Hillbilly heretic & the blasphemer-in-chief school Pope on Christianity

Some of America’s neo-Nazi politicians seem inclined toward conflict, and they’re criticizing the Vicar of Christ for promoting peace in the way taught by Jesus and emphasized throughout the Bible, a book where the word “peace” appears over 400 times in its passages.

The Vice President of the United States, a man who came to the Catholic faith late enough to remember the price of conversion, has taken it upon himself to explain to the first American pope how Christianity works.

It is a spectacle that would be funny if it were not so grim, and grim if it were not so familiar by now.

JD Vance stood before a crowd of cheering conservatives at the University of Georgia on Tuesday. He did what a growing number of American politicians do when a religious leader says something inconvenient. He cited World War II.

The pope had made a simple statement, one that has been carved into stone by saints and scribbled in margins by monks for two thousand years.

Disciples of Christ, Pope Leo XIV said, are never on the side of those who wield the sword and drop bombs.

Vance, the couch-loving conservative con artist who seems to believe that publishing a book about his own spiritual journey qualifies him as a doctor of the church, called the pope wrong.

Vance asked the crowd: Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? He then answered his own question, as men often do when they are not interested in the reply.

Yes, he said. And the crowd applauded, because it is always easier to applaud a comfortable lie than to sit with an uncomfortable truth.

The uncomfortable truth is that the Nazis were not Iran, that 1945 is not 2026, and that the question of whether God takes sides in any human bombing campaign is a theological trap that has snared wiser men than the Vice President.

President Donald Trump, the adjudicated rapist who had already called the first American pontiff “weak on crime” on social media, seemed pleased with his deputy’s performance.

The pope, for his part, told reporters he had no fear of the Trump administration and then posted a quiet message online about God’s heart being torn apart by wars, violence, injustice, and lies.

He did not mention Iran. He did not mention the Vice President. He simply stated a truth so old that arguing with it is like disputing the law of gravity.

But argue Vance did. He told the audience that if the pope is going to opine on matters of theology, he had better get his comments anchored in the truth.

The Vice President, who has anchored his own public statements to several things that have turned out not to be true, added that it is very, very important for the Pope to be careful when talking about theology.

Just as it is important, he said, for the Vice President to be careful when talking about public policy. The audience did not laugh. That tells you something about the audience.

Now, a fair observer might note that the Vatican has been thinking about war and peace since before the United States was a collection of unhappy colonies.

The church’s own catechism, which Vance has presumably read, places such strict conditions on any defensive war that almost no modern conflict survives the test. Pope John XXIII wrote in 1963 that in the atomic age, it is almost impossible to think of war as an instrument of justice.

Pope Francis said we can no longer think of war as a solution. Pope Leo, continuing that line, has made peace the central theme of his pontificate. But Vance, who converted as an adult, has apparently decided that the last two thousand years were just a warm-up for his own arrival.

The Vice President also said he likes the Pope. He admires him. He has gotten to know him a little bit. Leo did not die right after meeting Vance, the way that Francis did.

It does not bother him when the pope speaks, even when he disagrees. Then a voice from the dark interrupted the proceedings, yelling that Jesus Christ does not support genocide.

Vance agreed.

Jesus certainly does not support genocide, he said, whoever yelled that out from the dark. It was a smooth reply, the kind of reply that sounds reasonable until you remember that the administration Vance serves is currently bombing one country, blockading another, and sending six thousand additional troops to the Middle East aboard the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is moving more firepower into the region. The ceasefire with Iran is set to expire in a week. The President has announced a blockade of Iranian ports.

And the Vice President is in Georgia, telling a crowd of true believers that the pope needs to be more careful.

You could not make this up. And if you tried, a good editor would send it back for being too on-the-nose.

The pope, for his part, said nothing more on Tuesday. He did not need to.

He had already said that those who pray do not kill or threaten with death. He had already said that true strength is shown in serving life, not in dropping bombs from thirty thousand feet.

Those words stand, unchanged and untroubled, by whatever a vice president says in a college auditorium.

That is the way it is, and if anyone is still keeping score, that’s the way it has always been.