alt Hacker NewsThe Pentagon Threatened Pope Leo XIV's Ambassador with the Avignon Papacy
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Idk which is more impressive that someone referenced the Avignon Papacy in a heat of the moment argument or that the same person who could reference that thought it was a good idea. (Not Catholic...but like...why?)
There is a lot to source from Christian ideals, many of which are the foundations of Western culture: human dignity, moral equality, conscience, limits on power and care for those less fortunate and weaker. Much of what is happening in the world today feels like a stark reversal of those ideals: selfishness and divisiveness manufactured to promote a narrow segment of society.
Recent news articles have indicated an increase in church attendance. This makes sense: we have lost our moral compass... Specifically in the USA... And people are searching for a new direction.
> America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world.
Yeah, well. That aged like raw milk.
I have recently deepened my search in Christianity which started with the Catholic Church, one of few points I struggle with when it comes to Catholicism is the papacy, and the Avignon Papacy debacle and the events that followed (a la Western Schism) has quite a bit to do with that. I was a little confused by what they meant here by “threatening with the Avignon Papacy.” If anyone else is curious, I think the phrase “Babylonian Captivity” will provide better context, as it is what some contemporaries and later historians called it as it appeared that the Church had been “captured” by French political interests, with the popes being seen as too cozy to the French king and less focused on their universal spiritual role.
A non expedit towards American Christians would be so fun before elections
I can't speak my mind openly because it would be fedposting. However, something must be done about this group of outlaws that has assumed power in the US.
Threatening the holy father is not something I entirely expected, but when you couple that with statements like "We have the military power to do what we want" it becomes rather terrifying.
> a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force
The history of American diplomacy is mostly of an iron fist wearing a thin glove. This administration removes the glove. It is in line with the transparency of the Department of War v. Defense. Consensus is the label they put on the package of sausages to save face.
This administration seems so emotionally fragile that they threaten anyone who disagrees… often completely unnecessarily…
This administration is 100% acting in a way that it never plans to leave.
US really is on a crusade to burn every bridge they can find
I'm not sure why this is on Hacker News, and I'm even less sure why the papacy is so important to MAGA right now.
In any case, perhaps we will soon see the return of Catholic persecution in the U.S. due to "conflicting" loyalties between Pope and country...
Why are they referring to Elbridge Colby as the Under Secretary of War for Policy? That’s not his title.
Threatening to send the pope back to chicago is one strategy for sure..
This is similar to Joseph Stalin who famously asked, "How many divisions does the Pope have?" to dismiss the Vatican's political and military influence.
New antipope when?
To be fair most self-proclaimed MAGA Christians in the USA are heretics. So this is not really surprising.
WW3 is shaping up to be a theocratic holy war struggle between Christianity, Judaism, Islam ... and all of us secular folks have to suffer for their ignorance and intolerance.
I love this:
>According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at the administration.
>What enraged them most was Leo’s declaration that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”
they then proceed to insinuate use of force.
> Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned the Holy See’s then-ambassador to the U.S., Cardinal Christophe Pierre, to the Pentagon.
Can the DOD do this? This seems more like the purview of State.
What is tiresome is how sincerely these people insist on being able to make everyone act according to their will, while simultaneously displaying weakness, incompetence, and extreme pettiness. Trying to threaten people into respecting them. The lack of class is just so unsightly.
I think what's most clear to me about the Papacy and the Pentagon is that neither of them actually believes scripture.
Makes you pine for the good old days when it was just QAnon and Pizza Gate.
Now we're fast tracking the Rapture.
Assuming that doesn't work out for them, who are they going to follow when the Chosen One doesn't get a 3rd term?
"The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" - Joseph Stalin
Time in minutes after which christian nationalists will form a circular firing squad once they've cemented their grip on the US government: 2
The past which the 'make america great again' people want to take us back to absolutely loathed Catholics, something I don't think modern Catholics realize.
The colony of Maryland was originally intended to be a safe place for Catholics, and the first chance the Puritans got, they revolted, invaded, burned the Catholic churches down and persecuted their worshippers. The US was explicitly not founded on religious tolerance, it was founded on freedom to persecute Catholics.
Go ahead do it. Make Trump the pope while you are at it, we all need a good laugh.
Sounds like sensationalized hearsay and I’ve been burned so many times by the media reporting on Catholicism I’m not paying this one any mind.
I would care more about the plight of the pope if it the church was not still covering for nonces and other malfeasance. I do not view them as arbiters of morality.
This confirms Trump's suspicion that he isn't getting into heaven.
Any surprise there?
If the people ruling the US nowadays ever read the Bible they would likely reject the word of Jesus as woke bullshit. And if they do read the book, they likely only care about the bits related to the end of the world, and are hellbent (hah) in speeding it up.
Lot of Catholics are MAGA aren't they? The few I talked to recently were really anti-woke, like 'woke' is ruining the world. Very Maga.
How does this land with them?
> America, Colby and his colleagues told the cardinal, has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world.
I‘m pretty sure the god they often mentioned would see that differently.
Not that anybody really believed they are true believers and just hypocrites.
Catholics now have to decide if they will continue to support the pro-life party even as the Trump administration demands the pope redefine the catechism of the Catholic Church at Trump's whim.
Non-paywalled coverage earlier: https://newrepublic.com/post/208820/pentagon-threatened-pope... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704570)
Non Christian here, I feel like How I feel can be accurately summarized by this poem
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist ...[0]
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
What this feels is just an escalation. There are some devout catholics who might've voted for Trump and his antics, perhaps feeling for a christian identity.
I definitely feel like there was something similar to that poem where they first came for W,X and Y people and people didn't speak out now its Z people and no one is left to speak.
It's easy within humanity to hate a particular outside group and sometimes that becomes the basis of the inside group. I wish to say that Humanity has multiple problems, we can try to make a better world by co-operation and hope that we learn from this dark chapter in history from the last year or two.
I don't wish to blame anyone because blaming leads to nowhere, Sadly, we haven't learn from the past atrocities thus we are within the present but I just hope that with open-ness we can learn from the past, we can learn from the present and I hope that we can only leave a better future for the next generation to come.
It's hard to give hope right now in reality but I hope to give others what I am lacking right now myself at times. all these things are truly for petty reasons. I expect better from humanity but perhaps this is an weird form of equilibrium but we are humans and we can think for ourselves and change things and build a better future for all of us hopefully.
We can do better, and I hope so that we will. Have a nice day to all.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came (The poem continues but I am trimming it for context of this message)
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Anyone have non paywalled reporting? Technically I think this post is HN guideline-breaking as there is no easy bypass for substack paywalls.
Pentagon better quit playin' or things are going to start Pope-ing off.
I know that Hacker News can be for anything "hackers find interesting," but I really hope it doesn't become yet another political doomland. There are so many other places to go to raise your anxiety - I'd rather this remain a space for things that are positively interesting.
Worth noting: the source of this claim is anonymous, and so far the framing of the statement feels a little more radical than maybe what was said in the meeting.
Other news publications are trying to get the full story: https://x.com/jdflynn/status/2042076430406672829?s=46&t=u6IW...
I wouldn't put anything past the current admin, but I don't know what the US could stand to gain from directly antagonizing the Vatican.
Wow. I knew the current administration was bad but this is something extra.
It also shows the short-sightedness of the "scholars" in the administration. Sure, the Avignon Papacy did occur, that's historical fact.
It's also a historical fact that the Catholic Church is an actually ancient power broker in the world still and they have been around for much, much longer than the United States. The Church is actually quite good at playing the long game (and I say that as someone raised firmly Protestant).
I saw a headline in NYT today saying this current historical situation is the United States "Suez Crisis" moment. Hard to disagree and hard to see how America recovers from this. I don't feel the pinch will come in the next few years but by 2036 I think the US will wonder what happened.
Also...I don't think a fast-follow conflict in Cuba right after this Iran affair is going to do much good, but that seems like where their appetite is going next.