We have a vice president who is a recent convert to Catholicism and, like Ross Douthat at the New York Times, thinks this qualifies him to tell us what Catholicism is (and what it isn’t). It was JD Vance who was among the last people to see and speak with Pope Francis before he died Monday.
I found his tweet, or his X, or whatever you call it now, very odd. You see, while all Catholics are Christians, not all Christians are Catholics. So when news of the Pontiff’s passing broke, the vice president tweeted that his heart went out to the “millions of Christians” who loved Francis. Was he implying that not all Catholics loved him? Was he implying, perhaps, that he didn’t love him? Maybe I’m reading too much into a tweet. But I don’t think I am.
Because, in January of this year, Vice President Vance alluded to the Catholic concept of what St. Augustine, Doctor of the Church, called ordo amoris or “the right ordering of love” in an interview with Trump cheerleader and Fox News gadfly Sean Hannity. Vance explained his understanding of this “Christian” (there he does it again, swapping ‘Christian’ for ‘Catholic’) concept as being that love and compassion start with family, then extend to neighbors, then nation, and, last and least, fellow human beings. Rory Stewart, the former Conservative member of the UK parliament and cabinet minister, tweeted or X’ed back: “a bizarre take on John 15:12-13 – less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.” It escalates from there, with Vance telling Stewart to google it and questioning Stewart’s IQ and making some MAGA/populist comment about “elites,” and Stewart responding, rather brilliantly I might add: “An honour [English spelling] to have my IQ questioned by you Mr VP. But your attempts to speak for Christ are false and dangerous. Nowhere does Jesus suggest that love is to be prioritized in concentric circles. His love is universal.”
If only someone would step in to sort this one out, preferably someone who knows more about Augustine than what he’s googled or remembered from his RCIA (Catholic convert) classes, I dunno, maybe someone who has gone to seminary, maybe even read Augustine as a primary source. Well, we’re in luck.
On February 10, 2025, the Holy Father, Pope Francis, issued a letter to the bishops of the United States. In it, he states:
Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings!
Advantage Stewart. Clearly, a concrete, unambiguous, yet characteristically civil and simultaneously instructive repudiation of Vance’s interpretation of Augustine. But Pope Francis wasn’t finished! I think he wanted to leave no room for doubt, no maneuver space for spin by a cynical Vance, so he added:
The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ … that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.
That is game, set, and match. Or as the kids today might say, “In your face – JD!” I might say that too. But not the late Holy Father. He was too busy loving JD enough to correct his error with the charity of truth to sink to my vengeful level. And that is why I, even as a former Franciscan, former seminarian, and former Catholic, love Pope Francis and mourn his loss. I doubt that I shall ever see the likes of him again in my lifetime. Dormit in pace.
Vance is not the only far Right populist who has wed nationalism with what he says is the correct notion of Christianity. Orbán in Hungary has been promoting the idea that a proper understanding of “Christian Democracy” is not only “illiberal,” but nationalist. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has said, “The Christian identity can be secular rather than religious.” It’s what the UCLA sociologist Rogers Brubaker has called “Christianism” as opposed to actual Christianity: what matters is not believing or actually putting into practice the principles of that belief (i.e., the teachings of Christ), but only belonging (cf: The New Language of European Populism).
I am not here to suggest I know what “proper” Christianity or Catholicism is. I’ll leave that to whoever is now to become pope and to the bishops in communion with him. Nor can I, or will I, definitively diagnose this festering nationalism disguised as populism that has infected our country, and the world, like a virus. But, given the late Holy Father’s letter, I think his own words make something quite clear which I will commend to you today: Catholicism, and by extension Christianity, is not compatible with the “America first” and humanity last view of the Trump Administration.