Ordo Amoris

 Vice President Vance and Pope Francis are both, of course, right about the "order of love."  Vance sees that there is a structure, a hierarchy, a priority about love; Pope Francis sees that Christian charity reaches outward, beyond boundaries to the margins. The two complement and complete each other.  The VP (intellectual, combative, virile, conservative) is stronger on order; the Holy Father (emotional, compassionate, inclusive, feminine-of-sensitivity, liberal) is clearer on love.

Love has an order. It is infused with, as it infuses, Truth. An ordo that is weak in love becomes defensive, pugnacious, ungenerous, chauvinist, xenophobic, tribal, macho in a toxic way.  (Sounds like our current administration?) Love that is weak on order becomes emotive, volatile, vague, confused, dispersed, vacuous, effete. (Sounds like our current pontificate?)

My love for my wife would be defective if I did not care about the young women in Afghanistan, the displaced Palestinians, or the hostages in Gaza. My concern for these suffering people would be diminished by negligence of my spouse and immediate family.

I count as my singular blessing and foundation that I was conceived, born, and raised in a family where my mother and father loved each other...tenderly, reverently, passionately, faithfully, with deep Catholic devotion. Love...quiet, modest, stable, less than perfect...was the air we breathed. Our family of nine was itself enclosed within a large extended family, St. John's parish/school in Orange NJ, the global Roman Catholic Church, the United States of America, the Democratic Party, the UAW with the union movement, and the entire Greatest Generation.

When I was seven years old, the "age of reason" I learned about the starving babies in China and was pierced to the heart. The image of those suffering children indelibly structured my person and my aspirations. In other words, the simple love I absorbed in my family moved me around the globe to China. I grew up with the NY Times, America and Maryknoll Magazine in the Catholic Camelot of 1945-65, prior to the Cultural Revolution with its rupture of sexuality from marriage, when political liberalism was expressive of a vigorous, open, solidly traditional Catholicism. We interiorized a fervent internationalism and a firm sense of our mission as Americans and Catholics within the global family.

My wife and I were blessed to raise our seven children in a tough, working class neighborhood of Jersey City, the most diverse city in the country. Our children were not sheltered, but learned quickly to navigate safely in a dangerous world and became comfortable with all sorts of people. My wife opened our home to all sorts. A particular memory: two tough little boys, whose parents were drug addicted and always close to homelessness, were playing in our house with another child from an affluent family. The two tough kids were dispersing our toys all over the house; the rich kid was following them, spontaneously putting them back in place. Quite a contrast!

The lifestyle of the Catholic Worker was always, for me, a vague aspiration; even as my wife kept us tethered to a stable, wholesome primacy of the family. This did and does still make for tension, but of a fruitful type.

As I write this, Pope Francis is in the hospital with a complex lung infection. His pontificate is likely drawing to a close. We commend him to our Lord as we seek to receive what is best and reject what is problematic in his papacy.

I have admiration and hopes for JD Vance. He has more talents of heart and intellect than any American politician since JFK. But he has his own limitations. Consider: he was raised in the tribal, combative hillbilly culture; served as a marine in early adulthood; went to Yale where he was clearly a misfit;  succeeded in the combat arena of finance; and finally into the political game in a viciously polarized society. He has been groomed to be a fighter. Politics is always combat, Culture War; but it is also always cooperation, compromise, reconciliation. My prayer is that in the coming years he will grow deeply into his Catholic faith and distinguish within Trumpism the good and the bad.