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An article in a Vatican-approved publication offers harsh words for conservative American Catholics. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr/cc)
An article written by two associates of Pope Francis in the Catholic journal La Civilta Cattolica illustrates vast disagreements between the Pope and conservative American Catholics--a rift which has been growing since Pope Francis was elected in 2013.
The journal is published in Rome and receives Vatican approval before going to press, suggesting that the Pope does not take issue with the thesis of the article, which was published in July and was the subject of an interview with one of its authors in the New York Times Wednesday: that Catholicism in the U.S. has "fallen into the hands of the religious right" with an intention to "impose its own law and logic on the political arena."
The article takes aim at Steve Bannon, one of Trump's top strategists, in particular. Bannon is called "a supporter of apocalyptic geopolitics" for his role in the Trump administration's rolling back of greenhouse gas regulations, and his promotion of anti-immigration policies and rhetoric.
But conservative Catholic voters are also subject to criticism by the piece's authors, Rev. Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa, both confidants of the Pope. The authors accuse ultraconservative "values voters" who place abortion rights above other domestic issues, of attempting to transform the U.S. into "a theocratic type of state," and compare the worldview of conservative American Catholics and evangelical Christians to that of extremist Muslims.
The article has received a backlash by some conservatives and Catholic leaders who call it "anti-American."
\u201cAntonio Spadaro SJ has a Facebook account. You might want to express your opinion of his anti-American screed. Please be respectful.\u201d— Father Peter West (@Father Peter West) 1500430544
But co-author Rev. Spadaro took to Twitter as well, saying his observations had been badly needed in the U.S.
\u201cConsidering the allergic reactions, it's clear that the debate opened by @civcatt was long overdue: https://t.co/KfhWUHNDTi\u201d— Antonio Spadaro (@Antonio Spadaro) 1501684056
The gap between Pope Francis and American conservative Catholics widened during the 2016 presidential campaign and following the election of President Donald Trump, whose policies the Pope has criticized. Pope Francis referred to Trump in 2016 as "a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges" and said Trump's anti-immigrant stance was "not Christian," angering Trump's Catholic supporters.
Meanwhile, though the Pope has maintained traditional Catholic stances on social issues, he has been warmly embraced by liberal American Catholics as well as many other progressives for his insistence that the Church move beyond its "obsession" with and punitive views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, focusing instead on being "a home for all."
In the Times, Rev. Spadaro said the piece's main point "was the pope's argument that religion in the service of politics or power is ideology," and his objection to "the manipulation of anxiety for political ends."
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An article written by two associates of Pope Francis in the Catholic journal La Civilta Cattolica illustrates vast disagreements between the Pope and conservative American Catholics--a rift which has been growing since Pope Francis was elected in 2013.
The journal is published in Rome and receives Vatican approval before going to press, suggesting that the Pope does not take issue with the thesis of the article, which was published in July and was the subject of an interview with one of its authors in the New York Times Wednesday: that Catholicism in the U.S. has "fallen into the hands of the religious right" with an intention to "impose its own law and logic on the political arena."
The article takes aim at Steve Bannon, one of Trump's top strategists, in particular. Bannon is called "a supporter of apocalyptic geopolitics" for his role in the Trump administration's rolling back of greenhouse gas regulations, and his promotion of anti-immigration policies and rhetoric.
But conservative Catholic voters are also subject to criticism by the piece's authors, Rev. Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa, both confidants of the Pope. The authors accuse ultraconservative "values voters" who place abortion rights above other domestic issues, of attempting to transform the U.S. into "a theocratic type of state," and compare the worldview of conservative American Catholics and evangelical Christians to that of extremist Muslims.
The article has received a backlash by some conservatives and Catholic leaders who call it "anti-American."
\u201cAntonio Spadaro SJ has a Facebook account. You might want to express your opinion of his anti-American screed. Please be respectful.\u201d— Father Peter West (@Father Peter West) 1500430544
But co-author Rev. Spadaro took to Twitter as well, saying his observations had been badly needed in the U.S.
\u201cConsidering the allergic reactions, it's clear that the debate opened by @civcatt was long overdue: https://t.co/KfhWUHNDTi\u201d— Antonio Spadaro (@Antonio Spadaro) 1501684056
The gap between Pope Francis and American conservative Catholics widened during the 2016 presidential campaign and following the election of President Donald Trump, whose policies the Pope has criticized. Pope Francis referred to Trump in 2016 as "a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges" and said Trump's anti-immigrant stance was "not Christian," angering Trump's Catholic supporters.
Meanwhile, though the Pope has maintained traditional Catholic stances on social issues, he has been warmly embraced by liberal American Catholics as well as many other progressives for his insistence that the Church move beyond its "obsession" with and punitive views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, focusing instead on being "a home for all."
In the Times, Rev. Spadaro said the piece's main point "was the pope's argument that religion in the service of politics or power is ideology," and his objection to "the manipulation of anxiety for political ends."
An article written by two associates of Pope Francis in the Catholic journal La Civilta Cattolica illustrates vast disagreements between the Pope and conservative American Catholics--a rift which has been growing since Pope Francis was elected in 2013.
The journal is published in Rome and receives Vatican approval before going to press, suggesting that the Pope does not take issue with the thesis of the article, which was published in July and was the subject of an interview with one of its authors in the New York Times Wednesday: that Catholicism in the U.S. has "fallen into the hands of the religious right" with an intention to "impose its own law and logic on the political arena."
The article takes aim at Steve Bannon, one of Trump's top strategists, in particular. Bannon is called "a supporter of apocalyptic geopolitics" for his role in the Trump administration's rolling back of greenhouse gas regulations, and his promotion of anti-immigration policies and rhetoric.
But conservative Catholic voters are also subject to criticism by the piece's authors, Rev. Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa, both confidants of the Pope. The authors accuse ultraconservative "values voters" who place abortion rights above other domestic issues, of attempting to transform the U.S. into "a theocratic type of state," and compare the worldview of conservative American Catholics and evangelical Christians to that of extremist Muslims.
The article has received a backlash by some conservatives and Catholic leaders who call it "anti-American."
\u201cAntonio Spadaro SJ has a Facebook account. You might want to express your opinion of his anti-American screed. Please be respectful.\u201d— Father Peter West (@Father Peter West) 1500430544
But co-author Rev. Spadaro took to Twitter as well, saying his observations had been badly needed in the U.S.
\u201cConsidering the allergic reactions, it's clear that the debate opened by @civcatt was long overdue: https://t.co/KfhWUHNDTi\u201d— Antonio Spadaro (@Antonio Spadaro) 1501684056
The gap between Pope Francis and American conservative Catholics widened during the 2016 presidential campaign and following the election of President Donald Trump, whose policies the Pope has criticized. Pope Francis referred to Trump in 2016 as "a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges" and said Trump's anti-immigrant stance was "not Christian," angering Trump's Catholic supporters.
Meanwhile, though the Pope has maintained traditional Catholic stances on social issues, he has been warmly embraced by liberal American Catholics as well as many other progressives for his insistence that the Church move beyond its "obsession" with and punitive views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, focusing instead on being "a home for all."
In the Times, Rev. Spadaro said the piece's main point "was the pope's argument that religion in the service of politics or power is ideology," and his objection to "the manipulation of anxiety for political ends."
"What angers Greenblatt is that Mamdani isn't courting HIM," said one advocate. "By winning the bulk of the young Jewish vote while condemning Israel, Mamdani is exposing how out of touch Greenblatt is."
The largest Muslim civil rights group in the U.S. on Tuesday was among those condemning the latest attacks from the Anti-Defamation League on New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whom ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt this week accused of not reaching out to the city's Jewish population.
On CNBC Monday, Greenblatt claimed Mamdani, a Democratic state assembly member who stunned former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by winning the primary in June by nearly eight points, has not visited "a single synagogue... one Jewish neighborhood" or "any of the mainstream Jewish institutions."
A number of observers pointed to several instances in which Mamdani has visited Jewish centers and places of worship during his campaign, including attending Shabbat services in Brooklyn in February, taking part in a town hall with the Jewish Community Relations Council in May with United Jewish Appeal Federation, and attending candidate forums at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in June.
Greenblatt later published a post about the interview on the social media platform X, saying this time that Mamdani had not visited Jewish synagogues or other communities since the primary in June—but Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, suggested the head of the ADL attacks Mamdani not for things he has or hasn't done, but because many Jewish people have embraced him as their candidate of choice.
"Of course Mamdani has visited synagogues and Jewish communities," said Beinart. "What angers Greenblatt is that Mamdani isn't courting HIM. By winning the bulk of the young Jewish vote while condemning Israel, Mamdani is exposing how out of touch Greenblatt is with many of the people he claims to represent. That's what makes Mamdani a threat."
As Common Dreams reported last month, Mamdani led Cuomo—who is running in the general election as an independent following his primary loss—by five points in a poll by Zenith Research. More than two-thirds of likely Jewish voters between the ages of 18 and 44 said they planned to vote for Mamdani, who has condemned Israel's apartheid policies and its US-backed bombardment and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
Beinart added that while Greenblatt may be "unaware" of Mamdani's relationship with Jewish voters, "his unawareness says nothing about reality. It says a lot about him."
In the interview, Greenblatt also doubled down on attacks that began in June regarding Mamdani's refusal to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," which pro-Israel groups have claimed denotes support for violent attacks by militants against Israel—but which the mayoral candidate pointed out in a podcast interview is to many people "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights."
"Why won't he condemn 'globalize the intifada?' Because he believes it?" said Greenblatt, adding that the phrase suggests support for attacks by Palestinian militants who have "killed people simply because they were Jewish."
The Arabic word "intifada" means "struggle" or "uprising" and is associated by Palestinian rights advocates with Palestinians' fight for self-determination and freedom from Israel's occupation—which took the form of numerous non-violent protests including boycotts, labor strikes, and marches, as well as armed resistance, during the First and Second Intifadas.
Jasmine El-Gamal, a foreign policy analyst and host of the podcast "The View From Here," noted that "not one of the presenters corrected Greenblatt when he lied and said the intifada was a violent uprising that 'killed people simply because they were Jewish.'"
"The intifada was an uprising against an occupation," said El-Gamal. "Whether or not you agree with the concept of violent resistance, the fact is, Greenblatt blatantly lied and no one batted an eyelash."
Mamdani has never publicly used the phrase "globalize the intifada," and has said he would "discourage" others from doing so.
At the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), national deputy executive director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said Greenblatt's "dishonest and bigoted attacks on Assemblymember Mamdani represent the latest sign that the ADL director is an increasingly unhinged anti-Muslim bigot masquerading as a civil rights leader."
Referring to Greenblatt's refusal to condemn an apparent Nazi salute by former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk in January, Mitchell said Greenblatt "will bend over backwards to give real antisemites a pass so long as they support Israel's genocide while he goes out of the way to lie about and smear Muslim public officials if they dare to oppose Israel's genocide."
"Mr. Greenblatt's top priority is protecting the Israeli government from criticism," said Mitchell, "and no one should take his claim about American Muslim leaders seriously."
Basim Elkarra, executive director of CAIR-Action, said Greenblatt's comments "are not only misleading—they risk stoking division at a time when New Yorkers need unity."
"Subjecting Muslim elected officials to such bigotry is dishonest, dangerous, and diverts attention from substantive policy issues," said Elkarra. "We urge all public figures to condemn Jonathan Greenblatt and others who attempt to inflame bigotry against American Muslims engaged in politics."
"This MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage," said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.
Teachers from California and New York seeking work in Oklahoma will be required to pass an "America First Test" designed to weed out applicants espousing "radical leftist ideology," the state's public schools chief affirmed Monday.
Oklahoma—which has a severe teacher shortage, persistently high turnover, and some of the nation's worst educational outcomes—will compel prospective public school educators from the nation's two largest "blue" states to submit to the exam in a bid to combat what Superintendent for Public Instruction Ryan Walters calls "woke indoctrination."
"As long as I am superintendent, Oklahoma classrooms will be safeguarded from the radical leftist ideology fostered in places like California and New York," Walters said in a statement Monday.
Walters told USA Today that the test is necessary to vet teachers from states where educators "are teaching things that are antithetical to our standards" and ensure they "are not coming into our classrooms and indoctrinating kids."
However, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten warned in a statement Monday that "this MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage."
The exam will be administered by Prager University—also known as PragerU—a right-wing nonprofit group which, despite its name, is not an academic institution and does not confer degrees.
While all of the test's 50 questions have not been made public, the ones that have been published run the gamut from insultingly basic—such as, "What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?"—to ideologically fraught queries regarding the "biological differences between females and males."
PragerU's "educational" materials are rife with false or misleading information regarding slavery, racism, immigration, the history of fascism, and the climate emergency. Critics note that the nonprofit has received millions of dollars in funding from fossil fuel billionaires.
PragerU materials also promote creation mythology over scientific evolution and attack LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender individuals, calling lifesaving gender-affirming healthcare "barbaric" while likening its proponents to "monsters."
In one animated PragerU video, two children travel back in time to ask the genocidal explorer Christopher Columbus why he is so hated today. Columbus replies by asserting the superiority of Europeans over Indigenous "cannibals" and attempting to justify the enslavement of Native Americans by arguing that "being taken as a slave is better than being killed."
Closer to home, PragerU's curriculum aligns with so-called "white discomfort" legislation passed in Oklahoma and other Republican-controlled states that critics say prevents honest lessons on slavery, the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, and enduring systemic racism.
The law has had a chilling effect on teachers' lessons on historical topics including the 1921 Tulsa massacre, in which a white supremacist mob backed armed by city officials destroyed more than 35 city blocks of Greenwood, the "Black Wall Street," murdering hundreds of Black men, women, and children in what the US Justice Department this year called a "coordinated, military-style attack."
Responding to Oklahoma's new policy, University of Pennsylvania history professor Jonathan Zimmerman told The Associated Press that "instead of Prager simply being a resource that you can draw in an optional way, Prager has become institutionalized as part of the state system."
"There's no other way to describe it," he said, adding, "I think what we're now seeing in Oklahoma is something different, which is actually empowering Prager as a kind of gatekeeper for future teachers."
Oklahoma is not the only state incorporating PragerU materials into its curriculum. Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and Texas have also done so to varying degrees.
Weingarten noted Walters' previous push to revise Oklahoma's curriculum standards to include baseless conspiracy theories pushed by President Donald Trump that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. Walters also ordered all public schools to teach the Bible, a directive temporarily blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in March. The court also recently ruled against the establishment of the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school.
"His priority should be educating students, but instead, it's getting Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians to notice him," Weingrarten said in her statement.
Cari Elledge, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, called the new testing requirement "a political stunt to grab attention" and a distraction "from real issues in Oklahoma."
"When political ideology plays into whether or not you can teach in any place, that might be a deterrent to quality educators attempting to get a job," she added. "We think it's intentional to make educators fearful and confused."
California Teachers' Association president David Goldberg told USA Today that "this almost seems like satire and so far removed from my research around what Oklahoma educators need and deserve."
"I can't see how this isn't some kind of hyper-political grandstanding that doesn't serve any of those needs," he added.
"Stephen Miller was a loser in college, and now we all must pay for it," remarked one critic.
Stephen Miller, the hardline immigrant-trashing adviser to US President Donald Trump, drew scorn and ridicule on Wednesday after he dismissed people protesting against the National Guard deployment in Washington, DC as elderly and ignorant "hippies."
During a visit to Union Station along with Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Miller took a shot at local residents who in recent days have demonstrated against Trump's takeover of their city's law enforcement.
"All these demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never have been," Miller claimed. "We're gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old."
Stephen Miller: "All these demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never have been ... we're gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over… pic.twitter.com/v7Bj4pfEPW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 20, 2025
Hundreds of people over this past weekend took part in a "Free DC" protest against the presence of the National Guard and assorted federal agents patrolling the city, and many other spontaneous protests have erupted as local residents have regularly gathered to jeer federal officials carrying out operations in their neighborhoods.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, shared a photo on Bluesky of an event that took place in the city on Tuesday, and he pointed out that people of different ages and colors can be seen protesting against the presence of the National Guard in their city.
"I don't see one 'elderly white hippie' there," he remarked. "I do see a wide variety of ages, genders, and races; DC residents united in disgust at what Miller is cheering on."
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse also slammed Miller for failing to notice the diversity of the crowds protesting against Trump's DC initiative.
"Stephen Miller is apparently so racist he can’t even *see* nonwhite people on the streets of DC protesting his goons," he commented on Bluesky. "Wait, is *that* what they meant by 'colorblind conservatism?'"
Pam Fessler, author and former correspondent for NPR, gave Miller a swift fact check in a post on X.
"Besides Miller's nastiness, he's wrong," she explained. "Guess what? A majority of DC residents, regardless of race, oppose Trump's unnecessary just-for-show federal takeover."
A poll released by The Washington Post on Wednesday backs up this point, as it found that 79% of DC residents are opposed to Trump's takeover, including 69% who register as "strongly" opposed.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, speculated on Bluesky that Miller is lashing out at "hippies" to make up for his own past inadequacies.
"Stephen Miller was a loser in college, and now we all must pay for it... sincerely, someone who remembers him from school," said Kreis, who attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the same time Miller was attending nearby Duke University.
Podcaster Bob Cesca, meanwhile, warned Miller to be careful in antagonizing Washington, DC residents.
"I take comfort in the idea that, for the rest of his miserable life, he'll wonder how much phlegm and/or feces has been added to his restaurant meals," he joked on X.