Pope Leo XIV weighed in on sexual morality and blessings for same-sex couples on Thursday aboard the papal plane, telling reporters he believes the Catholic Church focuses too much on equating morality with sexual issues, and not enough on equating morality with issues of justice, equality, and freedom.

“First of all, I think it’s very important that the unity or division of the church should not revolve around sexual matters,” Pope Leo said, according to the National Catholic Register. A reporter had asked him how he intends to preserve the unity of the global church on the issue of blessings for same-sex couples.

“We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality that the only issue of morality is sexual,” he said. “And in reality I believe there are greater and more important issues such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion that would all take priority before that particular issue.”

READ MORE: How Trump Is Doubling Down on His ‘God Complex’: Columnist

But Pope Leo made clear he, like his predecessor, opposes formal blessings for same-sex couples, while acknowledging that informal blessings are permitted, for all.

“We do not agree with the formalized blessing of couples, in this case homosexual couples,” he told reporters.

Leo warned that efforts to allow formal blessings of same-sex couples risk disunity.

“I think that the topic can cause more disunity than unity, and that we should look for ways to build our unity on Jesus Christ and what Jesus Christ teaches,” he said.

READ MORE: ‘Vile Racist’: Trump Promotes Unhinged Anti-Birthright Citizenship Screed

Image via Reuters 

President Donald Trump is losing his Iran war — but Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark argues American democracy might come out the winner.

Last points to Wednesday’s reported firing of Navy Secretary John Phelan, preceded just three weeks earlier by the firing of Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, now 54 days into the war.

“These datapoints are linked. They are an admission by the president that America is losing the war,” Last writes. “Because the simple fact of the matter is: You do not make high-level personnel changes in the middle of a war if you are winning.”

He notes that the entire Pentagon operation is involved when America goes to war. In wartime, with organizational structures strained, what’s needed most is stability.

“If you are winning the war, then you don’t fire senior leaders, even if their performance is subpar—because the result speaks for itself. You are winning. Any change you make to leadership risks upending that balance.”

Conversely, when “the president starts firing senior military leaders while combat operations are ongoing, it’s an admission that the war is going badly. It’s an admission that the status quo is not tenable and must be altered, even if doing so creates instability and organizational risk.”

Last finds a possible silver lining in the Iran war’s failure: it strengthens American democracy — if U.S. military leadership turns on Trump, even partially.

READ MORE: ‘Vile Racist’: Trump Promotes Unhinged Anti-Birthright Citizenship Screed

He wonders if “perhaps the net effect of the Iran war will be to turn the senior leadership of the military against Trump and reduce his confidence that, in a constitutional crisis, he could call on them to help him domestically?”

Last notes several data points related to the war, such as Trump launching it after being talked into it by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his rejection of the military’s assessments, the “almost daily” shifting of rationale for going to war, being caught “completely by surprise” when Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and trump repeatedly being proven wrong about what is happening and will happen.

He also reminds that during “the rescue operation of the two downed airmen, the president had to be kept out of the room in order to prevent him from interfering and screwing up the mission.”

Last offers up an uncomfortable concept, what he calls, “not a very nice thing to say”:

“One of my maxims is that in the real world, the Joint Chiefs are the final arbiters of American democracy. No one gets sworn in on Inauguration Day without the implicit consent of the military.”

Losing the Iran war will make it that much harder for Trump to turn the military against American democracy should he not like the outcome of any future election.

“Political leaders who lose wars—especially through their own strategic incompetence—do not usually engender loyalty from the officer corps,” Last says, suggesting that losing the war has made one of Trump’s “long-shot endgame scenarios even more unlikely to work.”

READ MORE: How Trump Is Doubling Down on His ‘God Complex’: Columnist

Image via Reuters

President Donald Trump is “doubling down on his God complex,” The Guardian‘s Emma Brockes writes in an opinion piece, questioning why evangelical Christians are onboard.

Brockes points to the president’s Oval Office recording of a Bible passage this week, part of an America Reads the Bible event that urges people to repent of their “wicked ways.” She wonders if America’s evangelical Christians, “who overwhelmingly support Trump, have a red line and if so, can they find it with both hands?”

Trump, she writes, is “treating us to a section of the Old Testament as part of a week-long, continuous public reading of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.” She wonders about “separation of church and state,” before noting that Trump is the same president who has, variously, been found by courts to have falsified business records, as part of a hush-money payment scheme to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, and sexually abused and defamed E Jean Carroll.”

Reading from Scripture, Trump on Tuesday said: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

READ MORE: ‘Vile Racist’: Trump Promotes Unhinged Anti-Birthright Citizenship Screed

Brockes appears to mock Trump, saying, “what I love about the choice is that it comes hard on the heels of his other, recent engagement with Christianity in a way that looks to me a lot like doubling down.”

“It’s very him, isn’t it?” she notes. “Ten days after sharing an AI-generated image in which Trump appeared as a Jesus-like figure healing the sick, here he is delivering a Bible passage that involves taking on a first-person delivery of God’s word.”

Trump’s approval among Catholics has taken a beating, she suggests, noting his approval rating with them is underwater.

Evangelicals, by comparison, “are much more solidly and implacably pro-Trump, not least because he put through their agenda to restrict abortion rights by delivering a rightwing majority to the supreme court. They also appear to be more politically organized in the US.”

Brockes asks if the mission of America Reads the Bible would be better served “by the country not starting an unnecessary war, deporting American citizens or cancelling foreign aid to cause the deaths of an estimated 600,000 people worldwide.”

“On the other hand,” she observes, “if a convicted felon reading a passage from the Bible makes you feel closer to God, then all one can say is good luck to you.”

READ MORE: Trump: ‘Extraordinarily Brilliant’ — Yet Stumped by Virginia’s ‘Rigged’ Referendum

Image via Reuters