What Nobody's Mentioned About "Just War" Doctrine

A sort of sub-debate over "just war" doctrine has emerged between Vice President Vance and Bishop James Massa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine. This past Tuesday (April 14), Vance gave an ex tempore response to Pope Leo's criticisms of the war at a Turning Point USA event in Athens, GA. His full remarks are in the video embedded above. I'll start, though, with Bishop Massa's response, posted on the USCCB site:

“For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war. A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword ‘in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2308). That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’

“When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ. The consistent teaching of the Church is insistent that all people of good will must pray and work toward lasting peace while avoiding the evils and injustices that accompany all wars.”

The first thing I notice is that Bp Massa commits a logical error called "hypostatization" or "reification" in the first paragraph. This error treats an abstraction, "just war" doctrine, as something specific and concrete. On one hand, the bishop calls it a "long tradition" that has been variously expressed since ancient times -- but there's the rub. One version of "just war" doctrine is enumerated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2309, which the bishop oddly doesn't reference.

CCC 2309 lists four specific conditions for a "just war", which I'll summarize for brevity:

1. The damage inflicted by the aggressor must be major
2. all other potential solutions must have been exhausted
3. there must be a serious chance of winning
4. the damage done in the war must not be worse than the problem the war is meant to solve.

It concludes this list by saying, "These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the 'just war' doctrine." Unfortunmately, this list isn't exclusive, and other parts of the "tradition" say things very differently. For instance, St Thomas Aquinas lists these conditions in Summa Theologiae question 40 (again, summarized for brevity):

1. A just war cannot be declared by private individuals. It must be initiated by a legitimate sovereign authority
2. the party being attacked must deserve it due to some fault or injustice on their part
3. the motive must be the advancement of good or the avoidance of evil.

As we see, Aquinas lists three basic conditions, not four, and they're very different from those in the Catechism, which has nothing to say about lawful authority, while Aquinas says nothing about the chances of winning. Other conditions, if somewhat similar in intent, are expressed very differently. Thus "just war" doctrine is in fact a highly diverse set of conditions. In fact, you can make very general statements about, say, the law on drunk driving, but the law in individual states, much less countries, establishes very different conditions.

When Bp Massa implies "just war" theory is a "long tradition" that's somehow consistent and unified, he's incorrect. Let's take a similar potential generalization about "drunk driving law". In the US, the blood alcohol limit for drunk driving is 0.08% BAC, although this is only because it has been standardized across state laws. In Germany, the limit is 0.05% BAC. I could be convicted for 0.07% BAC in Germany, but get off with a talking-to in the US. By the same token, I don't see where Aquinas's conditions for "just war" would be violated in the current US war with Iran, while the conditions in CCC 2309 are at least subject to debate.

To claim there's a single "just war" tradition that makes Trump an evil tyrant is misleading, and the bishop should have learned this in freshman comp, which I taught back in the day. But let's move to the remarks by Vice President Vance that have drawn controversy, as reported at this NBC link:

“Now we can, of course, have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just, but I think in the way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vance said.

“But I think one of the issues here is that if you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth, and that’s one of the things that I try to do, and it’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they’re Catholic or Protestant,” he added.

I think Vance actually left a key argument on the table and didn't use it here. CCC 2309, after saying of the four contitions it lists, "These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the 'just war' doctrine", says immediately afterward, "The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good." In other words, the people who are tasked with making this evaluation are, at least in Western democracies, the elected officials, typically the head of government and the cabinet. Period. Neither the pope, nor the USCCB, nor the Berrigan brothers are mentioned.

But let's look at the words "prudential judgment". Edward Feser, a neo-Thomist philosopher and vocal opponent of the Iran war, has had a great deal to say about prudential judgment, so much that I asked Chrome AI mode to provide a summary of his views. I recognize that AI can get things wrong, and if Prof Feser sees this, I'll be happy to post any corrections or clarifications he may provide here. Nevertheless, in response to my question, "How does Edwared Feser define prudential judgment?" it replied (footnote references omitted),

Edward Feser defines prudential judgment as the application of fixed doctrinal or moral principles to concrete, contingent circumstances. Drawing from the Thomistic tradition, he views it as an exercise of "right reason" that determines how a general rule should be enacted in a specific, often complex, situation where multiple courses of action might be legitimate.

According to Feser's writings and his defense of traditional Scholastic philosophy, prudential judgment has several defining features:

Application of Principle: It is not a "free pass" to ignore moral law; rather, it is the process of identifying which moral laws apply to a specific case and how to fulfill them.

Contingency and Error: Because it deals with complex, real-world variables—such as political conditions or military strategy—it is subject to human error. Even high-ranking Church authorities can make mistaken prudential judgments because they may lack the specialized expertise needed to assess those specific circumstances. [emphasis mine]

Legitimate Disagreement: Unlike "intrinsically evil" acts (like murder or abortion), where no disagreement is possible for a faithful Catholic, prudential judgments allow for a "legitimate diversity of opinion" among people of good will.

So Feser himself, at least in areas like capital punishment, gives civil authorities latitude in identifying which moral laws apply to a specific case. Even high-ranking Church authorities can make mistaken prudential judgments. Prudential judgments allow for a legitimate diversity of opinion among people of good will.

What Vance said in Athens, GA is that there's room for a legitimate diversity of opinion between the Trump administration and Pope Leo. In fact, although he doesn't cite CCC 2309, he strongly implies that he agrees with the Church's teaching that it's up to US elected officials to determine the morality of Iran policy using prudential judgment, a situation in which there's room for disagreement.

Bp Massa, in the name of the USCCB, incorrectly implies, first, that there is a single, unified "just war" doctrine that the Church teaches, when Church authorities , for instance St Thomas Aquinas and the Catechism, in fact differ on conditions, but second, he implies -- though his remarks are by no means clear on this point -- that the pope is speaking from some sort of special authority when he is "preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ". But Leo did not claim his remarks on the Iran war are infallible, for a start. But according to Wikipedia,

A doctrine proposed by a pope as his own opinion, not solemnly proclaimed as a doctrine of the church, may be rejected as false, even if it is on a matter of faith and morals, and even more any view he expresses on other matters. A well-known example of a personal opinion on a matter of faith and morals that was taught by a pope but rejected by the church is the view that Pope John XXII expressed on when the dead can reach the beatific vision. The limitation on the pope's infallibility "on other matters" is frequently illustrated by Cardinal James Gibbons's recounting how the pope mistakenly called him "Jibbons".

Whatever Bp Massa may think, the pope's implication in various recent statements on whether the Almighty blesses any conflict and so forth are nothing but his opinion, and Trump and Vance are well within the bounds of legitimate disagreement -- but Vance's exhortation to the pope to "be careful" even when discussing matters of theology should also carry particular weight. Pope Leo in recent remarks has gotten a fair amount of scripture just plain wrong.

"Oooooh, He Shouldn't Have Said That!"

The brouhaha over Trump's Truth Social post criticizing Pope Leo seems to be settling into a pattern that's established itself since Trump entered presidential politics: Trump says something blunt and on the face of it wildly out of line. Several days of hysteria follow, until other voices provide a reluctant acknowledgement that however clumsily he may have expressed it, Trump has a point. For instance. in July 2019, he told far-left members of congress in "the squad" to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came," which led the House of Representatives to formally censure him for "racist comments".

Nevertheless, this led to an overall reassessment of their role, and two of them, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, lost their seats in the 2024 primary cycle. In January 2018, he trolled North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying his own "Nuclear Button" was "much bigger & more powerful" and that it actually "works!". Despite initial rage from North Korea, the two appear to have developed a good interpersonal relationship at a summit that June. In 2021, The New York Times published The Complete List of Trump's Twitter Insults (2015-2021), apparently on the assumption that having left office and now banned by Twitter, Trump woold issue no more of them.

Instead, as we've seen over just the past couple of weeks, Trump the international troll is back as strong as ever, and trolling continues to be an important part of his toolkit. And true to the pattern, calmer voices are predictably saying, "I wish he hadn't put it just that way, but he does have a point. . ." A good example is the Prayerful Posse podcast embedded above that's hosted by Raymond Arroyo, a Catholic commentator and Fox contributor and host of the EWTN news program The World Over. At 4:36, he says,

I want to frame this for the audience, because the media is depicting this as a war of words between the president and the pope. But there's another player here that has been ignored. The inciting incident was really CBS's 60 Minutes, which Trump was watching on April 12th. Norah O'Donnell, the correspondent there, featured three influential cardinals, that's how they were billed, Cupich, Tobin, and McElroy, all of whom were appointed by Pope Francis, and clearly men of the political left.

These three cardinals were paired with comments from the pope to create a kind of 15-minute critique of Trump policies. As I've said elsewhere, you've heard of rope-a-doping? Well, O'Donnell was pope-a-doping Trump, and it worked. They were trying to get Trump to overreact, and he did. But I want you to listen to a bit of what these cardinals said. . .

He cuts to Cardinal Tobin saying that ICE agents "hide their identities to terrify people". Arroyo then turns to guest Robert Royal:

ARROYO: Bob, Tobin is not the USCCB president, neither are the other cardinals who were featured in this piece, Cupich and McElroy, but they seem to have taken it upon themselves to represent the US Church. Is this appropriate?

ROYAL: Well, it's either that, or CBS wanted to use them as kind of stalking horses in their attack on the president. And you're right to say, I mean, the three of them are billed as so-called influential, but none of then hold offices in the US Bishops' Conference and have never been elected to it. They're kind of outliers. I mean, with all due respect to them, they're sort of like the Squad is in our secular politics, they're a very definite and pretty left-wing group of just three. . .

ARROYO: Father [Gerald Murray], a number of bishops I spoke to were not happy that these three cardinals were speaking for all of them, because as Bob said, they weren't elected to anything, and they felt, and I spoke to about five different bishops, they felt that this was not reflective of the body of bishops or where they are at this moment.

MURRAY: Yes. Well, CBS isn't, you know, they're the ones that picked these men to be part of their panel, how that came about, you know, we don't know, but they picked three cardinals who are on the political left, obviouslly. . .

When Fr Murray says, "how that came about, you know, we don't know", this is a significant we-don't-know -- what he doesn't mention is Pope Leo's audience with David Axelrod just the Thursday before the 60 Minutes segment. On Tuesday, I linked to a piece by Monica Showalter, Hand of Axelrod? 60 Minutes gives a platform for the Catholic Church's most leftist cardinals that ties the cardinals' appearance directly to the Axelrod audience. Arroyo and his panelists, we must assume, are too circumspect to address this issue directly -- but that's not Donald Trump.

In his Sunday night post on Truth Social, made at 6:00 PM before the 60 Minutes broadcast, although he was almost certainly aware of what its content would be, Trump raised an intriguing question:

Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.

We can read this in two ways. One way, that a great many people will do, is to see this as just another narcissistic blurt from an unbalanced mind who wants to believe he's the center of everything, including the last papal conclave. Another way, which I lean toward, is that unbalanced narcissists don't escape multiple state and federal indictments and go on to win reelection to the US presidency. There isn't just method, but exceptional stability, insight, and strength of character, to this madness, like the guy or not. (He's also lucky.) I can't think of too many similar historical figures, but Winston Churchill and Andrew Jackson come to mind for me lately.

But if this is the case, he knows a hawk from a handsaw, and as a US president, we must assume he has access to highly privileged intelligence, even that surrounding a papal conclave. According to AI, "Every person involved -- including the cardinal electors and all support staff (such as doctors, cooks, drivers, and cleaning personnel) -- must take a formal oath to maintain 'absolute and perpetual secrecy' regarding everything that concerns the election process."

Somehow, something reached his ear from the conclave, and one thing he's doing here, if my read is correct, is signaling to Leo and others in the Vatican that he's got this information. And we're hearing disconcerting speculation now from other quarters, for instance:

The Vatican announced this week that Pope Leo XIV will convene his second extraordinary consistory of cardinals on June 26-27, but are these meetings being organized with genuine openness, or are they structured to steer toward a predetermined outcome?

. . . Traditionally, they follow a structured format centered on a single theme. Typically, they open with a substantive presentation by a distinguished theologian or canonist, providing the basis for an extensive general debate among the cardinals, with the pope presiding. Tailored to the purpose of a consistory, this classical format let the pope hear the cardinals—and the cardinals hear one another—directly and unfiltered.

. . . What is not widely known is that Pope Leo XIV’s first extraordinary consistory was initially planned to follow the classical format. But it was later reconfigured under somewhat mysterious circumstances, with no official explanation as to why the format changed, who was involved in the decision, or who ultimately organized the meeting.

. . . The timeline suggests that the shift occurred sometime between December 19 and January 5—over the Christmas holidays. Vatican sources point to the possibility, or even likelihood, that one or more Cardinals met with Pope Leo XIV during that period, proposing a format more in line with the “synodal Church” envisioned by Pope Francis.

. . . Given the nature of an extraordinary consistory as articulated in the Code of Canon Law, its format ought to enable the Pope to listen to the Cardinals unfiltered.

Whether that principle will, in fact, be borne out in practice remains to be seen.

Elsewhere,

Pope Leo XIV's recent visit to the Mosque of Algiers--where he removed his shoes, stood in silent reflection before the mihrab, and expressed gratitude for being in "a place that represents the space proper to God"--is not a harmless gesture of goodwill. It is a deeply consequential moment that raises serious questions about how the highest office in the Catholic Church is choosing to represent Christian truth in the public square.

. . . Standing in silent reflection in a mosque, directly before the mihrab--the directional focal point of Islamic worship--is not a neutral act. It is not the same as visiting a historical site or engaging in dialogue in a conference room. It is entering a space defined by a specific act of worship to God as understood in Islamic theology, and participating in its atmosphere of devotion without any accompanying doctrinal clarification.

When the Pope then describes the mosque as "a space proper to God," the problem intensifies. Proper to which understanding of God? Christianity and Islam do not simply differ in language; they differ in the most foundational claims about who God is, how He is known, and how He has revealed Himself. To speak in generic terms of shared divine space is not bridge-building--it is theological flattening.

. . . The danger in the Pope's actions is not that he visited a mosque. It is how he did it, what was said, and what was left unsaid. In a world already drowning in relativism, religious leaders do not have the luxury of ambiguity. Their words and gestures define how millions understand God.

And when those gestures begin to suggest that Christianity is simply one language among many ways of reaching the divine, the result is not harmony--it is the erosion of Christian identity itself.

When Trump blurts things out, other things inevitably happen, although not right away, and not necessarily the things we would expect -- but they happen. It's odd how Pope Leo expressed things on Monday:

"I have no fear of neither [sic] the Trump administration nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel. And that’s what I believe I am called to do and what the Church is called to do."

At the same time, he clearly misrepresented scripture over the past several days, and it's not clear if, as in Algeria, he's speaking the Gospel as clearly as he might.

UPDATE:

Exactly.

By raising the issue, it makes people look at what Pope Leo is saying and what Pope Leo is saying is leftist nonsense. https://t.co/1ZB9qbwOCc

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) April 16, 2026

Strange Bedfellows

More than a few observers are beginning to look past the conventional wisdom in the disagreements between President Trump and Pope Leo. Just at random, I ran across the YouTube remarks embedded above from Pesach Wolicki, an Orthodox rabbi born in the US who emigrated to Israel. He begins his remarks by pointing pout that Pope Leo misrepresents scripture when he says (as he did in a tweet I embedded yesterday), "God does not bless any conflict". At 1:23, Rabbi Wolicki says,

Take a look at the Bible. For example. in the song at the sea, in Exodus 15, where it says that the Lord is a man of war, Adonai ish Milchamah, OK?

This is Exodus 15:3, which in the CatholiC New American Bible says "The LORD is a warrior; LORD is his name!" Back when I was in RCIA (now OCIA), the catechist frequently said, "Scripture without context is pretext." When I looked this up, AI helpfully added,

This verse is part of the "Song of Moses" (or Song of the Sea), a hymn of praise celebrating God's victory over the Egyptian army at the Red Sea.

A week or so ago, I mentioned Exodus 17:8-16, the battle with the Amalekites at Rephidim, in which while Joshua's army fought on the ground, Moses went to the top of a hill with Aaron and Hur, carrying the staff of God. When Moses raised the staff, Joshua prevailed. When he grew tired and let the staff fall, the Amalekites prevailed. Aaron and Hur placed a stone for Moses to sit on and stood on either side of him, holding his hands steady until sunset.

God also commanded Moses to write the account in a book as a permanent memorial, declaring that He would "completely blot out the name of Amalek". Sounds a little like wiping out a whole civilization, doesn't it? I'll get back to Rabbi Wolicki below, but I notice that this morning, Rich Lowry of the National Review, never a Trump cheerleader, has taken a similar tack:

The Bible has a realistic view of the inevitability of human conflict.

As Ecclesiastes says, there is “a time for war, and a time for peace.”

In the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel or Kings, it is often a time for war.

The key question is whether or not a war is righteous — the difference between Israel, say, prevailing in the Battle of Deborah, or seeing the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem.

. . . Leo has wrongly made it sound as though no war can possibly be just — and regardless, his opposition to the Iran war isn’t dispositive or binding on anyone else.

At 4:25 in the video embedded above, Rabbi Wolicki takes up the issue of Leo's audience with David Axelrod:

David Axelrod is a senior adviser to Obama, and he had visited the pope just a few days before all of this happened. So there's a lot of suspicion that this was part of some sort of op to try to influence Trump or pull Catholics away from President Trump, which is already somewhat happening, we'll talk about that in a bit.

At 25:30, he sums things up:

Right now in America, you have a very vocal and sizeable wing of the Republican party that is very anti-Israel and is very anti this war, and is dominated by traditional Catholic voices. Traditional Catholics, including people like Candace Owens [a recent "convert" for whom there is no clear indication that she or her husband went through RCIA] and Tucker Carlson [actually Episcopalian] . . . Megyn Kelly . . . in this growing anti-Israel wing of MAGA, it's dominated by a lot of traditional Catholics. So I think that these anti-Trump and anti-Israel forces. . . decided to meet with the pope and to drive a wedge, a further wedge, between Trump and Catholicism, to make it less palatable to be supportive of Trump if you're a Catholic. . . and that's why I think that Pope Leo is participating in what is basically an op.

I would say, though, that it's questionable how large the traddy Catholic anti-Trump wing actually is, and how Catholic those really are. Of the people he names, Owens and Carlson are sketchy if they're Catholic at all; Megyn Kelly is apparently a cradle Catholic, but by her account, she's only recently become observant enough to begin the process of securing a declaration of nullity for her first marriage. In other words, if she attends mass at all, she'd better not receive the sacrament until this is straightened out.

The fact is that traddy Catholics tend to be so traddy that they're on the fringes of the faith. Some in that group tend toward the view that no pope since Pius XII legitimately holds the seat, which is a heretical position. Others are deeply skeptical of Vatican II, likewise raising questions on whether they're Catholic at all. Still others, like Edward Feser, insist that the opposition of recent popes to the death penalty is unscriptural at best -- but all of a sudden, he's calling us all to come to Jesus!

The present moment is revealing people’s true loyalties. The pope is the spiritual father of all Catholics. In a family, even when you disagree with your father, you rally to his defense when he is attacked by an outsider. And if you don’t, there is something very wrong with you.

— Edward Feser (@FeserEdward) April 13, 2026

In other words, he's rallying the sketchy traddies, the ones who don't think Leo is really pope, the ones who don't like Vatican II, the ones who are nervous about LGBTQ+ masses and Fr James Martin, the ones who want to kneel at the communion rail, to come home to Pope Leo. "[Y]ou rally to his defense when he is attacked by an outsider [Trump]. And if you don’t, there is something very wrong with you."

Now and then I've raised questons about Prof Feser's rhetorical errors, especially his hypostatization, when he treats a diverse set of "just war" principles articulated over millennia under widely differing historical circumstances as a single, consistent, abstract doctrine. Here, I think, he errs in using a variation of the "bandwagon" technique: we're a big family! Leo is our father! No matter all our sometimes heretical disagreements, no matter we maybe shouldn't be receiving the sacrament, or we aren't receiving it anyhow, no matter we haven't been to confession, no matter some of us aren't even Catholic, let's rally to Pope Leo! Otherwise something's very wrong with us!

But who is Pope Leo, really, and why did he have that meeting with David Axelrod?

It's fascinating to see what social media reveals about a person before they become the Pope.

Before he became Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Robert Prevost was on Twitter trashing Trump, criticizing Vance, calling for open borders, promoting COVID vaccines, endorsing stricter gun… pic.twitter.com/B60TqSYk7O

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) April 14, 2026

I've got to say that as he's presented himself lately on social media, Prof Feser reminds me a great deal of the leftists I knew on campus in the 1960s. He isn't in that generation, so he may not have their examples to compare himself to, but he's starting to look a lot like those angry, bitter, scruffy guys back in the day. I was at least a good acquaintance of some of them, and even when I sympathized (which I often did at the time), there was always a little voice in my head asking if they were being paid, what kind of a network was behind their agenda, there were all sorts of strange coincidences.

I'm starting to get the same sense of underlying, bitter anger in Prof Feser that I used to have with my SDS schoolmates. I'm also getting a very similar discomfort with what I'm beginning to sense is disingenuousness on his part. Who's he working for? I'm wondering if he knows more about the agenda here than he's letting on.

More than just a few people are wondering if this is all an op, and Prof Feser, whom I used to admire, seems to be losing credibility the more he looks like he's pitching the party line.

Trump Trolls The Pope, Usual Suspects Apoplectic

From CBS News:

President Trump on Monday defended his decision to post an AI-generated image appearing to depict him in the likeness of Jesus, insisting the image shows him as a "doctor."

. . . "I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor," the president told reporters in an impromptu press conference outside the Oval Office. "And it had to do with Red Cross. There's a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one."

He continued: "So I — I just heard about it. And I said, 'How did they come up with that?' It's supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better, and I do make people better."

His tongue, of course, is firmly planted in his cheek -- but in his defense, there's no specifically Christian symbology in the image. Trump is depicted holding some sort of shimmering crystal in his hand, which is more New Age than Christian. While he wears some sort of white base garment, it isn't specifically an alb, and the reddish robe he's wearing is generic; it certainly isn't any sort of vestment. The symbols around him are patriotic, not religious. The intent is in fact humorous and even self-deprecating, not blasphemous.

But let's look at some of the context from the past week:

Last Thursday [April 9], Pope Leo XIV inexplicably met with President Obama's highly partisan top strategist, David Axelrod, in a longer-than-scheduled meeting at the Vatican.

Speculation at the time was that the pope was discussing an Obama visit to the Vatican, as the former president had said he'd like to have. Much was made of all three players being from Chicago and loving the White Sox.

But Axelrod's name is strongly associated with partisan politics and the Democrat establishment, so it definitely looked as though the pope was going political and attempting to send President Trump a message beyond his current public criticisms.

Knowing this, I was skeptical this was about an Obama photo op to best Trump, who certainly isn't going to be meeting the pope any time soon, and speculated that more likely, the pair would be discussing political action and communication strategies to knock out Trump and help elect Democrats.

In the wake of the image, Trump's tweets, and Vice President Vance's remarks that "in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what’s going on in the Catholic Church, and let the President of the United States stick to dictating American public policy,” Pope Leo said his role is to preach the Gospel, not to enter into political disputes.

Well, OK, then why did he meet with David Axelrod, who isn't Catholic but is best known as a Democrat political consultant? It's hard to avoid thinking he does in fact intend to play politics, but if he's challenged, he'll sanctimoniously claim he isn't. And this is actually pretty transparent:

It is patently obvious that these tweets, which are indistinguishable from DNC messaging and make no meaningful mention of Christ, were drafted during or as a result of the meeting with Axelrod. People don’t seem to remember how closely associated the Church and the Democratic… pic.twitter.com/Me5tG785SE

— William Wheelwright (@ploughmansfolly) April 13, 2026

Monica Showalter continues at the second link:

For Axelrod, it's a crisis for Democrats that they have lost so much of the Catholic vote. Catholics were in the Democrats' minds, their property, their captive vote.

Americans of any religious denomination have always had a good sense of when their religious leaders are on point and when they're not. As Main Line Protestant leaders have become increasingly leftist and pansexual in their outlook, their members have simply stopped listening and stopped going to church. In the past, Catholics have tended not to take the pronouncements of far-left clerics like the Berrigan brothers seriously.

I think there's another factor at work: Last Wednesday, I pointed out that in his earlier posts denouncing the attacks on Iran, Leo effectively enabled Trump's strategy of forcing Iran into negotiatikons -- although Trump wasn't going to be bamboozled into lengthy and unproductive intransigence. As soon as Iran tried that, Vance declared the negotiations over.

The problem for Leo is that even if he insists he isn't playing politics, if he tries to dialogue publicly with Trump, that's what he's doing. In matters of public dialogue, Trump is agile. Over and over, he makes remarks that shock people, but he somehow gets his point across. As early as 2015, apparently hoping to nip Trump's presidential ambitions in the bud, Politico listed The 15 most offensive things that have come out of Trump’s mouth -- and that was even before his remarks about Carly Fiorina ("Look at that face!") and Megyn Kelly ("blood coming out of her wherever").

Trump has been rewriting the rules throughout his political career. Leo is kidding himself if he thinks he can play politics with Trump, claim that's not what he's doing, and come out on top.

UPDATE:

It is in the best interests of the Roman Catholic Church, the USA and the world that the Vatican publicly release details as to the subject matter of the recent meeting between Pope Leo XIV and Obama's political strategist, David Axelrod.

This incident is harming the Church in…

— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) April 14, 2026

Swalwell: I Don't Get It

So the stanmdard take on Congressman Eric Swalwell dropping out of the California governor primary race is that it was cooked up by the Democrat establishment to avoid having two Republicans win the top two positions in the state's jungle primary.

Under California’s voting system, the top two vote-getters in the primary will proceed to a general election in November, no matter what party they’re from. If the primary were held today, according to the most recent polling, that would mean two Republican candidates, each pulling in just 14 percent of the primary vote, battling it out for the governor’s office in the fall. A lot could change before primary day, but the Democratic Party is increasingly nervous.

The two Republicans are Chad Bianco, Riverside County Sheriff, and Steve Hilton, a Fox News host. The top Democrat until he pulled out of the race was Swalwell, who had been polling at 12%, compared to Bianco and Hilton, who each polled at 14%. So the story goes that people like Speaker Emerita Pelosi, Sen Schiff, and Speaker Jeffries decided to push Swalwell out of the race to concentrate the Democrat field and try to get enough support for at least one of the also-ran candidates to make the top two.

But I'm scratching my head:

Before the bombshell news, Swalwell had trailed the Republicans at roughly 12%, just 1 point ahead of billionaire Tom Steyer, who garnered 11%, and former Rep. Katie Porter with 7%. Candidates Xavier Becerra, Matt Mahan, and Antonio Villaraigosa each held 4% of likely voters, while Betty Yee and Tony Thurmond followed, each attracting just 1%.

. . . Still, if Swalwell had emerged from the primary as one of the top two vote-getters, he had extremely good odds of winning the general election and succeeding Gavin Newsom as governor in a state where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly two to one.

Now, Steyer and Porter must scramble to catch up with less than two months before the June 2 primary. Porter was considered an early frontrunner until her campaign imploded after videos surfaced of her berating her staff. Steyer, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist, has spent more than $100 million of his own money on a series of expensive television ads, yet remained stuck in third place among Democrats and fifth overall before Swalwell’s sexual scandal broke.

Let's think about this for a moment. Straight white males don't fare all that well among 21st century Democrats. Swalwell's most visible problem at the moment is that he's a little too straight and a little too male; we'll just throw the white part in at no charge. But even if the Democrats had been able to keep the rape bit out of the news for another seven months, he still would have been a straight white male. The two big Democrat winners in last year's governor races were, after all, attractive white women.

This suggests to me that Swalwell's problem wasn't all the groping, schtupping, and so forth, but that as a straight white male, he wasn't going to rally enough Democrats either in the primary or the fall. But who are the next runners-up in current polling? Tom Steyer, a straight white male billionaire, seems unikely to resonate with California Democrats:

Billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental warrior Tom Steyer, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, is facing mounting questions about how he earned his wealth — notably investments in private prisons that are now being used to house undocumented immigrants facing deportation.

Some of the most vicious political attacks come from his Democratic rivals and Sacramento special interest groups as the June 2 primary election fast approaches, but Steyer has been dogged for years about his past, controversial business ventures and how they help fund his unbridled campaign spending.

That leaves Katie Porter, a former congresswoman who in fact had been the overall front-runner for the election as of last summer, but several incidents last fall eventually put her behind both the Republicans and Steyer. The video embedded above from last summer, when she was briefly front-runner, encapsulates the problem: she's overweight, dowdy, shrieky-squeaky, and abusive. As one commentator notes, first impressions matter. It seems unlikely that Steyer will move the needle; he ran a similar self-funded campaign for president in 2020, but he dropped out before the primaries.

So why did the Democrat elders decide to dump Swalwell? It appears that his sexual misconduct had been an open secret for years:

The women described a similar pattern of events: Swalwell, who is married and has three children, showed close interest in their lives when they were in their twenties and finding their footing professionally, making them feel special and even starstruck. Then, they said, he would send them increasingly sexual messages. Many said they reciprocated and engaged with him in part because of his position of power. In some cases, those inappropriate exchanges escalated to alleged unwanted physical touch or sexual assault, often tied to episodes of heavy drinking.

. . . But several of the women who made allegations about Swalwell said that the congressman’s actions had long-term implications on their lives, leaving them confused, distraught and scared. They said they decided to come forward after hearing rumors that they were not alone in their experiences with the congressman.

“I always felt like if I came forward, I was going to suffer the consequences because he was so powerful,” the former staffer who accused Swalwell of assaulting her said, adding, “I’ve lived in fear every single day.”

But all of a sudden, it's now OK to trash Swalwell? What puzzles me is that a strategy of eliminating Swalwell to consolidate support behind some other candidate could well work if there were a credible candidate among the others -- but so far, the best prospect seems to be Katie Porter. The two most prominent non-sraight white male contenders, Sen Alex Padilla and Kamala Harris, announced they would not run last year. Given less than two months remaining before the June 2, primary, it's unlikely either would change their mind.

So, why did the Democrat elders choose to greenlight the me-too attacks on Swalwell, who might well have been able to surge if he chose to represent his candidacy as a referendum on Trump? Gavin Newsom turned the Proposition 50 redistricting referendum campaign which originally looked like a loser, around on exactly that basis. Instead, Pelosi, Schiff, et al chose to trash their front runner by making it suddenly OK to accuse him of sexual stuff, when they'd previously kept the victims fearing for their careers and reputations if they uttered a peep.

I'm scratching my head.

The Story So Far

It's been quite an Easter octave. A week ago, Trump threatened to nuke a whole civiliation, with an effenheimer no less, following which Iran asked for negotiations. This set me to watching for signs of what was really going on.

Let's keep in mind that ever since the Viet Nam War, the conventional wisdom has been that "negotiations" have nothing to do with ending a war, they're a tactic for the weaker side to get an extended pause in the bombing so they can recover, rehuild, and resume hostilities at a time of their choosing.

Let's also keep in mind that modern Islamists simply never "negotiate" in good faith. They use "negotiations" like the North Vietnamese did, with the added feature that following extended delay, as soon as the "negotiations" conclude, they violate any "agreements" and simply resume fighting.

But let's add a third factor. Trump is no dummy, and he prides himself on his ability as a negotiator. All week, a little voice in my head kept telling me Trump had to be aware of what the Iranians would do in any "negotiation". Why would he waste his time? After yesterday's developments, I think we're starting to get the picture.

On April 1, in a national address, Trump said the US military objectives in Iran were "very close" to being met. By April 8, the day after Iran agreed to "negotiate",

". . . America's military achieved every single objective on plan, on schedule, exactly as laid out from day one," Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said during a press briefing this morning at the Pentagon. "Iran's navy is at the bottom of the sea. .. . Iran's air force has been wiped out. Iran no longer has . . . any sort of a comprehensive air defense system; we own their skies. Their missile program is functionally destroyed: launchers, production facilities and existing stockpiles depleted and decimated."

In other words, if Iran intended to buy any sort of time to rebuild in a cease fire, or somehow delay a US offensive, this wouldn't buy them anything; the US had already met its objectives. Still, the conventional wisdom insisted Iran had one final card: they still controlled the Strait of Hormuz:

Iran has insisted that ships wanting to transit the strait must secure its permission and has suggested it retains the right to impose a fee for passage.

The Iranian navy released a map late Wednesday indicating it may have mined the strait and outlining the designated shipping lanes vessels should use to transit safely. It directs outbound ships leaving the Persian Gulf along a route just south of Larak Island, while inbound vessels must follow a route north of the island — both closer to Iran’s mainland than the route often taken before the war.

A large portion of the strait, marked in a rectangular box that also includes Oman’s territorial waters, is designated in the map as “hazardous.”

That's what Iran was claming as of Thursday. The situiation was unclear:

Chinese ships were among a long line of vessels waiting for clearance to leave the strait, said Muyu Xu, a Singapore-based analyst with Kpler. She said that the overall picture was still confusing and cited how last week Iran said it was accepting Chinese yuan as payment for transit, but then changed to a preference for cryptocurrency.

Ships “don’t know whether they need to pay first, or they go past first and then Iran sends a bill? It’s just a lot of uncertainty,” she said.

Which is just how Iran wanted it -- yes, they'd agreed to open the strait, but given the overall uncertainty, it was de facto closed. And who knew where all those mines were, or whether there were any at all? This would also keep insurers nervous and keep rates high.

So he talks began Friday, but not long after they started,

Centcom wrote Saturday on X that its forces “began setting conditions for clearing mines” in the passageway.

The command added that the USS Frank E. Petersen and USS Michael Murphy, both guided-missile destroyers, transited the strait and operated in the Arabian Gulf “as part of a broader mission to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines” that the IRGC previously laid.

“Today, we began the process of establishing a new passage and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of Centcom.

This was preceded by idle threats from Iran. At the same link:

After the U.S. military launched operations to de-mine the Strait of Hormuz, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy reportedly warned an American destroyer in the passageway.

“This is the last warning. This is the last warning,” the Iranian forces radioed to one of the two U.S. destroyers in the strait, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Passage in accordance with international law. No challenge is intended to you, and I intend to abide by rules of our government’s cease-fire,” the U.S. ship responded, referring to the temporary pause in hostilities between the two sides.

The Hill has reached out to U.S. Central Command (Centcom) for comment on the reported radio message. The IRGC Navy, meanwhile, denied Saturday that U.S. ships passed through the Strait.

Consider this: the US sent not one, but two destroyers through the Strait of Hormuz. It's hard to avoid thinking it would never do this if there were the remotest chance of either ship hitting a mine and being damaged, much less sinking. Imagine the morning headlines, much less the photos and video equivalent to Ukraine's sinking the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva in 2022. It would be a military disaster exponentially worse than if Iran had captured the second airman who'd ejected from an F-15 last weekend. This was yet another of Trump's calculated risks, and again, it paid off.

Following that,

In the least surprising international news this week, Vice President JD Vance provided an update Saturday night on his negotiations with the Iranian regime that included confirmation of that regime‘s refusal to make any reasonable deal.

. . . Within two hours of the ceasefire announcement, the Iranian regime was already bombing multiple countries in the Middle East, especially Israel. It also refused to track down and disable the mines it scattered in the Strait of Hormuz, while simultaneously demanding massive tolls from countries that send ships through the strait. Throughout every step of the process this week, the Iranian regime has been arrogant, demanding, defiant, and irrational.

This strikes me as confirmation that this had been Trump's plan all along: Iran was expecting to use the "negotiation" as a means to drag out the cease fire for its own benefit while continuing to hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage. But as we've seen over and over, one of Trump's own negotiating strategies is always to walk out, which on Saturday, having proven the US is the one that controls the strait, he instructed Vamce to do. Then,

President Donald Trump announced a U.S. blockade on the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday.

Trump made the announcement in a post on his Truth Social account, blaming the failure to reach a deal with Iran during talks in Pakistan this weekend.

"At some point, we will reach an 'ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT' basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, 'There may be a mine out there somewhere,' that nobody knows about but them. THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted," Trump continued.

"I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas. We will also begin destroying the mines the Iranians laid in the Straits. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!

So at the end of the week.

• Trump negated the Islamist "negotiating" strategy of delay via inmtransigence and simply announced negotiations were over
• Then he simply demonstrated that the US already controls the key negotiating asset Iran thought it had, the Strait of Hormuz
• He then announced the US itself was blockading the strait, subject to removing all mines.

Crazy

Apparently in the wake of Trump's post calling out Tucker, Megyn, Candace, and Alex, commentators are beginning to weigh in on what those people are actually saying. Rich Lowry at The National Review, which has never been especially favorable to Trump, has the following to say in the video embedded above:

I think first factor is the isolationist Right, overlap with a lot of these people, thought they controlled Donald Trump. They thought Trump was an isolationist the way they are isolationists. And it was never true, he was never an isolationist, and also, in his second term, he's actually been hyperactive in terms of foreign policy. So this led to extreme disappointment, which led on the one hand to a massive reevaluation of Donald Trump. Now yes, Donald Trump made wild threats in the runup to the cease fire with Iran. Are we really shocked by that? Do we not remember fire and fury with North Korea in the first term? And also, he dropped an f-bomb in that post on Easter morning. Bad! Shouldn't have done it! But also, we're shocked? We think he's polite in all his communications and observes all of the norms? No!

. . . Now, Tucker Carlson sounds like a member of the Committee to Save the World during the first term. This was the establishment type that considered Trump a danger and thought he had to be controlled. . . . Here he was, calling on people around Trump to get the nuclear codes and stop potential nuclear conflict. [inserts clip of Carlson] Now, there's another way to deal with disappointment with Trump, not mutually exclusive to the one we just talked about, which is to believe he's being controlled by shadowy forces that happen to be Jews. . . . This is why it's such a key part of the world view of a Tucker Carlson, or of Candace Owens, that the United States government killed JFK.

. . . And Tucker Carolson sees these kinds of conspiracies everywhere, right? The USS Liberty, the spy ship that was accidentally and tragically shot up by Israeli forces during the Six Day War, was a deliberate attack, and the US government was in on it and is still covering it up. Chemtrails, the US government is using commercial aviation to spread these chemicals in the atmosphere for dastardly reasons. The government might be covering up the real killer of Charlie Kirk. . . .

So Tucker Carlson is suggesting Donald Trump might be part of some Satanic project. Now, what country around the world considers the United Ststes the Great Satan? Right? Iran. And now you put on top of this that a lot of these people think Israel is the main problem in the Middle East and perhaps in the international system broadly, and here, our domestic politics as well.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse also weighed in following Trump's post, specifically referencing Alex Jones:

When President Trump responded to the goofball diatribe of Alex Jones, what he apparently was referencing was a segment Jones put out on his podcast when he first requested the administration to intervene and use the 25th amendment to remove Trump. Mr. Jones followed that call for the 25th amendment, by saying he wanted administration officials to conduct a soft-coup against the President of the United States, because Trump wasn’t following his advice.

He then embedded this clip from Jones's podcast:

🚨 Alex Jones and Robert Barnes call for an internal coup of President Trump.

Jones "How do we 25th amendment his ass?"

Barnes "Tackle Trump and let him pretend he is President"

These are the people telling you you're not America First 🤡 pic.twitter.com/vjJO553vj5

— J (@JayTC53) April 7, 2026

Robert Barnes, who as I've noted frequently appears on these Woke Right podcasts, gives his inchoate solution to the obstacles posed by the 25th Amendment:

Tackle Trump and let him pretend he's president, and publicly report that he's going through a health issue, and they have to take over.

In other words. just don't bother following the 25th Amendment, don't involve the cabinet and Congress, just lock him up and proceed. Sundance concludes,

Folks, these characters are not psychologically stable people. This is a level of weird only evident now because Trump decided to address it.

But let's look a little farther into Candace Owens and her allegations against the Macrons. According to a defamation suit filed against Owens by the Macrons,

These outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions included that Mrs. Macron was born a man, stole another person’s [her brother] identity, and transitioned to become Brigitte; Mrs. Macron and President Macron are blood relatives committing incest; President Macron was chosen to be the President of France as part of the CIA-operated MKUltra program or a similar mind-control program; and Mrs. Macron and President Macron are committing forgery, fraud, and abuses of power to conceal these secrets.

. . . she makes absurd claims that Mrs. Macron (as Jean-Michel) participated in the Stanford Prison Experiment, which Owens claims is somehow linked to her later “transition.” Owens has also gone so far as to suggest that the Macrons are involved in an alleged conspiracy to distract Owens from investigating Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

I think Rich Lowry's explanation is the most generous: some people, even given what Trump revealed about himself in his first term, somehow sincerely thought he'd always agreed with them, not necessarily just in foreign policy, but over a whole range of other issues. But Trump has been remarkably consistent in his views on Iran, dating back to before he entered politics. These people are sincere, if mistaken, but they need to be careful not to be drawn into the craziness. I suspect Edward Feser is in this group.

There's a second group that's disappointed, assorted conspiracy theorists like Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Michael "Lionel" LeBron, who have always believed in one or another widely held conspiracy theory, and they apparently thought Trump believed in those theories as well. Trump has turned out to be more grounded and hard-headed than they thought.

A separate issue is Trump as Jacksonian. I think I must have missed school the day they taught Andrew Jackson in history class -- they maybe might have mentioned the Battle of New Orleans and the Bank of the United States, but for whatever reason, they leave out the business of him invading and seizing Florida without authorization in 1818. Walter Russell Mead promoted the parlor version of Andrew Jackson when he called Dubya, a Yale Bonesman, a "Jacksonian". Dubya would have been on the board of directors of the Bank of the United States. Part of the Trump problem is Walter Russell Mead's fantasy of Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson probably said the f-word on Easter morning himself, just he didn't do it on Truth Social. Nobody seems to have thought very hard about what "Jacksonian" really means. I'm sure Trump hasn't, because he's never needed to. That's at the heart of the bigger problem.