It was striking to me that the Pope refused to address the president’s authorization of inhumane treatment and torture of prisoners. This was not an accidental omission. In return, the president refused to engage the Pope on his own complicity in the systematic cover-up of child rape and teen abuse by his own priests.

Sullivan noted that the leaders’ failure to criticize one another publicly obscured not only these facts, but also their deep philosophical disagreement over the nature of political freedom. In spite of such disagreements, however, their political instincts appear to have prevailed. As Sullivan pointed out, “The president is keen to advance certain factions in a religious faith he does not share - for his own political purposes. That instrumental use of religion is at the core of today’s ‘conservatism’.”