New Pope Leo XIV Greets Trump World
"[VP JD] Vance told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel, “[Y]ou love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.” When right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec, who is Catholic, posted Vance’s interview approvingly, Vance added: “Just google ‘ordo amoris.’ Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense.”
On February 10, Pope Francis responded in a letter to American bishops. He corrected Vance’s assertion as a false interpretation of Catholic theology. “Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity,” he wrote. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups…. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by…meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
“[W]orrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth,” Pope Francis wrote. He acknowledged “the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival,” but defended the fundamental dignity of every human being and the fundamental rights of migrants, noting that the “rightly formed conscience” would disagree with any program that “identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.” He continued: “I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”
The new Pope Leo XIV greeted the world today in Italian and Spanish as he thanked Pope Francis and the other cardinals, and called for the church to “be a missionary Church, building bridges, dialogue, always open to receiving with open arms for everyone…, open to all, to all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love…, especially to those who are suffering.”
My parents never took us to church. Or, well, they sent us to this Baptist week-long day camp one summer but I think that was mostly just to get us out of the house. I remember coloring pictures of Jesus but no music. With some music they might have had a better chance at making me a believer. I like some gospel music. The Soul Stirrers from the 1950s: peak rock & roll era vocal group tightness. That Harry Smith gospel stuff from the late 1920s early 1930s. The Old, [Awesomely] Weird America in Sister Mary Nelson's "Judgment" (1927). Mahalia Jackson on Duke Ellington's Black, Brown, and Beige (1943). Achingly beautiful. I did attend a few Catholic masses with relatives and friends, several in Latin which made them feel impressive and a little scary to me as a little kid. And then as a bigger kid a little tedious sitting in the balcony of a 5 o'clock Saturday mass with a buddy so we didn't have to get up early on Sunday after partying like it was 1999 the night before. Of course, the Catholic church should immediately make transparent efforts to expose and root out the sexual abuse of children in the church. And then probably have one of their conclaves reevaluating the priestly vows of celibacy. Anyway, my point, I've got my gripes with the Catholic church. Opposition to birth control to me is barbaric and an assault on the basic individual rights of women. But in this battle I'm rooting for Pope Francis and Pope Leo standing up for poor migrants and refugees. The Catholic church is the last cultural remnant of the Roman Empire, and before it took over the empire it was a refuge to those who were marginalized and left behind and lived on the fringes of the empire. And here they are a millennia and a half later still speaking up for the suffering and speaking out against criminalizing people for their immigration status. I like that.
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