'Poisonous to the church': Ex-Republican highlights pope's reluctant stand against Trump

Pope Leo XIV doesn't want to be the anti-Donald Trump but he is, according to a conservative Sunday.

New York Times columnist David French, a former writer for the conservative National Review, wrote an article on Sunday called, "Pope Leo Doesn’t Want to Be the Anti-Trump. But He Is," in which he argues that "the path past Trumpism is beginning to emerge."

Clarifying that statement, the columnist argued, "I did not and do not mean that the pope will somehow enable the defeat of any particular politician or program at the ballot box."

"American Catholics are true swing voters. A majority voted for Trump in 2024, but a majority disapprove of him now. And there are many devout Catholics who are deeply embedded in the MAGA movement, including Vice President JD Vance," he wrote. "Partisanship is poisonous to the church. Neither party’s political platform truly embodies the teachings of the New Testament. Each party has its moral strengths and weaknesses, which is why you can find Christians and people of every faith and no faith on both sides of the political aisle."

French goes on to say, "But when partisanship becomes part of your identity — much less part of your faith — it has a pernicious effect: It causes you to highlight the deficiencies of the other side while tempting you to rationalize or minimize the injustices on your own. Partisanship makes hypocrites of us all. I know it made a hypocrite of me on my worst partisan days."

According to French, this is how the pope is the anti-Trump.

"The approach that Pope Leo takes, by contrast, puts virtue outside and above politics. His declarations are the living embodiment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonition that the church 'is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state,'" he wrote Sunday. "I’m not Catholic, but I can see that the Catholic Church enjoys some profound advantages over the American evangelical church in taking King’s approach. The Catholic Church is a global church that existed for more than a thousand years before the founding of America. American evangelicals, by contrast, often belong to churches and denominations that were founded in America, remain rooted in America, and they have a distinct, America-centered political worldview."

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