Getting Love Right: J.D. Vance and the Ordo Amoris

A Round-Up of Commentaries

It’s not very often that St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas become a topic of nationwide social commentary, but such was the case last week when Vice President J.D. Vance made reference to the traditional Christian ethical concept of the ordo amoris to justify the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Vance claimed that, according to this principle, we naturally love our own family first, then the fellow citizens of our own country, and only then others around the world. Vance’s remarks set off a firestorm among Christians on social media, and the discussion of what the ordo amoris means, and whether Vance had interpreted it correctly, even spread to secular media (for example, see here and here).

The debate began last Thursday when Vance, defending the Trump administration’s policy of pursuing the “mass deportation” of undocumented immigrants during an interview on Fox News, said:

There’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family and then you love your neighbor and then you love your community and then you love your fellow citizens and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

Later that day, the British politician and academic Rory Stewart questioned Vance’s interpretation of Christian love in a post on the social media site X, and Vance responded:

Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?

What is the ordo amoris, what is its relevance to contemporary society, and was Vance interpreting it correctly? Here is a round-up of commentaries on these questions, as well as my own brief contributions to the conversation at the end.

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Disagreeing with Vance’s claim that Christians are called to prioritize their own families over strangers, and their fellow citizens over residents of other parts of the world, critics pointed to several passages from the Gospels suggesting that Jesus took a quite different, or even opposite, approach. In a lengthy post of his own on X, Jesuit author James Martin referenced two of the most cited Gospel passages, the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk. 10:25-37) and Jesus’ seeming rejection of his own family: “[H]e said in reply . . . , ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother’” (Mt. 12:48-50).

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, however, Jesus’ point is certainly to extend our understanding of neighborliness to those beyond our kin group or nation, even members of groups we consider our enemies, but the story is not really addressing the question of prioritizing kinspeople or strangers. Similarly, Jesus’ remarks about his family members are meant to stress that a Christian should prioritize their membership in the new family of Christ’s disciples over loyalty to their biological family (and is therefore similar to Jesus saying earlier in Matthew, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (10:37)), but they’re not necessarily meant to downplay the special responsibilities we do have for family members. That being said, however, these and other passages still suggest that the thrust of Jesus’ teaching is to expand our love outward—to our brothers and sisters in Christ, to foreigners, and even to our enemies—rather than to restrict it to those closest to us (“For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?” (Mt. 5:46-47)).

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Although rooted in Scripture, the concept of the ordo amoris was developed by the fourth century bishop and theologian St. Augustine. The term itself appears in Augustine’s City of God:

[I]f the Creator is truly loved, that is, if He Himself is loved and not another thing in His stead, He cannot be evilly loved; for love itself is to be ordinately loved, because we do well to love that which, when we love it, makes us live well and virtuously. So that it seems to me that it is a brief but true definition of virtue to say, it is the order of love. (Bk. XV, ch. 22, emphasis added)

The concept of the ordo amoris, however, is more fully developed in the earlier On Christian Doctrine. Augustine again links the ordo amoris to virtue, explaining that it involves loving the right things and rightly loving some things more than others:

Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things, and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he 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. (Bk. I, ch. 27)

Most importantly, Augustine argues that we are called to enjoy (frui) God alone, and merely to use (uti) created things, including other people (Bk. I, chs. 3, 22). We should enjoy God alone because only God is the source of our true happiness. The English translation is somewhat unfortunate since to “use” something or someone sometimes implies exploitation or a purely instrumental relationship, but as Augustine explains, to use something in the sense he intends simply means that it assists us in achieving our true happiness in God. We are called to love ourselves and one another, which entails assisting one another in focusing our lives on the love of God.

As the philosopher Terence Sweeney explains in his recent commentary on the ordo amoris, Augustine further distinguishes different types of loves among those created goods we are called to “use”: “After and in God, we ought to love virtue, ourselves and each other, and then material goods.” Finally, Augustine explains that we can make distinctions among particular people in terms of how we love: “[A]ll men are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you” (Bk. I, ch. 28). But note that, for Augustine, this ordering of loves is compatible with loving all equally, and likewise, as he subsequently explains, he is primarily talking about situations in which “you cannot consult for the good of them all,” that is, when helping one person absolutely excludes helping another.

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Writing in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas further develops Augustine’s point that we should pay “special regard” to those “brought into closer connection” with us. Aquinas’s explanation of the ordo amoris is shaped by his understanding of the natural law, which orders not just our personal morality but our social relationships. Aquinas touches on this question most directly in article 8 of question 26 of the Secunda Secundae of his Summa Theologiae. He writes, in the body of the article:

[W]e ought out of charity to love those who are more closely united to us more, both because our love for them is more intense, and because there are more reasons for loving them. Now intensity of love arises from the union of lover and beloved: and therefore we should measure the love of different persons according to the different kinds of union, so that a man is more loved in matters touching that particular union in respect of which he is loved. And, again, in comparing love to love we should compare one union with another. Accordingly we must say that friendship among blood relations is based upon their connection by natural origin, the friendship of fellow-citizens on their civic fellowship, and the friendship of those who are fighting side by side on the comradeship of battle. Wherefore in matters pertaining to nature we should love our kindred most, in matters concerning relations between citizens, we should prefer our fellow-citizens, and on the battlefield our fellow-soldiers.

Aquinas’s remarks here are quite similar to Vance’s. Arguing that “JD Vance is Right About the ‘Ordo Amoris,’” First Things editor R.R. Reno writes in Compact:

Aquinas applies the notion of ordo amoris to our love of other people. There is no question that all persons are equally worthy of our love. We are created in the image and likeness of God. But each of us is cast into a world of already existing relationships. These relationships bring with them duties and responsibilities.

But things may not be that simple. As Catholic News Agency journalist Jonah McKeown explains, drawing on an interview with the Dominican theologian Pius Pietrzyk, the “practical application [of the ordo amoris] is complex and allows for legitimate disagreement,” and “Aquinas’ approach requires taking into account certain situational difficulties and urgent needs, especially the greater need of an individual in the moment.”

Aquinas notes some of these complexities in his replies to the objections in the article cited earlier. For example, he writes that while we have a greater responsibility to provide necessities to our family members, we may give precedence to our friends when it comes to sharing in certain types of activities (Reply to Objection 1). On the battlefield, the soldier gives greater obedience (reflecting a specific type of love) to his commanding officer than to his father (Reply to Objection 3)! Elsewhere in the Summa, when addressing a similar question, Aquinas writes: “[I]n certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need” (II-IIae, q. 31, a. 3), a most pertinent example when considering U.S. immigration policy.

Although Vance correctly recognizes that our already existing relationships create distinct responsibilities, Aquinas does not speak of our different loves in terms of prioritizing one over another or as one coming before another. Rather, as I already noted, although he speaks of loving those who are closest to us more, Aquinas argues that “a man is more loved in matters touching that particular union in respect of which he is loved.” We have different responsibilities to different people, and these responsibilities are not necessarily competitive.

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(Photo: Ben White, Unsplash)

Husband and wife team Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt and Maureen Sweeney make the same point in their own commentary on Vance’s remarks. They write:

[I]t is a mistake to suggest, as Mr. Vance seemed to do in the interview, that Aquinas thinks that love or compassion is a zero-sum game, such that compassion for American citizens who are victims of violent crime is incompatible with compassion shown to immigrants. In fact, Aquinas thinks that love can be increased infinitely because it “dilates the heart.”

Bauerschmidt, a theologian whose work has focused on the theology of Aquinas, and Sweeney, an immigration lawyer and professor, are especially well-positioned to comment on Vance’s use of the concept of the ordo amoris in the context of U.S. immigration policy. For example, they explain:

Thomas Aquinas writes that, when confronted with two people in need, “If one of the two is more closely connected to us and the other is more needy, it is not possible to determine by a universal rule who should be helped more, because there are different degrees of both neediness and proximity, but this requires the judgment of a prudent person” [ST, II-IIae, q. 31, a. 3, ad 1]. The ordo amoris does not mean that proximity always trumps urgent need.

They then continue, applying this insight to immigration policy:

Aquinas rejects the idea that one can address such matters via universal rule (or executive order). Rather, prudent people must be allowed to make judgments in complex situations, which suggests less a closed-door policy on immigration and more the creation of a system in which people seeking refuge can have their claims heard in a timely and fair way.

For his part, Reno does not think that Vance’s explanation of the ordo amoris is incompatible with a compassionate immigration policy. He writes:

I suspect that most of Vance’s critics anguished over his forthright affirmation of our love of our fellow citizens. They fear “nativism,” or some other manifestation of xenophobia. But we should not let disordered loves discredit a proper order of loves.

As an example, Reno admits that “Neglecting the needs of someone in Syria by failing to make a donation to a relief organization may be sinful. (I emphasize may.)” Vance’s position is simply that, in Reno’s words, “[S]tanding by with indifference when one’s neighbor is in distress is likely a far graver sin.” Reno concludes, “Vance is not undermining America’s concern for the other nations and peoples,” for just as the love of a husband for his wife “has prepared his heart to love his country and make sacrifices on behalf of his fellow citizens,” our love for fellow Americans prepares us to properly love those in “far-flung lands.”

But Vance’s remarks can’t be read in isolation—his initial comments, after all, were made in defense of the concrete immigration policies implemented by the Trump administration. Reno surely knows that a week before Vance made these remarks, the Trump administration had completely suspended the U.S.’s refugee resettlement program, even stranding those refugees who had already been vetted and accepted for resettlement in the U.S. The administration likewise, for all intents and purposes, made it impossible to claim asylum at U.S. ports of entry. Since Reno’s article was published, the Trump administration has also attempted to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency that provides billions of dollars in direct foreign aid and grants to private agencies, including Catholic Relief Services. Vance is guilty not of failing to donate to a relief agency to assist Reno’s hypothetical Syrian, but rather of seeking to eliminate the very possibility that any assistance can reach them, and any hope of seeking a better life on our shores, a “far graver sin” indeed.

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Although it’s helpful to look to theologians like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to better understand the concept of the ordo amoris, and to examine its roots in Scripture, it’s also important to remember that the task of authentically and authoritatively interpreting the deposit of faith “has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ” (Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, #10). My intent is not to resort to a kind of magisterial fundamentalism, but rather simply to point out that Catholics don’t need to start from scratch when figuring out how to properly order our loves in the contemporary political and social context, and in particular how to balance our responsibilities toward our fellow citizens with those we hold toward immigrants and refugees.

The popes from Pope Pius XII, in the years after the Second World War, to Pope Francis today have extensively taught on the rights of immigrants and refugees and on the responsibilities of nations to welcome them. The United States Catholic bishops have also applied these teachings to the American context, most importantly in the pastoral letter Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope, co-written with the Catholic bishops of Mexico, but also in numerous shorter statements produced over the years. These teachings provide us with a set of standards with which to judge whether our immigration policies reflect a rightly ordered love. Last November, the U.S. bishops issued a short statement outlining key ethical principles for U.S. immigration policy in anticipation of the new presidential administration, and as I detailed here, the bishops have been harshly critical of the flurry of executive orders and enforcement operations implemented by the Trump administration in its first days.

Stepping back from the particulars of U.S. immigration policy, however, I would make the case that our clearest blueprint for how to understand the ordo amoris in our contemporary political and social context is Pope John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris, which has served as the jumping off point for all subsequent papal encyclicals dealing with international affairs. In a systematic fashion, Pacem in Terris begins by considering the human person and his or her rights and responsibilities in community, turns to the relationship between the person and the political community, and concludes by discussing both the duties of states toward one another and the responsibilities of the citizens of a particular political community toward the entire human family.

Pope John begins the encyclical by discussing the order infused into God’s creation, leading up to his description of order in human society:

[T]he world's Creator has stamped man's inmost being with an order revealed to man by his conscience; and his conscience insists on his preserving it. Men “show the work of the law written in their hearts. Their conscience bears witness to them.” [Rom. 2:15] And how could it be otherwise? All created being reflects the infinite wisdom of God. It reflects it all the more clearly, the higher it stands in the scale of perfection. . . . (#5)

He goes on to say that this order encompasses the relationships between neighbors, between citizen and state, between states, and between members of the human family (#7). Later on in the encyclical, he explains that this order is an order of love:

[T]he order which prevails in human society is wholly incorporeal in nature. Its foundation is truth, and it must be brought into effect by justice. It needs to be animated and perfected by men's love for one another, and, while preserving freedom intact, it must make for an equilibrium in society which is increasingly more human in character. (#37)

For human society, from the local community to the international community, to be rightly ordered, then, it needs to be perfected by love.

Rather than summarizing the whole encyclical, I want to highlight two pertinent points. First, John’s use of the principle of subsidiarity in his discussion of the duties among states is a good example of the application of the ordo amoris to the contemporary context. The principle of subsidiarity is usually taken to mean that responsibilities should be carried out at the smaller or most local level possible, while larger or more universal bodies should step in and provide assistance when necessary.

Applying this principle, Pope John argues that any kind of international order must respect the ability of “each nation, its citizens and intermediate groups, [to] carry out their tasks, fulfill their duties and claim their rights with greater security” (#141). This implies that citizens have a particular responsibility to work toward the common good within their own country. Nevertheless, citizens of different countries must work together and provide assistance to one another, for two reasons: for one, the common good of one country is impacted by issues that are global in scope (e.g., the climate, migration, the arms trade, etc.), and so it is in their own interest for countries to work together (#99); second, we should develop a global sense of solidarity because the common good extends beyond our particular nation to the entire human family (#98). Here we see an example of how, when properly ordered, love of country and one’s fellow citizens, although having a certain priority, is complementary to our love of those from other nations; these loves are not caught in a zero-sum competition.

The second point I want to highlight is John’s statement on refugees. Pope John laments the large number of refugees in the world, a crisis that has only grown since his time. But his argument for why the rights of refugees should be protected is profound and perhaps unexpected. Although grounded in the refugee’s equal dignity as a person, John’s argument is not based on the premise that all people—kin, fellow citizen, and foreigner alike—should be treated the same. Instead, he argues that the plight of refugees arises from the breakdown of proper order, an order in which these more particular forms of community could ensure that the rights of all are protected: “Refugees cannot lose these rights simply because they are deprived of citizenship of their own States” (#105). Because the refugees’ own particular community has failed in its responsibility to ensure that their rights are respected, it falls on other nations to welcome those refugees so that their rights can be honored (#106). There’s a certain parallel, then, between John’s argument here and Aquinas’s point that, in certain cases, one should prioritize a stranger in urgent need over one’s own father. Later magisterial teaching extends this principle to other forms of migration.

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Writing for the National Catholic Register, Jonathan Liedl raises the question of whether Vance has taken on the role of “Catechist-in-Chief” by raising the notion of the ordo amoris to public consciousness. That’s a bit much, especially considering how Vance applies the concept to the issue of immigration. More realistically, Charles Collins makes the case that, whether Vance is right or wrong, there is a certain benefit to Catholic moral teaching becoming part of the public conversation. I will happily say “Amen” to that, but I wish that this renewed public interest in the Church’s moral teachings wasn’t coming at the same time as a sustained attack on the Church’s public outreach, including its assistance to refugees and immigrants and its promotion of integral human development around the world through Catholic Relief Services, a major beneficiary of USAID.

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Coming Soon…

• Just a quick update on some topics I’m hoping to write about soon: Like many others, I was fascinated by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon during the inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, attended by both President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. I want to write something about her actions, not focusing so much on the political aspect, but rather on her style, for lack of a better word, and whether the US Catholic bishops can learn anything from it.

• Earlier I mentioned the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle USAID, a move that would have disastrous consequences for Catholic Relief Services. While not getting too much into the details of what’s going on with USAID, I would like to write about what Catholic social teaching has to say about foreign aid as an expression of global solidarity, providing some context for ongoing events.

• Ash Wednesday, which is on March 5 this year, offers us a reminder of not just our finitude, but also that we come into this world in the state of original sin. Many find the traditional understanding of original sin developed by Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas objectionable, however. As Ash Wednesday approaches, I want to highlight three “rogue Dominicans”—Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (14th c.), Robert Holcot (14th c.), and Ambrogio Catarino Politi (16th c.)—who developed interesting, alternative accounts of original sin that remain orthodox and that may be more amenable for believers today. I’ve been thinking about this article for a long time, so hopefully I will get a chance to work on it!