Qwertyman for Monday, April 20, 2026

LIKE MANY people in the world today, I don’t consider myself particularly religious, in the sense of Mass-going, living by the Bible, and toeing Church doctrine. My wife and I do believe in a Supreme Being to whom we are all ultimately responsible, and pray every day and night to God for thanks and guidance in our daily life, but mistrust organized religion while continuing to admire and support such brave and progressive clerics like Fr. Flavie Villanueva in their pastoral work.

I grew up in the Catholic tradition, but l soon began to question and to argue with the Church’s positions on such flashpoints as the role of women, sexuality and reproductive rights, and its ties to authoritarian regimes, not to mention its untaxed wealth and the horrifying cases of sexual abuse.

I’m sure my estrangement is hardly an isolated case, but this isn’t about me as much as it is about the moral authority that, despite all our misgivings, the Catholic Church—and yes, other religions as well—can exert on our deeply troubled world, and how it can provide a welcome and more embracing alternative to the exclusionary politics of neofascist despots like Donald Trump.

The world woke up last week to a series of posts from the American president threatening to destroy Iran’s 6,000-year-old civilization for good, warning Pope Leo XIV to stay out of politics, and posing in an AI-generated picture as Jesus Christ himself. The posts were so atrocious and deranged that even Trump’s faithful MAGA followers were revolted by them, and said so. His erstwhile media ally and drumbeater Tucker Carlson called him the “Antichrist.” Others expressed disbelief, confusion, and dismay over the posts, finally realizing what the rest of us already knew: the man is mad, megalomaniac, and cares for no one and nothing but himself. 

This is a man who, after decimating Iran’s leadership (which quickly bounced back) and killing 170 schoolchildren, declares the war “won,” says that gas prices are “not very high,” and—in the middle of the global economic shock he’s initiated—insists that the tacky ballroom he’s demolished a whole historic wing of the White House for is needed for “national security reasons,” aside from contemplating a monstrous “Arc de Trump” in the nation’s capital. Trump’s growing lunacy is obvious. He has become such a caricature of himself that he will be hard put to outdo his latest acts to keep hogging the headlines, which seems to be his chief preoccupation. 

But what fascinates and appalls me even more is the servile indifference to the truth with which his closest allies continue to defend him, torturing logic and common sense to make Trump seem like some kind of genius who understands something the rest of us don’t, praising the Emperor profusely for his new clothes. His Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for example, acknowledges that while gas and other prices are going through the roof, American consumers “feel good in their heart of hearts.” (Like many in Trump’s orbit, Bessent is a centimillionaire who doesn’t have to line up at the gas station or buy groceries at Walmart.)

More egregious was the defense of the boss by Vice President JD Vance, who cautioned Pope Leo against speaking out on Iran, saying that “I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology. 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.” For someone who only recently converted to Roman Catholicism, Vance sounds precociously learned to lecture the Pope on the theology of just war—a tenet first advanced by St. Augustine and later developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. (Pope Leo just happens to have headed the Augustinian order before becoming Pope, and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Augustinian concept of authority.) Trump’s posing as Jesus, Vance said, was “a joke.”

Trump, of course, is hardly alone in his dislike of the Pope and papal power. Monarchs and politicians have argued with the Vatican for centuries, from Henry VIII to Josef Stalin. (To be fair, many popes—especially during what was called the “pornocracy” early on—were notoriously lustful and corrupt.) All this reminds us of another president—Rodrigo Duterte—who called Pope Francis a “son of a whore” for causing a traffic problem during his visit to Manila in 2015. And why stop at the Pope? In June 2018, in a speech, Duterte called God a “stupid SOB.” Later that year, annoyed by the church’s opposition to his drug war, Duterte told a group of local leaders that their bishops were “useless fools… kill them!” His spokesmen Sal Panelo and Harry Roque tripped over themselves to emphasize that the President was speaking in “hyperbole”—a distinction that was lost to the cops who to0k his orders to kill thousands of drug suspects literally.

And again the real danger here is not just the catastrophic damage these despots bring to our societies and economies but to our mind and hearts, in the continuing acceptance and propagation of falsehood by the self-deluded, in the replacement of our hope and courage with fear, cynicism, and resignation.

But thanks to Donald Trump’s excesses such as his assault on Pope Leo, our sense of outrage seems to have been revived. Leo has categorically said that he is “not afraid of the Trump administration” and has deplored the world’s being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants.” Bravo!

There have been many recent reports of the resurgence of the Catholic Church in America and around the world, especially among the young—the result of a growing need for a moral center of authority where other centers like government have failed, the liberal reforms of Pope Francis, and the quiet but capable and inspiring stewardship of Pope Leo. I may not be a steadfast Catholic, but if Leo continues on the path of righteousness and resistance to tyranny, he can count me in his crusade for peace and justice. Donald Trump may yet turn out to be the best recruiter for the Catholic Church.