One could scarcely have scripted a more poignant dramatization of the crossroads facing contemporary Catholicism than Pope Francis’s meeting with Vice President J. D. Vance at the Vatican on Easter Sunday. On one side, the leader of the Church calling attention to marginalized people around the world. On the other, the second-in-command of a global superpower championing Catholicism as a template for a solipsistic “America First” agenda. Two competing accounts of what Christ’s life meant squared off on the day commemorating his resurrection. When Francis died less than twenty-four hours later, the portentousness of the meeting became unmistakable.
The MAGA-verse appeared to notice. President Trump’s supporters swiftly took to social media with an eye-catching idea. In order to ensure that the Vatican would be more in line with the Trump administration, they argued, the president should be named pope. South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham tweeted, “I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope.… The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides.” Eventually, the White House fired off its own post with a now infamous AI-generated image of Trump in papal vestments, enthroned on the Chair of St. Peter.
There are two obvious ways to interpret this episode. The first is that it was the mean-spirited trolling that we’ve come to expect from Trump and his most ardent supporters. “Somebody did it in fun,” Trump said. “It’s fine. Have to have a little fun, don’t you?” The second way to interpret it is that it was yet another example of Trump’s well-documented aspirations to rule as a king. The pope, after all, is technically a monarch, and the papacy features many of the premodern royal aesthetics that are attractive to would-be autocrats. It’s not hard to imagine the MAGA movement viewing the papacy as a further means to consolidate Trump’s power.
There’s probably some truth to both readings. However, I found myself wondering whether something else might also be going on. The incident reminded me of a tweet from three months earlier, during Francis’s health scare, by prominent right-wing social-media personality Costin Alamariu, better known as Bronze Age Pervert. “Allowing the communist pope to elect [sic] church officials within the United States is an attack on American national sovereignty,” he wrote about Francis. “Only the elected representative of the American people should appoint bishops and such.” Could it be that MAGA’s fever dream of a Pope Trump reflected a genuine anxiety about Catholicism exerting undue influence across national borders—potentially in opposition to the state?
My perspective as a Jew informed this suspicion. The accusation that a transnational religious entity with nefarious goals was infringing on national sovereignty sounded awfully familiar. It’s textbook antisemitism. As early as the book of Esther, the Persian official Haman incited animus against the Jews living in the empire by making such claims. “Their laws are different from those of every other people,” he warned, “and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them” (Esther 3:8). Throughout history, antisemites have charged Jews with harboring “dual loyalties”—first and foremost to the Jewish people (and/or, since 1948, the Jewish state) and only secondarily to the country in which they reside. Right-wing versions of this idea, from fascism in the twentieth century to the MAGA movement of today, have usually construed Jews as agents of progressive agendas—including communism, mass migration, and wokeness—designed to undermine national identity and security.
The outrageous notion that “the communist pope” was attacking American sovereignty by appointing left-leaning bishops seemed to fit the antisemitic pattern all too well. Pope Francis was starring in the role of George Soros or the Rothschilds: wealthy Jews whom right-wing conspiracy theorists often identify as the bankrollers of Jewish schemes against the national interest. Throw in some “globalists”—a coded term for Jews in right-wing discourse—and we would’ve had antisemitism bingo. Did the Catholic Church scare MAGA—including, ironically, some of its Catholic leaders—for the same reasons that Jews scare them?
It didn’t take long for the internet to lend credence to this inkling. When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost emerged on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as Pope Leo XIV, reactions on right-wing social media were filled with antisemitic motifs. In one thread, an influencer warned that Leo, a naturalized Peruvian citizen, would facilitate invasive mass migration to the United States—a riff on the “Great Replacement” theory, which argues, among other things, that Jews are masterminding an anti-white demographic upheaval. Several other posts called Leo a “globalist,” blowing that telltale dog whistle. Yet another commentator directly stated, “The new Pope is a Jew. Even his father is a Jew. Christianity is done.” By this point, it was clear that some right-wingers were mapping the idea of a global, anti-American Jewish menace onto the Vatican. MAGA antisemitism had come for the Catholic Church.
In retrospect, this convergence seems almost inevitable. Accusations of “dual loyalty” have been a fixture of anti-Catholicism in addition to antisemitism. For much of American history, Catholics faced open suspicion of being devoted to the pope rather than to the United States. In 1928, when New York governor Al Smith became the first Catholic presidential nominee for a major party, his opponents quipped that the Holland Tunnel was his clandestine passageway to the Vatican. He lost the election in a landslide. In 1960, John F. Kennedy’s candidacy was dogged by warnings that Catholic control of the White House would be a foothold for communist takeover. Unlike Smith, he managed to win the presidency—if by less of a margin than might otherwise have been expected. Open anti-Catholicism gradually receded from American public life. When Joe Biden became the second Catholic president, his Catholicism was not inherently controversial. Rather, the fight was now between liberals and conservatives over whether he represented the “right kind” of Catholicism. In some ways, therefore, the MAGA attacks on the conclave and Pope Leo are a throwback to older forms of anti-Catholic bigotry. While they’re more directly focused on the Vatican, they’re rooted in the same wariness about whether Catholics are truly loyal to the state. Were this not in doubt, how would the Vatican pose a threat?
For many American Jews and Catholics, accusations of dual loyalty trigger reflexive denial: “Of course we’re loyal Americans!” I understand this instinct. Yet in our present political context, this line of defense strikes a different chord. As commentators have noted since Trump’s first term, “loyalty” is at the heart of his authoritarianism. He demands personal loyalty rather than a principled commitment to the Constitution. In so doing, he places himself—and by extension, the state he heads—above any conceivable countervailing value. Rather than defaulting to defensiveness, then, American Jews and Catholics who oppose MAGA should pause to think about why exactly right-wing anxieties about our loyalties are so easily conflated. Members of both communities should explore together how our traditions offer native resources for resisting this kind of nationalism.
As it turns out, Pope Leo has offered one possible direction for doing so. In his first homily, he referenced Gaudium et spes, Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, focusing on the document’s famous Christological section (§22). Amid the MAGA attacks, it seems significant that the overarching purpose of Gaudium et spes is to set the Church’s mission within an explicitly global purview that stands in direct contrast to “America First”: “The council focuses its attention on the world of men, the whole human family along with the sum of those realities in the midst of which it lives” (§2).
When I teach Gaudium et spes to mostly Catholic undergraduates at Villanova University, the pope’s alma mater, I devote special attention to the document’s discussion of the Church’s relationship to politics. The council writes,
It is very important, especially where a pluralistic society prevails, that there be a correct notion of the relationship between the political community and the Church, and a clear distinction between the tasks which Christians undertake, individually or as a group, on their own responsibility as citizens guided by the dictates of a Christian conscience, and the activities which, in union with their pastors, they carry out in the name of the Church.… The Church, for her part, founded on the love of the Redeemer, contributes toward the reign of justice and charity within the borders of a nation and between nations. By preaching the truths of the Gospel, and bringing to bear on all fields of human endeavor the light of her doctrine and of a Christian witness, she respects and fosters the political freedom and responsibility of citizens.… At all times and in all places, the Church should have true freedom to preach the faith, to teach her social doctrine, to exercise her role freely among men, and also to pass moral judgment in those matters which regard public order when the fundamental rights of a person or the salvation of souls require it. (§76)
My students usually breeze through this passage, assuming that it’s an anodyne affirmation of the separation of church and state. In reality, it’s much more complex. Although the council concedes that modernity has deprived the Church of temporal political power, it doesn’t surrender its political function. Rather, it reimagines it. The Church educates Catholics in its theological and moral values and then sends them into the world to take political action as private citizens of their respective countries in accordance with those values. While the Church can’t force Catholics to pursue its mission, it may form them in such a way to ensure that they do so naturally.
This conception of politics is deeply subversive of MAGA nationalism. While the council encourages Catholics to work for the benefit of the state, it also emphasizes that the state is not absolute. National politics is a local instrument for a global community—the Church—to achieve what truly matters: a broader vision of the common good. In this context, it’s no surprise that many Vatican II scholars see Gaudium et spes as an heir to St. Augustine’s idea that while Catholics are mere sojourners in the Earthly City, they are true citizens of the City of God. As both the first Augustinian pope and the first American pope, Leo embodies this challenge to those who ascribe absolute value to the state.
Gaudium et spes always reminds me of how diasporic Jews think about our complex political relationships with the non-Jewish countries where we live. Once again, this goes back to the Bible. Speaking for God, Jeremiah tells the people deported from Judah to Babylon, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare [shalom] you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7). About 2,500 years later, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a central figure in twentieth-century Orthodox Judaism, addressed this issue in the United States. Before the 1984 presidential election, he wrote,
On reaching the shores of the United States, Jews found a safe haven. The rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights have allowed us the freedom to practice our religion without interference and to live in this republic in safety.
A fundamental principle of Judaism is hakaras hatov—recognizing benefits afforded us and giving expression to our appreciation. Therefore, it is incumbent upon each Jewish citizen to participate in the democratic system which safeguards the freedoms we enjoy.
For both the prophet and the rabbi, it’s axiomatic that Jews must contribute to the state. Equally axiomatic, however, is the Jewish people’s continued national distinctiveness. The state doesn’t matter for its own sake; it matters because it allows God’s nation to survive in it. That focus on a community beyond the state is what should guide Jews to work for a state that benefits everyone, including themselves. The affinities with Vatican II’s challenge to nationalism are clear. In fact, in a telling analogy, Church historian Norman Tanner has called Gaudium et spes a “prophetic” message to the Church amid the “Babylonian captivity” of modernity.
In noting these parallels, I’m not drawing facile equivalences. Jews and Catholics have significant communal differences that impact how they think about their relationships to their countries of citizenship. While there are over a billion Catholics, there are only about 15 million Jews. While Catholicism is a religious communion, Jewishness more complexly combines religion, ethnicity, and nation. While the Church enjoyed earthly political power for much of its history, Jews have not. Today, however, the state of Israel, the focal point of Jewish politics, is a full-fledged state—while the Vatican, though sovereign, doesn’t function as a state in the same way.
Beneath these differences, however, is a core similarity: Judaism and Catholicism are built upon commitments to transnational entities with quasi-political structures that cut across sovereign borders. For Jews, this entity is the Jewish people; for Catholics, it is the Church. These commitments defy a simplistic binary of loyal versus disloyal. While they obligate Jews and Catholics to work diligently for the benefit of the state, they also underscore the state’s contingency because they don’t fit neatly into nationalist mythologies. Paradoxically, they ascribe importance to national politics because it’s the theater of the transnational task that ultimately matters most.
American Jews and Catholics should be proud of our contributions to our country—contributions frequently made despite considerable adversity. We should reject accusations that our transnational communities make us worse Americans. Yet in doing so, we should also resist the temptation to defend ourselves in ways that affirm our accusers’ unitary conception of “loyalty.” Our transnational communities do challenge right-wing nationalism, for they hold us to ideals that are higher than the state. The irony, of course, is that the United States itself was founded on such ideals. If MAGA attacks on the Catholic Church draw from the antisemitic playbook, then this should remind American Jews and Catholics that our commitments orient us toward those higher American ideals—and they enjoin us to uphold these ideals together.
