The theological fault lines that divide America’s 50 million or so Catholics from its roughly 130 million Protestants have been largely set aside when it comes to politics in the Trump era, if only because most practicing Christians in the United States understand they have a common foe in the secular left. When Democrats are openly trying to drive all forms of Christian piety from the public square and impose what amounts to a neopagan morality, it tends to focus one’s attention on the near enemy.
But not this week. President Trump’s diatribe against Pope Leo over the weekend and the ensuing fallout triggered an online fracas between Catholics and Protestants that exposed those fault lines and called into question the durability of the conservative coalition that has twice sent Trump to the White House.
Many Catholics were understandably outraged at Trump’s crude attack on Pope Leo for opposing both the Iran war and his administration’s immigration policies. Catholics of course believe the pope is the spiritual father of the faithful, and to some extent the Catholic reaction against Trump’s attack was an expression of filial piety. But there was also a sense that Trump was simply being unfair. That the leader of the Catholic Church would oppose a war of choice by the United States shouldn’t come as a surprise. In 2003, an aged Pope John Paul II forcefully opposed the Iraq war in terms similar to those Pope Leo has used: “War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity. International law, honest dialogue, solidarity between States, the noble exercise of diplomacy: these are methods worthy of individuals and nations in resolving their differences.”
For their part, many Protestants were rankled by the Vatican’s criticism of the Trump administration and thought Pope Leo had it coming. Some noted, not unfairly, that the pope never seems to speak as sharply or specifically about Democrat presidents who flout Catholic teaching on abortion, gay marriage, and much else. Others simply lambasted the pope as a hippie or a commie — essentially deploying the same brain-dead invective as the president did. Still others expressed the misguided opinion that the pope should stick to religion and stay out of politics, forgetting that politics concerns morality and justice and the ultimate ends of man, and therefore implicates religion. (And how could any religious leader “stay out of politics” when the American president threatens to destroy “an entire civilization?”)
This was the immediate context for the online sniping between Catholics and Protestants this week, but the sniping is part of a growing tension between the two groups over theological differences. We saw this over the Easter holiday, for example, amid reports of record numbers of adult Catholic conversions. We see it, too, in the discourse over Christian Nationalism and the ongoing debates about Christian Zionism and antisemitism.
Some of this tension is simply a consequence of social media. But much of it is the natural consequence of the collapse of political liberalism, which is exposing old religious disputes as the West enters an era of re-enchantment. Much of the Catholic-Protestant dustup between Trump and Pope Leo was really a debate over temporal power and spiritual authority. Liberalism falsely claims to have resolved that age-old tension but it obviously hasn’t, and now it’s reappearing. As religion regains its salience in American public life, so too will the religious differences between Catholics and Protestants. That could pose a political problem for conservatives in both religious camps that have, over the past decade, managed to overcome their theological differences and coalesce around a Trumpist GOP.
I myself am a Catholic convert from evangelical Protestantism, so I’m thoroughly acquainted with these differences. They are deep and persistent and in some ways unbridgeable. But I say this with all conviction and sincerity: We have to set them aside right now — if not for the sake of brotherly comity then for the sake of common survival. Simply put, the left is waiting to eat us alive. In an era of Republican governance it’s easy to forget that half the country, more or less, rejects our religious convictions and worldview. That includes a significant cohort that’s actively hostile towards the Christian faith. Whatever our inter-Christian conflicts, they pale in comparison to the conflict awaiting us when Democrats take power again.
And unlike Christians, leftist ideologues have no qualms about using coercive force to compel belief, or at least compliance, with their secular religion. Everywhere they wield power today, in fact, they are pursuing coercive force against Christians.
In New York, an order of Catholic nuns that has spent more than a century caring for the dying poor has been forced to sue Gov. Kathy Hochul over a new law that would force the nuns to affirm and submit to LGBT ideology that contradicts their Catholic faith. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have quietly cared for dying cancer patients for 125 years at Rosary Hill Home in Mount Pleasant, about 30 miles northeast of Manhattan. They have done so without problems — until two years ago, when they began receiving letters from the state’s public health agency accusing them of violating a 2023 state law requiring long-term care facilities to affirm residents’ gender identity, use preferred pronouns, and open bathrooms to either sex.
Of course, there are no such patients under the care of these nuns, and no actual complaints on file against Rosary Hill Home. The State of New York is targeting these sisters because they don’t subscribe to the state religion. As a lawyer for the nuns said, “It’s the state requiring these holy nuns to bend the knee to an ideology contrary to their faith.”
The lawsuit calls to mind a unanimous 2021 Supreme Court case that found the City of Philadelphia had violated the free exercise rights of Catholic Social Services when it tried to exclude it from the city’s foster-care program for not certifying same-sex couples as foster parents on religious grounds. Here again, Democrat politicians targeted Catholics for refusing to compromise their faith and adopt the left’s LGBT ideology.
New York State will likely lose its case for the same reason Philadelphia lost, but it won’t stop Democrats from pushing the limits of their power everywhere they can. Consider a new law passed by Democrat-controlled Virginia and signed into law this week by Gov. Abigail Spanberger that would strip tax-exempt non-profit status from Confederacy-related groups in the state. While not a religious case exactly, the target of this law is a group disfavored by the left: the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), a philanthropic organization founded in 1894 by the descendants of Confederate veterans. Today, it mostly runs food banks and homeless shelters.
Yet Virginia Democrats consider such groups, whose members are mostly history buffs and American patriots, to be “extremist.” Honoring one’s Confederate ancestors, or even acknowledging them, is now reason enough to be targeted by the state. That’s a dangerous message to send, especially considering that in the summer of 2020 the group’s headquarters in Richmond was attacked by arsonists, who caused millions of dollars in damage, including the destruction of irreplicable artifacts, during BLM riots that followed the death of George Floyd. Unknown assailants not only firebombed the building but defaced it with graffiti and broke windows. No one was ever arrested or charged.
Whatever one thinks of such groups or the Confederacy, the fact that Virginia Democrats would pass what amounts to a Bill of Attainder (which the U.S. Constitution prohibits) against the UDC for the crime of being associated with the Confederacy, suggests that if they could, they would pass more bills targeting disfavored groups.
These are just a few recent examples plucked from the news this week. They are part of a longstanding trend and tendency of the left to use all the power at its disposal to persecute groups and individuals it views as a threat. That’s why President Biden’s Justice Department raided the home of pro-life activist Mark Houck and arrested him at gunpoint in front of his children. Houck won a $1-million settlement this week.
This kind of thing will never stop. As soon as Democrats win the White House, or take control of Congress, we will see more targeting of Christians and conservatives. And the attacks will likely be even more brazen and vicious. What’s coming is worse — much worse — than the pope criticizing Trump or Trump attacking the pope. The religious fighting between Catholics and Protestants is nothing compared to the coming war between leftist neopagans and all faithful Christians.
All of this is not to say Catholics and Protestants should paper over their religious differences, or that those differences don’t matter. As liberalism dies, there will come a time of reckoning between Catholics and Protestants. But that time is not now. Now is the time to stand together and fight. Our common enemy is at the gates.
