A Catholic Scrutiny for J.D. Vance

 Dear J.D.

With you we joyfully thank and praise God for the blessings and graces he has bestowed upon you: your love of Christ in the Catholic Church; your striking family; your extraordinary gifts of intelligence, competence, charisma, virility, energy and leadership; your amazing life journey from hillbilly to marine to Yale law to capitalist to senator to V.P. candidate; and your moral vision combining economic with cultural populism on behalf of the underclass!

You are the most promising, talented, charismatic political leader since JFK; but you appear to be happily free of the demons of lust that afflicted him and his family.

You are far from perfect! Like all of us, you are a work in progress. You are young...especially in our Catholic faith. You are a good learner and you are still learning. As an older brother-in-Christ (you are same age as my second son, 6th of 7) I have a Word for you, a scrutiny, a challenge and invitation: Catholicity and Magnanimity of Spirit.

Nikki Halley, in her fine convention speech, urged the RNC to open up, to welcome others, to expand itself and enhance its influence. Good advice for you to take personally.

"Catholic" means universal and indicates a welcome to all people and indeed to everything, in every culture and people that is true, beautiful and good.  "Magnanimity" means "greatness of spirit" as a generosity, an expansiveness, a liberality free of fear and defensiveness. I urge you to pray for these gifts. You deficit here is, in my view, your defining weakness.

Your combative spirit is at once a strength and a weakness. It needs to be purified, deepened, sanctified.

Sometimes, listening to you brings to mind the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the iconic tribal battle between two hillbilly families. That is, of course, your background. It sounds in you still. But you are moving well beyond that, hopefully into deeper Catholicity and stronger Magnanimity.

You and the party are correct about our Southern border: it must be sealed tightly, immediately. This is for our safety and order, but also for all the migrants risking life and limb to make the journey. But let's drop the rhetoric of "aliens."  That word indicates a strange, inhuman creature, usually from outer space, or a hostile, dangerous presence from another land. These people are, for a Catholic, our brothers-and-sisters in Christ. For the most part they are decent, hardworking, family folks, like you and me. I am sure that you and I both would risk the journey from (say) Venezuela and cross illegally if we were convinced it would be the best for our families. You are not a moralistic legalistic! Let's drop the fear and defensiveness in favor of trust, confidence and decisiveness.

Likewise: the Ukraine. These also are our brothers and sisters. A good Catholic is a patriot, a localist, and also an internationalist...caring about young women in Afghanistan, civilians in the Ukraine, innocents in Israel and Gaza. We are bound together, ontologically as God's children, but also technologically. For humanitarian reasons for sure, but also on behalf of a stable world order which benefits everyone, we need a forceful foreign policy to deter bad actors like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. We need good alliances with NATO, with democracies in Asia, and furtherance of the Abrahamic Accords, one of the finest achievements of Trump's first term. May your fierce, martial spirit direct itself against the real threats to world order and show a gentleness and generosity to those under attack and suffering afflictions.

I haven't been so hopeful for our democracy since 1960, when I, at 13, was infatuated with JFK. You have promise of taking what is best of Trumpism and creating a new "Catholic-inspired"  politics which champions the weak, unborn, religious liberty, family life, social justice and all the freedoms. Like Moses, you come from the underclass but are at home with the overclass. You have the potential to overcome the class-conflict paradigm and draw different groups into cooperation.

For my part, I resist the temptation to idealize you. You are flesh and blood, wounded and sinful, like all of all. All the more for me to pray for you, your family, and your mission in our country and world.

In Christ!