Given the meaning of the word “Catholic”, the Pope has always been the planet’s pope. But I’m happy to see Rolling Stone appreciating him. Evangelists for 2000 years would call that a win.
But the people most outraged and offended by that are the ones who consider themselves the Greatest Catholics of All Time[TM]. They see their mission as driving away the riff raff, pouring boiling oil from the ramparts of the Church on all who approach and driving out all the vermin within the Church who do not measure up to their rigorous standards of purity, beginning with the pope himself.
It’s hilarious to me that decent people all over the planet have found themselves deeply attracted to the gospel thanks to Francis and Leo, while the people who hate these popes the most are not atheists nor even Fundamentalist Protestants, but the Catholics sent by God (as they suppose) to deliver the Church from the Holy Father and replace him with disgraced, deported, jailed, excommunicated, grifting nuts and schismatics like this pack of MAGA weirdos they elevated to their alternative magisterium five years ago:
The pope haters in MAGA have been so wrong about so much so many times for so long that only an utter fool would trust their judgment. And the most incredible part is that even at this late date their pride blinds them from admitting the slightest error.
Meanwhile, in October 2025, Pope Leo XIV quietly handed a letter to a group of visiting U.S. bishops. While Trad Catholics seethed over their petty concerns about smells, bells, and the fine point of liturgical aesthetics, Episcopalians saw and appreciated Leo’s efforts to live out the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, writing of that letter:
Inside were messages from migrants families separated by deportations, children afraid to sleep and one unmistakable command:
“You must speak. You must not remain silent.”
According to Vatican officials and border clergy, Leo told the bishops to publicly confront Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, calling it “inhuman” and “morally indefensible.”
This is the first time the new pope has explicitly addressed Trump’s second-term raids — and he didn’t hold back.
“Where the world sees threats,” Leo said, “the Church sees children. Where walls are built, she builds bridges.”
That line, delivered to stunned bishops, echoes through his new 104-page exhortation Dilexi te (“I Have Loved You”), a sweeping document about dignity, inequality, and the moral cost of indifference.
Leo’s warning is clear: A society that treats compassion as weakness is already in decay.
He called the growing cruelty toward migrants “a test of our humanity,” adding that a nation that forgets mercy “falls into a cesspool.”
The message is not subtle.
It’s a direct challenge to Trump’s so called “Christian nationalism” a movement that claims to defend life while supporting family separations, mass deportations, and detention camps.
“Someone who says they are against abortion but supports the inhuman treatment of immigrants,” Leo said, “is not really pro-life.”
That single line has conservative Catholics scrambling and MAGA media fuming. But
Leo isn’t here to please politicians, he’s here to call their bluff.
His tone is fatherly but firm.
Where Trump demands obedience, Leo calls for conscience.
Where Trump trades empathy for applause, Leo reminds the Church that silence is complicity.
This bears repeating: “Either we regain our moral and spiritual dignity,” he writes, “or we fall into a cesspool”
Again and again, Leo (like his predecessor) demonstrates the truth of Jesus’ observation about his own rejection by the Pharisees:
“A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. (Mk 6:4–6)
Some people have the notion that Christians believing God became man is a boast that man is extra-specially deserving over all the Vulcans, Klingons, and other sentient races that (they believe) populate the universe. But, of course, what drew the Son to us in the Incarnation was not our wonderfulness, but our wretchedness.
Relatedly, Americans who imagine God gave us an American pope because Americans are especially awesome are like cancer patients who imagine God gave them an oncologist as a reward for being the Healthiest Patients Ever.
We have an American Pope because we are the most dangerous and toxic society on the planet and we pose an extinction level threat to the entire human race. Leo is given to the whole Church, of course. But he is given to the whole Church because America and the MAGA American Church are a deadly menace who, given a choice between Peter and an orange antichrist, chose antichrist. That the Cult cannot see what a gift he is a great tragedy. I hope the Cult lives long enough to appreciate him.
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To paraphrase a wise pastor, we can either be chaplains to empire or prophets of justice.
The annoying thing about MAGA Catholics is that they think , they and only they, speak for God. What kind of a religion is based on hate? Hatred of immigrants, dark skinned people, gays, non Christians,etc? MAGA is a perversion of Christianity.
Mark, your post on sins that cry to Heaven for Vengeance spoke to me to look at them more deeply.
First, a primer for those who are unfamiliar: Sins that cry to Heaven for Vengeance (Latin: peccata clamantia, literally: screaming sins) are four specific sins:
The sin of Cain (willful murder)
The sin of Sodomites (more on that in a moment)
The sin of Egyptians (oppressing the poor, the children, the widows)
The sin of (more on that in a moment) (taking advantage of workers and defrauding them)
These sins have one thing in common: Nobody is condemning them. Even the victims themselves are silenced and have nobody to turn to but God. They are committed with no witnesses or witnesses do not condemn them (either by profiting from it directly or indirectly, or by being ignorant of the evil).
The first three sins are ones committed before the Israelites settled Palestine. They saw the sin committed and they saw the punishment for them meted out by God. God spared the individual (Cain), giving him the opportunity to atone or at least reflect, while punishing the entire systems that facilitated evil (Sodom, Egypt).
The fourth sin is the one that prophets warned against: Israelite landowners wantonly committed this sin against their workers out of greed. Israel was repeatedly punished for this. Wealthy landowners turned against Yahweh because He forbade it, while Canaanite gods made it almost into a holy act.
This makes it the systemic sin of Israel.
What of the sin of Sodomites? Jude 1:7 is pretty clear on what it is, Paul is likewise against homosexuals in his letters. But disciples of Jesus didn’t have the letter of Jude at hand when Jesus said: “Amen, I say to you, it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”
Wow, so disciples would not just be unwelcome, but might get sodomized, too?
The problem is, it doesn’t make sense.
Wisdom 19:13-17 draws a parallel between Egypt and Sodom in how Sodom didn’t welcome strangers from the get-go, while Egypt seemed to have welcomed strangers, but then hardened to them.
Ezekiel 16 is even more explicit. He roundly condemns Israelite wealthy elite for committing the same sins as Sodomites and Egyptians did. Why? He couldn’t be more clear than this:
44 See, everyone who makes proverbs will make this proverb about you, “Like mother, like daughter.”
45 Yes, you are truly the daughter of your mother* who rejected her husband and children: you are truly a sister to your sisters who rejected their husbands and children—your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite.
46 Your elder sister was Samaria with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister was Sodom and her daughters, south of you.
47 Not only did you walk in their ways and act as abominably as they did, but in a very short time you became more corrupt in all your ways than they were.
48 As I live—oracle of the Lord GOD—I swear that your sister Sodom with her daughters have not done the things you and your daughters have done!
49 Now look at the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were proud, sated with food, complacent in prosperity. They did not give any help to the poor and needy.
50 Instead, they became arrogant and committed abominations before me; then, as you have seen, I removed them.
(…)
56 Did you not hold your sister Sodom in bad repute while you felt proud of yourself,
57 before your evil was exposed? Now you are like her, reproached by the Arameans and all their neighbors, despised on all sides by the Philistines.
Ezekiel is clear on how Sodom sinned: by being proud, sated and prosperous, while not welcoming the immigrant who wanted to participate in their prosperity. The sexual depravity only came later when the luxury made everything else boring and Sodomites looked how to “spice things up”. And yes, that included homosexuality.
But the depravity was the effect of their hearts hardened by luxury, not the cause of it.
With that in mind, Jesus admonishing the towns that would not welcome his disciples and comparing them to Sodom and Gomorrah then starts making sense.
I think that Paul and Jude spoke out against homosexuality because of just how common it was, while Israel had capital punishment for it, and it was a culture shock to them.
The commandment against homosexuality is something in the Mosaic Law and there’s absolutely no reason to declare *that* one as valid and binding while claiming that other commandments are no longer binding.
This last paragraph may be unnecessary, but just to be clear: I’m not advocating for sacramental homosexual unions. Jesus clearly says that a valid sacramental union one between a man and a woman and then demands the absolute fidelity of spouses (not relative fidelity as in they can do “controlled cheating” if they agree to it). Jesus adds to by saying that not all are suitable for marriage (Matthew 19:12) and Paul further expounds on this in 1 Corinthians 7 (at the same time, he condemns those who forbid people to marry: 1 Timothy 4).