Inside JD Vance’s Post-Liberal Catholic Brain Trust

They aren’t household names — but they made JD Vance, are shaping the soul of the new American Right, and are trying to make him the next president of the United States.

Dear friends —

Happy Thursday. Today’s essay is the fourth in our ongoing series on the religious and political formation of Vice President J.D. Vance — a formation that continues to shape the direction of Catholic life in American politics, often in ways that unsettle the very tradition it claims to uphold.

In Installment One, we traced Vance’s 2019 entry into the Catholic Church — not as a sacramental homecoming, but as a strategic shift in worldview that accompanied his turn from Trump critic to MAGA standard-bearer.

Installment Two examined his now-infamous invocation of ordo amoris to justify hardline immigration policy — and the rare, public rebukes from both Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV that followed.

Last week, in Installment Three, we introduced the Dominican friars who privately catechized Vance behind closed doors — bypassing parish OCIA and embedding him instead in Washington’s elite conservative Catholic circles.

Now, in Installment Four, we zoom out to the broader intellectual scaffolding. Who shaped Vance’s moral and political imagination? Who gave him the tools to blend post-liberal theory with culture war combat?

Today, we meet four of the most influential figures behind Vance’s worldview: Leonard Leo, Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, and Scott Hahn. Some mentored him directly. Others helped create the ideological current he now rides. Together, they’ve helped craft a Catholic politics that is suspicious of liberalism, confident in state power, and increasingly at odds with the Vatican itself.

This isn’t the full map — but it’s a crucial section. In future essays, we’ll continue to trace the networks of influence and funding that brought this movement to national power.

As always, these thoroughly-researched essays are available only to our paid subscribers. If you haven’t yet joined us, I hope you will — your support keeps this work independent, ad-free, and fiercely committed to truth.

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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.

Most of my readers aren’t fans of JD Vance. I certainly am not. Yet understanding the Catholic voices that shaped his thinking is crucial to grasping why he talks about politics the way he does.

This isn’t a defense of Vance, but a guide to the intellectual world he’s absorbed — a primer on the “post-liberal” Catholic influences behind his rise, to be unpacked more fully in future essays.

A Convert with an Agenda

JD Vance entered the Catholic Church in 2019 as a 35-year-old Yale Law grad and bestselling author. Within a few years, he was touting “Catholic social teaching” as a basis for his political vision.

For Trump’s vice president, Vance’s rhetoric can sound strikingly theological — peppered with terms like “common good” and openly critical of the liberal status quo.

How did an Appalachian Protestant-turned-Catholic come to embrace an intellectual tradition critical of both Wall Street and Washington?

The answer lies in a tight circle of mentors and muses.

Vance himself has cited a “weird” mix of influences — from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel to the French Catholic philosopher René Girard — but at the core of his transformation are a handful of conservative Catholic and Orthodox thinkers.

Let’s meet four of the most important: Leonard Leo, Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, and Scott Hahn. Each represents a facet of the post-liberalism outlook that Vance has made his own.

The Post-Liberal Catholic Turn

Vance often calls himself a “post-liberal” Catholic, signaling a break from the usual left-right boxes. Post-liberal Catholics believe that America’s reigning philosophy of liberalism — with its focus on individual freedom, open markets, and secular neutrality — has failed society.

In their view, an excessive emphasis on personal liberty has eroded the common good, left communities broken, and produced elites with no loyalty to their fellow citizens.

Here’s what that means in 2025 American politics.