Ordo Amoris?

 Amidst all the annoying and terrible things J.D. Vance is doing (such as berating one of the most courageous leaders in the world on live TV for daring to defend his country), you'd be forgiven for missing the fact that Vance is also touring around social media these days, trying to be—literally—more Catholic than the Pope. Despite converting to the Church only about six years ago, he has since donned the vestments of social media's Catholic-splainer in chief: putting himself at odds, in the process, with the Pontiff himself (who might be said to know something about the subject). 

The latest episode in this ferula-measuring contest started with Vance trying to excuse his administration's so-called "America First" policies by explaining that they are actually (in spite of appearances) consistent with Catholic teaching.

At first blush, of course—it might seem that blinkered nationalism is somewhat at odds with the New Testament. Ahem, "there is neither Jew nor Greek; [...] neither male nor female," anyone? Come to think of it—that passage would also seem to pose a problem for an administration that has recently announced by executive order that the two sexes are "immutable" and "grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality." The Apostle Paul would seem to disagree! 

(Nor is J.D. Vance's much-vaunted "pro-family" stance an obvious logical fit with a religion whose founder said: "Whoever does not hate father and mother, wife and children [...] cannot be my disciple." But that's another matter!)

But surely the biggest and most straightforward problem for Vance is that the New Testament tells people to love their neighbors and welcome the stranger. And that's a bit hard to square on the face of it with the administration's policies of filming immigrants in chains and posting the images online as a sadistic "ASMR video"—for the delectation of howling xenophobic mobs; or of expelling asylum-seekers without a hearing; or of detaining people in Guantanamo for no other reason that to induce fear. 

But Vance found a way around that one. He went on social media to say—in so many words—that true "Christian love" stops at familial and national borders. In defense of this proposition, he cited the medieval theological concept of the "Ordo Amoris"—which depicts the Christian's moral obligations as a series of concentric circles. 

Within the inmost circle is one's own family and immediate community. To them—one is bound by the most important and demanding ties of affection and duty. As one expands out from there, the obligations become more attenuated. And they are at their weakest, according to Vance, when one is talking about distant people from distant lands. 

This is where the Pope felt duty-bound to weigh in. He could abide no more of this. In one of his last written appeals before being taken ill and going into the hospital (here's wishing him a speedy recovery), Pope Francis went out of his way to underline that the Christian ethic is incompatible with nationalistic chauvinism. He wrote that Christian love requires showing compassion to immigrants and refugees. He argued specifically that "mass deportations" violate human dignity. He emphasized—seemingly in direct response to Vance—that the true "Ordo Amoris" must be "open to all, without exception."

If this were purely a matter of abstract moral theology, I'd say they both have a point—and the two ideas aren't actually so incompatible with each other. I actually like the idea of "concentric circles"—if for no other reason than it seems a bit more realistic about human moral psychology. It is within our closest relationships, according to this theory, that we first develop the rudiments of moral behavior; and it is only after we have first learned how to honor obligations to others in these closest relationships that we can expand outward. 

So far as this goes—I buy it. There are similar ideas in Mencius and other great teachers of moral wisdom, and they ring true to me. Mencius, for instance, argued against the doctrine of universal love "without distinction," which was attributed to the Mohist school. He observed (plausibly) that such a practice would negate the importance of one's relationships with one's parents and immediate family members. 

However, this should not be taken the wrong way. Mencius did not say that one should exclusively practice moral obligations to one's family members, and then stop there. To the contrary, he argued that the moral practices one develops toward one's parents and children should then be expanded outward. After describing the duties of filiality and devotion that one learns to practice toward one's parents and elders, Mencius writes, "what is left to be done is simply the extension of these to the whole Empire." (D.C. Lau trans.)

This, then, is where Vance goes astray. It's not so much that his notion of "concentric circles" is entirely wrong. Here, as so often, Vance has not so much gotten ahold of a falsehood and run with it, as he has—much more disturbingly—gotten ahold of a truth and perverted it. (See my earlier blog on this subject, in which I quoted Edgar Lee Masters to describe Vance's approach to propaganda: "to pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose.") 

The truth that Vance has gotten ahold of here is the same one Mencius was describing: namely, that if we are going to be loving and compassionate people, it is unrealistic to expect us to immediately be able to "love" everyone in the world "without distinction," in the Mohist way. Rather, we have to start by learning to practice devotion and compassion toward those closest to us—and gradually build outward. 

But Vance perverts this profound human truth by then using it as an excuse to recognize no moral obligation whatsoever to people who are in his outermost "concentric circles." In other words, he simply recognizes no concentric circle at all that includes asylum-seekers. They are just beyond the pale, according to his perverse version of the idea. 

This is what Pope Francis was picking up on and specifically going out of his way to disavow. You cannot pervert the concept of the "ordo amoris," he insisted, to exclude certain groups of people from any kind of compassion or dignity whatsoever!

I am here 100% on Team Francis (no surprise). 

I mean, look, J.D. Vance, maybe I don't actually expect you to love asylum-seekers you've never met. Maybe it's asking too much for you to immediately feel some intense affection toward them. But—just because you don't love them as much as you ostensibly do your family—just because they are not within your inmost concentric circle—does that mean you have to put them in chains and summarily expel them to death, torture, and persecution without a hearing? 

The paradox of Vance's definition of "Christian love" was made visible in a particularly stark and striking way the past few weeks—when a family of Christian converts from Iran were denied an asylum hearing under Trump's executive orders and deported to Panama. There, they were held captive in a hotel, before being sent to even more dire conditions in a remote camp deep in the Panamanian jungle. One of the Times's articles on the jungle camp described it as "zoo-like" setup, where people were held in wire cages. 

In an image that went viral on social media, as the clearest possible encapsulation of the inhumanity of Trump's approach, some New York Times journalists managed to capture a photo of the Iranian family standing by the window of the hotel, where they were being held captive. One of them had written on the glass of the window, in lipstick, the simple message: "Help us." 

The family—the journalists later learned—had fled Iran because they faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity. If they are ever deported there, they will face execution. They are, therefore, the perfect representatives of why we have asylum in the first place. This is what the asylum system was designed to prevent—it is meant to provide relief from deportation to people who face persecution, torture, or death in their countries of origin. And now that Trump has suspended all asylum hearings—this is the foreseeable result. 

It's very hard to square even the most constricted notion of "Christian love" with a policy of expelling people to the obvious risk of persecution and death. One would also think that the fact that these asylum-seekers face persecution specifically for being Christian might, if nothing else, be something that would make a difference to Vance. But, as T.S. Eliot once wrote, in his Choruses from 'The Rock': "It is hard for those who have never known persecution,/ And who have never known a Christian,/ To believe these tales of Christian persecution."

And what about me—who have known plenty of Christians but never been one myself? What stake do I have in any of these controversies of moral theology, if the "theos" part is not one that I believe in, in the first place? 

Well, I believe in the divinity of people suffering injustice. I believe that however imprisons someone in a cage in a jungle (or a hotel room, for that matter) is imprisoning the image of the Christian God. Whoever places a stranger in chains and deports them to death or persecution is doing the same to Jesus's memory, and everything he represents in human culture and history. 

A family of Iranian asylum-seekers who have made a simple plea to America to "Help us" is the closest thing to the actual image of Christ I can imagine. Even if God does not exist—or does, but offers no salve for human suffering—these, our fellow humans asking for help, are divine. I'm with Thomas Hardy, in short, in his poem about the "Blinded Bird": the innocent who suffer are the only true divinity. 

The injured bird, Hardy wrote, was—"with God's consent"—"alive ensepulchred" in its cage—just like the Iranian asylum-seekers begging the world to "help us," from behind their glass window; or from behind the bars of their "zoo-like" cage in the Panamanian jungle—"Enjailed in pitiless wire;" as Hardy goes on. "Who is divine?" Hardy asks at last—"this bird;" that is: the one who suffers unjustly. 

Looking out of their window at that hotel and seeing the journalists and photographers there—did they see them the way that the protagonist of Kafka's The Trial sees a mysterious figure, in his final moment before his execution? "Who was this? A friend? A good man? Someone who wanted to help? Was it just one man? Was it all of mankind?" (Lück translation)

If there is any divinity in this world—it is to be found here; not in spirits or supernatural beings; but in the voice that cries out "help us"; and in the part of humankind that longs to answer that prayer. This is the truth of the Christian ethic, if there is any. This is the essence of Christian love. This is the only true "ordo amoris"—as Pope Francis wrote—the compassion that ultimately—even if it has to proceed by stages of moral growth and education along the way—reaches out to embrace all "without exception." 

Mencius had a name for this too: the "heart of benevolence" in every human being. And however far we are able to make it stretch—it surely must stretch farther than Vance's administration is willing to take it. 

Whatever we may think that "Christian love" means, it surely does not mean deporting people to a Panamanian jungle. Whatever it means, there is surely more "Christian love" to be found in the asylum-seekers' plea—in the hope that endureth all things—in Kafka's prayer that "someone who wanted to help" might appear—than in all J.D. Vance's religious posturing and hypocrisy. Who is divine? These asylum-seekers.