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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14165 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 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.

It's the pope. How many times in recent years has the pope not spoken up against war efforts?

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?

I mean, usually when the administration responds that they're going to look into a situation, that means that the message that's been reported is not what the administration approves of. At least publicly. So this would have to be something where they told Colby to threaten the Vatican, but unlike Canada and Greenland, wanted it kept on the down low? Seems implausible, but I've been wrong before.

It's the pope. How many times in recent years has the pope not spoken up against war efforts?

Yes the papacy is typically against war, but Leo seems particularly passionate about this recent one.

Seems implausible, but I've been wrong before.

What is implausible about threats being made behind closed doors? If anything the Trump admin being openly aggressive against Canada and Greenland is the weird thing. But ok let's say this was done entirely without the top brass, it seems concerning that our under secretaries are apparently going around and threatening our allies and no one above in the chain of command knew about it/cared until it became public.

but Leo seems particularly passionate about this recent one.

There are two reasons for this- pope Francis was seen as overly conciliatory towards the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine(not totally without reason), and for internal Vatican political reasons this was a major mark against him, so Leo feels the need to make up for lost ground. And also Israel is bombing Christians in Lebanon; yes there's probably no way to invade Lebanon without doing this but the Vatican's perspective is perhaps more on the side of 'well they don't actually technically need to fight this war, now do they?' than about dispassionately measuring collateral damage.

Francis was a Franciscan, Leo is an Augustinian. Different orders, different charisms.

Pope Francis was a Jesuit…

Technically Francis was a Jesuit, although he saw St Francis of Assisi as a role model and frequently talked like an pietistic Franciscan. Based on the stereotypes the various Orders had back in the day, I would expect a Franciscan to resort to the kind of soft-headed pacifism that generally makes you a useful idiot for the aggressor, an Augustinian to intelligently but not necessarily productively apply Just War theory, and a Jesuit to make a political calculation based on what they thought the interests of the Church were.

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