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It is always awkward when you feel complacent that you have conquered the social media splashing the nature of Christian love, and then literally the pope comes and tells you that you are wrong.
It was the fate of the number of two Donald Trump last week-not Elon Musk, but Vice President JD Vance. From atheism, it turned into Catholicism in 2019, choosing its patron saint Augustine, who first wrote, in the fifth century, about the idea of focusing on this extremely spit of 21st century.
Clip He was circling Vance by defending Trump’s “First” policy. “Like an. . . The American citizen your compassion first belongs to your fellow citizens, “he told Sean Hannity from Fox News.” There is this old school – and I think it’s a very Christian concept. . . To love your family and then love your neighbor and then love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and after that you can focus and give preference to the rest of the world. “
Rory Stewart, British politicianCentrist-Dadcastertook a problem with Vance’s “bizarrely taking”, describing it on x As “less Christian and more pagan tribes”, and we suggested that when “politicians become theologians”, we should all be concerned. To which Vance reciprocated (before making some firmly non-Christian digs on Stewart’s IQ): “Only Google” Ordo Amoris. “. The idea that there is no hierarchy liabilities violates the basic common sense. Does Rory really think that his moral duties to his children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Is there anyone?”
I think this is a very interesting question, in terms of not only Christian doctrine, but Secular ethics wider. Also I don’t think it’s bad that a politician can take the theological or moral questions so seriously. But that does not mean that Vance has properly understood the nature of Christian love.
It was clear whose side of Pope Francis took the debate when he posted letter US bishops last Monday. “Christian love is not a concentric spread of interest that extends little by little to other persons and groups,” he wrote. “Truth Ordo Amoris This must be promoted is what we discover constantly meditating on the parable of the ‘good Samaritan’. . . That is, meditating about the love that builds the Brotherhood open to all, without exception. “
Perhaps the respect of the respect that Vance, who in 2020 wrote that “too many American Catholics failed to show appropriate respect for the papacy, treating the Pope as a political figure to criticize or praise toward their whim,” engaged in any Backchat Emperor Tom Homan, who told the TV camera that “Pope [sic] should be repaired by the Catholic Church ”). But with the risk of looking cheeky, I’m not sure Pontifex He really struggled with the shade of what Vance was; And neither did Stewart.
We can all think of people who seem far more capable of showing the compassion for the suffering of those who live thousands of miles – which is easy to idealize as victims’ crimes – than for people closer to home that may have different political views in their own. It is fair to criticize this impulse. And while all is good for the Pope to talk about the “Brotherhood open to all”, it is certainly, certainly, morally properly and properly loving your own family more than you do by accidental foreigners. As a philosopher Bernard Williams wroteA man who has to think about saving a stranger or his wife – when they are both in danger, but only one can be saved – he had “one thought too much.”
But what about the needs of a stranger is greater than your family member? Here, it seems that Vance did not have a head around the shade, according to David Fergusson, Regius Professor of Deity at the University of Cambridge. While Thomas Aquinas, who spread to Augustine’s idea of Ordo Amoris, We have suggested that we have obligations to those who are close to us, it is not the case that we must always give them an advantage. “Obligations can be canceled when someone is further in need of them,” Fergusson tells me. “Exigency can overdo it in the immediate vicinity.”
Having politicians who publicly express interest in Christian theology could not be a bad thing. What is desirable is when they seek to use religion as a kind of intellectual or moral cover, especially when it makes a mistake. The Aquinas V Vance is, of course, an intelligent man. But is it less blinding bright than he believes it is? And. . . Is Pope Catholic?
