JD Vance is sworn in as vice president by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as Usha Vance holds the Bible during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool)
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated 8:03 AM EST, February 6, 2025Share
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Vice President JD Vance recently cited medieval Catholic theology in justifying the immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump.
“Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” he posted Jan. 30 on the social media platform X.
He posted this in reply to criticism over statements he made in a Fox News interview: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” He claimed that the “far left” has inverted that.
Vance posted that the concept is “basic common sense” because one’s moral duties to one’s children outweigh those “to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away.”
What is ‘ordo amoris’?
It’s been translated as “order of love” or “order of charity.” It’s a concept discussed by St. Augustine, an ancient theologian, who said everyone and everything should be loved in its own proper way.
“Now he is a man of just and holy life who ... neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally,” Augustine wrote.
