On today’s “To the Contrary podcast, Peter Wehner and I discuss his recent piece in The Atlantic, “The American Pope vs. the American President.”
But we also spend some time talking about King Charles III’s speech, in which the King reminded Americans and their faux monarch about the historic roots of the separation of powers. We dove into the absurd indictment of James Comey — which is laughable, but also part of Trump’s pattern of trying to intimidate his critics into silence.
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No president has ever attacked the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church so directly and so personally. Trump called Leo “WEAK on Crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.” He attacked the pontiff for opposing his Iran-war policy, labeling him a “very liberal person” who is “catering to the radical left.” He also said Leo owed his papacy to Trump. It’s unusual, to say the least, for a head of state—in this case, of the most powerful nation in the world—to treat the bishop of Rome as a bitter political rival.
But beyond that, this conflict has a dramatic, even archetypal, quality to it, pitting polar opposites against each other. One is a religious man in the deepest sense; the whole of his life has been shaped by religious disciplines and a theological tradition. He is inseparable from his faith.
The other is completely secular—thoroughly of this age, thoroughly of this world. He measures success by wealth, by power, by sexual conquest. He admitted that he’s never asked God for forgiveness. He has no ties to any church and is in many ways contemptuous of the core teachings of the Christian faith.
Happy Tuesday.
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Some highlights of my conversation with Peter Wehner
The Real King Schools our Fake King
How intimidation silences critics
