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| By The Free Press |
It’s Wednesday, April 15. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Maya Sulkin reports on the people cheering on violence against OpenAI chief Sam Altman. Mike Pesca on the autocrat who got voted out. Michael Horn on the financial crisis hitting America’s colleges. And much more.
But first: the Catholic case for the Iran war.
Lately it seems that many of our political conflicts are really theological ones, particularly when the American president is taking jabs at the first American pope. Just consider the debate over the Iran war. As The Free Press reported last week, senior Pentagon officials lectured top Vatican diplomats on how the Holy See should get behind President Donald Trump’s military campaign.
That happened behind closed doors. Now it’s all broken out in public, with both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance—a convert to Catholicism—engaging in a war of words with Pope Leo XIV. When Trump threatened to level Iran’s civilian infrastructure and end a “whole civilization,” Pope Leo called Trump’s comments “truly unacceptable.” Trump responded by saying the leader of the Catholic Church was, among other things, “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”
That brings us to today. The U.S. has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz and is turning back ships leaving Iranian ports. Democrats hope Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo will help them peel off some conservative-leaning Catholics. And the Pontiff says that, while he has no appetite for criticizing Trump, he’s also not afraid of the president.
The Pope is clearly on one side and the Trump administration on the other. But within the Church, the dividing lines are not so neat. Many of us American Catholics think the war with Iran ill-conceived.
But many others believe the war is justified, including Father Gerald Murray, an expert on canon law, and on what makes a “just war” in Catholic tradition. He explains why he thinks the strikes on Iran are just in our pages today. Agree with him or not, Murray is one of the country’s foremost Catholic thinkers, and his case is worth considering.
As for the progress of the war itself: So far, the U.S. blockade against Iranian ports seems to be holding. Aaron MacLean breaks down how it works, what it would take to force Iran to the table, and whether Iran’s leaders will cut a deal to save themselves or go down with the ship.
And on the latest episode of the School of War podcast, Aaron is joined by maritime history and shipping expert Sal Mercogliano to dive deeper into the history of naval blockades—how past ones have fared and what it would actually take to open the Strait of Hormuz.
—Will Rahn
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