Relations between the U.S. and the Catholic Church have not been the same since January, when senior U.S. defense officials shared an abrasive message with a Vatican official.
Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture.
“The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
MAGA has no concept of soft power. They just don’t get it, do they?
“Might makes right” authoritarianism has no use for it. Why bother with getting people to like you when you have all the guns? Besides, these troglodytes are a pretty unlikable bunch in the first place - it’s simply not how they navigate the world.
“You can do anything you like with bayonets, except sit on them” Talleyrand, circa 1815
Well, they’re clearly aware enough to feel threatened by it, given that that’s all the power the Vatican holds
The idea seems to be to use the hard power to make the soft power go away.
It doesn’t work like that of course, but fascists are gonna fascist.