Whether or not one agrees with Pope Leo’s application of just war theory to the Iran conflict, it’s unthinkable to deny his powerful renewal of the Church’s authoritative moral voice.

Positive comparison with his predecessor Saint John Paul II is equally unmistakable. Both pontiff’s have, to borrow a phrase, made the mountain come to them in terms of galvanizing the world’s attention. All eyes are now upon the Roman Catholic Church’s unique global status for adjudicating between right and wrong, good and evil, God’s way and the secular pathway.

A key proof is the antic response that Leo’s clear condemnation of war in general, and the Iran war in particular, provoked from U.S. President Donald Trump. Beyond the Holy Father’s words, his demeanour embodied the wise dignity of his role as the Vicar of Christ. Trump, by contrast, demeaned his Presidential office with his infantile response. 

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Our columnist Glen Argan captures the difference with crystal clarity in this issue of the Register.

“Trump claims to be strong and mocks the Pope for advocating weakness. However, people are listening to the Pope while Trump is widely regarded as unstable,” Argan writes.

Then he provocatively poses the question: “On which side do you stand?”

The overwhelming response shows Catholics and non-Catholics alike are, on this choice at least, picking the Rock of St. Peter as the place to stand. Fittingly, it falls to one of Canada’s most eminent religious-military leaders to put that choice into active context. 

As our reporter Quinton Amundson writes, Bishop Scott McCaig, who pastors the Roman Catholic Military Ordinariate of Canada, urged audiences at a recent evangelization renewal conference in Calgary to see our moment as the advent of “a new apostolic age” worldwide.

The age itself demands, McCaig said, casting aside long-defunct models of Christendom like so many rusty swords, and instead proceeding as bearers of the light of Christian love. To evangelize otherwise, he cautioned, is to lapse into mere corporate strategizing, a perfect descriptor for the pitfall the Trump administration has tumbled down.

None can deny or denigrate the pro-life and pro-faith policy choices the current White House has advanced. Yet the President’s recklessly reactive war of words with Leo, and Vice-President Vance’s cockamamie admonition that the Pope in Rome should watch his words when it comes to theology, illustrate how these goods are as much the fruit of power calculations as commitment to Christ.

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In McCaig’s addresses to more than 700 southern Albertans during four renewal sessions, the bishop contended that in place of treating the Faith as a mere instrument to achieve political, economic or social policy preferences, Catholics must look to their own spiritual gifts to make evident the Holy Spirit.

The third Person of the Trinity, he said, is the “principal agent of evangelization” but it is our many hands that make the work light. The first task is outreach to those who are our neighbours, both literally and spiritually.

“(When) you evangelize…you’re taking on the responsibility to walk with them and pastorally accompany them. When they are ready, invite them to Mass and ask them to sit with your family,” he said.

There lies practical Catholic wisdom for carrying out the higher order affirmation of moral authority articulated by Pope Leo. No sensible person would argue that authority needed – needs – to be reclaimed. Decades of scandals sexual and financial, abuses historic and current, divisions dogmatic and liturgical, have muffled, at times seemingly silenced, our Holy Mother Church’s capacity to speak meaningfully into the world.

It must be acknowledged that the world itself has lately been too much with us, or rather against us, or worst of all arrogantly ignorant of us. Where once the Church moved the world rather than moving with it, for the generations since Saint John Paul II at least, the world moved on without us.

But what “has been” is never what forever must be. The alternative is evidenced in Bishop McCaig’s message (which are but a fresh recalling of what the fathers of the Church first taught an apostolic age ago) coupled with Pope Leo’s inspiring clarity and bravery on the world stage.

The way ahead for us as Catholics is neither in bombs dropped from a great height above nor in shirking our duty to call evil by its name when we witness to it. It is in giving to the world the gifts that have been given to us.

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