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How Donald Trump Could Save My Church from Lavender Bishops Like McElroy … and Pope Francis

By John Zmirak Published on January 9, 2025

Pope Francis has just flipped the bird in every American’s face. And reports suggest that he did so as part of a hissy fit over Donald Trump choosing a faithful Catholic and conservative as ambassador to the Vatican.

As The Stream has already reported, the newly appointed Archbishop of Washington, Robert McElroy, is not just a radical leftist who works with George Soros-funded Marxist organizations. And he’s not just one of the most disgraced prelates in the U.S. on the issue of sex abuse, which he covered up and minimized, including the sexual predation of accused child rapist ex-cardinal Ted McCarrick.

McElroy is also a leftist politician. Immediately after his appointment, McElroy started fear-mongering and lying about Trump’s plans to deport the 10 million-plus illegal aliens waved or smuggled into the U.S. under the Biden administration. McElroy is falsely claiming that Catholics must oppose any deportations — citing the recent, deranged Vatican document that claims any deportation of anyone from any country is evil, on par with slavery and forced prostitution. (By that standard, Nazi war criminals and narco-terrorists should never have been sent back home to face justice.)

McElroy is on record calling for every Catholic parish in the country to become part of a criminal conspiracy to defy our immigration laws — essentially serving as nodes in the human trafficking network that leads from cartels in Latin America (via Soros-funded and Church-backed nonprofits) to safe houses in the U.S. (such as Annunciation House, which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to shutter).

If Catholic parishes obey him, they will actually deserve strict scrutiny and surveillance by the FBI — which they have endured under the Biden regime for their perfectly legal, admirable pro-life activities.

My hope is that Donald Trump responds to this slap in his voters’ faces by using his power to empty the coffers of McElroy and his fellow bishops, and even of the Vatican. I will explain how this could happen, but first let me explain why as a Catholic I think it should.

When Caesar Saved the Church

It has happened before in history. Secular rulers with tenuous ties to organized religion (or colorful personal lives) have intervened in the affairs of the Catholic Church in the interests of their countries — and the Church has benefited from it. In fact, some of the brightest epochs of moral reform and mass evangelization depended on the actions of laymen involved in politics.

It took the Emperor Constantine, who hadn’t even been baptized yet, to summon the Council of Nicaea. He actually presided over it as it hashed out our understanding of the Trinity in the face of the Arian heresy which denied Christ’s full divinity. We have the Nicene Creed and the established canon of Scripture in part because of Constantine.

The emperor Charlemagne, whose private life included polygamy and whose rule included horrible, quasi-genocidal wars against the Saxons, was pivotal in reforming the clergy of his era. His theologian friend Alcuin spearheaded the missionary efforts throughout the unconverted fringes of Western Europe, and he led the program to force all Catholic pastors to learn basic theology and prayers such as the Our Father, which they then taught to their people. Charlemagne’s backing allowed the papacy to break free of the Byzantine emperor’s control and establish itself as the effective leader of the Western Church.

The Emperor Otto the Great saved the papacy from the control of local aristocratic gangs, who chose the popes via street fights and violent intrigue, in a period that historians soberly call the “Pornocracy” since at one point powerful prostitutes were actually choosing which men got to serve as pope. Otto invaded Rome, forced a corrupt pope to resign, and oversaw the election of an honest one. The result was a period in Church history widely called the “Ottonian Renaissance,” whose pontiffs served the Church and not local criminal gangs.

Now I hope that of all men Donald Trump might be able to serve America’s interests by putting powerful pressure on the Roman Catholic Church, which would have as its happy side effect saving the Church from its current leaders.

Taxpayers Pay the Bill for Bishops’ Shuffling of Sex Abusers

As I’ve written here before, the U.S. Catholic church has collected $3 billion in taxpayer funds over 15 years via nonprofits (such as the misnamed, totally secular federal contractor Catholic Charities), most of it for “serving migrants.” The Stream has documented that such nonprofits are heavily engaged in actually smuggling migrants across our borders and throughout our country.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice could shut off this spigot off with the stroke of a pen. As I wrote here before, Trump’s attorney general must

Launch a RICO investigation of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Conduct the national investigation which my church’s bishops have so far dodged into 1) the systemic cover-up of clerical sex abuse and 2) the human trafficking conducted by church-controlled nonprofits of illegal immigrants.

The DOJ should also investigate the role which the Vatican itself has played in encouraging the sex abuse coverup — for instance by directly interfering with reform efforts by our bishops, giving the lie to the legal fiction that each Catholic diocese is an independent corporation enjoying bankruptcy protection, and that the Vatican ought to be immune to sex abuse lawsuits. …

A former federal prosecutor whom I consulted said the DOJ’s even launching such a case “certainly would” imperil the legal eligibility of the USCCB and its nonprofits for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts — such as the moneys sluiced into church coffers under the Biden administration. …

Any real enforcement of our immigration laws would devastate the finances of flaccid, inward-looking and increasingly LBGT-friendly dioceses. It would defund, almost overnight, the vast network that is the Catholic Left.

Let Victims Sue the Vatican

But Trump must go further. Currently the U.S. Catholic bishops and the Vatican are protected from full legal liability for their sex abuse coverups by a convenient legal fiction: that every diocese is an independent corporation, solely responsible for paying its own legal judgments and protected by bankruptcy laws. The Vatican can’t be sued by American victims of sex abuse, even if they can prove Vatican policies enabled their abuse, because of this legal fiction.

I explained at length in 2023 how Pope Francis’s heavy-handed intrusions into the governance of American dioceses, including removing his political enemies, disproved this legal fiction. In reality, American dioceses operate as branch offices of a global corporation, like British Petroleum or Tesla. Pope Francis dictates their policies on sex abuse, hires and fires their CEOs (bishops), and ought to bear full legal liability for their actions, including their decisions to shuffle sex abusers or smuggle immigrants.

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If Pope Francis wants to fight the American voters and stop them from enforcing their just, democratically enacted laws against sex abuse and illegal immigration, Trump should direct his Justice Department to start dismantling the legal fiction and support plaintiffs who wish to sue the Vatican in U.S. courts. I’d hate to see all that great art go on the auction block, but justice must be done, though the heavens fall.

Perhaps only a Church stripped of assets, denuded of wealth, and exposed as powerless would return to its mission of preaching the Gospel rather than pimping for globalism, abortion-tainted vaccines, and chaotic open borders. Maybe the cardinals voting on Pope Francis’ replacement when he meets his rich reward will fear Trump’s retribution, and pick an actual Catholic for the job.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.