The Goniff, the Pontiff, and the Ordo Amoris

Ordinarily, it is a fool's errand to parse theological arguments as they relate to public policy. Religious convictions do provide context for individual politicians' governing philosophy. And with six out of nine Supreme Court justices being Catholics, a knowledge of the Roman church's long tradition of moral and legal reasoning is indispensable. But in a rapidly secularizing society, most citizens simply don't think in theological categories, nor should they be expected to be bound by them.

Every so often, however, an exchange of religious ideas will come along that points to some current in the society worth teasing out. Consider, for example, Vice-President JD Vance's ill-advised attempt to justify Trump administration refugee policies with an appeal to the theological concept of the "ordo amoris," and Pope Francis' firm rejection of Vance's argument.

“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” Pope Francis writes. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

On first consideration, this might seem like a relatively minor scuffle, nothing more than JD Vance getting "sonned" by the Holy Father. But slow down and reconsider the exchange carefully. Important lessons emerge, some immediate and political, some with the unmistakable stench of the ultimate. Even better, exactly none of those lessons require religious faith to benefit from them.

The Theology

Vance is not exactly wrong when he cites the ordo, an attempt to think through the ethics of Christians' ethical obligations to others. Or rather, he cites one legitimate stream of interpretation of that concept — but only one. We should always remember that Vance's thoughts on Christianity are not necessarily representative of the whole. He comes out of a very conservative perspective (fine) that seeks to delegitimize any alternatives (not fine). Here as elsewhere, the Vice-President tries to palm off his views as run-of-the-mill ideas shared by all Christians, which they most certainly are not.

Francis captures Vance's argument in a nutshell pretty well. By the conservative view of the ordo, citizens ought to seek the good of their families first, then the neighborhood, city, and so on, as they are able. Concentric circles, expanding little by little. But there's another way to think about the subject, one to which Francis just so happens to subscribe. To the Pontiff's mind, the ordo provides not an end to thinking about social obligations, but a starting point. True, participants in any society must make prudential decisions about what they are able to contribute to the wider community. We can't all be Jimmy Carter effecting global change, after all.

But when it gets down to it, Christians have a duty to help when and where they can. It says so right in the Catholic catechism (the official teachings of the church):

“It is the duty of citizens to contribute along with the civil authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom. The love and service of one’s country follow from the duty of gratitude and belong to the order of charity. Submission to legitimate authorities and service of the common good require citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community.”

It's a cop-out to deny social obligation by saying, "I'm taking care of those closest to me!" if you're able to do more. The United States government certainly can do more, says Francis.

In fact, by the evidence, Trump and Vance aren't even trying to do the bare minimum. They're trying to do nothing — or less. So, Francis implies, the talk about ordo amoris represents nothing but a fig leaf covering the shame of this administration's cruelty. Greg Sargent calls it for what it is: the administration's policies "represent a near-total forswearing of [social] obligations, a declaration that we are embarked on a new phase of self-enrichment that is almost entirely unbound by them."

Or as Reinhold Niebuhr puts it in The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness, some people believe in nothing but cynical corruption, recognizing "no law beyond their will and interest." Such people would like nothing better than to drag the rest of society down to their level, to make everyone else believe that the only social value worth holding — in fact, the only social value anyone does hold — is "I got mine, Jack." It is a mistake to appeal to these folks' higher values, because they simply don't have them. Sargent says this is the "dark soul" of Trump's approach to refugee policy, which Vance pathetically tries to tart up with some faith-based lipstick. You don't need to embrace the theology to see how the Pope calls out this attempt. Vance is arguing for naked self-interest, which as Francis reminds him like a schoolteacher to a recalcitrant pupil, is anything but Catholic.

The Scripture

Instead, Francis wants Christians to broaden their social horizons. He cites the Parable of the Good Samaritan in his response, a canny move on his part. Jesus tells the parable in the midst of a debate with another teacher of Jewish ethics, who pushes him to define who exactly constitutes the "neighbor" a good Jew is supposed to love. It's a religious controversy with political implications, in other words, just like the beef between Vance and Francis, and with roughly the same content. Who is the neighbor to whom we are obliged? On a meta level, who has the authority to answer that question?

Like any self-respecting example of the genre, the story of the Good Samaritan requires the reader to make a decision about its meaning in order to answer the questions it raises. One good heuristic for interpreting the parables Jesus tells is to ask who represents the reader in the story, and who is the cut-out for God.

The most prominent interpretation is the one anyone who's spent more than five minutes contemplating Christian thought has heard. We, the readers, are supposed to be the good guy and take care of people in need, even if they're not part of our community. As atheists are sometimes eager to point out, that moral doesn't even require a belief in God.

It's a message made all the more challenging with the knowledge that Samaritans weren't just "others," people not ordinarily considered neighbors by Jewish society in Jesus' day. It might be an exaggeration to say that they were the enemy, but not much of one. Samaritans were rivals to the Jews in both economic welfare and religious practice.

Which brings up the other common, but less popular, way of interpreting the story. Jesus himself may be the Good Samaritan, and readers are the man by the side of the road. The punchline of the story then becomes something like, "I'd rather die than be saved by someone like you!"

If that's the case, it explicitly identifies Jesus with "the enemy." Readers can fill in the appropriate modern analogy here. The Parable of the Good Ayatollah, perhaps. Or think about the role those despised immigrants and refugees play in keeping the American economy running, providing care for Americans, breathing new life into the American heartland. Could it be that the United States is being saved by unacceptable saviors?

Any way of interpreting the parable teases the reader into considering wider circles of care. Better yet, because humans perpetually devote themselves to carving the world up into "us" and "them," the story forever maps easily onto whatever divisions are roiling our society at the moment.

The Teacher and the Teaching

A major role for any bishop, from Bishop Budde to the bishop of Rome, is to be an authoritative teacher of the faith.

Of course, Francis isn't just any old bishop. He is explicitly given the authority to represent the teaching of the Catholic church, which is to say, to look at the faith held by literal billions of followers over the course of 2,000 years and say "Yes, this fits" or "No, this doesn't work." As it turns out, sometimes pushing back on authoritarianism and heartless, cynical corruption looks like simply doing your job. And make no mistake about it, interpreting Catholic thought and guiding the flock in the best way of understanding it is Francis' job.

Where does he get the authority do that? Despite his title as successor of Peter, in practical terms, Francis is the legitimate teacher of the Roman faith by consent of the Catholic faithful. In particular, the consent of the Catholic laity, who far outnumber the clergy, and whom Francis has made clear he believes hold the heart and soul of the church. They have given him this authority in just the same way a student cedes authority to an instructor. That doesn't mean there is no room for disagreement, but it does imply an obligation to listen and consider carefully the teacher's interpretations. The petard Vance hoists himself on so neatly is that citing obedience to traditional teachings requires obedience even when the teacher says something politically inconvenient.

What is so fascinating about this beef is that, like Catholic nuns in past run-ins with the GOP, or Bishop Budde, or Presiding Bishop of the ELCA Elizabeth Eaton defending Lutheran Social Services, Francis is given a lot of legitimacy in his teaching by opponents of Vance, Trump, Musk, the entire MAGA Cinematic Universe. That includes people who aren't Catholic, even people who aren't religious at all.

You could take that as "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," with plenty of justification. But it may also be a sign that no matter how imperfect they are, or how much they are changing, religious institutions retain quite a bit of moral authority in our society — and they still have a lot of say in determining the legitimacy of our rulers. Who knew that the pushback on Trump would be led in part by organizations everyone (including me) had written off as irrelevant years ago?

But Francis would likely be unhappy to be accorded such authority for no better reason than getting off a sick burn on JD Vance. He might point to the way his controversy with Vance oddly recapitulates the story of Jesus' argument with a challenger to his legitimacy as a teacher of Jewish ethics. The early followers who put together the Christian Bible didn't preserve this story because Jesus was able to chump a lawyer. In fact, Jesus's parable is completely ridiculous! It would have almost certainly baffled its original hearers. By the debate standards of the day, it's not at all clear that he wins the exchange.

Yet Jesus expresses something his followers prize above any normal social standard. They declare him the legitimate teacher because he has the more expansive view of who deserves their love and care. He refuses to be bound by "concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups." Love is love is love, without boundary or calculation of social distinction.

More to the point, Jesus refuses to be bound by the assumption that taking care of one's own first is normal and expected. Niebuhr's children of darkness — the ones who "know no law beyond their will and interest" — would love for everyone to think the same way. But they would also happily settle for making everyone believe that their way is just the way things are, an immutable fact of social existence. This is the motivation behind much of their bald-faced lying and nonsensical justifications for bad behavior: to make reasonable observers throw up their hands and say "Who knows what the truth is? Everybody's a crook these days."

Call that gaslighting. Call it warping reality to suit cynical and corrupt ends, if you like. However it's termed, it is immensely oppressive. So for the sake of sanity, if nothing else, it is good to hear someone offer a counterargument: that what is good and right and just and normal, what is real, is compassion for those in need, whatever their nation of birth. You might not need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing or a Pope or a holy book to teach you which end is up, but you know what? These days, every little bit helps.