Say what you will about the first two weeks of US president Donald Trump’s second term in office, it has certainly put the focus on Catholic Social Teaching.
That’s largely due to the words of Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019.
Before becoming a senator of Ohio in 2023, Vance was most famous for his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016 and adapted for the screen in 2020. The book spoke about his small-town upbringing in the Appalachia, including his relationship with his conservative, evangelical Protestant family.
Ever since Vance converted, he has been vocal about his Catholicism. Vance has also been and frank in his acknowledgment of how the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, the North African bishop who lived from 354-430 and is universally recognized as the greatest of the Church’s Latin Doctors, have influenced him.
In a Jan. 29 interview on Fox News, Vance spoke about the Trump policy on illegal immigration, and noted the president’s plan to deport millions of people didn’t conflict with his religious beliefs.
“There’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — 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 your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” the vice president said.
“A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society,” Vance said.
“And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is the simple concept of America First. It doesn’t mean you hate anybody else; it means that you have leadership — and President Trump has been very clear about this — that puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British prime minister should care about Brits and the French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans, and that’s a very welcome change,” Vance said.
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