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Most American Catholics have taken what the Popes say with an enormous grain of salt for a long time. I am one of them.
Over history, most Popes have had the common sense to speak with restraint and caution, especially about things outside their expertise. It's called prudence. It avoids making public mistakes and avoids embarrassment.
This Pope has always been a quart low in the prudence department. It can't be explained as the conduct of some well-meaning old fool. He's a Jesuit-trained scholar. Despite all the excuses and modifications his handlers later propose to patch up the public record, he means to upset the applecart. Over and over. And usually in a very left-leaning direction. Coming off the trip to Mexico and the mass at the border, he's presently all pumped up about his ideal of open borders - disregarding the right of nations to provide for their own security, just as the Vatican does on its territory. It makes him look a bit foolish and simpleminded. To Catholics, too. But he is no fool and he's not simple minded. He's trying to sell an agenda and stamp it as the only authentic kind of Christianity. This is a topic that is full of spirited debate by sincere persons, many of whom are Christians, however. He goes way too far in his attempt to label those who don't buy his open borders message as being pagans. And that's what he's saying when he says that those who disagree are not Christians!
So long as Trump does not go further than to defend his beliefs, avoiding personal insult back to the Pope, this little exchange is likely not to affect one Catholic vote. This is, I think, a tempest in a teapot.
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Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice. . . Restraint in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue.
Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964
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