A Sermon Without a Verse

Peter Wehner has written a 2,000-word essay in The Atlantic praising Pope Leo XIV as a “prophetic” voice against Donald Trump. The essay quotes T. S. Eliot. It quotes Glenn Tinder. It quotes Martin Luther King Jr. It quotes the pope. It quotes the Augustinian Rule.

The American Pope vs. the American President

It does not quote Scripture. Not once.

That is the indictment that sits at the center of an article whose entire premise depends on the claim that Leo is “relying on moral language and moral reasoning… on Catholic social teaching, the Church fathers, and the scriptures.” A piece arguing that the bishop of Rome has reinjected biblical morality into American political discourse contains zero biblical citations. The reader is asked to take Wehner’s word that the pope speaks for the prophets while neither Wehner nor the pope quoted in the piece actually quotes a prophet.

Start there. The rest follows.

1. The “non-Catholic Christian” contradiction

Wehner identifies himself as “a non-Catholic Christian” who finds Leo’s witness “vivifying.” This is the load-bearing pillar of the entire essay, and it cannot bear the weight.

Either the office of the papacy is what the Roman Catholic Church says it is… the Vicar of Christ, supreme pontiff, visible head of the church on earth, holding the keys to bind and loose with infallible teaching authority… in which case Wehner has a duty of submission and should convert. Or the office is not what Rome claims, in which case Leo’s voice carries no more authority than any other pastor’s voice, and his “prophetic stance” is a borrowed costume.

Wehner wants neither. He wants papal moral capital deployed against a president he dislikes without endorsing the office whose authority he is invoking. This is instrumentalization. It is the same move Wehner spends paragraphs attacking when white evangelicals make it on Trump’s behalf. The direction reverses. The mechanic is identical.

2. Audit the pope’s quoted language

Wehner gives us Leo’s actual words. Read them with care:

“God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest.”

“A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.”

“Wanting to inaugurate a kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity…”

Notice what is conspicuously absent. No Christ. No cross. No blood. No repentance. No sin. No judgment. No resurrection. No regeneration. No new birth. No mention of the Spirit. No Gospel.

The vocabulary is humanitarian and philosophical. “Justice, fraternity, solidarity” is the lexicon of the French Revolution dressed in clerical garb. “Discriminated against and oppressed” is the lexicon of late-modern social-justice discourse. “The weakest” is a sociological category dressed up as a theological one.

Compare these phrases to actual prophetic speech.

Amos: “Let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24). Grounded in covenant law, naming specific sins, calling Israel to repentance.

John the Baptist: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2). And to Herod’s face, naming the specific sin of unlawful marriage… a confrontation that cost him his head.

Christ Himself: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).

Paul before Felix: “He reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come” (Acts 24:25). Felix trembled.

Prophetic speech in Scripture names sin, demands repentance, invokes “thus saith the LORD,” and warns of judgment. Leo’s quoted speech does none of these things. What Wehner is calling “prophetic” is in fact a vague humanitarianism.

3. The titles violate the explicit command

Christ is not subtle here. Matthew 23:8-10:

“But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.”

The Roman Catholic Church calls its priests “father.” It calls its bishop of Rome “Holy Father.” The title “Pope” is itself derived from the Latin papa, “father.” The office is called “the papacy.” Roman Catholics address their pontiff with the very title Christ explicitly forbade His followers to bear.

Wehner waves none of this off because he never engages it. He simply assumes the legitimacy of an office whose foundational title contradicts a direct command of Christ.

The standard dodge is to claim Christ was speaking against pride, not against the title itself. Read the passage. The structure forbids three specific titles… Rabbi, Father, Master… and grounds each prohibition in the uniqueness of God’s role: one Master (Christ), one Father (the heavenly Father), one Master again (Christ). The titles are not incidental decoration. They are the entire point. Christ frames it explicitly: “for one is your Father, which is in heaven.”

There is also the claim of unique mediation. 1 Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” One. The papal office, with its claim to apostolic-Petrine succession and its sacramental priesthood standing between the laity and Christ, inserts a class of mediators where Scripture insists on one.

4. The Augustinian frame collapses under apostolic standards

Wehner praises Leo’s formation in the Augustinian order, including “vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.” The order is “founded in the 13th century.” Wehner offers this as a credential. It is a problem.

Three observations.

First, Paul’s standard for an overseer in the church: “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2). The husband of one wife. Not a celibate. Not a man under permanent vows of chastity. The apostolic standard for elders requires marriage as the assumed norm.

Second, the warning Paul issues directly against this kind of religious order: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:1-3, emphasis mine).

Mandatory celibacy plus mandatory abstinence from certain foods on certain days describes the Roman religious orders with embarrassing precision. Paul calls it “doctrines of devils.” Wehner calls it spiritual formation. One of them is reading the actual text.

Third, “founded in the 13th century” is conspicuously not “founded by an apostle.” A thirteenth-century human tradition cannot substitute for apostolic Christianity, and Wehner conflates the two as though they are interchangeable. Augustine’s Rule binds the conscience of an Augustinian. The apostolic Scriptures bind the conscience of a Christian. Those are not the same authority.

5. “A Church that knows no enemies to fight” inverts the apostolic model

Leo: “A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.”

This is poetic. It is also flatly contrary to the apostolic witness.

Jude 3: “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” The verb is contend… ἐπαγωνίζεσθαι (epagōnizesthai), to struggle, to fight strenuously. Jude is writing about fighting for doctrine against men “who privily” creep in to corrupt it. The original-language verb intensifies an already combative root… agōn… contest, struggle. The apostolic stance is forensic and martial, not vaguely warm.

James 4:4: “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” James names a category of enemy the church must refuse to befriend.

Paul, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15: false apostles, deceitful workers, ministers of Satan transformed as ministers of righteousness. Named enemies. Wolves dressed as shepherds.

Christ Himself sent His disciples “as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matthew 10:16). The wolves are real. They have to be identified before they can be resisted.

Leo’s formula sounds gracious. It would have neutered Paul, dissolved Jude, silenced John, and confused John the Baptist. The apostolic church had enemies and named them by name… Hymenaeus, Alexander, Diotrephes, Demas, Elymas. Any “Church” that pretends otherwise is not the church the apostles planted.

6. James 2 forbids the “preferential option for the poor”

The phrase Wehner places adjacent to Leo’s mouth, “preferential choice for the poor,” is liberation-theology vocabulary that crystallized at Medellín (1968) and Puebla (1979). It is not Scripture. It contradicts Scripture.

James 2:1-9: “My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons… But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.”

The phrase “respect of persons” translates προσωπολημψία (prosōpolēmpsia)… literally “face-receiving”… meaning to make moral judgments based on a person’s external category rather than the truth of the matter. James forbids this in both directions. Verses 2-4 warn against favoring the rich man in fine clothes. Verses 6-7 acknowledge unjust treatment of the poor. The biblical principle is impartiality, not preferential treatment running in the opposite direction.

Acts 10:34: “God is no respecter of persons.” Same root word. Same principle. Romans 2:11. Ephesians 6:9. Colossians 3:25. The biblical pattern is uniform across the canon.

A theological framework built on “preferential” love organized around socioeconomic class smuggles in the very partiality James condemns. It also tracks, with uncomfortable precision, the class-based moral framework of the Marxist tradition that birthed liberation theology in the first place. The Atlantic‘s reader is not given this data point.

Scripture commands generous, urgent care for the poor (Galatians 2:10, James 1:27). Scripture forbids tilting moral judgment by socioeconomic category. Catholic social teaching has fused these into a slogan that violates one of them.

7. The instrumentalization Wehner condemns is the instrumentalization Wehner performs

Wehner’s strongest rhetorical move comes near the end:

“That so many people of the Christian faith, especially white evangelicals and prominent figures within that movement, have weaponized their faith to win the favor of an American president is among the most grievous things to have occurred during the Trump era.”

Replace “to win the favor of” with “to oppose,” replace “an American president” with “this American president,” and you have a one-sentence summary of the essay you just read.

Wehner has weaponized the moral capital of the papacy to attack a president he dislikes. He admits, in passing, that he is “not entirely convinced by Leo’s arguments.” He does not actually share the pope’s ecclesiology, his sacramental theology, his Mariology, his soteriology, or his view of papal authority. What he shares is the political target. The faith does the work. The argument arrives at the conclusion the author wanted before he opened his Bible (which, again, he never opens).

This is the same template Wehner condemns. The mechanic is identical. The honest version of the column would name what is happening: a writer who finds an American president distasteful is borrowing a religious figure he does not theologically endorse, to clothe a political grievance in vestments.

The only difference between Wehner and the evangelical “courtiers” he denounces is which way the courtship runs. They court power. He courts the appearance of moral elevation. Both treat Christian authority as a tool.

8. What a prophetic voice actually sounds like

Wehner closes by quoting King: the church should be “not the master or the servant of the state but the conscience of the state, its guide and critic and never its tool.”

The line is correct. Its application here is wrong, and the test is simple. King grounded his prophetic speech in specific biblical texts… Amos, Isaiah, Paul. He named sins. He called the nation to repentance. He preached Christ crucified and risen. His “Letter from Birmingham Jail” cites Scripture, Augustine, Aquinas, the prophets, and the apostles by name.

A prophetic voice in the biblical sense does these things:

It speaks “thus saith the LORD,” and it can show you which verse. It names sin specifically… not “those who manipulate religions” but the actual idolatries, sexual sins, oppressions, and false teachings on offer. It calls hearers to repentance and faith in Christ, not to “fraternity and solidarity.” It warns of judgment to come, not of “the delusion of omnipotence.” It treats Scripture as the final authority, with Church Fathers, philosophers, and political theorists subordinate to the text.

By every one of these markers, the voice The Atlantic is celebrating fails the test. What is being praised is a churchman with the right political enemies. The “prophetic stance” Wehner finds vivifying is a stance against Trump dressed up in vestments. The same stance would be invisible to him if a pope were taking it against a president he liked.

The pope is welcome to oppose any war. He is welcome to criticize any president. The church has no obligation to silence on matters of justice. None of that is in dispute.

What is in dispute is whether the bishop of Rome speaks with prophetic biblical authority simply because The Atlantic finds him politically useful at the moment. He does not. His office is not what it claims to be. His titles violate a direct command of Christ. His order’s vows resemble what the Spirit “expressly” warned against in 1 Timothy 4. His quoted vocabulary draws from humanitarian discourse and skips scriptural categories entirely. And the writer praising him won’t even open a Bible to defend him.

A prophetic voice carries Scripture in its mouth. The pope The Atlantic is celebrating shows up empty-handed. The writer celebrating him never reaches for a Bible either. Two empty hands. One borrowed costume. A political grievance in vestments.

Wehner reached for Eliot. The Bible was on the same shelf.