Trump’s Vice-President J.D. Vance recently ignited a theological debate over the Christian concept of “ordo amoris” (ordered love, or order of love) after an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation. He told journalist Margaret Brennan:
“There’s this old school – and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way – you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus [on] the rest of the world.”
This came in the context of defending the Whitehouse’s “America First” position. After some pushback online, the V.P. tweeted “just Google ‘ordo amoris,” adding that the idea is simply common sense.
Among his detractors was Rory Stewart, co-host of The Rest is Politics podcast, who took issue with Vance’s interpretation, describing it as “pagan tribal.” Stewart, who was once slated to be the UK Conservative Party’s candidate for Prime Minister is, in some sense, a representative of Right-of-centre mainstream political correctness.
Ordo amoris, as an expression, originates with St. Augustine and was developed centuries later by St. Aquinas. Despite Stewart’s protestations, if we explore Aquinas’ wider body of work to identify how he applies the concept, it does indeed seem to have clear political consequences. From the Summa Theologica (Prima Secundae Partis, Q.105 art.3):
“…if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they settled down in its midst, many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might attempt something hurtful to the people. Hence it was that the Law prescribed in respect of certain nations that had close relations with the Jews that they should be admitted to the fellowship of the people after the third generation; whereas others were never to be admitted to citizenship.”
We find something like a restrictionist approach to immigration in Aquinas, therefore. The policy of the present American administration will by no means be consistent in every particular with Catholic Social Teaching, but on this point, Vance’s remarks were certainly not as out-of-sink with the thought of Aquinas as his critics have argued.
