The Obligations of Home: JD Vance and the Ordo Amoris

Let us not replace ordo amoris with abstract notions of “humanity.”

La humanidad es el único dios totalmente falso.

[Humanity is the only totally false god.]

— Nicolás Gómez Dávila

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Imagine waking up from a coma, or returning from your rest-cure after a nasty bout with Influenza B, and finding the entire media ecosystem caught up in an acrimonious debate over some obscure Christian doctrine like Preterism or Monophysitism. Surely you would think you were still in the grip of a somnolent hallucination or bizarre fever dream. Yet that is essentially our reality, as the flame war over Vice President JD Vance’s reference to the Augustinian doctrine of ordo amoris (“order of love” or “order of charity”) enters its third week with no sign of dying down. Turn on CNN and you might encounter an utterly wet Passionist priest chastising the vice president for his theological stances. Browse the pages of Newsweek and you might find lefty journalists eagerly citing bizarre fringe figures like Joash Thomas, a self-styled “Masala Chai theologian,” who has apparently determined that Vance’s interpretation of the ordo amoris is “not a Christian concept; it’s a Western individualistic one,” as if those were necessarily at odds. And turn on Fox News and you might just catch Border Czar Tom Homan announcing that he has “harsh words for the pope.” What a time to be alive. Incredible things are happening in the Year of Our Lord 2025!

Continued below.

The order of love is correct according to Catholic teaching and JD Vance got it right regardless of what independent publications say. This does not exclude loving those even those outside our vicinity. It’s not either/or.