ROME — Gay rights activist Father James Martin has accused Vice President J.D. Vance of misinterpreting the ancient Christian concept of ordo amoris, or the order of love.
On Thursday, Vance appeared on Fox News’ Hannity program, during which he explained the duty of governments to prioritize the common good of their own citizens before turning to the rest of the world.
“There is a Christian concept that you 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,” Vance noted, summarizing classic teaching by Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas on the order of love.
Former UK member of parliament Rory Stewart shot back on X, calling Vance’s words a “bizarre take on John 15:12-13,” a biblical passage where Jesus commands his disciples to love one another.
Vance’s take is “less Christian and more pagan tribal,” Stewart retorted. “We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love…”
Continuing the argument, Vance replied: “Just google ‘ordo amoris.’”
“Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense,” he wrote. “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?”
At this point, Father Martin jumped into the fray, insisting that Christians should love everyone equally without favoring anyone.
“Jesus’s fundamental message is that *everyone* is your neighbor, and that it is not about helping just your family or those closest to you,” the priest contended on X. “It’s specifically about helping those who seem different, foreign, other. They are all our ‘neighbors.’”
In point of fact, however, Vance (a Dominican-instructed Catholic) interpreted the Catholic tradition correctly.
In De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine), Augustine explained that it is natural to love those closest to us — such as family members and fellow citizens — more than distant strangers. He did not intend to nullify the broader duty to love all people, but merely spoke of a hierarchy of love, according to which our responsibility is greater toward those nearest to us or dependent upon us.
Augustine further developed this point in his monumental work City of God, where he noted that humans are inclined by nature to care for their families first. Augustine acknowledged that it is right and proper to love family members and countrymen more than strangers, without letting this rightly ordered love justify selfishness or injustice.
In that same work, Augustine taught that political leaders should prioritize the good of their own citizens, since this is their primary responsibility, but this priority must be properly ordered within the framework of divine justice. He likened political rulers to parents, whose duty toward their children is superior to their duty toward strangers.
Similarly, Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that ordo amoris means allocating a greater degree of love to family members, close friends, and countrymen over distant acquaintances or strangers. While Christians are called to love everyone, he wrote, even our enemies, we have a higher duty to love those nearest to us.
Political rulers, he wrote in his Summa Theologica, must act as stewards of the public good, ensuring order and well-being for their people, since they have a duty to prioritize the common good of their own citizens.
Rulers should love their own community first, but without neglecting broader moral obligations, Aquinas said.
Or as Saint Paul wrote in his first letter to Timothy (1 Tim. 5:8): “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
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