Two Popes Rebuked Him. JD Vance Still Keeps Mocking the Church.
As Donald Trump publicly wonders if he’ll make it to heaven, his nominally Catholic vice president faces deeper questions about whether his own actions are already closing the gates.
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On Wednesday, a United States immigration enforcement officer shot Renee Nicole Macklin Good three times in the head and chest.
Good — a 37-year-old widowed mother of three — lost her life within moments.
For Vice President JD Vance, however, this tragedy quickly became a talking point to demonize Good and defend the deadly force.
As Good’s wife later noted of that day, “We had whistles. They had guns” — yet within hours Vance was on Twitter insisting the shooting was “a tragedy of [Good’s] own making”.
He echoed and escalated his administration’s swift effort to discredit the victim.
Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem had immediately labeled Good’s actions “an act of domestic terrorism,” and President Trump claimed — contrary to video evidence — that she “viciously ran over” an ICE officer.
Vance not only justified the killing; he outright blamed Good herself. “Don’t illegally interfere in federal law enforcement. It’s really that simple,” he tweeted on Jan. 7, as if a point-blank killing were an appropriate consequence.
The next morning, he went further. Vance publicly challenged Democrats to say whether the ICE agent was wrong “defending his life against a deranged leftist who tried to run him over” — Vance’s own slur for a woman known by loved ones as a kind, faith-filled neighbor.
There was no hint of sorrow or prayers for Good’s grieving family; instead Vance pledged full support to ICE and warned that the administration would “work even harder to enforce the law”.
I responded immediately to our nominally Catholic vice president.
But Vance wasn’t done. In a press conference yesterday, he said “There’s a part of me that feels very, very sad for this woman. Not just because she lost her life but because I think that she is a victim of left-wing ideology.”
“What young mother shows up and decides they are going to throw their car in front of ICE officers that are enforcing legitimate law? You have to be brainwashed to get to that point to where you’re willing—not just to protest, that’s fine—but throw your vehicle in front of law enforcement officers.”
“To get to that point you have to be radicalized in a very, very sad way.”
Such a response is staggering from a self-professed Catholic leader.
In moments like this, even secular politicians typically offer condolences and urge calm. Vance chose outrage.
As a Catholic convert, he should know that the sanctity of life and the dignity of every person are foundational. Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV have both taken Vance to task in his first year as vice president.
When Vance tried to defend hardline immigration raids by citing ordo amoris (an “order of love” from St. Augustine), Francis publicly corrected him. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests. The true ordo amoris is love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” the pope wrote in rebuke of Vance’s America-first spin.
Why Two Popes Told JD Vance He Was Wrong on Christianity 101
JD Vance’s attempt at a theological gotcha became a teachable moment for the nation. He told America to look up ordo amoris; Pope Francis and Pope Leo delivered the results.
And Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff, has been equally blunt about the cruelty of the Trump-Vance agenda. Just weeks ago in Rome, Leo deplored the “inhuman” treatment of migrants, calling it a “serious crime” when governments treat any human being “like garbage”.
He has insisted that the Church must be a “Church of the Beatitudes” that makes room for the vulnerable and defends the “little ones” who are cast aside.
None of this has moved Vance.
The vice president continues to wrap himself in Catholicism even as his actions scandalize the faithful. After Pope Francis’ critique, Vance half-heartedly brushed it off by calling himself a “baby Catholic” who has “things about the faith that I don’t know”.
While President Trump is the one who publicly muses about whether he’ll get into heaven, it is now fair to ask harder questions about the state of JD Vance’s own soul. Vance He converted to Catholicism in a unique pathway as an adult, yet in office he has trampled the very values he vowed to uphold.
JD Vance’s Road to Rome — and to MAGA
He once likened Trump to Hitler. Now Vance is Trump’s vice president. The Ohio conservative’s journey from “Never Trump” skeptic to MAGA firebrand coincided with his 2019 conversion to Catholicism.
Is such a leader even fit to receive the Holy Eucharist? The late Pope Francis cautioned against weaponizing Communion — reminding us that the Eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine for the weak” — but in Vance’s case the medicine doesn’t yet seem strong enough to cure his moral blindness.
At the conclusion of his searing column on this incident, National Catholic Reporter’s John Grosso lamented that “our only recourse is to pray” for Vance’s conversion. Prayer is vital, but it is not our only recourse.
As Catholics and as citizens, we have a moral duty to stand up against Vance’s brand of cruel politics time and again.
Our popes have done so in the public square; we must do likewise.
That means ensuring a man who so blatantly betrays the Gospel’s call to life, love, and truth never holds elected office again. It’s not partisan retaliation — it’s fidelity to our faith and the basic demands of justice.
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Interesting column from Grosso. Never read before I saw that yesterday.
He is good writer, but I must disagree with his take on “Letters from Leo” https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/letters-not-leo-progressive-efforts-claim-pope-leo-misunderstand-his-mission
I never got the impression that you were hinting at some secret knowledge of Leo.
Anyway enjoy your stack. I am a lapsed southron Baptist. I am also pleased that the most famous American in the world is the Pope.
Would I be wrong to suggest that the Pope should follow the ancient example of Pope Gregory VII who forced Emperor Henry IV to do penance barefoot in the snow at Canossa in 1077, wearing a hair-shirt, to beg for absolution from excommunication. I know that I might be jumping the gun to excommunication - but I sometimes think it is time for the Papacy to take back the secular power that it once held. There was a time when kings bent the knee to the Vicar of Christ. Now it seems fashionable to ignore him and even blatantly insult him, even though he holds the keys to the gates of Heaven.