President Trump against Pope Leo, on Behalf of Catholicism?

"When we speak without piety in regard to our elders, it provokes people to despise their elders. So in this sense, Mr Trump is a Marxist and a Liberal in the most essential aspect of those movements."

From One Peter Five

By Timothy Flanders, MA

Modern popes have been against modern warfare since Benedict XV.

US President Donald Trump made one of his characteristic social media posts last night, as the Holy Father was preparing for his trip to Africa.

The good thing about President Trump is that he’s helping to restore the Doctrine of Two Swords. But first let’s talk about the bad side. First, this post is against the virtue of piety. The virtue of piety is the Fourth Commandment, which is an essential piece of human cultures everywhere. If people do not respect their elders, every society crumbles. The essence of Liberalism, Marxism and Modernism is disdain for elders and sneering at the prior generation.

President Trump seems to have as much piety as a ten year old, and so he speaks like a ten year old bully on the playground on social media. This is an abomination against public decorum, and every Christian should oppose him on this and warn him, as it is written: Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it on the day of judgment (Matt. xii. 36).

When we speak without piety in regard to our elders, it provokes people to despise their elders. So in this sense, Mr. Trump is a Marxist and a Liberal in the most essential aspect of those movements. His words seem to be intended to cause Catholics and other Americans to despise the Holy Father, to whom the whole earth owes the greatest piety of any living human in the Church militant. This puts his vice president, who is a pious Catholic, in a difficult situation. Let us pray always for Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance.

Nevertheless, at the same time, President Trump’s government is helping to restore – albeit clumsily – the Two Swords doctrine. Why is that?

First of all, what is the Two Swords doctrine? It is the traditional dogma non definitum which defines the relationship between the spiritual and temporal powers of Christendom. The phrase “Church and State” is a Liberal dichotomy and should be abandoned by Catholics. The phrase should be changed to “clerics and lay people” or “spiritual and temporal powers.” Why? Because the State is (or should be) also made up of Baptised Catholics. Therefore the State is the Church and the clergy is the Church.

In the 19th century, due to the sins of lay rulers against the clergy, Blessed Pope Pius IX created a major wound in this situation by refusing to call lay rulers to Vatican I, which was a massive innovation in the history of the Church, and cost him the Council (literally), when the French troops had to be recalled from Rome and the Freemasons sacked Rome – that’s when “Rome [lost] the Faith and [became] the seat of the Antichrist [Freemasonry],” a fact later dramatically witnessed in the life of St. Maximilian Kolbe (see my article “The Real Alta Vendita: When the Gates of Hell “Prevailed” in 1870.”)

Contrary to the Trad myth about Vatican II, the Second Vatican Council actually did a great deal to restore a traditional ecclesiology with regard to the clericalism of the 19th century, by expanding the scope of “the Church” to be grounded in the common Baptism and Confirmation of clergy and laity, and urged the laity to reclaim their rights as rulers in the Church by Christianising society, condemning the Liberal error of “separation of Church and State” as “that ominous doctrine,” citing Immortale Dei.[1]

What does this have to do with Donald J. Trump? First of all, the clergy themselves have already done a great deal to restore the Two Swords doctrine by posting policies in many dioceses worldwide to report sexual abuser priests to the police. That means that the clergy are asking the lay people to rule them – to govern the Church itself in this area – in this delict against the moral law. In the ideal of Christendom, the clergy should rule themselves and discipline their own bad priests, but this is a stop-gap measure to restore something of sanity in our time of the Third Pornocracy.

But what Trump is doing is fighting for his rights as a lay ruler. He was baptised Presbyterian in 1959 so I assume his baptism is valid and he is actually a Christian, even though I’m not convinced he has any piety and obviously he is not Catholic. Nevertheless, Mr. Vance seems to be pious, and there are many good Catholics trying to work with Mr. Trump to govern these United States according to Catholic social teaching. The Trump Administration has always been asserting its legitimate rights to govern the temporal sphere: economics, politics, immigration policy, etc. This sphere is by definition the laity’s jurisdiction. It is not the domain of the clergy. The clergy have every right to expound upon the fundamental principles of Catholic social teaching. But the clergy have no right to dictate to the lay rulers the exact policy that they must take on economics and politics.

This also includes waging war. The laity, by definition, wield the temporal sword. It is their right and jurisdiction to decide when to wage war, and the clergy should never use weapons, even in self-defence, as St. Thomas teaches (II-II q64 a4). (For more on the mutual relationship of clergy and laity, see Alan Fimister’s article “Lay Clericalism and Clerical Laicism.”) So the Trump administration is re-establishing the rights of lay rulers to govern their own jurisdiction.

Nevertheless any cleric – especially Pope Leo – has every right to manifest to lay rulers their opinion of their policies in the temporal sphere. And in many cases – most cases – the wars of lay rulers are unjust and do not meet the strict conditions of just war theory. Since Pope Benedict XV during World War I, the popes have been increasingly condemning modern war, whose methods have become more and more unjust since they murder innocence civilians when whole cities are bombed, as we saw during World War II. (One of the only condemnations in Vatican II was a condemnation of modern warfare wherein cities are bombed: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.” Therefore it’s completely false for Mr. Trump to say that the Holy Father is OK with Iran or any country having nuclear weapons, much less using them.) It is lamentable that many American Catholics do not know that the Church is traditionally anti-war (although not pacifist). This is the traditional Catholic teaching, and this anti-war stance has only increased in the modern period.

Last week President Trump threatened Iran with evil actions in war which would cause immense civilian harm – which always hurts little children the most. Moreover, the overall attack on Iran – like the prior 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which Pope Leo cited on Saturday – is hard to justify under Catholic just war theory.

Nevertheless, our brethren, Hebrew Catholics in Israel, are in favour of regime change in Iran, and no Catholic should disagree with that pious desire. Islam of any kind – Sunni or Shia – which seeks to follow and imitate the warlord and false prophet Muhammad – is a threat to humanity in general and innocent Jews and Christians in particular.

But what the modern Popes since Benedict XV have been trying to do is end the “carnage solely for economic reasons” (that was Pope Benedict XV’s description of World War I). Pope Leo is continuing in that tradition by attempting to promote a Christian approach to these international conflicts which does not create widows and orphans, and establishes not a ceasefire, but rather a just peace, where the cause of war is removed. In this, Pope Leo is utterly traditional. Nevertheless, only the restoration of the Two Swords will bring some sanity to the governance of nations, and therefore in Mr. Trump’s unintentional long term affect in this area, God may bring good out of evil, as He always does.

Let us pray for and support the widows and orphans of war!

Let us act as Christians and promote a just peace with all our efforts!

CHRIST IS RISEN!