The sense of Catholic unity didn’t last long. Less than a week after Vice President JD Vance shared the inauguration stage with a senior Catholic cardinal, Vance picked a fight with the top American leaders of his church.
The new vice president, a Catholic convert, accused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops of resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to get federal funding. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who gave the invocation shortly before Vance took his oath of office, denounced the remarks as “scurrilous” and “nasty.”
Recommended Videos
Vance has claimed that a concept from medieval Catholic theology — “ordo amoris” in Latin — justifies the Trump administration’s America-first immigration crackdown. He contended that the concept delineates a hierarchy of care — to family first, followed by neighbor, community, fellow citizens and lastly those elsewhere.
Several scholars say Vance is promoting a simplistic misreading of the concept and that Catholic teaching requires the helping of strangers in urgent need.
But Vance received support from others, particularly those in a largely Catholic movement he identifies with, known as postliberalism. It combines a social conservativism with a belief in using the power of the state to promote Christian values and build community. The movement's leading thinkers have advocated for precisely the sort of sweeping “regime change” underway in the Trump administration, cheering its largescale cuts to the federal agencies and workforces deemed antithetical to these goals.
The Catholic rift comes as leading bishops applauded some of the new Trump administration initiatives. Statements from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops welcomed executive orders supporting “ school choice," rolling back federal support for gender transitions and requiring foreign agencies receiving U.S. aid to certify that they don’t provide or promote abortion.
Catholic power shift in Washington
The change of administrations seems to mark a tectonic shift in Catholic power in Washington. Democrats Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi — liberal, Mass-attending Catholics who supported abortion rights, prompting some bishops to oppose their receiving Communion — are gone from the White House and House speaker’s chair, respectively.
Trump has nominated a leading conservative Catholic activist, Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote, as Vatican ambassador — even as Pope Francis appointed a relatively progressive cardinal, Robert McElroy, as archbishop of Washington.
But Vance's blast at the bishops conference stung.
Vance called himself a “devout Catholic” who was disappointed bishops have “not been a good partner in common sense immigration enforcement.” He claimed they took $100 million "to help resettle illegal immigrants."
Dolan, on his SiriusXM show, called the statements harmful.
“That's just scurrilous, it's very nasty, and it's not true,” Dolan said. The bishops conference is one of 10 national U.S. organizations that resettle refugees, who have been legally brought to the country under decades-old policy until Trump paused the program. Dolan said government grants don't match expenses and are supplemented by private donations.
“You think we make money on it? We're losing it hand over fist,” Dolan said, adding that he hoped better from Vance in the future.
But Vance has stood by his “ordo amoris” justification for Trump's migration restrictions.
“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country,” Vance said on Fox News. “Then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” He claimed that the “far left” has inverted that.
What the 'ordo amoris' concept means
In a follow-up social-media skirmish, Vance urged people to Google “ordo amoris” or “order of love.”
On the concept, St. Augustine, an ancient theologian, said while everyone must love everyone equally, no finite person can help everybody and thus should particularly look after those with whom one has a "closer connection."
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, agreed that people have a particular obligation to family and fellow citizens. But, he added, it also depends on circumstances: “In certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one’s own father, if he is not in such urgent need."
David Hollenbach, a Jesuit theologian and professor at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, said Vance seriously misinterprets Aquinas.
“Aquinas says we love most effectively those who are near us,” said Hollenbach, who is also senior fellow of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. But, he added, "Aquinas goes on to say if there are people at a greater distance who are at great need, they take priority.”
Hollenbach cited the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, in which an outcast took care of a badly beaten traveler neglected by others.
“If there are refugees out there and there are people who are fleeing for their lives, they’re in great need and we need to respond to their needs,” Hollenbach said.
He also cited Pope Francis' exhortations to countries to receive immigrants. Francis, in a 2020 encyclical, warned against a “xenophobic" response that denies the “inalienable dignity” of migrants in need.
Immigration, gender identity and other Catholic social issues
Vance has received plenty of support from conservative Catholics who see the Trump administration as bringing many of their ideas to reality.
“You know you’re in a postliberal order when high elected leaders explain their views in terms of political theology, and the main debate isn’t over whether they are 'intolerant’ but whether the political theology is right or wrong,” Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule posted on the social media platform X.
R.R. Reno, in an article for the online journal Compact, argued Vance was correct about “ordo amoris.” He cited the fictional Mrs. Jellyby in a Charles Dickens novel — someone who is so busy with charitable work that she neglects her own family — as an example of misplaced love.
"Christ-like love encourages concern for victims of fires in other states, regions, or countries," Reno wrote. “But all the more so does Christ-like love compel us to come to the aid of neighbors whose houses down the street are burning.”
Other Catholic bishops have maintained their support for aid to immigrants.
Bishop Michael Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, defended “the dignity of every immigrant, regardless of his or her status.” He said immigrants have enriched the nation and the church. Catholic teaching, he said in a statement, does not allow for an open border but rather emphasizes a “common sense approach where the duty to care for the stranger is practiced in harmony with the duty to care for the nation.”
Immigration is not the only issue that divides high-level Catholics in Washington and elsewhere — there also are sharp divisions over LGBTQ+ inclusion.
Trump’s recent executive order mandating the federal government to define sex as only male or female — a repudiation of transgender people — was welcome by Washington-based Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy Broglio, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Yet Cardinal McElroy has advocated for “radical inclusion” of LGBTQ+ Catholics in the church. And the outgoing archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, apologized at a recent prayer service for the church’s treatment of LGBTQ+ Catholics and his “own lack of courage to bring healing and hope.”
Vance, meanwhile, continues citing Catholic names more often discussed in seminary than in politics. In a speech Wednesday on religious freedom, he quoted the ancient theologian Tertullian in support of freedom of conscience.
“It is, I think, a conceit of modern society that religious liberty is a liberal concept,” he said at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington. “But we know that religious freedom flows from concepts central to the Christian faith, in particular the free will of human beings and the essential dignity of all peoples.”
___
Associated Press writer David Crary contributed.
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.