By Joe Broadmeadow

Pope Leo XIV was returning from Turkey and Lebanon last December when a reporter asked him about interfaith coexistence. The Pope said Lebanon demonstrates that Islam and Christianity “are both present and are respected” and that there is “a possibility to live together, to be friends.”

He suggested Europe and North America be “a little less fearful” and pursue “authentic dialogue and respect.” He is currently in Algeria, visiting the Grand Mosque, meeting with Muslim leaders, carrying a message of peace. His motto for the journey: “Peace be with you.”

Liz Wheeler of BlazeTV is “deeply disappointed.”

The successor of Saint Peter, Wheeler announced, is articulating “leftist political opinions.”

Let’s sit with that for a moment.

According to Wheeler, the Pope, the representative on Earth of the Prince of Peace, by saying there is a “possibility to live together in peace” with other faiths, is a leftist. If that is the definition of leftist, maybe, just maybe, I should revisit my connection to this faith. (Just kidding)

The Pope said peace is possible. He said we should respect one another. He said fear is not a strategy. And a cable television host—armed with a green screen and a partisan grievance—has concluded that this is leftism. That the Bishop of Rome has strayed from the faith.

Where to begin?

The Catholic Church, and Christianity in general, is not a prop for American identity politics. The Pope is not a pundit who can be corrected when his message fails to serve the weekly talking points. And the call to live in peace with one’s neighbors, to be less fearful, and to pursue authentic dialogue is not leftism.
It is the oldest instruction in the tradition Wheeler claims to defend.

Joe Broadmeadow

Start with the theology since Wheeler apparently hasn’t. The foundational text of Christianity, the Sermon on the Mount, is not a Republican Party platform. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” “Love your enemies.” “Do unto others.” Jesus Christ crossed every tribal line available to him. He spoke to Samaritans. He healed Romans. He sat with tax collectors and sinners while the righteous grumbled. If you want to argue that a pope—pursuing peace and dialogue—has betrayed the faith, you’re going to have a rough time with the source material.

Then there’s the history, which Wheeler seems to have skipped entirely. The Catholic Church didn’t discover interfaith dialogue last week. The Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and concluded in 1965, formally endorsed respect for non-Christian religions. Nostra Aetate, one of the Council’s defining documents, explicitly affirmed the Church’s regard for Muslims and their faith. Pope John Paul II visited the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in 2001. He became the first pope to enter a mosque. Was he a leftist? Was Vatican II a progressive fever dream? Or is Wheeler simply unaware that the institution she’s scolding has two thousand years of history she hasn’t bothered to read?

The Pope’s Algeria visit is grounded explicitly in Saint Augustine, the fifth-century theologian born in what is now Algeria, a man who converted from paganism and spent his intellectual life wrestling with truth across traditions. Augustine is one of the pillars of the Western Church. He is nobody’s socialist. But he came from Africa. He emerged from a world where faiths and cultures collided and coexisted. The Pope honoring that legacy isn’t a political statement. It’s a theological one, with roots far deeper than BlazeTV’s founding date.

Here is what Wheeler has actually done, whether she recognizes it or not. She has taken the vocabulary of American cable news, “leftist,” a word that means whatever the speaker needs it to mean on a given Tuesday, and applied it to twenty centuries of Catholic doctrine. She has confused the culture war with a warped interpretation of faith. She has mistaken her partisan framework for theological authority. And in doing so, she has told the Vicar of Christ that he is getting Christianity wrong.

That’s like a six-year-old telling Shohei Ohtani how to hit a baseball. Actually, it’s more like a kid, picking up a bat for the first time, offering the advice.

The audacity of that position deserves to be named plainly. Liz Wheeler is not a theologian. She is not a bishop. She is not a scholar of Church history. She hosts a show. And she has decided that the Pope’s call for peace and coexistence is politically inconvenient because it complicates the narrative that Islam is simply an enemy, a useful enemy, the kind that drives clicks and subscriptions and outrage-fueled engagement.

That is not a theological objection. It is a tribal one.

The Catholic Church, and Christianity in general, is not a prop for American identity politics. The Pope is not a pundit who can be corrected when his message fails to serve the weekly talking points. And the call to live in peace with one’s neighbors, to be less fearful, and to pursue authentic dialogue is not leftism. It is the oldest instruction in the tradition Wheeler claims to defend.

When the man charged with carrying that tradition across the globe says, “peace be with you,” the correct response is not disappointment.

It is: “And also with you.”

Interestingly enough, in Islam they use similar words in greeting.  “As-Salam alaykum”- “Peace be upon you” and the response is “wa-alaykum s-salam”- “and peace be upon you.” An oddly familiar ring.

While there is much about any radicalized religions that need be banished from this world, both Christian, Muslim, and other, the Pope calling for understanding and dialog is not part of it.

If anything, Wheeler’s form of Catholicism, so convoluted with tribal identity politics as to render, is the perfect example of the dangers of religious sectarianism. And I can assure you the founding fathers, even if some of them were Christian, would find her political agenda both distasteful and contrary to the basis upon which they built this country.