We are now 452 days into President Trump’s second term.
As many Americans observed Easter or Passover this month, the president again chose vulgarity, menace, and spectacle. In remarks about the Iran war, he went so far as to warn that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
He also lashed out at Pope Leo XIV and depicted himself as what appeared to be Jesus in a social media post.
When a president attacks the pope, speaks about whole populations in the language of annihilation, flirts with catastrophe, and treats cruelty as strength, we should call it what it is: a corrosion of morality.
This did not come out of nowhere. For months, Trump’s conduct has tested the nation’s civic and moral guardrails while too many American leaders have remained silent. The drift toward authoritarianism does not happen only through policy. It also happens through language, through the steady normalization of rage, intimidation, indecency, and excess.
That is why the response from religious leaders matters—not only in Washington and Rome, but here in the Catskills, where local clergy are also speaking out.
Pope Leo, the first American pontiff, has shown a willingness to speak plainly and publicly about the moral demands of faith and has not shied away from criticizing the president. “I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do,” Pope Leo said.
In writing this commentary, I reached out to several priests from Catholic parishes in The Overlook’s coverage area. All pointed to this week’s statement by Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in response to Trump. “I am disheartened that the President chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father,” Coakley said. “Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.”
That is not the language of spin or political deceit. It is the language of moral seriousness.
The Rev. Matthew Wright of St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Woodstock made much the same point in his Sunday sermon. He condemned Trump’s “whole civilization will die” pronouncement and said, “The U.S. has acted as the aggressor and initiated a war with Iran, and in addition to bombing their schools and killing their children, we have been systematically destroying their infrastructure, hospitals, water plants, and our president even invoked the threat of genocide.”
Wright also praised Pope Leo, who he said “has emerged as one of our most significant, authentically Christian voices, fearlessly speaking truth to power.”
About one in five Americans identifies as Catholic, making Catholicism the largest organized religion in the United States. Time will tell how this widening clash between the president and Catholic leaders will unfold. But one thing is already clear: Some church leaders are showing more moral clarity than many business leaders, universities, tech companies, law firms, and other major institutions in confronting Trump.
Words matter.
When words like these come from the president of the United States, they do not remain a personal defect. They become a national burden. They coarsen public life. They dull the conscience. They make the unacceptable seem routine.
That is how moral numbness sets in and metastasizes.
Many Americans are embarrassed by what they see from our 47th president. They feel alienated not because they love their country less, but because what they see is an erosion of restraint, decency, and respect.
Most of us were raised to show kindness, exercise discipline, and engage in civil discourse. The Donald Trump brand is the inversion of all that: rudeness, tantrums, half-truths, belligerence, and reckless boasting. He has made vulgarity a governing style and indecency a political weapon.
One of the strengths of our small towns and rural communities here in the Catskills is that we still try to live by a simple idea: love your neighbor as yourself. We may have different politics, come from different backgrounds, and carry different priorities, but there remains a shared understanding that neighborliness counts.
We see one another at the post office, the farmers market, the library, in church, at restaurants, and on Main Street. We live next door or down the road from one another. We are a community.
In the Catskills, as in many places across America, people still know the difference between strength and cruelty, between toughness and vulgarity, and between leadership and bluster.
This is no time for silence. We should not be afraid to say so.
Scott Widmeyer is co-founder of The Overlook and a member of the vestry at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Woodstock. Reach him at scott@theoverlooknews.com.
