Vance’s “Communion”: A Modernist’s Subjective Journey in the Conciliar Sect
Summary and Thesis
The EWTN news portal reports that U.S. Vice President JD Vance has announced a book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” detailing his personal conversion to Catholicism within the post-conciliar “Church.” The article presents Vance’s narrative as an individualistic, psychological journey of “finding my way back” and “regaining faith,” emphasizing personal experience and a vague, ecumenical “reconciliation with God” for “Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise.” This narrative is fundamentally at odds with Catholic doctrine. It is a pure product of the Modernist apostasy condemned by St. Pius X, reducing faith to a subjective sentiment and utterly silent on the objective, supernatural realities of grace, the Sacraments, the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation, and the Social Kingship of Christ. Vance’s story, celebrated by the conciliar “publisher” HarperCollins, is not a return to the Catholic faith but a perfect embodiment of the “synthesis of all heresies” in the “abomination of desolation” occupying the Vatican since John XXIII.
1. Factual Deconstruction: The “Story” of Subjective Autonomy
The article centers Vance’s own words: “The story of how I regained my faith… is why I ever strayed from the path. Why the Christian faith of my youth failed to properly take root.” This framing is anthropological, not theological. It posits faith as a plant that may or may not “take root” in an individual’s psyche based on personal circumstances. The Catholic faith, however, is not a “path” one “finds” through introspection. It is a supernatural gift infused by God, received through the Sacrament of Baptism, and sustained within the visible, hierarchical Church founded by Christ. Vance’s language of “regaining” and “finding” is the language of human autonomy, echoing the Modernist error that faith is a “self-awareness of… relationship to God” (Lamentabili, Prop. 20), not an assent to revealed truth proposed by the Church’s Magisterium. His statement, “I’m a Christian, and I became a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ’s teachings are true,” reduces Christianity to intellectual agreement with moral principles, severing it from membership in the one true Church and submission to its divine authority.
2. Linguistic Analysis: The Tone of Naturalistic Humanism
The article’s tone, mirroring Vance’s statements, is therapeutic and self-referential. Phrases like “deeply heartfelt story of doubt and regained belief,” “searching for faith, connection, and meaning,” and “questions that define this moment in American public life” place the focus on human psychological needs and societal relevance. This is the precise “cult of man” condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Error 58: “all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches… and the gratification of pleasure”). The supernatural end of man—the vision of God in heaven—is absent. Faith is presented as a resource for “connection and meaning” in this life, a tool for personal fulfillment and public discourse, not as a sovereign gift obliging total submission to God’s law. This silence on the last things—death, judgment, heaven, hell—is the gravest accusation, proving the naturalistic, modernist spirit of the narrative.
3. Theological Confrontation: Omission of All Catholic Essentials
A thorough analysis reveals what Vance’s story and the article’s framing systematically omit, exposing their incompatibility with integral Catholic doctrine.
3.1. The Church and Salvation: Vance speaks of “the Church” and “faith” without any reference to the Catholic Church as the sole ark of salvation. This is a direct negation of the dogma extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus condemned the error that “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Error 16). Vance’s inclusive language (“Catholic, Protestant, or otherwise”) embraces the indifferentism condemned by the same Pope (Error 15). He thereby propagates the heresy that the Church of Christ is not necessary for salvation, a cornerstone of Modernism.
3.2. The Sacraments and Grace: The article contains not a single mention of Baptism, Confirmation, the Holy Eucharist, Penance, or any sacrament as necessary means of grace. Vance’s “conversion” is presented as an intellectual and emotional decision. This aligns with the Modernist proposition condemned by St. Pius X: “The sacraments merely serve to remind man of the presence of the ever-benevolent Creator” (Lamentabili, Prop. 41). The objective, ex opere operato efficacy of the sacraments, instituted by Christ to confer sanctifying grace, is completely denied by omission. His use of “Communion” in the title is a purely symbolic, post-conciliar term, stripped of its sacrificial and sacramental meaning.
3.3. Christ the King and the Social Order: Pius XI’s encyclical Quas Primas, a document of unchanging doctrine, establishes the feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism that removes God from public life. The Pope writes: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” Vance, a high-ranking political official, announces his personal faith while serving a regime that enshrines secular liberalism and “religious freedom” (condemned by Pius IX, Syllabus Error 77). There is zero acknowledgment of the duty of states and rulers to publicly recognize and obey Christ the King, as defined by Quas Primas. His faith is privatized, a personal comfort, not a public standard for law and society. This is the “secularism of our times” Pius XI lamented, now baptized as “personal conviction.”
3.4. Authority and the Magisterium: Vance’s journey is one of personal discovery, not submission to the teaching authority of the Church. This is the Modernist error of “the Church listening… should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Lamentabili, Prop. 6). It inverts the hierarchy: the individual’s experience judges the “faith,” rather than the faith, objectively defined, forming the individual. The concept of an infallible, hierarchical Magisterium to which the intellect must bond is absent, replaced by a democratic “search” for “meaning.”
4. Symptomatic Analysis: The Fruit of the Conciliar Apostasy
Vance’s narrative is not an anomaly; it is the logical fruit of the “conciliar sect’s” revolution. The Second Vatican Council’s “hermeneutics of continuity” allows such subjective, naturalistic accounts to be hailed as “conversions” while the objective, supernatural content of the faith is evacuated. His publisher, HarperCollins, is a secular entity; the fact that a “Catholic” conversion story is marketed through mainstream channels shows how thoroughly the “neo-church” has merged with the world. This is the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place: a “Catholic” faith that is indistinguishable from generic theistic humanism.
Furthermore, Vance’s position as “Vice President” in a government that promotes abortion, “LGBTQ+ rights,” and globalism is presented without any hint of the Catholic duty to “not become slaves of men” (1 Cor. 7:23, cited in Quas Primas). The article’s silence on the intrinsic evil of the policies he supports, and the absence of any call for his public penance or correction, demonstrates that the “faith” being celebrated is one that conforms to the world, not one that judges it. This is the “national conversion without evangelization” and “diversion from apostasy” noted in the analysis of false Fatima—the focus on external political alignment while the internal doctrinal and moral apostasy is ignored.
5. Doctrinal Weapons: Unchanging Truth vs. Modernist Sentiment
“The kingdom of Christ encompasses all men… His reign extends not only to Catholic nations… but also to all non-Christians” (Pius XI, Quas Primas). This truth demands the social reign of Christ, not a private “faith” for individuals. Vance’s narrative implicitly denies this by accepting the secular state’s neutrality, a direct contradiction of the encyclical.
“A manifest heretic… is not a Christian… therefore, a manifest heretic cannot be Pope” (St. Robert Bellarmine, De Romano Pontifice). While Vance does not address the papal question, his entire framework operates within the “conciliar sect” that acknowledges the antipope “Leo XIV” (Robert Prevost). By celebrating his “conversion” within this structure, he endorses a “Church” whose heads are, by Bellarmine’s criteria, manifest heretics who have destroyed the faith. One cannot be “in communion” with a “pope” who teaches Modernist errors and remain Catholic.
“The Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Lamentabili, Prop. 63, condemned). This is precisely the attitude of the conciliar “Church” which Vance has joined. His book’s premise—that his “youthful” faith was inadequate for modern complexities—echoes this condemned proposition, suggesting the “old” faith must be updated for the “modern mind.”
Conclusion: A Testimony to Apostasy, Not Conversion
JD Vance’s announced book is not a return to the Catholic faith. It is a manifesto of the “Church of the New Advent.” It replaces the objective, hierarchical, sacramental, and social Catholic religion with a subjective, psychological, and privatized belief system compatible with secular power. It is a narrative of discovery, not of submission; of meaning, not of truth; of personal journey, not of doctrinal assent. In the words of Pius XI, such a mindset is part of the plague that has “poisoned human society.” Vance’s “Communion” is a communion with the world, not with Christ the King. His “way back” is a deeper plunge into the apostasy foretold by St. Pius X and Pius IX. True reconciliation with God requires abjuring the conciliar errors, rejecting the antipopes, and returning to the immutable faith of the pre-1958 Church—a path Vance’s story willfully ignores.
Source:
JD Vance announces book exploring his conversion to Catholicism (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 31.03.2026