, but there's no possibility of a vice president personally ending the war. That's not how the government works.

Glad to see someone else here who stays abreast of the SSPX. The Pope has no secular terrestrial power to end the war but to condemn it and make it incumbent on every Catholic to obey his leadership and interpretation of doctrine. They’re continuing to do all the hard yards for the Church since Vatican II crippled their ability to remain firmly committed to dogma. It was a great pity after Francis’ death the next Pope didn’t come from that side of the aisle.

… which incidentally is exactly why people were worried about JFK becoming the first Catholic president back in the day: would he refuse orders from Rome if his immortal soul were on the line?

That's interesting. I'm not an expert in the topic, but my reading it seems to me that there is a rich history of political leaders ignoring the Catholic hierarchy's orders. Maybe political leaders, historically, even ignored its orders more often than they followed them, though I really don't know.

Catholics are not allowed to ignore the pope. A Catholic potus has an obligation to obey the pope or they are not Catholic. I’ve always said Jews have the same issue with Israel and their tribe.
The pre-eminent Catholic school in Americas motto is literal God-Country-Notre Dame.

That being said Catholic and Jews have already conquered this country and the Wasp are dead so the old evangelicals have already made their choice to back the Catholics.

Protestantism always struck me as a dead end theologically. Sola Scriptura ultimately leads to complete doctrinal anarchy. Scripture according to ‘whose’ interpretation? Mine? Yours? Church tradition? It’s a complete misnomer to reject Sacred Tradition because it provides the historical framework of interpretation for reading the Bible.

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