Michael Osborne

The Catechism of the Catholic Church on Just War Doctrine.

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This is the top form analysis. It’s more than plausible to find Trump’s war irreconcilable with Catholic doctrine; the same must be said about Pope Leo's pronouncements.

Having spent some time in Toronto 🇨🇦 over Passover I was struck by the amount of spoken Russian I heard in public spaces. I have since learned that there are thousands of Russians who came to Canada since Russia's war on Ukraine began, and many before that. There's about an equal number of Russians and Jews in Canada. Russian Canadians require no protection, are free from attacks, and can show their Russian identity proudly and openly and every public space they wish, as they are entitled to. Canadian Jews on the other hand are constantly threatened, attacked, and require heavy police protection just to simply go about their daily lives. Think about that: people understand that Russia, which is responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths in Ukraine, Syria, and many other places, is rightfully not a reason to attack people with Russian identity. People are able to separate the actions of a government from the actions of people, even if those people support that government. Yet when it comes to attacking Jewish people Israel is constantly used to justify attacks on Jews. That is because it was never about Gaza, Israel, or Palestinians. What we are seeing is an outburst of age old medieval anti-semitism.

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The statements made by President Trump on Truth Social regarding the Pope were entirely inappropriate and disrespectful. They don’t contribute at all to a constructive conversation. It is the Pope’s prerogative to articulate Catholic doctrine and the principles that govern the moral life. In regard to the concrete application of those principles, people of good will can and do disagree. I would warmly recommend that serious Catholics within the Trump administration–Secretary Rubio, Vice President Vance, Ambassador Brian Burch, and others–might meet with Vatican officials so that a real dialogue can take place. This is far preferable to the statements on social media. I am very grateful for the many ways that the Trump administration has reached out to Catholics and other people of faith. It has been a high honor to serve on the Religious Liberty Commission. No President in my lifetime has shown a greater dedication to defending our first liberty. All that said, I think the President owes the Pope an apology.

"International law [...] provides states with the right to defend themselves in specific circumstances when attacked. That right does not evaporate when the source of violence lies just across a border, particularly when the neighbouring state is unwilling or unable to act."

BREAKING: an extraordinarily rare late Sunday night statement from the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, His Excellency the Most Reverend Paul Coakley, Archbishop of Oklahoma City.

Today, on Yom HaShoah, we remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, the darkest period in history. We will never forget the victims, and we honour the survivors. Never again.

This is the official poster marking #YomHashoah 2026 The image in Yoav Kahana's poster depicts the "absence" within the "presence"; the personal and collective rupture to the Jewish people engendered by the Holocaust. This rupture accompanied the survivors as they searched for living relatives and were met with an aching void. Learn more: bit.ly/4lDfwjC

@AkaLazarus @lehmanlaw Just like the first Christians then. Any Catholic who understands his faith would treasure such a connection.

@lehmanlaw He’s Jewish. However raised Catholic.

Sylvester Stallone on standing for the Jewish people: “People don’t know this, but in my family there are Jewish roots on my mother’s side. My mother, Jackie Stallone, was born Jacqueline Labofish. That family story has always reminded me that the Jewish people have gone through centuries of struggle, persecution, and resilience… and yet they are still standing. When I think about that, I feel respect. A lot of respect. The story of the Jewish people is the story of perseverance. From the ancient patriarchs to the modern State of Israel, there is a chain of faith, identity, and survival that has withstood everything. And I’ll say something clearly: antisemitism has no place in this world. Hatred against Jews is something humanity should have overcome a long time ago. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that supporting Israel and the Jewish people is not only a political issue. It’s about recognizing the history, the culture, and the right of a people to exist, live in peace, and feel proud of who they are. If you are Jewish, be proud. Your history is a story of survival, of faith, and of light. And the world needs more light.”

@Ostrov_A This is true. But he's also a supporter of Putin.

Whatever one’s views on the politics of Viktor Orbán, two facts are undeniable: 1. Under his leadership, Hungary became the safest place in Europe for Jews; and 2. He was an unflinching supporter of Israel, unwavering in his solidarity with the Jewish state and fearless in standing up to the hordes at the European Union and the United Nations. This we will never forget. Thank you! 🇮🇱 🇭🇺

@kinsellawarren It's hard to discern what Trump's strategy is here. He won a large share of the Catholic vote in the election. His Catholic voters might disagree with Leo on this or that, but they won't appreciate an ad hominem attack on the Vicar of Christ.

Trump attacks the Catholic Church.

@MichaelARothman Justice David Stratas calls the em dash “a comma with attitude” in his slides on legal writing.

𝐍𝐎, 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀𝐈. 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐃 𝐏𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. I see it constantly now. Someone reads a post or an article and spots an em dash — that long horizontal line — and immediately declares it was written by AI. 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐦 𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐡, 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐆𝐏𝐓. You know who else uses em dashes? People who actually learned how English punctuation works. I don't normally step on this particular soapbox — and I commit authorial malpractice by never trying to sell you my books — but I've authored over 30 of them. Many have been international bestsellers. Well over 𝟏,𝟎𝟎𝟎,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐬 in print, translated into 7+ languages, sold around the world. I am, amongst many other things, an actual author. So let me give you a quick education your grammar teachers apparently skipped. The em dash — this thing right here — is one of the most versatile punctuation marks in the English language. It's called an "em dash" because in traditional typesetting, it was the width of the capital letter M in whatever typeface you were using. It serves three primary functions. First, it sets off a parenthetical statement within a sentence — like this one — when you want more emphasis than commas provide but less formality than parentheses. Second, it signals an abrupt break in thought or a dramatic pivot. Third, it introduces an explanation or amplification of what came before it. Writers have been using it for centuries. Emily Dickinson used em dashes so obsessively her manuscripts look like they were attacked by a horizontal line. Mark Twain used them constantly in dialogue. So did F. Scott Fitzgerald. None of them had access to ChatGPT. Now for a bit of trivia most people never learn. There's also an 𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐡 — slightly shorter, the width of the letter N. The en dash has a narrower purpose: it connects ranges. Pages 12–44. The years 1941–1945. The New York–London flight. It's the dash between two things that are connected but distinct. Most people have never heard of it, and most fonts render it just barely shorter than an em dash, which is why almost nobody notices the difference. Both have been part of formal typography since the invention of movable type in the 15th century. Gutenberg's typesetters used varying dash lengths to organize text. By the 18th century, printers had standardized the em and en dash as distinct glyphs with distinct grammatical functions. This isn't some modern AI invention — it's older than the United States. And if you use Microsoft Word, they're trivially easy to type. An en dash is Ctrl + Minus on the numeric keypad. An em dash is Ctrl + Alt + Minus on the numeric keypad. Word also auto-converts two hyphens (--) into an em dash if you have autocorrect enabled. That's why you see me use them in my books and in my posts — because I know they exist and I know the keyboard shortcut. The reason AI chatbots use em dashes frequently is because they were trained on well-written text — books, journalism, academic papers — written by people who knew the rules. The AI learned proper punctuation from proper writers. That doesn't make proper punctuation a sign of AI. It makes it a sign of 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐲. For the record, the only things I use AI for are conjuring up a quick graphic — like the image on this post — or as a shortcut for preliminary research. Think of it as a Google accelerator. The writing? That's all me. It has been for 30+ books and countless social media posts such as this one. If you've reached the end of this post, you now know more about dashes than most people who graduated with an English degree. And the next time you see an em dash and your first instinct is to scream "AI" — maybe consider that what you're actually looking at is someone who paid attention in class. Or someone whose grammar teachers didn't fail them quite as badly as yours failed you. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐦 𝐝𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝟓𝟎𝟎 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐥𝐝. 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐬.

@Pontifex Your father once wield the sword in defence of his country, during a just & necessary war that defeated evil and brought peace and freedom for millions. Now you are saying that he was wrong to do so, and that the allies were wrong to defeat evil & liberate all those countries?

God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.

@AndrewLawton She's trying to delete/scrub this this a.m. here you go; I downloaded it knowing she'd try. So I'm ensuring it's reviewed/seen so Canadians can decide what the next step is

As Canada continues to adapt to global changes, competition is more important than ever in protecting consumers, driving affordability, and making our economy as resilient as possible.

@micyoung75 @kinsellawarren Stalin famously asked how many divisions the pope has. Gorbachev found out when JPII helped bring down the Soviet empire. Threatening the leader of 1.4 billion people is not a winning strategy.

The Avignon Papacy reference is the detail that demands attention. An American defense official invoked a 14th-century episode in which the French Crown physically relocated the papacy to Avignon and controlled it for 67 years - as an implicit model for what happens to religious institutions that oppose state power. That's not a slip of the tongue. That's a studied historical reference deployed deliberately in a room with the Pope's senior diplomat. The message was not subtle. Leo heard it. He spent Holy Week delivering what papal scholars described as a sustained theological argument about the nature of power and imperial violence. On Palm Sunday he said Jesus rejects the prayers of those who wage war. On Easter Sunday - the same morning Trump posted his expletive-filled threat on Truth Social - Leo told world leaders to lay down weapons. On Tuesday he called the civilization threat "truly unacceptable" and asked citizens directly to contact their elected representatives. The White House's response to the Pope's Tuesday statement: "The Iranian people welcome the sound of bombs because it means their oppressors are losing." The first American pope will spend America's 250th birthday on Lampedusa with migrants. One Vatican official told The Free Press: "The Pope may well never visit the United States under this administration." The Pentagon summoned a cardinal and invoked the Avignon Papacy. The Pope responded by asking 1.4 billion Catholics to call their congressmen.

Trump announces a ceasefire. Here's what Iran does immediately afterwards.