Yesterday we considered how JD Vance’s conversion to Catholicism five years ago seems to be of a very different ilk than the Catholicism Joe Biden has been practicing for some eighty years.
In an article entitled “Vance gives Catholicism a bad name,” National Catholic Reporter editor Michael Sean Winters tells the story of how, when Vance was baptized and confirmed five years ago, his special guest in attendance was writer Rod Dreher. Dreher was a Methodist who turned Catholic and then Orthodox. He later separated from his wife and left his children so he could move to Hungary to be near his hero, Viktor Orban.
Orban is a hero to Trump and to Vance as well—even though and especially because he has pulled the rug of democracy from underneath his country which, under his leadership is now a single-party state with no free judiciary or press to speak of. Driven by a Christian nationalism that refuses to live in a pluralistic culture or practice religious ecumenism, he yearns for a return of a so-called “Christian culture.”
The day Biden delivered a very solid press conference on NATO three weeks ago, Orban visited Trump at Mar a Lago, two peas in a pod. Both Orban and Peter Thiel, the billionaire backer to Vance, believe democracy is passé.
Vance has given speeches at the Napa Institute which has hosted such far-right Catholic luminaries as Cardinal Burke (“homosexuality is equivalent to murder”) and Steven Bannon—now in prison for spurning a subpoena to tell congress what he knew about the events leading up to January 6.
When Vance gave a keynote address at the uber conservative Franciscan University, another participant was Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard Law professor and proponent of “integralism,” which champions a government that “seeks to subordinate temporal power to spiritual power—or more specifically, the modern state to the Catholic Church.”
Another speaker that day, Rachel Bovard, declared that the left seeks “normalized pederasty, forced euthanasia, postnatal abortion” and will disqualify “religious traditionalists and political conservatives from banking, property rights and public benefits.” Asks Winters: “Who talks like that? These are Vance’s intellectual running buddies.”*
The version of Catholicism that Vance embraces includes the overturning of Roe v Wade by SCOTUS. Should Vance become the Vice President, says Elie, Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanagh, and Barrett—”all would have a Catholic ally of like mind in the executive branch.”**
*https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/jd-vance-gives-catholicism-bad-name
**https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/j-d-vances-radical-religion?
See Matthew Fox, The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved.
Banner Image: Priestly Ordinations with His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke at Saint Francis de Sales Oratory, Saint Louis, Missouri. Photo by Phil Roussin on Flickr
Queries for Contemplation
Notice how “post-natal abortion” is being spoken of as a goal of the left by Rachel Bovard of the Conservative Partnership Institute speaking at Franciscan University along with DJ Vance. That notion found its way recently into a Trump speech as well. Do you believe with Winters that politicians can give faith a bad name?
Recommended Reading
The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved
The Pope’s War offers a provocative look at three decades of corruption in the Catholic Church, focusing on Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. The final section in the book focuses on birthing a truly catholic Christianity.
“This book should be read by everybody, not only for its ferocious courage, but also for its vision for what needs to be saved from the destructive forces that threaten authentic Christianity.” ~ Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope.
“In the gripping The Pope’s War, Matthew Fox takes an unwavering look at the layers of corruption in the Catholic Church, holding moral truth against power.” — Jason Berry, author of Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II
3 thoughts on “Biden’s Catholicism in Contrast to that of JD Vance’s, continued”
I do believe Winters is correct. The use of faith on the part of the right wing
extremists political and religious is a merely a effort at obtaining power.
If successful it ends up as tyranny. Anti democratic and anti Christian.
I’m sure the were many ‘educated’, ‘intellectual’, ‘intelligent’, ‘civilized’ people in Hitler’s regime that justified, supported, and blindly followed his authoritarian and genocidal regime that attempted to destructively conquer the world. Hatred, racism, ignorance, greed, and destroyers of human values and societal democratic laws and order have to be exposed with the Spirit of Love, Truth, Peace, Justice, Healing, Freedom, Equality, Creativity, Beauty, Joy, and Strength whenever subtle multifaceted evil raises it’s ugly head in persons, institutions, and society, otherwise it’s destructive perniciousness can easily grow and spread in society against human and spiritual values. That is what our Faith, mystic, and prophet in All of Us call Us to do in our own unique sacred ways on our personal and communal spiritual journeys.
Vance will use the Catholic Church just as he will use any means he and his right wing asociates will use to install tyranny in government and every aspect of our lives. As Damian says in his comment today let us work in the Spirit of Love to make a better and just world.