Weekly Roundup: MAGA’s Nuclear Brinksmanship: Is the Coalition Cracking?
Brad Onishi and guests dissect MAGA's nuclear brinksmanship, revealing a January 2026 threat to install an "Avignon Papacy" against Pope Leo if he opposes U.S. foreign policy. While Secretary Pete Hegseth invokes divine providence despite Iranian school bombings, medievalist Dr. Thomas LeCocq notes this unprecedented state capture reflects deep anti-Catholicism. Radical integralists, who helped elect JD Vance, now face disillusionment as Pope Leo rejects their authoritarian vision by skipping U.S. celebrations to support migrants. Ultimately, the episode concludes that the administration represents a conflict between followers of Jesus and those seeking to crucify him through imperial power. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Invoking God for Victory00:08:40
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi, author of American Caesar How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America Into a Monarchy.
Also, the founder of Axis Mooney Media.
This week is one of those weeks where you just don't know where to start.
We began the week with a sense that Donald Trump might mire the world in nuclear winter, threatening to destroy all of Iranian civilization.
The rift between the Pentagon and its evangelical leader, Pete Hegseth, and the Vatican and the Catholic Church grew ever wider due to a report about a tense meeting between the Pope's representative to the United States and members of the Department of Defense.
We'll talk about every dimension of that and the explosive reports surrounding those meetings.
Dan Miller is sick, and so he won't be joining me, but I do have two special guests who you hear from later.
Who can fill us in about everything related to Hegseth, the Pope, the Catholic Church, Donald Trump, and more?
Lots to cover.
Let's go.
Okay, so I want to start with a clip from Pete Hegseth, who, along with Donald Trump at the beginning of this week, were declaring victory in Iran and in the Iranian conflict.
Here's Hegseth Our troops, our American warriors deserve the credit for this day, but God deserves all the glory.
Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings, and strikes carried out under the protection of divine providence, a massive effort with miraculous protection.
Dude 44 Bravo.
Spoke for all of us.
God is good.
The chairman will now provide an even deeper military detail on the historic success of Operation Epic Fury.
Mr. Chairman.
Now, Hegseth does something here that I think is on the nose, and it may not be completely dissimilar from other American leaders who invoke the name of God in terms of national protection, national greatness, national accomplishment, military victory, or whatever.
But Hegseth does it in a way that I think really opens the door for.
Deep theological questioning in ways that we sometimes don't do when people like him give speeches.
He says, God gets all the credit, God gets all the glory.
We had a pilot who was shot down and spent time hiding on Saturday and then was found and emerged on Sunday, just like Jesus.
Okay, great, great illustration there, Pete.
And then he talks about the ways that God is the one who helped with all of the details regarding the Iranian conflict that has been going on here for some time.
And this just brings up something that Dan Miller says on this show all the time, and I'll say now is when you are willing to get up and give this full throated defense of God's actions in a war, you open up your reasoning and God themselves to a question about, well, what about all the bad things that happened?
And here's what Dan Miller says all the time on It's in the Code and so many other places on this show is that the problem with this kind of theology is that the people who perpetrate it.
Always give all the glory to God when something good happens, and then all of the blame when something bad happens to humans and their sinfulness.
It's this sense of like, if it's good, must have been God.
He was with us, He protected us.
And if it's bad, human mistake, human folly, human sin, whatever.
So, like, if I was in the press corps, as Hegseth was talking about, God is good and God is great and all that stuff, I would have said, look, we can debate how providence works and God's.
Interaction with the world?
How does the creator interact with human beings who have free will?
I don't know.
Christians have been talking about this for, say, almost 2,000 years, right?
Like, first and second and third century Christians started to kind of wonder about this.
And you really see it come into absolute clarity with someone like St. Augustine, right?
Writing whole books in the confessions and other places about what is time?
Where is God?
How did God become part of me?
Was God part of me before I even knew I was a me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lots of theology here, right?
But, Pete, here's the thing.
When you do this in such a bald way, a leveled way, a Fox News clip ready way, you have a theology that says, well, God did everything.
So the next question is this You bombed a girls' school, Pete.
You bombed children, girls, at a school.
Were they part of the war?
Were they fighting in the war?
Were they part of the Iranian regime?
Were they dedicated to the Ayatollah and his?
Supposed hatred of America.
The five year olds, the seven year olds, because I have kids that age.
And I can tell you that they're not part of any international conflict, ideological regime, or anything else.
They're kids.
They're at school right now.
You bond to them.
Was that God?
Did God do all of that?
Should we thank God for the death of those girls?
Should we be praising God for that or no?
Oh, was that a human mistake?
You denied it was a problem, or you did it accidentally, but that's the cost of war, right?
Okay.
Where does that fit in?
The problem of evil is the problem of evil.
How do you defend God if God is in control of everything, like you just said, against all the bad things that happen in the world?
Philosophers and theologians have been asking this for 1800 years in the Christian tradition.
How do you defend God when you bombed children, when people lost their lives, when Americans lost their lives?
How do you defend that?
So that's number one for today.
Beginning of the week started with Trump and Hegseth declaring victory.
And Hegseth continues to do this in a way that is so made for Fox News theological clickbait.
It is such a bald and one dimensional theology that you have to realize that when he says God gets everything, he gets everything.
And that's why the kind of God you're describing, Pete, is not the kind of God most people want to revere or believe in.
Doesn't mean all Christians, doesn't mean the entire Christian faith, because you don't represent the entire Christian faith.
And you don't represent most people who believe in Jesus.
Nonetheless, you've all, and final point on this, and I'll move on.
You also just left out all the people in the military, American citizens, the American public, who do not believe in your God, who do not believe in Jesus as their Savior.
Racism Reaches Deeper00:05:20
30% or more of the military, nearly half the country.
I know you don't care.
I know that for you, the Christian nationalist message is all that matters, but that has to be commented on as well.
Now, when Trump threatened to destroy Iran's civilization, I think this is a moment that reached deeper into the political soil than most stories.
I am very aware that every week, Dan and I get on the mic and we talk about things that those of you listening are deeply interested in.
People who are into politics and current affairs, people who read.
Newsletters and articles, listen to podcasts and read books.
But there's other folks out there who are interested in, but they're not doing that.
They're not you.
They're not the political junkie.
But I can tell you, I had several parents who know kind of what I do for a living come up to me at my kids' school and be like, hey, dude, are we like, is there going to be like a nuclear winter tonight?
Like, is this, do we need to like prepare for the end of the world?
And these are people who are not listening to 10 political podcasts a day or reading, you know, Mother Jones and Politico and the nation and the new republic and liberal currents and all the other things.
These are folks who are concerned citizens, but they're not political junkies.
This reached deeper into ether.
And I think it also reached deeper into the MAGA ether.
And let me play you a clip of Megyn Kelly talking about Donald Trump.
Iran is more powerful economically, it controls the strait and now is demanding the lifting of all sanctions against it.
And what Trump did with that 10 point plan was go from Monday saying no.
Not good, to Tuesday saying, very workable.
We can do it as a means of saving face to bail off of his insane threats about annihilating an entire civilization.
So Meghan Kelly's sort of been on this train for a little while.
She's been frustrated with Trump, whatever.
And then here's Alex Jones, the arch conspiracy theorist.
Paradoxical threat.
How do we get the 25th Amendment, his ass?
The problem is to get the 25th Amendment, it's harder than impeachment.
You have to get two thirds of the House and two thirds of the Senate to get the government.
Tackle Trump and let him pretend he's president and publicly report that he's going through a health issue and Vance take over.
It literally needs to be something like that.
It's that bad.
I've known you in a long time.
You've never called for an internal coup before.
Ever, ever, ever.
But that's how dangerous this is.
One of the questions we've asked on this show for the last month or so is Is the Iranian conflict a problem in MAGA?
Is there really a split?
And there's been some social scientists and statisticians and others who've said, Look, The data says there's not.
But what we said a month ago is like, well, give it some time.
Because right now, Trump seems to be dabbling.
This week, we got to a place where normal, everyday people were wondering if they were going to wake up to a nuclear bomb having been dropped on Iran.
I do think that that is going to signal people in the rank and file of MAGA starting to view Trump differently.
Do I have hope?
That's going to wake them up to the overwhelming racism, xenophobia, misogyny, Christian nationalism, anti Muslim, anti immigrant rhetoric.
No, this is not a great awakening and coming to see the light.
Nope, it's not that.
What it means is this Trump is embroiled in a war he doesn't know how to get out of.
He's embroiled in a war that he's lost.
If you examine the ceasefire that was negotiated over the last two weeks, he got nothing.
We started in one place as a country and we ended way behind, way further back than we started.
The Strait of Hormuz is in control of Iran.
They're going to supposedly charge a $2 million fee for ships that go through there.
We don't have control of the enriched uranium and so on and so forth.
I'm not going to go through all those details.
I want to stick to the kind of religious dimensions of this.
Nonetheless, Trump's embroiled in something he can't get out of.
This is a massive problem for him politically.
There's just no way to get out of it.
So I do think that when you have Megyn Kelly or Alex Jones or someone like Joe Rogan, who's also on this train as well, their voices give a permission structure to other MAGA influenced, MAGA adjacent people who are close to MAGA or voted for Trump to say, yeah, I think I'm done too.
Like it gives them public permission.
So, I do think this matters.
I do think it's a massive political problem for Donald Trump, who has shown himself to be 100% completely unfit for the office a million times.
But when you are using Truth Social, a fifth rate social media site, to announce that you may drop an atomic bomb, we cannot live like this.
This country, this world, cannot operate at the whim of a madman who thinks that threatening an entire civilization is going to be a great negotiating tactic.
Atomic Bomb Threats Confirmed00:10:32
It's not.
And I can go into how he's a terrible negotiator and he bankrupted all his casinos and all that.
I could do that if you want.
I'd rather just say this was a watershed week, I think, in terms of the ways that Trump's madness reached everyday normal people.
I do think it's going to have an effect on the Republican Party, the Republican brand, the MAGA brand, and all of that going forward, period.
I just do.
Let's take a break.
I'm going to come back and talk about what happened with.
The Pope, Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon, Donald Trump, all of that.
We'll come back in a second.
Okay, so this week there was a post, excuse me, there was an article at the Free Press by an Italian writer who is somebody who reports on the Vatican.
And that report was a bombshell because what that report outlined was a meeting in January between the Under Secretary of Defense, Elbridge Colby, somebody who serves under Pete Hegseth, and the Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christopher Pierre.
The Apostolic Nuncio is the representative of the Vatican to the United States.
They are also the representative of the American Church and American Catholics to the Vatican.
So they kind of have this dual role.
In one sense, they're a diplomat from the Vatican to the United States government.
On another foot, they are the representative of American Catholics to the Vatican and the Pope.
So what the report outlines is that.
In January, Christopher Pierre, Cardinal Christopher Pierre, met with Elbridge Colby and several others from the Department of Defense.
Now, a couple of things to keep straight here.
Last May, there was an attempt to get the Pope to come to the United States for the 250th celebration of the country's founding.
This is, of course, in Pope Leo, the first American Pope.
And he thought about it for a minute.
And as you'll hear later, and I'll get into it in more depth in a second, he said no.
And there's reasons why.
Doesn't want to be a pawn in the midterms jockeying come July.
Doesn't want to probably be seen with Donald Trump and MAGA figures.
And now, as we move forward from last July into December and January, just a couple of months ago, the Pope was outspoken against Trump's immigration mass deportation scheme and the Grotesque violence against migrants and others in Chicago and in the Twin Cities and in LA and other places.
Finally, the Pope has arrived at a place where he has more and more directly said that war is evil.
God does not answer the prayers of those who perpetrate war and that everything to have peace should be done.
Here's a clip from him from this week on that very topic.
In English, I would simply say once again what I said in the Urbi et Urbi message on Sunday, asking all people of goodwill to search always for peace and not violence, to reject war, especially a war which many people have said is an unjust war, which is continuing to escalate and which is not resolving anything.
So, To go back to our timeline, we are in April of 2026.
In January of 2026, three months ago, this meeting takes place.
This meeting has been confirmed as having happened on January 22nd.
It's confirmed by the Department of Defense and by the Vatican.
Now, in that meeting, what the report says is that there was a one sided conversation, basically addressing down by Elbridge Colby and his associates to the Pope's representative, Cardinal Christopher Pierre, telling him to get in line with what the American government is doing when it comes to immigration and when it comes to the Middle East.
And supposedly, there was a mention of the Avignon Papacy.
You'll hear more about that in a minute when I talk to Dr. Thomas Lecoq.
Who is a medievalist and an expert on religion and politics.
So just bear with me for a sec.
Now, I will say that since yesterday, the Department of Defense confirmed this meeting, but then went on to deny the kind of rude or belligerent nature of Elbridge Colby and others from the government who were involved.
The Vatican has also said that this was a good meeting and that the tone, the belligerence was, quote, exaggerated.
I will say for my part that this seems like damage control.
Neither the Vatican nor the Department of Defense talked about this meeting prior to this report coming out.
I will also say that if proof is in the pudding, the Pope has agreed and I believe is meeting with, as we speak, the French president.
So we have an American Pope who won't even come home for this country's 250th anniversary, and yet he's willing to meet with the French president.
He won't get anywhere near Donald Trump.
He won't get anywhere near The American government, or step on American soil for these celebrations.
But yes, you will go meet with Emmanuel Macron.
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This all matters.
And I promise I'm going to go to my discussion with Dr. LeCoc here in a second.
I just want to say one more thing to set the stage.
This all matters because we chronicled last week that Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon had a Protestants only religious service.
So there was no Catholic service last Friday for Good Friday.
Catholics don't have Mass on Friday, but they do have Stations of the Cross and other rituals, and that was not offered.
It was not held.
It was not part of what was there.
So the Pentagon did, as we talked about at length last week, make sure that there was going to be a church service for Protestants, but not Catholics.
That is obviously part of the context, because that's part of the context in which the Pope has continually criticized war, continually sent What seemed like direct missives at Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump regarding Iran.
The Pope has been unrelenting on this front.
So, in order to figure all this out, I did speak to my friend and colleague, Dr. Thomas LeCocq, who's an associate professor at Grandview University, whose writing has appeared at The Bulwark and the Washington Post and many other outlets, and who's trained as a medievalist, but also is an expert on American politics and religion.
He, I think, shed some real light on what this meeting. and report mean and what we should be paying attention to.
Dr. Thomas Lecoq, one of our favorite historians, medievalists, foul mouthed academics.
Welcome back to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
What is on your mind when it comes to this meeting?
What do you think is actually important here?
So, I think the timing of this is an important part because this is a report of a closed door January meeting.
This is, if I'm remembering my timeline correctly, this is also the same time that invitations were being extended for the Pope to attend the 250th celebrations.
And him being very clear that he was not only not going to do that, he was going to spend it.
With immigrants instead.
So, this is part of a series of attempts by the Trump administration in various ways to co opt the genuine popularity of Pope Leo into this kind of celebration of America that have all gone horribly awry.
But I think this is also, when this is coming out, it's easy to see this in the context of condemnations of hexess behavior at the Department of Defense, to see this in the context of condemnations of Iran.
This is the context to that.
Right.
We are now going back and getting a better sense of where the conflict is coming from, and the way that an American threat about the papacy needing to back American military power threats and violence has backfired so much that the Pope, far from bending to their will, has taken this as effectively the challenge I am the Christ vicar on earth.
I will use my megaphone to tell you exactly what I think of your genocidal campaigns.
I've rarely loved a pope more than I love having this background effect, which is a threat, which is a fundamental threat to the safety of the papacy.
The response to this being, you know, you and what army?
And their response is the American government's like, I have God.
It's great.
This is actually a beautiful moment.
Other than the madness of the way that you then get little bits and pieces of not only the threat, the military threat aspect, The side comment by some other anonymous US official of the Avignon Papacy, which is a truly insane thing to bring up in this context, but is why all the medievalists are losing their minds.
And then what it means when you have, especially within the context of the Pentagon and how weird the Department of Defense is under Pete Hegseth's reign, how you piece this together with all the other parts.
Avignon Papacy Madness00:02:42
So, what we have are two reports one coming from the Free Press, one coming from Christopher Hale, letters from Leo.
These have been picked up, they are now all over the place in terms of mainstream media, legacy media, and so on.
But in those reports, there's a mention that an American official, it does not seem, and I'm happy to defer to you here, Thomas, that it was Bridge Colby.
It was someone else who we don't know yet, mentions the Avenue and Papacy.
So we need a decoder ring for that.
Why, when you hear that, does that signal a threat to the living Pope, Pope Leo?
So the Avenue and Papacy, this fascinating moment where for most of the 14th century, the popes who are considered canonical now, Are no longer in Rome, but in the modern day French city of Avignon.
At the time, it's within the Kingdom of Arles, which is part of the Holy Roman Empire.
But it's a series of seven French popes who are moved into an area much closer to French power.
It comes about because of the conflict between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France.
Boniface and Philip had fought over papal authority, over money, over really who's in control of the French church and the assets of the French church.
It's a fairly long form fight.
There are some excommunications back and forth.
And it ends with the fourth sending his agents into Rome, where they attack Bonfit VIII.
They beat him, they imprison him for three days, and then they withdraw, but he dies a month later from a fever that is almost assuredly as a result of the kind of beating and abuse and imprisonment.
So the threat of an Avignon papacy starts with the idea of a recalcitrant pope who does not acknowledge the temporal authority of the king of France, that the response to this is effectively the beating to death of the pope.
And afterwards, you get the kind of Barely aggressive pressure after the death of the next pope, Benedict XI.
You, a king of France who pushes the conclave to elect the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who's a friend of his, as Pope Clement V in 1305.
Clement refused to move to Rome.
In 1309, he moves to the papal enclave at Avignon, and for the next 67 years, it stays there.
We talk about this as the Babylonian captivity of the papacy, which may be hyperbolic, but there is a degree to which you have a specific place where the king of France has a much more direct hand in the control of the church.
With armies across the realm that could be brought in if they ever needed to.
It's worth mentioning that Clement V is also the guy who bans the Knights Templar.
It's like the end of the Knights Templar.
We all get really weird with, like, oh, it was heresy and were they worshiping demons and are they still around?
Like, that's all French Revolution fan fiction conspiracy rot and like people should get offline.
Catholic Church Political Danger00:12:18
But it's also like this is the Pope who, as soon as he becomes Pope and the King of France, like, hey, you know, at that time I was at war with all of my neighbors and I asked to like tax the church.
What if we tax the Knights Templar out of existence too?
And the Pope was like, I would like to not die, sure.
There is an actual, this is a language of a metric of state capture of the Catholic Church.
Does it make sense in American context?
Absolutely not.
These are people who are deeply brain rotted, but it is an actual active threat.
Let me translate and see if you agree with my, I'm your student.
I'm in an oral exam.
I'm spitting this back to you in office hours.
You tell me if this holds up in like common parlance.
The United States in January is trying to get the Pope to come home.
For the 250th anniversary of the country, the birthday, the sequicentennial.
The Pope is the first American Pope.
He's the only Pope who's ever eaten a hot dog at a ball game.
I mean, at least as a kid, at least as an eight year old.
The only Pope who knows how good corn on the cob tastes on the 4th of July.
And he's like, you know, not going to happen.
Just we're not doing it.
And things get worse and worse.
He's actually fairly critical starting around the new year in January of the Trump presidency, foreign policy.
And it goes from Hey, Leo, do you want to come home?
Sequicentennial?
Maybe we'll get you eating a hot dog?
Ball game?
I don't know.
Downtown Chicago?
What do you think?
To, all right, bro, if we need to, we'll capture you, put you in a castle, and beat you until you're no longer with us, and then we'll pick our own pope.
Does that sound like the weird, you know, bro culture threat that was made?
Or what did I exaggerate?
I don't think, here's the thing I don't think you exaggerate a thing.
I don't think anyone said the last part out loud.
I think we have to go with like, it'd be a real shame if something happened to you.
Exactly.
The mafia implication.
That is the only difference I would make is that it's the mafia implication.
It's like, it's real dangerous in these parts around Avignon, if you know what I mean.
Don't you want to come home for the 4th of July?
You've been to the south side of Avignon lately?
Have you?
I mean, it's that, right?
That's insane.
But these are also.
These are both deeply unserious people who also just have killed a lot of people this year.
And that's the problem, right?
It's the two parts.
It's the stuff that seems like clown fodder, but also you have the death tolls of what the US military is doing all around the world.
So, like, that's the problem.
You are going from the actual serious person, because Bridge Colby is as serious as you would be, regardless of the politics.
He's a grown up.
We have a direct quote from him.
The direct quote that we get in these stories is that America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world.
The Catholic Church had better take its side.
That's a very particular argument.
And then the account is that one U.S. official, and they don't name which one, invokes the Avignon Papacy.
So you have one person who's making the very serious argument that we have the military power to do whatever, which is a threat, but it's also a call for the Catholic Church to align itself with a dominant temporal power.
And Bridge Colby is Catholic.
This is not necessarily, and I have not done a deep dive into his life because I don't need to be sad about everything every day.
This could be an argument of like, you know, Surely my church will support me in this.
The other one is then like, sure, surely you wouldn't want an accident to happen at two o'clock on a Friday.
That's the combination.
It's the bad cop and cartoonish villain cop.
I imagine it, and then we can get off of this.
You know, this, I don't want to get too carried away and be silly because this, as you're saying, this is incredibly serious.
People's lives have been lost.
The world order is on edge all the time based on whatever Donald Trump's posting on True Social.
They're doing things like invoking the Avenue and Papacy to the Vatican representative.
I imagine Bridge Colby, who went to Harvard and Yale as somebody who is sitting there talking to the representatives from the Vatican and playing the good cop, the serious person wearing the suit and tie.
And then in the movie, I imagine someone behind him, the Ben Affleck character from Goodwill Hunting, who's sort of like, well, yeah, Avignon Papacy, am I right, guys?
I read about that on Wikipedia today.
I don't know.
That's an option, isn't it, there, Bridge?
And Bridge is like, yeah, we don't want to do that, but back to the thing at hand, right?
So I imagine it in that way.
Let's zoom out.
What does this actually mean?
I mean, you're a historian.
In one sense, I think to me, what is significant is the US government is actually daring to approach.
The Vatican in this way, which seems like a truly horrendous miscalculation.
But I think you're also going to tell me, and I don't want to like ruin the surprise, that this is all part of a long history of the United States in relationship to Catholics and the Catholic Church.
So give us some context.
So I think part of it is that it is really exciting to see how quickly people forget things like the bedrock influence of anti Catholicism in American history, culture, language, religion.
I think that there are many moments where we forget that positive change is possible in this country because of how bad things are in the moment.
But the fact that we're noticing how bad things are at the moment actually speaks to a genuine narrative of societal progress, right?
The fact that you have to write awful, like, New York Times articles about, like, did wokeness go too far, but they're still using the R word in there instead of saying it, even just saying, like, it's back, baby.
No, it's not, because now you know it's inappropriate.
Things have changed.
I say this because.
Anti Catholicism and like overt anti Catholicism in the public sphere is a bedrock American concept, but post Kennedy, we usually are quieter about it.
I think people forget that like there's an awful lot of stuff being done around Kennedy saying that he's going to be a puppet of the Pope if he's elected, and you cannot put nukes in the hands of the papacy by, you know, electing Kennedy president.
That seems crazy to us now.
That's not that long ago.
You know, the Quebec Act that effectively grants the legal use of the Catholic Church and traditional powers in Quebec.
Is the last of the Intolerable Acts that really pushes us into the American War of Independence and its fears of ecclesiastical dominion and rights of Catholics added to all the other things.
These are real things.
1834, the Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, kind of modern day Somerville, gets burned down by a mob.
There are plenty of bits and pieces of the way that active violence against Catholics happens over and over and over again.
And there's a language of that that then we use that same language to apply to every other religious group.
This is a bedrock, effectively Puritan idea that then spreads out.
We don't do it as often, but it's one of the parts that's always been so weird about the kind of far right Catholic forces trying to make coalition with far right evangelical forces and assuming that, like, we're all on the same side.
No, you're cannon fodder for the evangelicals who don't believe you're Christians.
I grew up in a town where people would refer to the Christian church and the Catholic church as separate things because one is Christian, one is Catholic, which is other.
And I don't think modern Catholics treat Protestants that way anymore.
But that doesn't mean that your kind of hardline evangelical Protestants don't still view the world in that way.
Can I bring in the idea that our vice president likes to pal around with people who I consider Catholic integralists?
So, what is a Catholic integralist?
It's somebody who thinks that the US government should be integrated into the Catholic Church.
And he takes a lot of cues from people who are post liberal Catholics, Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule and Sorb Amari.
And he quotes Brent Bozell Jr.
He's all for this.
And my response is like this event shows us that we have Pete Hexath on one side, a Protestant who's doing no Catholics at the Good Friday services.
And then we have JD Vance, the Catholic convert, on the other.
And I just want to say to those Catholic traditionalists or integralists at this moment it's all fun to theorize until you realize that the U.S. government, as you say, has this long history of Catholicism and will turn on you at any moment.
And the history of this integration.
Is more like the Avenue on Papacy, where the king is holding the pope captive, or, and we're not going to have time for this, Napoleon arrests pope after pope.
It's more like usually the monarch and the tyrant control the papacy and the church rather than the church controlling the government.
I mean, do you see some of that at play here?
I think this is the two parts of this.
So, on the one hand, you have competing factions within Christian nationalism, and it's really much more convenient to talk about Christian nationalism as a singular movement.
But if you actually start looking into it, that breaks down very quickly.
Catholic integralism does not work with any of the Protestant notions of Christian nationalism because these two groups hate each other.
You have the factors of Catholic integralists in the Christian nationalist front who look to a Ferdinand Franco and an idea of a strong man who will help butcher the unbeliever and the communists.
I think the Catholic far right is kidding themselves over and over and over again about whether or not they can make common cause with these groups.
And I'd like to bring it to Pete Henseth.
I mean, this is the Department of Defense.
This is the Secretary of Defense who is holding Protestant only Easter services, who has put together weekly, like monthly sermons in the Pentagon.
But it's also his pastor, Brooks Pottinger, is being moved to a church plant, they're not calling it a church plant yet, a church service of Christ Church from Moscow.
I know the CREC Church.
Brooks Pottinger's defense, if you haven't done this, the podcast Reformation Red Pill, don't listen to it.
It's horrible.
We did it.
We've talked about it on the show.
Oh, God.
Well, did you guys talk about the Telerico part?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Everyone wants to focus on the crucify him with Christ, and that's what Pogger wants to defend.
I don't care about that part.
I get what we're talking about there.
It's the, it's Haymes, who used to be the intern there, talking about this is where you have imprecatory psalms.
This is where you pray strongly.
Yep.
It's the, it's part, if it would not be within God's will to do so, talking about the death and new life, stop him by any means necessary.
Yep.
This is the threats against a liberal Presbyterian.
Yep.
Do you think this is not the worldview about Catholics as well?
Yep.
I think the biggest problem with the kind of Avignon Papacy remarks is that it would require, frankly, radical traditionalists to have a spine.
Radical traditional Catholic Church, where the Catholic Church have a spine.
And I would respect them more if they, frankly, had the balls to elect an anti pope.
And I don't mean the like 47 set of Vaticanist ones who every single branch of that tradition has their own conclave.
And if you don't know what this is, there is a factor within Catholicism that believes after the death of like Pius VII, right before Second Vatican, that there has not been a legitimate pope since.
So, they just elect random traditions, and there are like seven or eight of them going around.
And maybe they matter, maybe they don't.
Who cares?
If the far right radical traditionalists had the courage of their convictions, they would have declared an anti pope by now.
But they're cowards who won't.
People like Carlo Maria Vigano, who was the apostolic nuncio to the United States through the beginning of Trump's first term, got excommunicated.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The bishop of Tyler, Texas, got removed from his role.
The kind of biggest names within that movement.
Are gently being pruned from the tree because they are bad Catholics, but also too cowardly to do something about it.
Catholic integralism doesn't work in the United States because the United States would never accept it because too much of our kind of ideology is bedrock anti Catholicism.
But it also doesn't work because all your allies hate you.
So having a threat of an Avignon papacy is maybe the best case scenario for one branch of it, but it would never work because one, the papacy as a whole, you can kidnap the man, there are means in place to then replace him.
You just have a new conclave.
And two, you're never going to build a Catholic Caesarea Papism in the United States.
The dominant faction of Christian nationalism is using Catholic integralists to push their aims.
Integralism Fails in America00:15:29
And they'll be the second wave up on the wall.
Well, don't tell Leonard Leo.
Don't tell JD Vance.
No, I mean, don't tell half the Supreme Court.
Don't tell Patrick Denneen and Adrian Vermeel.
Don't tell those folks.
But nonetheless, all right, we're going to have to stop there.
I wish I honestly could do this for three hours with you, and someday I hope we can.
But where can people find you, Thomas?
Right now, I am easiest to find on Blue Sky.
Or if you enjoy the subtle suffering of LinkedIn, I am also there.
I'm the only Thomas LeCocq on earth.
I'm pretty easy to track down.
The subtle suffering of LinkedIn.
That's like, that's such a, that's, you're a poet.
That's amazing.
All right, y'all.
Thomasism is medievalist and he's great.
And I hope you enjoyed what we talked about there.
But I wanted to get another perspective on this.
Rebecca is the digital editor at US Catholic Magazine, co host of the Glad You Asked podcast, and a regular contributor to the National Catholic Reporter.
She wanted me to make sure to let everyone know she's here speaking as herself.
She doesn't represent any of those places in her comments.
But I think she has just a unique and important perspective on all this as somebody who's a journalist, a Catholic, and knows a great deal about the politics of American Catholicism.
Speaking now with Rebecca Bratton Weiss, who is someone who's been on the show before, but it's again been too long, and just so glad to have you back, Rebecca.
Thank you for being here.
Yeah, I'm always excited to talk about church politics.
It's fun sometimes.
So, we have this bombshell report that in January, the Pope's representative to the United States, the Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christopher Pierre, meets with Undersecretary of War.
Elbridge Colby, also known as Bridge.
And there's a whole cadre of other representatives there from the US government.
Apparently, it's a dressing down.
It's a one sided conversation.
The Department of War has come out today and said, no, no, it was great.
Substantive, respectful, no problem.
I guess, I mean, I'll just start.
I'll just let you take it.
What's your reaction?
What seems important when you read the reports?
What did you think?
It didn't surprise me because.
In a way, this was kind of an inevitable conflict that was going to happen.
I think that a lot of Catholic church leadership, and this includes Pope Leo, is extremely diplomatic.
And many of the American bishops and cardinals, archbishops and cardinals, are also very cautious when it comes to confronting, I think, right wing political leaders.
I think we've had a trend.
For a long time, and I attribute this to a lot of culture war activity very much outside of the ranks of the actual governing and teaching bodies of the church.
For a long time, we've had this tendency in the United States to regard liberal or left leaning political initiatives as somehow a threat to the church.
I have a lot of thoughts on why this is quite frankly stupid, but I think that, and I've been saying for a long time, like.
Look, the issue is not like Obama wanting to make sure that women's birth control is covered by their insurance.
The issue is that we have this movement that is pushing back against a core value of the Catholic Church.
And a core value of the Catholic Church is the essential dignity of every human being made in the image of God.
The anti immigration and the anti LGBTQ, the anti humanitarian, Movements associated with the American right are really contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church in a way that some of these fringe issues relating to sex and gender simply aren't.
Like, not everyone would agree with me on that.
So, when Pope Leo has been speaking forcefully but diplomatically about the things the Trump administration has been doing with immigration, with extrajudicial killings, and with now most notably war.
So, I'm not surprised at all that people who can't handle criticism, and that's American right wing Catholics, would push back against it.
So let's stay on the meeting and then I want to go to those right wing Catholics and get your take on what the fallout of this might be across the kind of US Catholic spectrum.
Does it seem extraordinary to you, like it does to me and I think others?
And I think your perspective on this is unique and expert.
Does this seem like a watershed moment in US history in terms of, not in terms of the anti Catholicism of the US government towards the church or to Catholics?
But in terms of an administration having the gall to essentially confront the Pope and the churches, the Vatican's representatives to the US directly and try to strong arm them into getting in line with their foreign policy, which includes, as you've just outlined, conflict, war, indiscriminate bombing, and so on and so forth.
Yeah, this is absolutely unprecedented.
I think in the past, anti Catholicism.
In the United States meant Catholics don't get to influence American policy.
It did not mean Americans get to strong arm the Vatican into not doing what the Vatican is supposed to do.
I think that this is unprecedented in the United States, but it's not unprecedented in history and it's not unprecedented globally when an authoritarian regime becomes very upset at religious leaders for doing.
Their jobs.
One of the things that strikes me is the fact that some of the right wing Catholics that you've mentioned, and I think you know so much about, they have these dreams of the integration of the U.S. government into the Catholic Church.
They're called integralists.
And this may sound fringe, it may sound far fetched, but there are some really accomplished individuals who are you.
Who are United States integralists these days?
Adrian Vermeule, for example, is a Harvard law professor who is a giant in the field of constitutional law.
I'm not sure if he goes so far as to be an integralist, but he's pretty close these days.
Patrick Deneen is a Notre Dame philosopher who's in the news often.
There are people like Sorb Amari, who's a writer and publisher and magazine editor who is a Catholic integralist.
I mean, there are people who are not in the basement in a far off place.
Typing on the internet, who really believe that there's this solution to our problems as a country, and that is to wrap the United States government into the Catholic Church.
I guess for me, this is a reminder that it usually kind of works the other way.
Usually the monarch puts the Pope in a jail somewhere, like in France, whether that's in the 14th century with Avignon, or whether that's Napoleon arresting a couple of popes and being like, yeah, I'll take you.
You'll come with me.
I don't know.
Does that.
I'm just wondering about your thoughts on that.
And then, do you think this will do any, will this ripple in any way to those right wing spaces, or will they somehow deflect it or play it off in a different, different sort of story?
So glad you brought up the integralists because that's been on my mind ever since this came out.
And I think that when Pope Leo was elected, I think the radical traditionalists and sometimes some of just the planned conservatives in the Catholic Church were really tired of beating this dead horse that they created out of their own heads.
They really built up this idea of Pope Francis as being a heretic for a variety of reasons.
And I think they were tired of it.
And then Pope Leo was elected and they were all so excited.
Look, he's wearing the traditional garb.
He's one of us.
And I'm sitting there thinking, he really isn't, guys.
Well, he was educated at CTU in Chicago.
I work with people who went through that same program, who taught in that program.
And it's a very social justice oriented approach.
But yeah, I think that once the little honeymoon period with Leo was over, the dream of integralism, in which somehow or other the church is going to take leadership and integrate with Temporal rule in the United States, I don't think they would want that because what Leo is teaching is, well, you know, Catholic social thought, Catholic tradition.
And I will always reiterate the Catholic traditionalists reject Catholic tradition, they reject the Christian tradition.
What they are referring to is some, and this is not to say that Catholics haven't done horrible things.
The Catholic Church has done horrible things, the Christian Church has done horrible things.
But what the traditionalists are referencing, they really want this authoritarian, patriarchal, top down vision of the church, which will be accommodating of bigotry, accommodating of a neglect for the poor.
Leo's not going to give up that.
So, in a sense, pivoting to, well, I guess we'll have to, the church can't take control of the government.
I guess the government will have to take control of the church was kind of.
Inevitable, especially from people who are very comfortable throwing their weight around, that that's what they perceive to be strength.
That's what they perceive to be power.
So I think that this is, in a sense, and you mentioned the integralists as being, you know, this might seem like a fringe ideology.
These guys got JD Vance into power.
Exactly.
Vance.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I know you've written on the tech side of that.
You know, they were part of it, but so were the Catholic integralists.
So, you know, the oddball fringe is currently running the show.
And those of us who warned about it 10 years ago have a very rueful told you so.
So, yeah, I think that's some of what's going on.
Okay.
So, the Pope, going back to May of last year, so about a year ago, let's call it 11 months ago, there was an attempt to woo Pope Leo when Pope Leo became Pope to spend the sequence centennial, July 4th, in the United States.
And there was a moment, it seems, according to the reporting, where he was considering it and then realized a couple of things.
If he's part of these celebrations, I think at least, and I'm not, I'm not, You know, I'm going off the reporting.
It seems like he would be kind of a pawn in the midterm election race.
Oh, he's appearing at these celebrations.
That means Trump is at the podium and then he's at the podium, or, you know, who knows what the scenario would be, but it just kind of looks like not great, probably in terms of there's a midterm election coming.
Donald Trump is the president.
Do I want to do that if I'm Pope Leo?
Doesn't make sense.
Nonetheless, it's hard to imagine.
The only American Pope ever, the only guy who has been to a Fourth of July barbecue, right?
Saying, I'm good.
And actually, I'm going to go spend the Fourth of July in the Mediterranean on an island that is where refugees and migrants land when they're coming from North Africa to the European continent.
Will that have any effect on American Catholics?
And I know that that's a stupid question because you're like, well, which ones?
And I hear you, and you answer however you want.
I just wonder if there's any sense across the nation, and pick whatever segment of U.S. Catholics you want to talk about here, who see this as a moment where their allegiance to the church and to the Pope and to their faith is going to really start to weigh heavily in distinction from any allegiance they might have had to MAGA or to Trump or whatever he's up to from day to day.
Yeah, I actually think that's a great question, not a stupid one.
So, well, stupid in the sense that, like, US Catholics could be like a Latina church in San Antonio, right?
It could be a super wealthy church in Palo Alto.
It could be any, I mean, US Catholics are as diverse as the nation in some sense.
So, I just mean there's no way to say, well, all US Catholics will do this.
But nonetheless, that's, yeah.
Yeah, we are definitely not a monolith.
And of course, that's one of the issues that the integralists have they'd like us to be a monolith.
They want to cram everyone into these little narrow boxes of white heteronormativity and patriarchy and all of that.
But I do think so.
There are many different flavors of Catholic, and some of them are going to be a ride or die for MAGA.
I think, and I think, I think about this in theological terms.
I think about this in the sense that at a certain point, once you have committed yourself fully to a rejection of the good and a rejection of truth.
You have cut yourself off from the light of the good, to use a platonic expression that could also be a Thomistic idea that we are.
Once you have committed yourself to that, it's very hard to withdraw yourself.
It's almost like a spiritual addiction to evil.
But I think that there are others who have gone along with the MAGA thing because they are accustomed to voting Republican, because they do what the people around them do.
There's a group of Catholics I consider MAGA adjacent.
They voted for Trump, but they're not going to talk about it because a lot of times they still want to be accepted by their progressive friends or because it's kind of cringe to put your political views out there.
And I think a lot of them are waiting to see, because this is a timid crowd, I think a lot of them are waiting to see what their influencers say.
And there are several influencers in that group I keep an eye on.
And some of them have come out and been like, hey, hmm.
Gosh, kind of wish they hadn't said that, Pope Leo.
Navigating Religious Terrain Awkwardly00:09:01
Kind of, ooh, this war, not so great.
And I think we're going to see a little more of that.
I think that these timid people, once they see their timid little leaders poking their little heads out of the ground, they'll start to poke their little heads out as well.
And, you know, I would love to believe that what we're going to see is a massive rejection of MAGA.
From Catholics, I don't think that we will.
I think that white supremacy in the Catholic Church and in the United States is too strong, and anti LGBTQ attitudes are also a huge component there.
But I do think that what we're going to see is a kind of withdrawal of support.
This kind of echoes to me of you're seeing Joe Rogan now sort of say, Well, this doesn't seem or Israel's taking over Lebanon.
I don't know.
This I didn't vote for this, and you're seeing some of folks in those the manosphere spaces do a little bit of this.
I wonder if when you talk about those MAGA adjacent folks waiting for their influencer demigods to tell them what to think about this, then they'll have permission.
Well, if so, like, I think there's probably young men out there who are like in their little friend group, and it's like, I'm 26 and I'm hanging out with my bros, and Joe Rogan said he's not sure the Iran war is a good idea.
So now I'm allowed to kind of say it.
And that strikes me as what you're talking about with some of the MAGA adjacent Catholics in the United States.
Is that a fair comparison?
Yeah, yeah.
I think this is a very, that authoritarianism translates over into most people being very compliant and wanting to have someone tell them what to think.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I think that the final thing for me is we've got this really kind of incredible set of figures who are now embroiled in a kind of United States politics slash religious cold civil war.
So Pete Hegsef did not like, I don't think, Pope Leo saying that God doesn't listen to the prayers of those who perpetrate war.
And we now know all of this context going back to January.
So on Good Friday, there was a Protestants only email sent from the Pentagon saying, hey, no, no, uh, No Catholic service, no Catholic ritual today.
Protestants, Protestants only, which kind of most of American history has been that way.
There's Pete Hegseth, Doug Wilson, primed Christian Reconstructionist dude.
There is this attack on the church and on Poplio's representatives to the United States.
That's another node.
So there's two.
We have Donald Trump, who's kind of just a religious opportunist or a total opportunist.
He takes whatever is good for Donald Trump.
But then there's this awkward JD Vance thing that I just want to talk about before we go.
JD's been in Hungary all week, stumping for Viktor Orban.
He got on the tarmac Wednesday, April 8th, and tried to sort of talk about this in a way that made sense.
Somebody asked him about Cardinal Christopher Pierre, and he sort of said, No, never heard of him.
Wait, oh, him?
Oh, yeah, that guy?
Oh, I think I've spoken to him.
Okay, sure.
And I think some people took that as like, JD's not the Catholic convert he says he is.
He didn't even know who Cardinal Pierre is.
I read that as like JD is trying to navigate a very difficult religious political terrain right now.
And he has totally criticized the Pope and the church in the past.
But nonetheless, it feels to me like he's in a weird place.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe you just think, no, JD's MAGA.
He's going to MAGA up.
He's going to double down.
That's how it's going to go.
But from the Catholic perspective and the Catholic identity of JD Vance, does this feel as awkward as I'm making it out to be?
Or do I just think JD Vance is awkward all the time?
And that's just who this guy is?
I mean, that's a large part of it.
He's a very awkward man and everything he does is weird.
I think it's significant that as a Catholic, he was formed by the kind of Catholics that I, Knew when I was working at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
And this is a very stilted perspective on the church.
He doesn't really know Catholicism.
He's also an opportunist.
He is a liar.
And right now, what he most wants to do is make himself and Trump look good.
But that's, I don't think that's going to be served by, you know, dissing the Pope.
Oh, I do want to say that I think the idea that the evangelicals are going to take.
Control of MAGA and that Catholics are going to be oppressed.
I don't think that's accurate.
I think American Catholics need to get over their persecution complex because that was some time ago.
We have a lot of power.
We control the Supreme Court.
There are huge think tanks, Catholic conservative think tanks manipulating our present administration.
So I think it's less about Catholics versus evangelicals and it's more about.
People of faith who follow Jesus and people of faith who would crucify Jesus.
And if you're going to crucify Jesus, it helps to have the power of empire behind you.
And the United States is an empire, but the church is also an empire.
And I think Vance would like to have both of those.
It's not going to pan out for him.
Last question.
I know I need to let you go.
We started with this dressing down of the Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christopher Pierre, by the Undersecretary of Defense or War.
Ulrich Colby.
His name is Bridge Colby.
His grandfather was the director of the CIA.
He's, it's kind of runs in the family.
If your name is Bridge, I think you have to be in intelligence.
It just sort of seems like there's, what are you going to do?
Sell insurance, coach baseball.
Your name's Bridge.
You're going to be in one of the alphabet soup agencies.
It's going to happen.
He's Catholic.
He is Catholic.
I mean, there are pieces about his Catholic faith.
There are folks out there that are going to be like, how does a Catholic sit with the apostolic nuncio and tell him to go tell the Pope what to do?
Does that, I mean, I know this can happen.
It seemingly did happen.
Can you make us understand how it did happen?
Because a lot of folks are going to be at a loss for that.
I mean, in a way, it's a long and glorious tradition for Catholic politicians to completely reject everything good that the church teaches and to attack the Pope.
I mean, that's before the Avignon Papacy began, Philip the Fair had that huge tussle with Pope Boniface VIII.
And I do want to contextualize this and remind people that at that time, The Pope had papal states, owned a large chunk of Italy, had an army.
The Pope Boniface VIII was not Pope Leo.
Pope Boniface VIII was out of line, and I totally get wanting to tell him off.
Pope Leo is doing the Pope's job, he is teaching on faith and morals.
So I think what's unprecedented there is the idea that a Catholic political leader would chastise and attack the Pope.
While the Pope is very much staying in his lane, the Pope is not trying to interfere with people's marriages.
The Pope is not saying, you must elect this person.
The Pope is not saying, here's my illegitimate son, make him a cardinal.
Like I think that was Alexander VI, he did that.
So I think that's the issue here is that it's a real assault on core teachings of the Catholic Church versus an understandable reaction to the Catholic Church being too big for its bridges.
Yeah, so Pope Leo.
Won't go along with Trump's Monroe Doctrine, Don Roe Doctrine, whatever he calls it.
And the Pope is often speaking about the sinfulness of war, the wickedness of violence.
This is not the Pope getting on the television, getting anywhere and saying, the US president should do this.
Or if the US president doesn't do this, I'm going to do that, right?
I mean, there's no sense of like a threat, an ultimatum, an overstep.
It's simply his theology doesn't align with MAGA.
He cares for the poor.
He cares for migrants.
He doesn't want there to be war.
And so apparently, Bridge Colby needed to go talk to him.
So, anyway.
Yeah.
All right.
We should, I need to let you go.
Connecting with Eagle and Child00:02:53
Rebecca Bratton Weiss, thank you for your time.
Thank you for everything.
Tell us where people can find you and the best way to connect with you and what's going on with the books that made us your book.
And I'm sure there are many, many people listening who will be in the very position that you are.
Outline in the book, which is having read Christian classics and had wonderful authors that they adored as young people.
And they're like, now what do we do with that?
How do I react to that?
How do I reckon with my love for C.S. Lewis or anyone else?
So, what's the best way to connect with you and everything you're doing?
Well, it used to be Twitter back when Twitter was Twitter, but now I'm back to boring old Facebook.
I have a Facebook page, R. Bratton Weiss.
I have a writer page, but that's too much trouble to maintain.
I work at US Catholic.
We've got, I'll put out a plug for US Catholic.
We got some really great material there on immigration justice and LGBTQ rights and things like that.
So, and then you can find my book.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
You can find my book at Orbis.
And if you're a literature nerd like me, You know, read it.
Tell me what you think, man.
I was just laughing because I'm you're just so honest about the author website, which is just like the God's truth.
The second part is like my favorite pub in the world is the Eagle and Child.
My Oxford College that I went to shares a wall with the Eagle and Child.
That is the pub in England where the to you know the Inklings used to go, and it's now owned by Larry Ellison.
So, you know, I'm asking a question not only which beloved Christian authors can I still love, but Shit, can I go to the Eagle and Child?
Do I want to go to the Eagle and Child?
Is it allowed still?
Am I going to buy a beer there?
That seems weird.
I don't know if I want to give Larry Ellison my $6 for a beer.
We are going to call it a day.
Thanks for being here.
I'm going to ask you to do a couple of things.
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