Vance Twists Christian Theology to Argue You Don't Have to Love Immigrants — Pope Corrects Him
Vance invoked "ordo amoris" (ordered love) to argue Christianity requires loving Americans before foreigners. The Pope personally rebuked him, writing the true ordo amoris is found in the Good Samaritan — "a fraternity open to all, without exception."
On January 29, 2025, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that Christianity requires a hierarchy of caring: "You love your family, then you love your neighbor, then you love your community, then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world." He accused "the far left" of inverting this order.
Theologians responded that this is the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. Pastor Zack Lambert: "This is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, the story of the Good Samaritan, the sermon in his hometown synagogue, and basically every other time he opened his mouth."
The Good Samaritan parable — where a despised foreigner is the one who shows love to a stranger — directly contradicts Vance's ranked-love framework. Jesus told it specifically to answer the question "Who is my neighbor?" The answer was: everyone, including the people you consider enemies.
On February 10, Pope Francis himself — the head of Vance's own church (Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019) — wrote a letter to U.S. bishops directly rebuking Vance's theology:
"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. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups."
Three days earlier, Vance had attacked the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for opposing Trump's immigration policies, accusing them of being motivated by money: "Are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?" He later admitted he "spoke too harshly."
The Vice President of the United States was publicly corrected on Christian love by the Pope, by the bishops' conference of his own church, and by theologians across denominations — and continued implementing the policies they condemned.