In Steve Bannon vs. Pope Francis?, E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post points out that Bannon is hot for a religious Crusade, yes, with a capital “C,” and perhaps doesn’t think Pope Francis is up to the job:
Stephen K. Bannon disrupted American politics and helped elect Donald Trump as president. Will he disrupt the Roman Catholic Church by joining forces with right-wing Catholics who oppose Pope Francis?
Bannon’s dark vision contrasts sharply with the sunny disposition of a pope who has chided “sourpusses” and “querulous and disillusioned pessimists.”
Bannon believes that “the Judeo-Christian West is in a crisis.” He calls for a return of “the church militant” who will “fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity,” which threatens to “completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.”
Where Francis has insisted on dialogue with Muslims, Bannon points to “the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam” and reaches as far back as the eighth century to praise “forefathers” who defeated Islam on the battlefield and “kept it out of the world, whether it was at Vienna, or Tours, or other places.”
Of course, the eighth century is where Bannon and some of the other right-wing detritus the Pr*sident Trump has scooped up to run his regime would like to take us in so many ways.