Pope Francis’s Stunning Rebuke of JD Vance Exposes MAGA’s Dark Soul
The other day, JD Vance sought to reconcile President Donald Trump’s “America First” vision with the tenets of Christianity. Vance argued for a “Christian concept” that orders our ethical obligations in a series of concentric circles, starting with love of family, then out to love of neighbor, then to community and nation, and only then out to the rest of the world. Vance claimed the left has “inverted that,” casting Trumpism as more faithful to the allegedly Christian notion he’d outlined, because it puts “American citizens first.”
This was sharply criticized online, leading Vance to defend it by citing the concept of “ordo amoris.” That means “order of love”: Even if we are called upon to love all people, the practical limitations on the help we can offer others directs us to prioritize aid to those nearest to us.
Now another authority of sorts has weighed in on Vance’s defense of Trumpism: Pope Francis. In a remarkable letter, Pope Francis condemned the Trump administration over “mass deportations” and even indirectly criticized Vance’s use of ordo amoris to defend Trumpist nationalism.
I am not qualified to judge this as a theological dispute. However, godless secular liberals can learn a lot from this argument, because it exposes some ugly truths about “America First” Trumpism—and about the high-minded-sounding justifications that Vance is using to paper them over.
In his response, Pope Francis recognizes that nations and communities must defend themselves from serious or violent criminal migrants. But he condemns the broad conflation of undocumented status with “criminality,” a clear rebuke of Trumpists who tar all migrants who illegally cross our borders as criminals by definition.
Pope Francis writes:
The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.
Pope Francis also asserts that immigration policy must balance the regulation of migration with a recognition of the “equal dignity of every human being.” And he faults Vance’s use of ordo amoris to justify Trumpism.
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” Pope Francis writes. “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.”
Here’s video of Vance:
JD VANCE: There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world
A lot of the far left has completely inverted that pic.twitter.com/XkoTiKgq3g— Jack Poso
