America’s Empathy Deficit and Trump vs. The Pope

[0:04] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. The American Empathy Project, coming up on May 2nd, was created to address the cruelty crisis happening in this country. We talk about a prime example of this issue. Next, Virginia did a good thing and corrected a pox on the state from its recent racist past. And finally, we comment on the fight Trump picked with Pope Leo. Could it fracture the Catholic MAGA vortex in the U.S.? Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[1:00] On May the 2nd of 2026, the American Humans Association is sponsoring the American Empathy Project, awarded $100,000 in grants to fund service projects across the country because empathy is stronger than cruelty. And so some of the projects that people are going to be doing is food over cruelty, which is organizing a food drive, care over cruelty, coordinating a medical debt jubilee, affirmation over cruelty, run a closed drive, welcoming over cruelty, run a supply drive to support immigrant families, future over cruelty, host a community environmental cleanup, respect over cruelty, facilitate a joy drive for a senior center, and many, many more. The reason why they are doing this and the reason why we need it is that we’re living through a crisis of cruelty with a political administration that threatens our neighbor’s safety, leaves kids hungry, diminishes our collective humanity and seeks to divide us with fear and hate. But we won’t let them win. And there’s hope in each other and in ourselves. And so that is why my group, the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie.

[2:16] We were awarded a grant for this project. What we’ve decided to do is put together shelf-stable meal kits for a local food bank. And so basically that’d be like a taco bake with canned, some kind of canned meat and chips and stuff, you know, stuff that you could put in a bag and put on a shelf and it would be there for a few months that you wouldn’t need to refrigerate or make sure, you know, it wasn’t going to go bad like right away. And it’s not a hot meal, but something that you would use at home for one to two people, two or three people. And so that’s what we’re doing. We’re doing the meal kits. And that’s going to be on May the 2nd at 10 o’clock in the morning is when we’re meeting. And if you want further details on that, check out our website, humanistwle.org. If you’d like to help us out or participate, you know, the more the merrier, as it were. So we’re doing that. And I kind of want to give you an example of what we mean by that we’re in a crisis of cruelty in this country right now.

[3:32] My hometown, where I am from, is Finley, Ohio. And that is roughly 45 miles south of Toledo. I grew up there, graduated high school there. A lot of my immediate family is still in the area and it tends to be a conservative town. It’s, it’s a Republican town that, you know, they vote, they’re the type of people that voted for Trump several times. And I was mentioning it the other day that, that.

[4:08] Somebody was talking about identifying with people in the rural areas for the upcoming election that Democrats need to identify and get out and talk to some of the people in Northwest Ohio. And I had to make the comment that one of the epicenters for misinformation about President Barack Obama when he was a candidate in 2008 was Finley, Ohio. I think New York Times even did an article. I think it was the New York Times did an article about it, talking about how people, potential voters were thinking that he was Muslim and thinking he was from Kenya and didn’t have a birth certificate because they weren’t getting their information from a from a good source. They were getting their information from Kenny next door or their cousin Larry or whatever. And so that’s my town. I mean, it’s a good place. If you want to raise kids, it’s a good place to raise kids.

[5:11] It’s not any different than some other areas. There is a drug problem in some of the town. There’s also a housing issue. They don’t have enough affordable housing. We had a major flood in 2007 that wiped out a lot of the affordable housing that they ended up having to tear it down. And so they’ve not been great in building new affordable housing. So I still read the newspaper. I still read the local Finley newspaper, The Courier. And they had this article the other day. It took me aback. It took me, it shocked me.

[5:51] There is a report that this woman filed a federal lawsuit against the Finley YMCA and the director of the Finley YMCA for harassment and intimidation or some discrimination, a whole bunch of other stuff. And I’m like, what? Now, just so I kind of put this in context, the YMCA in Finley is a big deal. It’s a major player in the community. I used to go there when I was a kid. We couldn’t afford a membership, but like some of the groups that I was associated with, we’d have lock-ins at the YMCA, got to swim in their pool occasionally.

[6:38] And they’d have classes there that you could attend. They recently had some disputes with some neighbors because they bought up a bunch of properties next to their building because they wanted to expand. And one of the buildings that they bought and was going to tear down was allegedly the first Catholic church in the city of Finley.

[7:06] It was a house where the priest would show up and they’d have services there before they built St. Michael’s Church, which is the main Catholic church in town. And so people didn’t want them to tear down that house, and eventually they had to accuess to the public pressure, and they kept the house. They did buy it, but they kept the house, and they’re going to try to renovate it and repurpose it in some way so it’s still around. Anyway, so YMCA is a big deal. The other part of the context, too, is it used to be a religious organization. It still nominally is, but it’s not directly attached to any religious organization anymore. It used to be called the Young Men’s Christian Association, but they dropped that and just stuck with YMCA. And so what happened was this woman showed up at the YMCA and asked for help. She was in a domestic dispute and she had fled her home.

[8:12] And needed a space, a safe space that she could decompress a little bit, get cleaned up. She had two children, young children with her, and get them cleaned up and try to clear her head and think and try to do her next step. Step, what she was supposed to do after that, after she’s left her violent domestic situation and how she was going to get help.

[8:43] And so the staff at the YMCA graciously let her in and she went into the bathroom, the shower room and got cleaned up. But according to her lawsuit, And now, again, this is one side. This is just her side of the lawsuit. But it’s just indicative of what we’re talking about, about crisis of cruelty in this country. But here is what the article in The Courier said. It said, according to court documents, the plaintiff went to YMCA in May of 2025 and requested temporary access to the locker room to care for herself and her three young children, all under the age of three at the time. Willis told staff she was escaping violence and needed a brief period to clean up and regroup. The lawsuit claims Willis was in the locker room for about 80 minutes total, during which staff allegedly repeatedly entered the space, looked through the shower curtain, and ordered her to hurry. Staff then contacted law enforcement.

[9:44] At the time the police were called, the plaintiff had been granted entry to the complaint states. Officers allegedly treated Willis as a trespassing suspect and warned her that returning to the facility could result in arrest. Shortly after the incident, the woman reportedly, no, the director of the YMCA reportedly sent the woman a letter stating she entered the YMCA without authorization. The woman then requested the YMCA preserve surveillance footage of the encounter, but the complaint alleges the organization failed to confirm whether the footage was retained.

[10:19] And the lawsuit lists seven counts against the YMCA, including racial discrimination, violation of Title II of the Civil Rights Act, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, supervision, negligence, and defamation. I, you know, not knowing all sides of the story, just based on the facts of the lawsuit, you know, if you’re going to allow somebody to come into your facility because they need to, because they are requesting help, then to harass them and call law enforcement on them is cruel. That’s just plain cruelty.

[11:05] And so I don’t know how that that’s going to turn out, but it’s like, if you’re going to, if you’re going to allow the entry, then you should see it through. I know when I was working security at a building one time, we had a gentleman that was in, he was in a bit of a state, I guess he had walked away from a mental health facility, and he still had a gown on, a hospital gown and slippers on, and he showed up at our office building. Now, normally what we would have done is prevented him from coming in, which we did. But we also cared for him in that we called somebody to come pick him up. And so the mental health facility that he walked away from came and picked him up. But we kept an eye on him the whole time, even though we didn’t let him in the building. Because we couldn’t let him in. We weren’t allowed to let him in the building. But we cared enough that we wanted to make sure that he was taken care of and not ignored.

[12:09] So that’s how they could have done that differently if, and I’m guessing probably maybe one of the staff people took, I don’t want to say pity, but was concerned about this woman and said, sure, come on in. And then she got in trouble for it or they got in trouble for it. And so now they’re just trying to cover their butts. Who knows?

[12:32] The other thing that I want to mention about cruelty was that in the paper, The Courier, they still publish the column by a conservative, Cal Thomas. Cal Thomas is just one of those guys who’s kind of like Bill O’Reilly and some of those other political extremists. And he is an attack dog for religious people. And so he had a column up the other day, this week, the title, Democrats Again Attack Religion. I’m like, oh, really? And so basically, this is how he sets up the story. He says, Democrats are again trying to prize some of the religious votes from Republicans, but their actions expose the insincerity of their approach. The latest example involves an order of Catholic nuns in Hawthorne, New York, who care for the terminally ill. Washington Times reports the nuns are suing New York State over a transgender rights law that requires nursing homes to use pronouns, assign rooms, and allow restroom access based on the patient’s gender identity or risk jail time. The New York Department of Health also requires facilities to create communities that affirm patient’s sexual preferences and accommodate patient’s desire for extramarital relations.

[13:55] Fines up to $2,000 would be excess for the first violation, up to $5,000 for repeat violations. Willful violations would have fines of $10,000 and a year in prison.

[14:09] And then it says, the nuns argue all such requirements violate their religious beliefs. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne have been around for 125 years and runs the Rosary Hill home. Mother Marie Edward, the general manager of the Hawthorne Dominicans, issued a statement. We sisters have taken care of patients from all walks of life, ideologies, and faiths. We treat each patient with dignity and Christian charity. We have never had complaints. So basically, they get it. But Cal Thomas does not. See, if you’re going, if you have a religious group like these sisters, Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, and you take tax dollars from the government to provide a service, you have to abide by the rules set up by that government. You don’t get a free pass based on religious freedom. Now, if they wanted you to deconvert from Catholicism and, I don’t know, learn Santeria, yeah, that would be against your religious freedom. But if you offer a service and you claim that you treat each patient with dignity and Christian charity.

[15:21] Then you have to abide by the laws and regulations on the books at the time that do not infringe on your religious beliefs. And nobody who is religious can tell me that using somebody’s proper pronouns somehow denies you your religious freedom. I just don’t understand that. Nobody has ever explained that to me. And so if you claim that you treat each patient with dignity and then you don’t, then you’re a hypocrite.

[15:58] And again, that is another example of the cruelty that we are experiencing today, and it’s usually almost always at the hands of religious extremists, like those nuns. They’re religious extremists because they’re trying to mold their world to conform to their religious beliefs instead of existing in a world that doesn’t care about their religious beliefs, because most people do not care. It’s just when you try to impose your religious beliefs on other people, that’s when we have a problem. And so I’m really happy that we have this project for the American Empathy Project, and that we’re going to be doing that on May the 2nd. And I think it is badly needed because there’s just a lot of people in this country that have lost their sense of empathy, have lost their sense of compassion.

[16:51] And they’ve just turned inward and it’s selfish, almost like President Trump. And it’s all about them and how they benefit from it and not how it benefits society as a whole.

[17:14] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[17:34] I wanted to highlight some good news I read. I wish it was here in Ohio, but it’s not. It’s in Virginia. In case people don’t know, in Virginia, they elected a new governor who’s a Democrat.

[17:49] Spanberger is her name. Abigail Spanberger. She was a former congressperson. I’ve had issues with Spanberger in the past, but I’m glad that she became the governor. And they also have a trifecta in Virginia. The Democrats control the Senate and the House of Delegates. They call it the House of Delegates. And so they’ve been getting a lot done. She’s been getting a lot done, a lot of good stuff done. And one of them that she did was that she signed a bill into law this week that ended 76 years of taxpayer subsidies to Confederate groups. Says this article that I got this information from, it says, Governor Abigail Spanberger signed House Bill 167 into law this week, stripping tax-exempt status from six Confederate-linked organizations, including the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial, and the J.E.B. Stewart Birthplace Preservation Trust. It says these groups weren’t just getting a small courtesy. The exemptions covered state property taxes and recordation taxes that had and had been in place since the 1950s.

[19:16] So this wasn’t the result of the Civil War. This was the result of Virginia’s massive resistance campaign against racial integration in the 1950s. The tax breaks were a deliberate tool of white supremacy designed to financially reward organizations that romanticized the Confederacy while black Virginians were being denied basic rights. And the Richmond headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy alone dodged an estimated $50,000 or more in annual property taxes, money that could have gone to the public schools, infrastructure, community programs in a city with a large black population. And so basically the United Daughters of the Confederacy, they’re the ones that built hundreds of Confederate monuments across the country to promote the lost cause narrative, including Ohio. They put up a statue of Robert E. Lee north of Cincinnati. Ridiculous. It says, A tax exemption is a privilege and not a right. This legislation does not challenge Confederate organizations’ right to exist. And it’s not about free speech, not about taking down any monuments. It’s about fairness, taxation fairness.

[20:37] And they’re right. They should not be getting a tax break for their values. They really shouldn’t. It’s not a religious group. They’re not a church. It’s a political group. They’re giving free money to a political group. And I agree that they should not have it. And I’m glad that Virginia made that move. The other thing that’s related to that is the Johnson Amendment, which supposedly is supposed to prevent churches from endorsing candidates. And we found out recently that the IRS under the Trump administration doesn’t want to enforce it. The rule has not really been enforced in decades, and I don’t see it being enforced anytime soon. However, because the Trump administration is going after anti-Christian bias that they deem to make up, we still have to be careful. Those of us, like in my group, my humanist group, we have a 5013C tax exemption. So we still have to be careful. The churches, the right-wing churches and the evangelical churches, they haven’t cared for years.

[22:04] And so probably they never will. I would like to see that rule enforced, but it probably never will be. But still, it’s a good thing because Virginia did the right thing in not allowing losers to benefit from losing.

[22:25] And they did. The Confederates lost the war.

[22:58] I know by living in this religiously biased world that we live in today, even here in the United States that supposedly has religious freedom, it can be quite exhausting to have to deal with religious extremists like all the time. You have, like, for example, here in Ohio, we have religious extremists that continue to target trans kids, continue to target the entire LGBT A-plus community.

[23:32] We have religious extremists that are still trying to restrict abortion. We also have a representative who believes, because of his religious beliefs, that drag performances, no matter where they’re performed, are naturally obscene. You know, just the fact that somebody believes that a trans girl is a predator. Now, I just don’t understand how people think that way. I also don’t understand how people aren’t giving others basic dignity and worth, especially, you know, we’ve seen religious extremists go after undocumented people. And we know, I mean, I’m an atheist, I’m a humanist, I’m an atheist. Even I know religious teachings are at the complete opposite of that. And so when Pope Leo, who’s the first American-born pope to be elected to the Roman Catholic Church, when he spoke out against the current chosen war by the Trump administration against Iran, it didn’t surprise me. I mean, I don’t have an opinion on it. He’s the pope. He’s the leader of his church. It’s not any different than a CEO of a company putting out a statement of their values and.

[24:59] But because it’s religion, it gets politicized. Well, at least currently here in the United States, religion gets politicized. And so with our current president, Donald Jefferson Trump, who is by all accounts a narcissist. I’m not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional or anything like that. I’m just going by what I’ve been told and read in articles that he’s a classic narcissist, that he took that criticism by the Pope personally and lashed out at him, said he was weak on crime, whatever that means, and that he wants Iran to have a nuclear bomb, which is not the case. The Catholic Church has usually been against nuclear arms.

[25:52] And so this whole Trump administration, because Trump is mad about it, all his sycophants, all the people surrounding him support him, and they do his bidding. And as any good authoritarian does, you surround yourself with people that will do what you want them to do. And so we have Vice President J.D. Vance, who blasts the Pope as well. And what is ironic about it is that J.D. Vance has a book coming out called, I believe it’s called Communion, where he talks about his conversion to Catholicism. His wife is Hindu. He got married in a Hindu ceremony many years ago, but he decides to convert to Catholicism. And it makes sense because Catholics, according to the statistics, are the largest religious group in the United States that shifted to the right over the last few years.

[27:01] And the other thing also to know is that there is a large contingent of Catholics in our government currently that have sizable control. Several of the Supreme Court justices are Catholic. Coney Barrett, one of the newest associate judges, taught law at the University of Notre Dame. And I know years ago, the head of the FBI that actually knew what he was doing was also a member. He was also a Catholic.

[27:40] What was it called? The group was called the Opius Day group or something like that. You might have to Google that. I’m not sure on that. Anyway, so J.D. Vance, who’s a newly minted Catholic, according to him.

[27:57] During a Turning Point USA conference on Tuesday, and this would have been the 14th of April, criticized the Pope for his disagreement with Trump. And Vance listed several disagreements he has with the Pope and then cited the conflict in Iran. And this is a quote from J.D. Vance. And he says, and look, there are certainly things that the Pope has said in the last few months that I disagree with. Let me take like one very concrete example related to this conflict in Iran. So the Pope said something where he said, I’m going to try to remember the exact quote, but he said that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword.

[28:38] God is never on the side of those who wield the sword. I’m pretty sure that’s what he said at that exact statement. Now, on the other hand, again, I like that the Pope is an advocate for peace. I think that’s certainly one of his roles. On the other hand, how can he say that God is never on the side of those who wielded the sword. Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? Was God on the side of Americans who liberated the Holocaust camps? And those innocent people from, you know, those who survived the Holocaust? I certainly think the answer is yes, and I agree. And in this article that I got this quote from, it says, Vance equates World War II and Hitler’s thirst for genocide to Trump’s irrationally sneak attack on Iran. And that’s the point. The Pope was criticizing Trump for attacking Iran for no real rational reason.

[29:29] In World War II, we had to fight. We had to defend people. We had to defend not only the free world, but democracy against an evil person who was Adolf Hitler, who just so happened to trying to kill all the Jews that he could find. And to use a religious term, that was a righteous war. The Crusades, the people that fought the Crusades in Palestine was at the 12th and 13th centuries. I think my history is probably pretty bad on that. The Crusades, they believed that they were on a quest from God. So they thought that they were wielding the sword appropriately. way.

[30:22] And so what Pope Leo was talking about was that he was pointing out rightfully that Trump chose to attack Iran for no real reason. We weren’t defending ourselves. We really weren’t defending ourselves. So then at this Turning Point USA conference, Vance then goes on to lecture the Pope on doctrine. And he says, when the Pope says that God is never on the side of those who wielded the sword. There is a thousand-year, more than a thousand-year tradition of just war theory, okay? Now we can, of course, have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just, but I think that it’s important in the same way that it’s important for the Vice President of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy. I think it’s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.

[31:12] So I think one of the issues here is that you’re going to opine on matters of theology. You’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to make sure that it’s anchored in the truth. And that’s one of the things that I try to do, and it’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy, whether they’re Catholic or Protestant. And here’s the thing, okay? I’m an atheist. I’m a humanist. But even I know that according to Catholic doctrine, the Pope is infallible. He is the ultra expert on theology and the Bible in the Catholic Church. You cannot dispute him on matters of theology. It is against canon law to do that. You could be excommunicated.

[31:57] For going against the Pope on a matter of theology. And there are dozens and dozens and dozens of anecdotal evidence to prove that of where you’ve had priests that have been defrocked and excommunicated because they decided that they knew better than the Pope when doing their masses or teaching their flocks. And so the fact that J.D. Vance, newly minted Catholic, thinks that he knows better than the Pope. Talk about arrogance. You know, these religious extremists are like that. It also blends into that common trope with these MAGA types that they just dismiss experts in whatever it is. They think that they’re the experts in everything. And so it’s just hilarious that the vice president of the United States thinks that he knows more than the Pope. Now, it’s just, I don’t have a personal opinion on the whole fracas, because I really don’t care. I just saw an article today where Bill Donahue, who is a Catholic extremist on the right, is kind of carrying water for Trump.

[33:23] And that he also disagrees with the Pope. He kind of hedges his bet, though. He doesn’t come right. He isn’t as confrontational as Vance was. He didn’t say that the Pope should stay in his lane. But he supports Trump’s war in Iran because, you know, most of the people on the right do because it’s, you know, they’re getting rid of the evil people, the evil Muslims. And so, you know, that’s the whole reason why they’re doing that.

[33:56] And so even Bill Donahue is kind of like, oh, wait a minute, you don’t want to do that, J.D. But he still kind of hedges his bets there. He doesn’t want to get in the Pope’s bad graces. But yeah, so I just think it’s hilarious that when these religious Christian nationalists, religious extremists start fighting amongst themselves, it’s very interesting because they get into these doctrinal theological arguments about things. And they always think that each one of them, each one of them, each of their views are the view. But then Trump is taking on the Pope. And there’s a lot of regular Catholics that are upset about it, unfortunately. I think he’s going to find out. And he actually needs the Catholics more than the Catholics need him. And so it’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.

[35:07] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.