“I don’t worry about what I will find on the other side of eternal sleep,” J. D. Vance writes in his new book, Communion. “Even as a child, I never feared hell.” Charming sentences to find in a book by the sitting vice president of the United States! One that in no way makes me want to run screaming off a cliff!
The book is full of many such humdingers. Here’s Vance, explaining why he prefers Catholicism to therapy: “I found liberation in guilt.” (Men would literally rather … well, you know.) Here’s Vance, explaining why he felt ready to join the Catholic Church even as it was “going through a tough time,” when headline after headline was recounting all of the ways it had “screwed up” in covering up child sexual abuse: “If the Titanic is going down, I’d rather be on board than hop on a lifeboat.”
Here’s Vance on the one kind of acceptable immigration: “It is true that immigration can bring benefits to the host country in its own right. Just think of Elon Musk and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that trace directly to his decision to come to the United States.” He adds: “Some populations assimilate more easily than others.”
Here’s Vance’s gloss on the Book of Job and the problem of suffering: “We are like golden retrievers trying to understand how an iPhone functions.” Well, the Book of Job left me troubled, but that golden-retriever analogy has fixed things!
“People sometimes talk about the size of the universe and how small they feel compared to the infinite stars many light-years away,” Vance writes. “I had never shared that feeling.” This, you can certainly tell. For a man who so often professes to be humble—what made him change his mind about Donald Trump? “Well, Joy, a little humility, actually,” he told Joy Behar on The View—he has very little actual humility on display. Put it this way: Vance’s book is about how he finally decided that Catholicism met his exacting standards.
Whenever he experiences regret, it is for saying something the wrong way. His sister takes offense when he complains that the cereal she serves is pure sugar. “Whatever the merits of my argument—there is some virtue in not eating Froot Loops every day, though I should have raised this more artfully,” he concedes, “it showed how far I was drifting from my roots.” This is as much of a retraction as Vance ever gives us! His regret about the “childless cat ladies” comment? “I could have made that point much more effectively, and with the benefit of showing a little charity to the many Americans who—some for reasons beyond their control—don’t have children.”
If only he’d said it better! He was right, but he didn’t say so in a way that allowed people to understand how right he was. That was the problem.
There are moments in Communion when you almost feel for him. A more deft cynic would simply describe a dramatic come-to-Jesus moment. In lieu of that, Vance offers the following: At one point, his car rolls to a stop on a slippery road short of hitting a guardrail. This experience does nothing for him at the time, but it remains in the back of his mind. Don’t worry! God has more in store. Later, he is discussing theological questions with a Catholic friend when—I am not making this up—a wine glass falls off a shelf behind a bar. (“Suddenly a wineglass seemed to leap from a stable place behind the bar and crashed on the floor in front of us.”)
But wait! There’s more! Once, he was listening to a psalm, and then, when he went to church—this will knock you over with a feather—they were also singing that same psalm. This is especially miraculous when you realize that there is a finite number of psalms and that churches sing or recite one at pretty much every service. (Vance quotes Pulp Fiction: “You don’t judge s*** like this based on merit.”)
If I were Vance, I would be a little offended that God was not putting in more effort to recruit me. But after reading the book, I had some sympathy for God’s approach. What does faith mean to this man? one imagines God asking. Will he alter anything about his life or his choices because of his beliefs, or will becoming Catholic just mean that he feels he can give notes to the Holy See?
This question also seemed to be on the minds of the hosts of The View when they spoke with Vance yesterday afternoon. (“I’m here to sell books!” he piped up, as the show cut to the first commercial.) How, one panelist asked, does he square his faith with what the administration is doing to immigrants? How can he explain this to his kids? Please go and visit a detention facility, Ana Navarro urged him. “Over 50 people have died in ICE custody. There are thousands of children, 6,200, being held in places like the Dilley detention center.” “You’ve thrown a lot at me!” Vance responded. “I see we got 30 seconds left here!”
“By their fruits ye shall know them” is a refrain to which Vance keeps returning in the course of Communion. The fruits—families, peace of mind—that his believer friends seem to be experiencing are what first make a faith-filled life appeal to him. But the fruits-first approach also turns out to be very convenient for Vance. If he likes the outcome of a thing, then perhaps it is more just than he initially thought. Hence, Donald Trump.
The only problem comes when others (even the leaders of his new creed) do not seem to think as highly of the fruits as he does. A conundrum, this! Probably, they are just not using the right words to explain the situation. “I still found our conversation unsettling,” he complains, writing about his visit to Rome. “Not because the Vatican expressed skepticism of the Trump administration’s migration policies, but because of how generic its position was. The diplomats acknowledged that the United States had the right to control its borders, but they also encouraged us to treat migrants humanely. What did they take issue with, exactly?”
I am going to go out on a limb and guess: the inhumane treatment of migrants. I am going to guess: migrants being warehoused in literal warehouses, and in tents in the Florida sun, with inadequate food, water, and access to medical care. Vance, though, cannot muster a guess.
More important, now that Vance has faith, he wants everyone else to reap the benefits.
He quotes a prayer by President Dwight Eisenhower, then laments that “when national politicians invoke God that much today, we’re warned that The Handmaid’s Tale has come to life.” But be not afraid! If this sounds ominous, it is simply one of those iPhone–golden retriever situations. Vance (I’m sorry—God) has a plan.
Unrelated to that Handmaid’s Tale thing: Our society needs more children! He writes, “We want more children in our society because children are profoundly good.”
Who will be making those children? Will they be consulted? We’ll start “winning people over,” Vance continues, by “reflecting Christian charity in the way we champion the unborn. Examples are everywhere. All over the country, pregnancy resource centers help young women afford food and diapers, and support young mothers through the inevitable chaos of an unexpected pregnancy.” (This was not a winning message in Ohio, he concedes.) “And we’ll need to make a better Christian argument, about building the kind of culture and economy that can actually sustain young families and the life they bring into the world.”
Ah! If only we’d said it better! Then people would understand! We just need better words to smooth over any objections to the “inevitable chaos.”
More children! More people in the pews of churches! More religion! But absolutely not more immigrants. Fortunately, Vance has faith enough to square it all.
“Of course, critics of the Trump administration say we’re too tough,” Vance writes. “The point is not to litigate this issue on these pages but to highlight that any application of moral principles in the real world requires a constant evaluation of trade-offs. Undoubtedly, that’s what the Christian faith demands of us.”
Undoubtedly! Not feeding the hungry, not tending to the sick, not clothing the naked, not welcoming the refugee. Not seeing the face of God in suffering. A constant evaluation of trade-offs! I think that’s in the Sermon on the Mount. (“Blessed are the meek, for they are best positioned to evaluate the trade-offs.”)
Now Vance has made his peace. The churches must be filled. The books must be sold. This is about as much faith as can fit in a shattered wine glass. No wonder God didn’t send anything fancier.
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