Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.
Last Thursday, Vice President J.D. Vance gave an interview where he claimed that the concept of ordo amoris (the order of love, or, love rightly ordered) was what lay behind his views on immigration and refugees. He said the concept was “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.”
Now, Vice President Vance is correct in one thing, order amoris does exist as a theological and ethical concept in the Christian religion. However, as a relatively new convert to the Catholic faith, the way he is using it in this context demonstrates that he is lacking in catechetical instruction about this concept and how it applies in the life of the follower of Jesus.
St. Augustine wrote about this in De Doctrina, when he talked about holiness of life involves keeping your affections under control and loving rightly. That is, not loving things you ought not to love, nor loving things more (or less) then you should. This concept was picked up by Aquinas in Summa Theologica, where he defined the ordo caritatis (the order of charity, or, rightly ordered charity). In that work, he cited Augustine to insist that Christians must love all people equally, but that the manifestation of that love runs out in concentric circles of interconnectedness.
Since then, many have taken to social media, either in defense or in criticism of how he is interpreting the application of the order of love, particularly in the policies of our country. One of the best responses I have read came from Mark Clavier, a priest and theologian whose doctoral work was on St. Augustine of Hippo.
As Clavier so aptly articulates, the point actually being made by Augustine and Aquinas (as well as authors like Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx) is that to love rightly we must begin by loving that which is the highest good – God. In Clavier’s words, “This does not mean rejecting the love of family, place, or work. Rather, these loves only find their true form when they are rooted in the love of God and a generous love of neighbor. Left to itself, love folds inward and becomes possessive, seeking to claim rather than to give.”
What Vance has unfortunately missed is the starting point of the order of love. It’s not your family. It’s certainly not yourself and your people. The starting point is the love of God as made manifest in our love of Christ, his son.
When Christ is at the center, our love will indeed pour out in concentric circles, pushing beyond the natural boundaries we tend to create. It will push us beyond our family and friends, our own country and people. It will propel you into love for the marginalized and vulnerable. Because Jesus told us clearly in Matthew 25 that loving them was how we love him. It will propel you into love for the immigrant and stranger, because the love of Jesus crossed those lines in his own ministry, often to the discomfort even of his own disciples. It will propel you even into love of your enemy, a love that Jesus said was the new teaching he brought in the Sermon on the Mount.
Once more, as Clavier so artfully says, in the church we are called to “practice a love that moves outward, not because of our own strength, but because love, rightly ordered, cannot help but spread. Like a bonfire on a winter night, it’s not content to warm only those nearest to it. Its nature is to glow, to beckon, to give itself away to a world lost in its own darkness.”
Some have said that the problem isn’t a desire to exclude some people from love, but a limitation of resources that this was the point Vance was trying to make: you feed your family before you feed the stranger. The problem with that idea is twofold. First, you cannot extrapolate the responsibilities of the individual onto the responsibilities of the most powerful country in the world. Surely we, as a society and a people, have greater responsibilities than any of us could hold individually.
The second problem is that’s just false. There is no scarcity of resources here. We are by far the wealthiest country in the world, holding over 30 percent of all household wealth. Second behind us is China with 18.6 percent, then Japan with 5 percent, Germany with 3.8 percent, and the UK with 3.5 percent. Did you catch that? We have over 30 percent of all household wealth and our siblings in the UK only have 3.5 percent. So, for leaders in our country to say we do not have the resources to help those fleeing violence and poverty is not just false, it is obscenely false.
So, let’s be clear, our country can absolutely reach out in support of others, we can follow international law for the welcome and resettlement of refugees, we can build a new rational immigration policy that is not based on racist quotas, we can do all of that and absolutely still care for our families. Nothing is stopping us. (Other than, perhaps, the wealthy and powerful who would prefer the system keeps benefiting them.)
As a country, we have resources to help the vulnerable. And to insist that the order of love requires us to take care of our own and turn our back on the rest of the world is a twisting of Augustinian and Thomistic theology of the highest order. It is contrary to the very basic teachings of Jesus Christ himself, who calls us to remember that whatever we did for the least of these we did for him.
Rightly ordered love, in truth, orders us to extend our love, our resources, out from our own people to heal a world broken by sin, violence, and injustice. Love orders us out, not in.
The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.
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