It is tempting to sequester the Gospel out of certain parts of our lives. It can also be tempting to tell ourselves that we do not need to listen to the Catholic Church on certain topics. We try to keep the church safely ensconced in one hour on Sunday mornings, to matters that are religious (whatever that term means) or only to certain areas of morality. However, when we seek to blockade the church’s teaching from the totality of our lives, we deny the universality of the church and her proclamation of truth.
Vice President JD Vance seems to want to do this kind of blockading. After President Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV and blasphemed against Jesus, Mr. Vance was quick to state that “in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what is going on in the Catholic Church.” Since the president must “look out for the interests of the United States of America,” Mr. Vance said, the pope should keep in his lane and “let the president stick to dictating American public policy.” Mr. Vance, in his remarks, wants to put a neat little box around Catholicity and leave out a wide variety of matters such as war, peace, international politics, migration policy and much more.
But it is important to remember that part of the catholicity of Catholicism is that it is meant to shape the whole of our human existence. That shaping takes place in several ways, but one of them is the teaching authority of the church, safeguarded and carried out by the pope and the bishops. Alas, too often Catholics have refused this shaping, preferring certain secular carve-outs. William F. Buckley’s National Review famously responded to John XXIII’s “Mater et Magistra” by saying “Mater si, Magistra no” (Mother yes, Teacher no). Mr. Buckley and his cohorts did not want the church teaching in certain areas, especially regarding economic justice. In this, he was not that different from progressives who proclaimed magistra no when it comes to sexual ethics, especially “Humanae Vitae.”
Mr. Vance is not only declaring magistra no, but he is also falsely claiming to determine the acceptable spaces for teaching by the Vicar of Christ and the successors to the apostles. Thus, we have the bizarre demand that Leo stick to morality, as if ethics were not a formative dimension of every human realm of action. When Pope Leo—quoting John Paul II, quoting Paul VI—proclaims “No more war,” he is certainly speaking about morality. Our response should not be to blockade that teaching but to seek to live it out by ending this war.
The church’s tradition of advocating for peace—and clearly delineating the boundaries of what can constitute a just war—goes back to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries. Continuing this tradition, the modern church has increasingly emphasized the high bar for a war to be just—and asserting that even a just war is a moral failure. Wars may sometimes be necessary, but they are always terrible. This is the reason that Leo states that “no one can use [Jesus] to justify war,” for Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” God is on the side of the peacemakers, whom he declares blessed, not on the side of the warmakers.
Mr. Vance thinks sticking to morality means that the pope and bishops should step back from matters of war and peace and let the president decide the contours of just war, constrained, as President Trump put it, “only by my own morality.” All this occurs after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth bragged about raining down death on Iranians and after Mr. Trump’s threat to wipe out a civilization. Mr. Vance appears to see delighting in death and making genocidal threats as not matters of morality—and thus something the pope should just keep quiet about.
But the church has always held that it has a role in guiding Christians in their political life precisely because politics and war are moral matters. Thus, Pope Benedict XVI taught in “Caritas in Veritate” that the church contributes to human development “only if God has a place in the public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social, economic, and particularly its political dimensions.” Silencing the church in these matters is a way of denying God’s place in the public realm, of sequestering the Gospel. For Benedict XVI, the church and her ministry have “a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance” and most especially in her social doctrine, which definitely applies to matters of war and international relations.
There is no realm in which we can say magistra no, as Mr. Vance has done this week. The whole church, especially her episcopal leaders, has the task of proclaiming peace and justice in our time and thus denouncing war and injustice. This is particularly the case because the war on Iran meets none of the qualifications for a just war—and is being directed by an administration that brags about raining down death without mercy after the bombing of a school that killed 165 children.
Considering this, the doctrinal office of the U.S. Catholic bishops has had to issue a twofold correction of Mr. Vance, noting first that the Iran war is not a just war, which is why God will not listen to the prayers of those who wage this war. Further, Bishop James Massa clarified that “when Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ.” Mr. Vance and too many other Catholics treat papal and episcopal teaching as op-eds that can then be dismissed or mocked. But Leo is not an op-ed writer: He is the Vicar of Christ. That the American bishops felt that they had to remind Mr. Vance of this should be a serious cause for reflection and conversion by Mr. Vance and those who support him.
All of this comes back to Mr. Vance’s distorted understanding of the order of loves in Christian morality. As St. Augustine makes clear, that ordering is not meant to constrain our loves to our own interests but to expand them from neighbors, to strangers and onto our enemies. But Mr. Vance, like too many MAGA Catholics, seems to want to rein that love in, which is why he claims that the pope should focus on what is going on “in the Catholic church.” In other words, he wants to set the borders for the proclamation of love and thus the range of papal authority.
That is likely why Pope Leo proclaimed in response to Mr. Trump’s attacks that he has “no fear” and will continue “speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel.” Christian love extends beyond the church, extends even onto the dead children in Iran, and so the range of pastoral concern cannot be locked “in the church.”
There is no border for our loves, no boundary of the Gospel, no realm of life that the church cannot speak to, no blockade that can silence the prophetic voice of the church when she denounces war and proclaims the Gospel of peace.
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