ORDO AMORIS: THE CONTROVERSY OVER VICE PRESIDENT J.D. VANCE’S THEORY OF LOVE

Vice President J.D. Vance Recently Taken to Task by Roman Catholic Social Activist, James Martin 

By Fr. Duncan Richards (Ancient Church of the West) 

Recently, Vice President Vance during an interview on Fox News made a statement laying out the order of love and responsibility that we ought to prioritize: family, immediate neighbor, community, fellow citizens, and the rest of the world. This sparked condemnation from the “priest” James Martin saying that VP Vance grossly misunderstands Jesus’ teachings from the Parable of the Good Samaritan and his rebuke of his mother and brothers wanting to take Christ away from his ministry. However, it is not Vance that misunderstands the Gospel, but rather Martin.

Martin is right that the Good Samaritan challenges us to love even our enemy as ourselves and to care for them even at their weakest and when they are broken, but that does not mean that we give the same level of care to everyone in the whole world. If this were true that we give the same level of care to every single person all the time, then the Good Samaritan ought to have also gone after the Bandit who had robbed and beaten the Jew in the parable and given him the same two denarius that he gave to the inn keeper for the Jew’s recovery. People like Martin love to say that when a person commits theft, assault, etc. that it’s a sign that society failed that person, rather than the person who committed the crime as being at fault. So, under James Martin’s paradigm, the Bandit was just as much a victim as the man he assaulted and should have been loved on by the Good Samaritan as well.

But this is not the case. We are not obligated to care for the Bandit in the same way we care for his victim: the beaten man lying on the side of the road is in need of healing and compassion – what the Good Samaritan gives to him – but the Bandit needs to be rebuked for his violence and to repent. Here within the very parable, we see two different levels of care given to two different individuals based on what they need and who they are.

​Now that we know that at the most basic levels, different people deserve and need different levels of care, let’s return to the different levels that Vice President Vance provides of care from the most to the least. These levels are care are not something that Vance makes up, but come from St. Augustine of Hippo’s City of God. Firstly, St. Augustine says in Book 14 Chapter 22 that “all husbands [need] to love their own wives in particular,” (italics mine) that it is the rule that each man is to be devoted to and to care for his own wife “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” and this is active love that the husband gives to his wife is to be more than for any other woman, not equal. (Ephesians 5:25). Augustine continues on in Book 19 Chapter 14 and shows the holistic precepts for how we ought to rightly order our affections for our neighbor – to those nearby and those afar off:

But as this divine Master inculcates two precepts,—the love of God and the love of our neighbor,—and as in these precepts a man finds three things he has to love,—God, himself, and his neighbor … He ought to make this endeavor in behalf of his wife, his children, his household, all within his reach, even as he would wish his neighbor to do the same for him if he needed it; and consequently he will be at peace, or in well-ordered concord, with all men, as far as in him lies. And this is the order of this concord,that a man, in the first place, injure no one, and, in the second, do good to every one he can reach. Primarily, therefore, his own household are his care, for the law of nature and of society gives him readier access to them and greater opportunity of serving them. And hence the apostle says, “Now, if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” This is the origin of domestic peace, or the well-ordered concord of those in the family who rule and those who obey. 

Therein we see that our first concern of our love is within our own household – and as St. Augustine proves here himself, this is exactly what St. Paul says and that a believer not only should, but must provide for the needs of his own family before he concerns himself with those outside of the household. And here is where the Good Samaritan comes in: if we have the means to help our neighbor who is near to us – even in the slightest sense as the widow offering her 2 pennies in Mark 12 and Luke 21 – then we are commanded by Christ to give sacrificially. 

​We also see this playing out with Christ on the Cross in John’s Gospel. From the Cross, Christ sees his Mother Mary with John and he in his compassion gives Mary to John so that she will be provided for as John standing in for Christ in the sonly capacity of care. But Christ doesn’t do this with Mary Magdalene or Martha or any other of the women at the Cross, only his own mother. And so yes, obeying the Gospel needs to supersede obedience to our family if they are demanding something of us that is contrary to the Gospel, but still we ought to still care for our relatives because they were given to us by God in the natural economy of life.

​Following on this theme in Chapter 16 of the same book, that we see that the home is the foundation of the city and that the structure and rules of the home are the foundation of the running of the city, province, kingdom, empire: 

Since, then, the house ought to be the beginning or element of the city, and every beginning bears reference to some end of its own kind, and every element to the integrity of the whole of which it is an element, it follows plainly enough that domestic peace has a relation to civic peace,—in other words, that the well-ordered concord of domestic obedience and domestic rule has a relation to the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and civic rule.

This means that if domestic peace is attained by the father and mother caring for the children first and the children honoring and obeying their parents and then from that foundation the household can lend aid to their neighbors, then the city attains peace through the ruler providing justice for the weak and punishment for the criminal in the city and by providing for the protection and physical needs of the citizens. It is from that basis that the city can then provide for the needs of others of their kingdom. Likewise for the kingdom in regards to those of other kingdoms.

Finally, we need to address the most egregious misinterpretation of the Good Samaritan Parable. Martin goes so far to say that “our ultimate salvation depends, as it did for that man, upon those whom we consider to be the "stranger."” This is sacrilegious and denies that our salvation comes from God – rather it places the source of our salvation as coming from those in this world that will save us physically. But we are saved by “grace through faith … not [of our] own doing; it is a gift of God,” and “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” through his suffering and dying to join us unto himself so that we may then after repenting of our sins and cooperating with God may care for our neighbor as ourselves and love all those God has given to us as unto Christ (Ephesians 2:8; John 1:17). And within this framework we may embrace the order of love that God has given to us: “we do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live well and virtuously. So that it seems to me that it is a brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of love,” (City of God Book 15 Chapter 22). This is the meaning of love your neighbor as yourself, love them and care for them as yourself, but love them in the proper order that God has placed them in, and in all things love all as if you are giving service to the Most Holy Triune God, to Whom be Glory for all Eternity.

A Visual Depiction of St. Augustine’s “City of God,” Showing the “Order of Love” in a Well-Ordered Society Flowing from Christ as Ruler of All, the Pantocrator