When Politics Clashes With Moral Authority

Ultimize. According to reporting from Reuters and the Associated Press, Vice President J.D. Vance told a Turning Point USA crowd that Pope Leo should be, quote, careful when speaking about theology after the Pope condemned those who today drop bombs. Vance defended the Iran bombing by invoking World War II, while Trump had already attacked the Pope as weak on crime. And terrible for foreign policy. And Pope Leo responded that he had, quote, no fear of the Trump administration. Now let me say what half the country is already thinking: J.D. Vance has been a Catholic for about 5 minutes now and he's giving performance notes to the Pope? Really? This is like a guy who just joined Planet Fitness last Thursday lecturing LeBron James on footwork. The arrogance is unbelievable. The Pope is the Pope. J.D. Vance is a politician with a podcast voice and a book tour, and somehow Vance has decided that the successor to Saint Peter needed a little coaching from the Vice President of the United States on theology. Really? What next? Is Vance going to explain Judaism to Chuck Schumer? Is Vance going to tell his wife how to be a better Hindu? Maybe he should just hold a seminar for the Dalai Lama on mindfulness. Or better yet, maybe he should give his own boss a crash course in Christianity. Because if we're suddenly doing biblical literalism, I have a fun one for the class. Leviticus 20:10 says that if a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both the adulterer and adulteress are to be put to death. In the King James Version, it says they shall surely be put to death. That ought to make staff meetings a little awkward in the Oval Office. Imagine Vance marching into the White House and saying, "Sir, before I lecture the Pope again, I just wanna review some additional theological guidance." Because this is the problem with these people. They treat religion like a buffet. They load up on the parts that flatter their politics, and then they quietly slide past the things that might inconvenience the boss. Kind of like when you and I go for the desserts and we pass the salad portion. And from a communication standpoint, this is what makes Vance so dangerous and so ridiculous at the same time. He's confused confidence with authority. Those are not the same thing. A man can be a very confident person and still be a fool. Every drunk guy at a sports bar is confident. That does not make him the Pope. And what makes this even dumber is that Pope Leo wasn't trying to win an argument on cable news. He was doing what popes traditionally do: speaking in moral language about war, violence, and peace. You know, pope stuff. That's literally the job description. So for Vance to say the Pope should be more careful when talking about theology is like telling a cardiologist to be more careful when discussing the heart. No, JD, this is his lane. You wandered into it because you thought the costume fit. And here's the deeper issue: this administration cannot handle criticism from any source that has moral standing that they don't control. That's why Trump attacks judges, generals, reporters, universities, and now the Pope. Because the one thing authoritarians cannot tolerate is an independent voice with real legitimacy. And Pope Leo has something Trump and Vance can never manufacture with a slogan, a meme, or a royal crowd, a rally crowd. That's moral authority, at least for people who follow that particular religion. That's why they're rattled. That's why Trump lashes out. That's why Vance starts doing amateur theology night at Turning Point USA. Because when you can't beat the message, you try to belittle the messenger. So here's the bottom line: if J.D. Vance wants to spend his time lecturing the Pope on theology, fine, but then he should also be prepared to explain why his own political movement treats the Sermon on the Mount like a liberal activist woke document. And if he really wants to be the administration's in-house theologian, maybe start with the basics. Humility would be a good chapter one, because nothing says spiritual depth quite like a 5-year Catholic convert wagging his finger at the Pope while working for a man who posted an AI image of himself looking like Jesus. Okay, to be clear, I'm not suggesting the Pope gets a free ride. I don't agree with probably most things most popes say. I'm not a fan of popes, but J.D. Vance by saying he is officially a Catholic convert is by definition saying he's a fan of the Pope. He's saying he believes the Popes are infallible. You can't have it both ways. You can't say, I'm now a part of this religion and I follow all of their doctrines and I really buy into it and I buy into the idea that the Pope's infallible, oh, except for when I have a different policy that I like. Now, if you want to have a policy debate with the Pope, I guess you can, but don't tell the Pope that he can't make a theological positioning statement. It's like telling a magician, okay, you can come entertain, but you better not show any magic. Well, no, that's what they do. Here's something I've learned after years of doing this: the people who actually improve don't necessarily hear better advice. They just stay around it longer. They keep exposing themselves to the same useful ideas until it finally clicks. Most people don't do that. So if you want to be in the small group that actually follows through, go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com and get the free course. There's one on communication, one on building better habits, nothing fancy, just something you can keep coming back to. If you're already there, you're doing the hard part. Just go to ultimize.com and build on it. Ultimize.