In a podcast episode, the vice president implied that the ‘End Times’ might be near
JD Vance kneels to pray during the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV Photo by Getty Images
By Mira FoxSeptember 4, 2026
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JD Vance said he might be bringing about the End Times, adding that he would not be “shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us.”
Vance was speaking on the Christian YouTube show The Bryce Crawford Podcast about his memoir, Communion, which covers his conversion to Catholicism from Protestantism.
Numerous Catholics online reacted to his statements with confusion and frustration, saying that the ideas about the apocalypse Vance voiced are not central parts of Catholicism. While Catholicism does discuss the idea of the Second Coming, a time in which Christians believe Jesus will return to Earth, the Catholic Church Catechism — the Vatican’s official statements and teachings about the fundamentals of the religion — says that “we are already at ‘the last hour’” ever since Jesus died; the Antichrist is mentioned only briefly as a “a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God,” not as a specific person who will come to the world.
The Antichrist and Armageddon, however, take center stage in many Evangelical churches, where these concepts often drive other extremist ideas, such as labeling politicians the Antichrist — at one point during the Obama administration, a poll found that one in four Americans thought the president might be the Antichrist — as well as Christian Zionism, an attempt to get all Jews to return to Jerusalem to hasten the apocalypse, when many believe Jews will be sent to Hell.
As one snarky Catholic commenter put it, Vance’s apocalypse-heavy discussion of his Catholicism sounded like “three evangelicals in a trench coat.”
It also sounded a lot like Peter Thiel, the billionaire Palantir founder and Vance’s mentor, donor and former employer. Thiel has a famed obsession with the Antichrist; earlier this year, several Catholic institutions distanced themselves from a series of lectures Thiel gave in Rome on the topic. Vance cited Thiel as an influence on his conversion in an essay about why he chose Catholicism, despite the fact that Thiel is not Catholic.
Thiel’s thinking on the Antichrist is esoteric and rambling, but it borrows heavily from that of Carl Schmitt, a Nazi jurist who also wrote at length about the apocalypse. Schmitt, a lapsed Catholic, argued that a “satanic unification of the world” would be brought about by a globalist Antichrist, and supported Hitler because he believed that he would keep the world safely fragmented. Thiel’s own discussion of the Antichrist largely equates the figure with those fearful about climate change, AI and other ideas usually associated with progressive politics.
Vance, who grew up in an Evangelical Christian household in which his “Meemaw” read the bible daily and watched televangelist Billy Graham, has upset Catholics in the past, particularly when he implied that Pope Leo XIV’s theological interpretations were incorrect after the pope made a statement against the U.S. war with Iran.
“I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vance said at a Turning Point USA event in April, responding to Pope Leo’s comments. “You’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth and that’s one of the things that I try to do and it’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy.”
In the Catholic Church, the pope’s word is infallible when it comes to official church teachings, and Vance’s boldness was offensive to many Catholics.
Vance’s version of Catholicism — one in which he pushes back against the head of the Church and brings in theological ideas foreign to most Catholics — is notable because it represents an increasingly visible ideological schism in the Church. On one side are Catholics committed to the Vatican, and who have been influenced by the liberalism of recent papal teachings. On the other is a growing movement of traditionalist Catholics, who are increasingly skeptical of the institution of the Church and its recent — and not so recent — theological changes, and are looking to other sources for inspiration.
Those changes have included Vatican II, a groundbreaking set of updates to Church teachings made in the 1960s that famously mandated increased tolerance and respect for other religions, particularly Judaism; the church repudiated antisemitism, Christian nationalism and coercive proselytizing. These were controversial moves, however, which led some Catholic movements to reject the document.
Voices suspicious of the Vatican’s more liberal ideas are getting bolder, and louder. The founder of the Society of Saint Pius X, Marcel Lefebvre, rejected Vatican II in large part based on its espousal of religious liberty; just this summer, the group was excommunicated after it ordained four bishops without the Vatican’s permission. In parallel, highly visible Catholic influencers are increasingly becoming the face of the Church for many young people, yet their theology is often only loosely based on the Vatican’s current teachings, and often reaches back to older, more antisemitic ideas the church has since disavowed.
Vance’s stated breaks with the Vatican and Catholic teaching are not overtly about religious tolerance or liberty. But they are a sign of the increasing acceptability of rejecting, or simply ignoring, the teachings of the Vatican and the pope — and, perhaps, of looking to other sources, like Thiel, for theology. The Catholic church is far from perfect, but the more acceptable it becomes to ignore the Vatican, the easier it becomes to declare almost anything — opposing progressive politics, endorsing Christian nationalism or spreading antisemitism — to be part of Catholicism, no matter what the pope says.
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