The National Catholic Register reports on U.S. Vice President JD Vance and his wife Usha discussing their family’s “Mass” attendance practices, including having priests celebrate “Mass” at their home. The article highlights Vance’s conversion to Catholicism and his upcoming memoir, while also noting the logistical challenges and “creature comforts” associated with their high-profile status. This seemingly benign report on a public figure’s faith journey reveals a profound spiritual malaise: the reduction of the Most Holy Sacrifice to a matter of personal convenience, comfort, and social accommodation, utterly divorced from the sacred, transcendent, and demanding nature of true Catholic worship.
The “Creature Comfort” of Home “Mass”: A Perversion of Sacred Worship
The most glaring spiritual deformity in this report is the casual treatment of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as a “creature comfort” or a “perk” of political office. JD Vance’s statement that having priests celebrate “Mass” at home is “one of the rare privileges of this life” and a “perk” exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Mass truly is. The Mass is not a private devotion, a family ritual, or a convenience to be scheduled around a busy workday or security concerns. It is the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the most sacred act of worship, where the infinite God offers Himself to His Father for the salvation of souls.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the Mass is “a sacrifice of such surpassing dignity and excellence, that it is not only the most acceptable to God, but also the most efficacious for obtaining all graces and blessings.” St. Leonard of Port Maurice, a renowned missionary, would often say, “If we understood the value of a single Mass, we would be willing to travel to the ends of the earth to assist at it.” To treat this supreme act of adoration and propitiation as a “creature comfort” or a “perk” is a blasphemous trivialization, reducing the divine to the mundane. It echoes the very errors condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, particularly those that subject spiritual matters to secular convenience and human comfort (Proposition 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”).
Furthermore, Vance’s admission that he tries not to have home “Mass” “too much” because it “makes us a little lazy” reveals a superficial understanding of spiritual discipline. The true Catholic understanding is that the faithful are obligated to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, not as a matter of personal preference or convenience, but as a divine commandment. The Code of Canon Law (1917), Canon 1248, states: “The precept of hearing Mass is fulfilled by a person who assists at a Mass which is celebrated either on a feast day or on the evening of the preceding day, anywhere, in a rite approved by the Church.” The emphasis is on the duty and the sacred obligation, not on the ease or comfort of the arrangement.
Accommodating the World: Security, Magnetometers, and the “Discomfort” of Others
The article’s focus on the logistical challenges of the Vance family’s “Mass” attendance – motorcades shutting down streets, magnetometers causing delays, and the “discomfort” for others – reveals a profound inversion of priorities. The world is not to be accommodated at the expense of the sacred; rather, the sacred demands that the world conform itself to God’s law. The Vances’ concern for “inconveniencing everybody” by their presence at “Mass” highlights a spirit of worldliness that is antithetical to the Gospel. Our Lord Himself said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). The true Catholic seeks to sanctify the world, not to be sanctified by it or to avoid causing it any “discomfort” in the pursuit of spiritual duties.
The second lady’s statement that they try to “mitigate all of these discomforts for all the other people who are just trying to live their lives” by adjusting the “timing of Mass and location” is particularly telling. It implies that the sacred act of worship is a burden to be managed, a disruption to the secular order, rather than the very purpose for which all life should be ordered. This mindset reflects the very “secularism” and “laicism” that Pope Pius XI so vehemently condemned in Quas Primas, where he lamented that “the Christian religion began to be equated with other false religions and shamelessly placed in the same category; then it was subordinated to secular power and almost surrendered to the arbitramment of government and rulers.” The Vances’ approach is a practical application of this error, where the state’s security apparatus dictates the terms of worship, rather than worship dictating the terms of engagement with the state.
The “Rootedness” of Conciliarism: A False Sense of Home
JD Vance’s description of his conversion to Catholicism, particularly his attraction to its “rootedness” and the feeling of being “at home,” is deeply problematic when viewed through the lens of pre-conciliar Catholic doctrine. He states, “Catholicism ‘felt rooted,’ and ‘if I went to a foreign country and I didn’t understand the language, I kind of knew what was going on. And I liked that feeling of rootedness.'” This sentiment, while understandable on a human level, points directly to the appearance of rootedness offered by the post-conciliar structures, which, in reality, are a profound departure from the immutable deposit of faith.
The “rootedness” Vance describes is precisely the illusion of continuity that the conciliar sect has meticulously cultivated. It is the “hermeneutic of continuity” condemned by traditional Catholic theologians, which seeks to reconcile the irreconcilable: the ancient faith with modernist innovations. The “Catholicism” Vance converted to is the very system that has embraced the “evolution of dogmas” (condemned by Lamentabili sane exitu, Proposition 58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him”), false ecumenism (condemned by Mortalium Animos), and religious liberty (condemned by Mirari Vos and the Syllabus of Errors, Proposition 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship”).
His journey from an “evangelical tradition” that offered “incredible generosity of spirit” and “welcomingness” to a Catholicism that “felt rooted” is a journey into a system that, while maintaining external forms, has emptied them of their true Catholic substance. The “home” he found is the very “abomination of desolation” spoken of by Our Lord (Matthew 24:15), a temple occupied by a new religion that mimics the old but denies its core. As Pope St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis, the Modernists “proceed to the extent of asserting that the faith of Christ is not the same as that which the Church teaches, but only that which the Christian consciousness, under the influence of the external world, has elaborated for itself.” Vance’s “rootedness” is the comfort of a system that has adapted itself to the modern world, rather than the demanding, unchanging truth of the Catholic Faith that demands the conversion of the world to Christ the King.
The “Catholic” in a Hindu Household: A Scandal of Indifferentism
The article explicitly states that Usha Vance “practices Hinduism.” This fact, presented without any theological commentary or concern, is a profound scandal and a direct contradiction of Catholic doctrine on the unity of the faith and the dangers of religious indifferentism. The Catholic Church has always taught that there is only one true faith, one baptism, and one Church outside of which there is no salvation. Pope Gregory XVI, in Mortalium Animos (1825), condemned the idea that “all religions are alike” and warned against “the fatal theory of the need of union with all religions.”
The Vances’ household, where one spouse is a “Catholic” (within the conciliar framework) and the other is a practicing Hindu, is a living embodiment of the very indifferentism condemned by the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 15: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true”; Proposition 16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation”). Such a union, especially for a public figure who professes Catholic faith, sends a devastating message: that the Catholic faith is merely one option among many, a matter of personal preference rather than objective truth. It normalizes the idea that a Catholic can be in a mixed marriage where the non-Catholic spouse actively practices a false religion without any apparent concern for the spiritual implications for the family or the children.
This situation also highlights the conciliar sect’s abandonment of the Church’s traditional teaching on mixed marriages. Prior to the Council, the Church strictly forbade such marriages unless there were serious guarantees that the children would be raised Catholic and the non-Catholic spouse would not impede the practice of the faith. The post-conciliar approach, as exemplified by the Vances’ public presentation, is one of benign neglect, where the “Catholic” spouse’s faith is a private matter, and the Hindu spouse’s practice is equally valid in the eyes of the world. This is a direct fruit of the “spirit of Vatican II” and its embrace of religious liberty and ecumenism, which have eroded the Church’s missionary zeal and her understanding of her unique role as the sole ark of salvation.
The “Confession” Before a “Mass” in Jerusalem: A Charade of Sacraments
The article mentions that Vance “met with a group of bishops and went to confession prior to Mass” during a diplomatic trip to Israel. This detail, presented as a positive spiritual act, is deeply suspect. Given that this “Mass” was celebrated within the conciliar structures, and the “bishops” and “priests” involved are part of the post-conciliar hierarchy, the validity and efficacy of these sacraments are highly questionable.
As the Defense of Sedevacantism argues, a “Pope-manifest heretic loses his office automatically” (St. Robert Bellarmine). If the occupant of the See of Peter is an antipope, and the bishops in communion with him are part of a heretical structure, then their ability to confect valid sacraments, particularly those requiring jurisdiction like confession, is gravely doubtful. The “confession” Vance made would thus be a mere external ritual, lacking the divine guarantee of absolution, and the “Mass” he attended would be a simulacrum of the true Sacrifice. This is not to judge the state of Vance’s soul, but to highlight the spiritual peril of relying on the sacraments of a church that has fallen into manifest heresy. It underscores the urgency of seeking out true Catholic priests and bishops who maintain the integral faith and valid orders, rather than participating in the empty rites of the conciliar sect.
Conclusion: The Comfortable Faith of the World
The article on the Vance family’s “Mass” attendance is a microcosm of the spiritual bankruptcy of the post-conciliar era. It presents a “Catholicism” that is comfortable, convenient, accommodating to the world, and utterly devoid of the supernatural fervor and doctrinal clarity that characterized the Church for two millennia. The “Mass” is a “perk,” faith is a matter of “rootedness” and “feeling at home,” and the presence of a Hindu spouse is a non-issue. This is not the faith of the martyrs, the confessors, and the saints who shed their blood for Christ. It is the “dogmaless Christianity” condemned by Lamentabili sane exitu (Proposition 65: “Contemporary Catholicism cannot be reconciled with true knowledge without transforming it into a certain dogmaless Christianity, that is, into a broad and liberal Protestantism”).
The Vances’ approach to “Mass” and faith is a testament to the success of the Modernist agenda: to create a “Catholicism” that is indistinguishable from the world, where the sacred is profaned by convenience, and the demands of the Gospel are softened to a comfortable, non-threatening spirituality. It is a call to return to the true Mass, the true faith, and the true Church, which demands not comfort, but conversion, sacrifice, and an unwavering commitment to the Kingship of Christ over all aspects of life, including the state and its most prominent officials. As Pope Pius XI declared in Quas Primas, “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The Vances’ “Catholicism” is a denial of this universal kingship, a private affair that bows to the dictates of the state and the comforts of the world.
Source:
US Vice President, Second Lady Share Family Mass Attendance Practices (ncregister.com)
Date: 16.06.2026