As one who would hitherto have been described as a conservative, Fr Dwight Longenecker writes:
Scrolling through social media this morning, I was struck by a double image: a jet fighter with a large icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary blazoned across it, next to an AI-generated image of Donald Trump radiating a kind of messianic glory in front of a flowing American flag and the motto ‘Thank God for Trump’. The person posting bore the profile name ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’. Above the double image that ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’ posted was the text: ‘God bless America and Trump. Thank you Jesus for sending Trump to stand up to an apostate pope in error with church doctrine.’
The bitter vituperation against Pope Leo by right-wing American Catholics is astonishing. After the Pope’s clash with Trump over the war in Iran and his support for the poor and immigrants, social media posts from Trump supporters have called Pope Leo a homosexual, a lackey of the Lavender Mafia, a puppet of the left-wing Obama/Axelrod political machine, a socialist, a communist and a hand-picked successor to the Marxist shielder of sex offenders, Pope Francis. The frightening fanaticism of die-hard Catholic Trump supporters is bewildering, but when one looks at the history and wider context, it is not surprising.
For wider context, one needs to understand American politics from the post-war period onwards. Of the two political parties – Republican and Democrat – the Democrats presented themselves as the party of the poor, the dispossessed, the immigrants and the working class. They were for the little man: the trade unions, equal rights, welfare and standing up against the wealthy East Coast establishment. As such, the Democrats also had the Catholic vote. The Republicans stood for the wealthy, the property owners, the white Protestant middle class, much of the university-educated and the establishment elite.
But from the 1960s onwards there was an about-turn. It became fashionable to defend the poor and fight for equal rights, and those equal rights were not only for black Americans. Feminists and homosexuals were also demanding equal rights. As intellectuals, the entertainment industry and media figures joined in, the Democratic Party became the party of a new kind of elite – the politically correct elite. What had been support for the poor, ethnic minorities, the working class and immigrants evolved into support for a wide spectrum of aggrieved identities.
As the Democratic Party shifted from the working class to this new elite, its traditional base began to move. Ordinary working-class Democrats (and Catholics) realised that their common-sense values – both economic and moral – were more aligned with the Republican Party. This shift was driven in part by the ‘Moral Majority’ in the 1970s, which entered the culture wars over sexual morality and abortion, and through which Protestants and Catholics began to see themselves as allies rather than enemies.
In a television interview with Donald Trump decades before he pursued political ambitions, the interviewer was walking down a street in New York City and asked Trump if he had ever considered politics. Trump replied, prophetically: ‘Sure, and if I did, I’d win.’
‘Who would vote for you?’ the interviewer asked.
Pointing to the construction workers on one of his building projects, Trump said: ‘Those guys up there’.
They were all waving to him and calling his name.
After the blue-blood East Coast establishment reign of the Bush family over the Republican Party, billionaire Donald Trump came to prominence. Formerly a registered Democrat, he understood the cultural shift that had taken place. The workers, the ‘little guys’, the silent majority were now Republicans, not Democrats. He portrayed himself as an ordinary man who had made good. He was shrewd and spoke – and acted – not like the Bush family, but like the construction workers.
Was he coarse and foul-mouthed? They were too. Did he have an eye for a beautiful woman? He was like them. Did he cut deals and make money? They wished they could. Did he avoid taxes, distrust big government and suspect the establishment of being corrupt? That was their view too. When he ended up being persecuted by that crooked and corrupt establishment, he became their martyr. When he survived an assassination attempt, that sealed the deal.
Now let us weave in religion. Many of these same working-class and middle-class Americans were Christians – both Catholic and Protestant. They did not like Trump’s language or morals, but they preferred him to the alternative, for by now the Democrats were firmly aligned with abortion rights, feminism, LGBTQ+ activism, transgender ideology and open borders.
Catholics who once voted Democrat because it was ‘the party of the poor’ hesitated when ‘the poor’ appeared to include a wide range of social outliers. In their attempt to be tolerant, the Democrats seemed, to these voters, to indulge the worst elements of the underclass – the indigent, addicts and the homeless. Catholics may have wanted to help the poor, but for many this was a bridge too far.
Donald Trump came with a promise to clean up cities, deport criminal immigrants, support the family, ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington and ‘Make America Great Again’.
When he took action alongside Israel regarding Iran, these supporters cheered – Catholics included. Many viewed Muslims as a threat and saw Iran’s actions, both internationally and domestically, as justification for American force.
For right-wing American Catholics there was an additional factor: Pope Francis. Many conservative Catholics believed that Francis disliked America, did not understand traditional Catholics and did not wish to. They viewed him as aligned with liberation theology and hostile to their concerns. If Francis did not like them, they returned the sentiment.
Now Pope Leo has assumed the throne of Peter, these same Catholics have convinced themselves that he is the result of a conclave shaped by Francis and his allies – Cardinals Cupich, Tobin and McElroy.
Too many are declaring that they are Catholic, but ‘this Pope is not my Pope’.
Mr Trump is their hero instead, and their battle cry is: ‘Thank you Jesus for sending Trump to stand up to an apostate pope.’
I realise there is little I can do to address this situation.
However, there are five steps I think ordinary American Catholics should take. First, we should heed the words of St Paul: ‘I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness’ (I Timothy 2:1–2). Considering these words were written during the reign of Nero, it should not be too much to ask.
Second, we should admit that it is the Pope’s role to speak out on moral as well as doctrinal issues and that it is acceptable for him to challenge the White House. Third, we should do the Holy Father the courtesy of discovering what he really said, rather than relying on scare headlines from bias-affirming news sources and social media. Fourth, we should be better informed about Catholic social teaching, realising that it offers a more expansive approach to world affairs that is balanced and fully Catholic.
Finally, we should all try harder to see the issues from the other side. We may disagree with our fellow Catholics on political questions, but if we grant that they hold their positions in sincere good faith, they might return the courtesy and grant that we also hope, pray and work for the best. In this mutual respect, the unity at the heart of the Catholic faith will be nurtured and prosper.
And as one who would hitherto have been described as a liberal, David Gibson writes:
In 1899, Pope Leo XIII sent a letter to the Catholic bishops of the United States condemning the errors of what he called “Americanism”—a temptation, he warned, to embrace pluralism, religious liberty, and freedom of expression and other dangerously “Protestant” ideas in an effort to help Catholics assimilate to the surrounding culture. Not only did the Catholic Church eventually embrace most of the concepts that Leo deplored, but even at the time, the American bishops assured him that his objections were unfounded. In their view, Catholics in their country could be both good Americans and good Catholics. The bishops were right, and what became known as “the phantom heresy” of Americanism was largely forgotten.
But if Leo XIII was wrong about what would corrode the religious identity of Catholics back then, it turns out he was right to worry about American Catholic identity; he was just a century ahead of his time. The recent clashes between Pope Leo XIV—who took that name to signal his commitment to advancing the previous Leo’s better-known teachings on social justice—and the Trump administration have underscored how U.S. Catholics have come to behave as though they are religious authorities unto themselves. This ecclesiological framing best explains the unprecedented drama between Washington and the Vatican and the challenge facing the first American pope as he marks the one-year anniversary of his election.
President Trump sparked the war of words with a characteristically blustery social media post blasting Leo as “WEAK on Crime” and warning that Leo “should get his act together as Pope” because he was “hurting the Catholic Church.” It sounded as if Trump were lambasting a local official who had disobeyed a party boss rather than a Roman pontiff who had critiqued the president’s genocidal threat to send Iranians “back to the stone age, where they belong.” Trump refused to apologize for the post and doubled down on his insults (even as he deleted another post that depicted him as Jesus working a miracle, an AI image that offended many in his Evangelical base).
What was striking was that, despite some initial tone-policing from Trump’s Catholic allies, many prominent Catholics in the United States soon shifted the focus to debates over just-war theory or the proper relationship between church and state, and some of them suggested that it was Leo who had stepped over the line. “I love the Catholic Church,” border czar Tom Homan told reporters. “I just wish they’d stick to fixing the Church because there’s issues—I know because I’m a member—instead of politics.” Vice President J. D. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, went so far as to tell the pope that “it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality” and “what’s going on in the Catholic Church.” Later that week he warned the pope to “be careful” when he “opines on matters of theology.”
This episode is not just about the outsized egos of politicians or even policy differences, nor can it be chalked up to the naïveté of converts. Yes, Church leaders likely regard Vance’s pronouncements on theology the way epidemiologists view RFK Jr.’s opinions on vaccines. But the split really goes back to a deeper alienation between the U.S. Church and the rest of the Catholic Church. While the Catholic Church in the United States started as a “church of immigrants,” many of these newcomers followed the classic American progression from Democratic urban ethnic enclaves to mainline Republican suburbs, and from social liberalism to establishment conservatism. Throughout the relatively conservative papacies of John Paul II (1978–2005) and Benedict XVI (2005–2013), the emerging leaders of this rightward-leaning Catholicism could plausibly claim favored status in Rome. But there were awkward tensions even then. Occasionally, conservative Catholics in the United States had to redact a papal teaching to make it align with GOP economic orthodoxy and culture-war politics. They often spoke as if their zealous commitment to the Church’s teaching about abortion gave them leeway to disregard inconvenient papal statements—like John Paul II’s forceful denunciation of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003. Notwithstanding their own differences with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, they insisted that any Catholic not aligned with the pope was a “bad” Catholic and unworthy of inclusion in the workings, ministries, and even sacraments of the Church.
Then two things happened. First, the conclave of March 2013 elected an Argentine cardinal, Pope Francis, who upended those conventions. Francis ended special access for conservative Americans and insisted that the Gospel message demanded that they, like all Catholics, welcome the stranger and care for the most vulnerable. Suddenly many self-styled “orthodox” Catholics could no longer claim a papal mandate for their ideology but neither could they claim a “good” Catholic had to agree with the pope because they obviously did not. One popular response to this predicament was to argue that not only was the pope wrong, but that he was promoting heresy and fomenting schism and might not even be a legitimate pope. This was not just dissent but a thoroughgoing dismissal of the papal magisterium.
The second development was the rise of Donald Trump. Having loosened the ties binding them to the wider Catholic world, many conservative U.S. Catholics attached themselves to Trump’s nationalist populism and then to the increasingly powerful Christian nationalism of his Evangelical base. Each step drew them further away from Rome’s orbit. In response to Mater et magistra, Pope John XXIII’s 1961 encyclical on the Church’s role promoting social justice, William F. Buckley’s National Review famously retorted, “Mater si, Magistra no”—mother yes, teacher no. The slogan of many conservative Catholics in 2026 might be “MAGA si, Magistra no.” U.S. Catholics these days can talk about Rome the way anti-Catholic Protestants used to, and they seem to think this is normal. Their first loyalty is not to the pope or any bishop, but to the leaders of their anti-globalist political movement. Consider that Vance’s backer and mentor, the idiosyncratically Christian tech billionaire Peter Thiel, says he worries about Vance’s “popeism” and counsels the vice president to distance himself from Rome, which he sees as the source of a potential “Caesaro-Papist fusion” that could usher in the anti-Christ.
The election of Pope Leo a year ago has not reversed this trend. Though different from Francis in various ways, Leo has made it clear from the start that he intends to maintain the missionary impulse and prophetic stance of his predecessor. Conservatives convinced Francis’s pontificate was anomalous were shocked that the College of Cardinals voted for continuity, not revanchism. Much of the Catholic right has spent the last year trying to interpret Leo as one of their own, but Leo eludes easy categorizations, and recent weeks have shown that he is no less willing to speak his mind than Francis was. Many Catholics in the United States would rather he didn’t.
The fierce response to Leo’s words represents a historic shift in the religious sensibility of American Catholicism, away from the communal toward a radical individualism, from the universal to a tribal nationalism. MAGA Catholics act as if they are arguing with some guy dressed in white running an NGO in Rome; they are in fact rejecting what the pope speaks for, and from: a tradition developed over centuries and a “sense of the faithful” representing some 1.4 billion other Catholics around the world (U.S. Catholics constitute just five percent of the Church).
The wealth and influence of U.S. Catholics has certainly contributed to this mindset, giving many an outsized view of their own might and righteousness. Some, like the bloviating Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, may declare themselves done with Catholicism. But most will stick around, while continuing to believe that, whatever any pope says, they themselves know best. Even if Trump falls out of favor with American Catholics, as he has with nearly every other sector of the electorate, what was once a phantom heresy will remain an uncomfortable reality.
Can the trend be reversed? One way forward would be for American Catholics to look outward. In Leo XIII’s day, the concern was to keep American Catholics connected to Rome. For Leo XIV, the challenge is to connect them to global Catholicism. It was perhaps providential that Leo embarked on his first marathon foreign trip, an eleven-day journey to Africa, just as the American president was taking aim at him. Much as Leo tried to tamp down the narrative that his every utterance was a direct response to Trump, the issues he highlighted during his four-nation journey were ones that also resonate in the United States—violence, corruption, economic inequality. In strife-torn Bamenda in northwest Cameroon, Leo told those gathered in the cathedral that, “in a world turned upside-down” and “ravaged by a handful of tyrants…today you are the city on the hill, resplendent in the eyes of all!” Here was the first pope from the United States conferring the foundational American identity—an image drawn from the Gospel of Matthew by the Puritan leader John Winthrop—on an African country that Donald Trump probably considers a “shithole.”
Similarly, on July 4, as his native country celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Leo will be celebrating Mass on a rocky Mediterranean island where desperate African refugees first find safe haven if they survive the perilous crossing. The pope’s visit to Lampedusa could be seen as a declaration of interdependence, a message that American ideals are inclusive, not tribal, as well as a vivid demonstration of how to be both a good American and a good Catholic.


