So, now the crazy former weekend FAUX NOOZ host, serial adulterer, and DUI Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, is going after religions that don't support his war-crazed policies?
Where have we seen this sort of madness in history?
Nazi Germany (1933-1945): Despite a 1933 treaty, the Nazis violated the concordat, closing church schools, suppressing press, and sending thousands of priests to concentration camps, most notably in the "Priest Barracks" of Dachau.
Mexico's Calles Law (1920s): President Plutarco Elías Calles' 1926 penal code aimed to break the Church's power, sparking the Cristero War, a violent conflict between Catholics and the government.
German Kulturkampf (1871-1876): Chancellor Otto von Bismarck initiated laws to assert state control over the Church, arresting bishops and priests, and forcing religious orders to disband.
Soviet Union (1917 onwards): The Bolshevik government actively attacked the Catholic Church, seizing properties and arresting clergy.
Early American Anti-Catholicism: In the 17th and 18th centuries, several colonies, including Maryland and Virginia, banned or restricted Catholic settlers and forced them to pay taxes to established Protestant churches.
"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.'
One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon, a region inside France.
The Trump administration had taken issue with the pope’s critique of its militaristic proclivities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Pentagon officials were particularly aggrieved by portions of Leo’s January 9 speech in which the pope argued that 'a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,' and that 'war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.'
Meidas Touch Report (Yes, I know, this is a left leaning source, but its report has been confirmed):
"SHOCK REPORT: Did the Trump administration threaten the Pope's life?!
The Vatican has shelved plans for Pope Leo XIV to visit the United States after what officials describe as a deeply alarming confrontation with the Pentagon.
A stunning new report — now independently confirmed the publication Letters from Leo — reveals that a top U.S. official summoned the Pope’s then-ambassador, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and delivered a stark warning: America has the military power to do whatever it wants — and the Church 'had better take its side.' ”
