President Versus Pontiff! The Donald Has gone Mad!

Let me state for the record that I am a lapsed Catholic.

I survived the ordeal of a Catholic education and walking through the penguin compound at zoos still makes me nervous.

However, I will argue to my dying day that people have the right to practice their religion even if I do not subscribe to them/

It is a right enshrined in our own Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

This, however, does not give practitioners of various religions to harangue people in order to proselytize them or preach politics from the pulpit, which I have seen only too often during political campaigns in Rochester, New York and I can safely assume it occurs elsewhere as well.

This violates the principal of separation of church and state.

Violators and their churches can lose their tax-free status if caught.

But I do not consider talking about peace, ending the violence and bloodshed of wars or constraining elected political leaders to behave with more modesty, humility, humanity, decency and appropriate decorum as preaching politics.

But The Donald does, and he is butting heads with Pope Leo XIV about just such comments.

To be sure, The Donald was absolutely delighted by the accession of the American-born Leo XIV to the papal throne last year.

He even stated that the two most powerful men in the world were American!

The Donald believed that an American-born pope would support and rubber stamp his increasingly erratic political behavior, much as King Henry II of England expected when he engineered his old friend Thomas a Becket's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury.

And both were disappointed with the results.

Both men saw their religious duties as superseding nationality.

In Leo XIV's case, he is the spiritual leader and final arbiter of faith for over ONE BILLION Roman Catholics worldwide.

Frankly, he owes The Donald nothing.

Henry II solved his problem with Thomas a Becket by shouting, in a fit of drunken pique "Who will rid me of this insolent priest?"

Apparently, four of his most loyal knights did, which earned Henry II excommunication, whose penance was a public flogging.

The Donald's regime has also threatened Pope Leo XIV with death.

Since The Donald has considered himself to be a messiah, effectively replacing Jesus Christ, but hasn't quite declared himself to be God (at least not yet), it is hard to see who could punish him if that deed were carried out.

All of this has been caused by the Pope's repeated calls for peace, an end to wars, for restraint, for moral and ethical fortitude, in which he never mentioned The Donald by name.

Given the increasing moral and ethical bankruptcy of the Trump regime, the Pope didn't have to be specific.

Everyone, including The Donald himself, knew who Leo XIV was referring to and what he was referring to: The Donald and Benny's war against Iran.

So, the Trump regime began to take action.

The papal nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, was summoned to the Pentagon by the Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby on January 22 od this year.

There the nuncio was treated to a lecture, the high points of which were that the United States (i.e., The Donald) can and will do whatever it wants in the world and a reminder of the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy in the 14th Century.

Let us turn to that briefly.

King Philip IV of France, sometimes called "Philip the Fair" (referring to his looks, NOT his sense of justice, made war upon Pope Boniface VIII, which ultimately resulted in his death. King Philip then found it possible to kidnap Boniface's successor, set him up at Avignon in France and forced him and his successors to be supportive of French policies.

This situation lasted for over seventy years.

At least Colby knew his history, and his threats were clear to the nuncio.

Yet the Trump regime was both surprised and disappointed when the Pope declined the invitation to come to the US to celebrate our 250th Independence Day!

Pope Leo XIV was NOT going to be used for The Donald's political agenda.

He even went further by stating that there would be no prayers offered for political leaders who undertook unjust wars, and that he would be spending the Fourth of July on the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is the first stopping point for people seeking asylum in Europe.

It was an obvious slap at The Donald, whose immigration and refugee policies are drawing such ire both domestically and internationally.

For these reasons The Donald has shouted that the Pope is preaching politics, because Leo XIV has no interest in becoming a puppet in his hands.

And The Donald doesn't care how many millions of voting American Catholics he is offending by his diatribes against the Pope.

He ought to be.

Mid-term elections are coming up and his asinine stance about the Pope will probably lose Catholic votes for Republican candidates.

Republicans have only a razor thin majority in the House and their majority in the Senate is not so absolute that it can be lost in November as well.

The Donald's increasingly bizarre behavior can mean only one thing: He has gone mad!