A short honeymoon for Catholics in D.C. as Vice President Vance clashes with bishops on migration

[Dulcinea]

(AP) The sense of Catholic unity didn’t last long. Less than a week after Vice President JD Vance shared the inauguration stage with a senior Catholic cardinal, Vance picked a fight with the top American leaders of his church.

The new vice president, a Catholic convert, accused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops of resettling “illegal immigrants” in order to get federal funding. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who gave the invocation shortly before Vance took his oath of office, denounced the remarks as “scurrilous” and “nasty.”

Vance has claimed that a concept from medieval Catholic theology — “ordo amoris” in Latin — justifies the Trump administration’s America-first immigration crackdown. He contended that the concept delineates a hierarchy of care — to family first, followed by neighbor, community, fellow citizens and lastly those elsewhere.

Several scholars say Vance is promoting a simplistic misreading of the concept and that Catholic teaching requires the helping of strangers in urgent need.

https://apnews.com/article/jd-vance-catholic-bishops-migration-94138954824b68dbd0b29b28504e056e