Catholic News Agency reports on U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s speech at Turning Point USA’s AmFest 2025, where he proclaimed America as fundamentally “a Christian nation” whose “shared moral language” derives from Christianity. The article highlights Vance’s claims that the Trump administration ended the “war on Christianity,” his defense of border enforcement as “humanitarian,” and his public disagreements with U.S. bishops and “Pope” Leo XIV over immigration policy. Vance invoked “ordo amoris” to justify prioritizing citizens over migrants, stating: “Border security is not just good for American citizens. It is the humanitarian thing to do for the entire world.”
Naturalism Disguised as Christian Politics
Vance’s declaration that America’s “Christian” identity rests on “our understanding of natural law and rights” constitutes a fundamental perversion of Catholic teaching. Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas (1925) dogmatically defined that “the empire of our Redeemer embraces all men” and that “rulers of states… must themselves govern their peoples as the ministers of God.” By reducing Christianity to a national “moral language” rather than demanding public submission to Christ the King (Quas Primas §18), Vance promotes the very naturalism condemned in the Syllabus of Errors: “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits” (Error 39). His silence about the Social Reign of Christ the King exposes this vision as Masonic nationalism.
The Heresy of National Exceptionalism
The assertion that “even our famously American idea of religious liberty is a Christian concept” constitutes blasphemous revisionism. The Syllabus explicitly condemns the notion that “every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Error 15). Pius IX’s Quanta Cura denounced religious liberty as “insanity” arising when “the unrestrained freedom of thought and of openly publishing whatsoever one likes is established.” Vance’s claim that America’s founding incorporated Christian principles ignores the Deist heresies of its Masonic architects – a truth evidenced by the U.S. Constitution’s omission of Christ’s name and its establishment of religious indifferentism.
Immigration: Subverting Catholic Charity
Vance’s “ordo amoris” justification for mass deportations perverts Aquinas’ teaching on ordered love. The Angelic Doctor taught that while charity begins with those nearest, it never negates the universal obligation to aid all in need (ST II-II, q.26, a.8). The Vice President’s claim that “open borders… empower the very worst people in the world” ignores the Church’s immutable doctrine that nations must “provide for the common welfare of all” (Pius XII, Exsul Familia). By framing border enforcement as “humanitarian,” Vance embraces the consequentialism condemned by Pius XII: “It is not permissible to do evil that good may come of it” (Address to Midwives, 1951). True Catholic statesmanship would demand just immigration laws subordinated to the supreme law of charity, not nationalist isolationism.
A Convert’s Dangerous Simplifications
The article’s uncritical presentation of Vance’s conversion narrative omits grave theological concerns. His reduction of Christianity’s essence to “the fact that a carpenter died 2,000 years ago” dangerously minimizes the dogmatic totality of the Faith. As the Holy Office decreed in Lamentabili Sane (1907): “The dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts” (Error 22). Vance’s focus on “good husbands, patient fathers” while remaining silent about sacramental grace and the primacy of supernatural life reduces Christianity to bourgeois moralism – the very error Pius XI condemned as “masked apostasy from the Christian religion” (Mortalium Animos, 1928).
Contempt for Ecclesiastical Authority
Vance’s public defiance of U.S. bishops and the Vatican antipope reveals Protestant tendencies incompatible with Catholic submission. The Syllabus condemns those who claim “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55), yet Vance’s policies embody this heresy. His dismissal of “Pope” Leo XIV’s pleas for migrant dignity – while paradoxically recognizing this antipope’s authority – demonstrates the fatal contradiction of conciliar “conservatism.” True Catholic governance would require either full submission to legitimate pre-1958 magisterium or sedevacantist consistency, not selective Modernist dissent.
Vance’s “Christian politics” constitutes a naturalistic counterfeit – a baptized nationalism substituting America for the Kingdom of Christ. Until he demands abolition of religious liberty heresies and public consecration of the U.S. to Christ the King, his rhetoric remains but “sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal” (1 Cor 13:1) in service of the Revolution.
Source:
Vice President Vance presents a Christian vision of politics (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 23.12.2025