Why the Trump/Leo spat is so exciting for Catholic anti-Trumpers

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 24, 2026

It’s their big moment. They have been waiting for it for a long time. And they think it may finally be here. I am talking about Catholics who believe Catholic support for Donald Trump to be some sort of abomination.

They come in different shades. The Catholic Left, of course, despises Catholic support for almost any Republican. But Catholic NeverTrumpers affiliated with the pre-Trump GOP have also been against Trump from Day One. Add to these two groups a Catholic segment of Benedict Option (BenOp) enthusiasts who practice a Christian retreat from politics that seems to go beyond what Rod Dreher had in mind. And finally, Catholic former Trumpers, disillusioned by his second administration’s turn on foreign policy and his weakening support for the unborn.

Each of these anti-Trump Catholic tribes have had it tough of late. At precisely the moment when the cry for Christians to abandon politics was gearing up, Trump’s first election in 2016 gave the Religious Right a new lease on life. The peak Wokeness of the Biden years then forced many who had interpreted the BenOp as total political withdrawal to reluctantly reengage. Next came Trump’s re-election in 2024 on the strength of the Catholic vote, a tremendous blow to the Catholic Left and to Catholic NeverTrumpers. Finally, disillusioned Catholic former Trumpers, who post day and night on social media about Gaza or Iran, are beside themselves over Catholics who either do not agree with them, or who do agree with them but still support Trump.

Which is why Trump’s post attacking Pope Leo is too good to let go. Even though it is almost two weeks in the past, and even though Trump and Leo have both turned down the temperature since Trump’s initial anti-Leo post, you are still hearing about it every day in the media and on your newsfeeds. Because, like the endless beatdown on Heritage President Kevin Roberts over the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes fiasco, keeping the story alive serves an ideological purpose. And that purpose is to drive down Catholic support for Trump-Vance as much as possible heading into the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

As someone who has opposed the Iran War from the beginning, and who has criticized President Trump for attacking Pope Leo, I have gotten some heat from the Catholic anti-Trumpers. Because I am not opposing the Iran War, or criticizing President Trump, in the way that they think I should. I am not calling on Catholic supporters to abandon Trump nor am I accepting invitations to a struggle session for having supported him myself. I am not serving the ideological purpose for which the Trump/Leo spat is being kept alive by anti-Trumpers.

In the first paragraph of my April 14th column criticizing Trump’s anti-Leo post, I called it “a tremendous gift to the people who want to kill unborn babies and trans your kids” and added, “[h]e should be required to report these posts as an in-kind contribution to the Democratic Party.” Those lines were not well-received by Catholic anti-Trumpers. “I think it’s more urgent to call out the underlying thing rather than squeezing a partisan point out of this,” one told me. “The things that drove many of us to Trump in the first place didn’t suddenly disappear,” I responded. And from there, we were off to the races.

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“But was Trump the correct champion to drive to?” asked a Catholic BenOp enthusiast. He called the overturn of Roe v. Wade “thin gruel” and argued that the second Trump Administration was setting religious conservatives up to take even more of a beating afterward than we did after the first Trump Administration. “Future generations of Christian Americans may curse the lot given to them because their forefathers chose to stand behind Donald Trump” he wrote to me.

But if you’re trying to stop, say, the slaughter of the unborn or the genital mutilation of minors, and Trump beat your preferred candidate in the 2016 and 2024 primaries, what then? “Not Voting or Write-In,” wrote my BenOp friend. “Our presidential votes don’t matter anyway, and I now watch all this devastation with the mild consolation that my conscience is clean.” He didn’t stop there. “Though we should be clear: you didn’t just, privately vote for Trump, Peter, you advocated for him across your platforms, even if you did so with reservations.”

This is what I don’t get about old school NeverTrumpers, BenOpers, and so forth. They want to peel Catholic Trumpers off Trump. But they hate him so much, and us for supporting him, that they just cannot stop themselves from telling us what bad people we are for not doing as we’ve been told. Not exactly a persuasive message but they just can’t help themselves. In that sense, they remind me of…Trump.

Meanwhile, Democrats are attacking nuns again, with the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne having to sue New York State so as not to have gender ideology forced on the nursing homes they operate. We learned the Biden Department of Justice worked hand-in-glove with pro-abortion groups to profile and jail pro-life grannies and with disproportionate prison sentences. And here in Connecticut, the Democrat supermajority in both chambers of our legislature just voted to repeal part of our state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act so as not to lose a lawsuit over a previous repeal of religious liberty. All of this has occurred just in the two weeks that anti-Trumpers have kept us distracted with Trump’s anti-Leo post.

This is why my low opinion of Catholic political quietism, and Catholic anti-Trumpism, has not changed. “What would be your breaking point on your ‘vote at all cost’ ideology?” asked my BenOp friend. “If Nick Fuentes was the GOP nominee against Kamala Harris, would you vote for him?” This is a supervillain question, like the Green Goblin forcing Spider-Man to choose between saving Mary Jane Watson or a tram car full of children. Kamala or Fuentes is a choice that we are not yet likely to come to.

But the choices that are before us right now, that have been before us for some time now, are choices like whether it’s ok for children to have their genitals cut off. Or for the state to take kids away from their parents for not agreeing to have their kids’ genitals cut off. The consciences of my Catholic anti-Trump and BenOp friends are clear because they didn’t get involved. My conscience is clear because I did.