Catholic Left projects its own misdeeds onto Trump Administration

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 10, 2026

“Whatever the left accuses you of, they are doing it themselves.” That’s a common saying on the right and it is often true. But it’s not always the whole truth. Sometimes it’s true of the left and only partly false about the right. The recent news story about the Pentagon and the Vatican—or, rather, the uses to which that story has been put—strikes me as one of those times.

According to an April 6th Free Press article, senior Pentagon officials summoned the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the United States to deliver a blunt warning after the Pope made statements sharply critical of U.S. foreign policy under President Trump. The article claimed U.S. defense officials pushed the Vatican not to interfere in matters of American strategic policy in language understood to imply that the U.S. could retaliate by fostering a rival Catholic authority or otherwise pressuring the Church—an insinuation supposedly underscored by an explicit reference to the Avignon Papacy, the historical episode in which the papacy was effectively subordinated to a secular power.

The meeting—which took place in January—has been confirmed. Nearly every salacious detail of it as reported by The Free Press has been denied. The Defense Department and the Vatican have both said it did not happen the way it was reported. According to The Pillar the meeting was “tense” but not threatening. All parties say there was no reference to the Avignon Papacy.

Which may come as a disappointment to Catholic Left activist Christopher Hale, author of the Letters from Leo Substack. And that, to me, is where the real story lies.

For anyone unfamiliar with Hale, this Crux interview is a good primer. For anyone familiar with my own work in this space, particularly my first and second columns on the Catholic New Left, you may see why his work would catch my eye. Hale makes the same distinction with Crux that I made here at Catholic Culture a year prior, that the Catholic New Left has, or should have, “less Kool-Aid sessions” on warring against Church authority over unchangeable teachings.

I like that Hale says the Catholic Left needs “to focus less on occupying chanceries and pastoral councils” because he is admitting that they do occupy the institutional Church. I like that Hale admits that the “Catholic Left is much more likely not to be in church on Sunday than to be in church” because it raises a fundamental question about the Catholic Left’s genuineness. Why should Catholicism take direction from its least faithful members, those who cannot even bring themselves to fulfill one of the most basic of Church precepts, Sunday Mass attendance?

Most of all, though, I like Hale’s honesty about the fact that he is a man of the Catholic Left. That such a thing even exists. One gets the impression that this is something the Catholic Left is not supposed to say out loud. My recent defense of Bishop Barron against the Catholic New Left was met largely with denial. “Catholic Left? What Catholic Left? Nobody here but us centrists.” In fact, Hale is so obvious in what he is doing that he has made the leftwing National Catholic Reporter uncomfortable. The NCR practically wrote the book on this sort of thing, and I think they would like Hale to hide it better.

Which brings us back to the Vatican Nuncio’s Pentagon meeting. It was The Free Press that first reported the now-discredited claim that the Trump Administration threatened to foster a rival Catholic authority, or to put the Pope under an Avignon-style captivity, if he did not get into line with the Republican Administration. But no single commentator has done more to popularize that claim and to capitalize on it than Christopher Hale. Which strikes me as a case of the left accusing the right of what they are doing themselves.

Catholics were shocked in 2016 when a Wikileaks dump of emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign revealed conversations by campaign chairman John Podesta about the creation of “Catholic Spring” groups that seemed designed to counter Catholic bishops’ influence on political issues. The emails evinced hostility toward Catholic teachings at odds with Obama Administration policies. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United were two of the “Catholic Spring” groups mentioned.

Catholics in Alliance, in particular, had received funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and was seen as a counterweight to Catholic conservative political influence. Podesta referenced these groups specifically in the context of seeking to mobilize progressive Catholic voters during controversies with the U.S. Bishops.

In other words, the Democratic Party was—or so it seems to many of us—attempting to foster a rival Catholic authority to the U.S. Bishops because the Bishops were making trouble for the Democratic Party. The very thing of which Christopher Hale loudly accuses the Trump Administration of doing against the Pope for the Republican Party. And the leader of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good from 2013 until the group’s dissolution in 2017? Christopher Hale.

I should note that leftist front groups created for the purpose of undermining conservative Christian resistance to their power target more than just Catholics. Ask the Evangelicals and they will tell you. Megan Basham wrote a whole book about it.

I should note, too, that just because Hale is wrong to exploit a false story about the Trump Administration attempting to pressure the Pope does not mean he’s wrong every time he makes a similar allegation against anyone on the Right. If you listen to the anger expressed against Pope Leo on some of the Steve Bannon’s War Room podcasts it sounds like, well, a Letters from Leo article. But that it is Bannon’s wish to bring the Pope to heel does not make it Trump’s.

Nor is it the case that Pope Leo, or the U.S. Bishops, have fallen under nefarious influences simply because they are critical of President Trump. Like many others, I wish the criticisms were clearer and more rooted in what the Church teaches on war and peace. But Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s bloodthirsty prayer, Trump’s threat to end Iranian civilization, these were all things well deserving of condemnation by those whose shoulders bear the burden of apostolic succession.

And that is the Catholic Church’s burden. It is the one institution in our society that transcends both left and right. It must resist all efforts to be coopted by either side of the political fence. And continue to call on her children, who labor on each side, to purify and elevate the side we are on.