JD Vance isn’t even trying to align his politics with the Catholicism he chose

There’s an old John Mulaney routine in which he imagines what one might say to persuade someone to convert to Catholicism. First, “Don’t Google us,” he suggests in an “SNL” monologue from 2019, before adding, “You know that strange look of shame and unhappiness I have in my eyes at all times, especially after sex, and it was all forced on me at birth? What if you voluntarily signed up for it?” Six years later, here we are with a vice president who’s done exactly that. A man apparently so besotted with his faith, he managed to grab a few awkward minutes with Pope Francis before the poor guy could shuffle off the mortal coil. And as someone with an educational background in negotiation, I am endlessly fascinated by the mental gymnastics that JD Vance must have to put himself through every day to reconcile his political actions with the religion he chose to sign up for.

Anyone who’s been a practicing Catholic has had to negotiate through the often conflicting imperatives of their personal morality, the particular flavor of Catholicism practiced in their home parish and the strict, no wiggle room allowed tenets of the Chuch. It’s a tricky enough high wire to have the derogatory phrase “cafeteria Catholic,” someone who selectively decides what parts of the faith to accept and what to reject. But as a former cafeteria Catholic myself, I know that’s not really how it works. There’s nuance and interpretation on many things, but there are certain infallible things you’ve just got to believe. You can have your own ideas about where unbaptized babies go when they die or carry on nuanced debates about same-sex unions, but either you know in your heart that the host and the wine are the literal body and blood of Christ, or you can GTFO. Metaphors are for Protestants. 

It’s in that space of theological certitude where Vance’s apparent lack of spiritual struggle really stands out. Like other Catholic elected officials before him, Vance has had to consider the potential conflicts of his duty to his office and the obligations of his faith. 

So hardcore is the Catholic Church that John F. Kennedy’s 1960 run for the White House was colored by serious concerns that he “could not remain independent of Church control.” A generation later, New York governor Mario Cuomo found himself in similarly hot water over his Catholicism, but from a different direction, when he faced the threat of excommunication for his support for abortion rights.

The most powerful and persistent form of conflict negotiation in our lives is the kind we have to use on ourselves. And while there are entire branches of philosophy devoted to the conundrums from misaligned moral tenets and professional duties, negotiation offers some of the more creative approaches. The integrative process, for example, makes sense for individual conflict because its entire aim is a holistic solution that recognizes the value of compromise. It’s not about one side winning, which is pretty important if you’re walking around in one body with different entities you answer to, like God and your constituents. 

Actors like Nicola Coughlan and Melissa Barrera took some career hits when they made the moral decision to speak out in support of Palestine, but they’ve continued to work within an industry often at odds with their personal views. In their ongoing and messy break from the royal family, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have grappled with the institution’s notions of what “a life of public service” entails and reconsidered how their own ideas of service could be reframed in a different context. Good negotiation, whether with your colleagues or yourself, should leave you able to hold your head high.

The difference, then, between Joe Biden advocating for reproductive choice and JD Vance saying that drug dealers should be executed is the moral dissonance. Biden, who positioned himself as pro-reproductive choice, has continued to maintain consistently that he’s still “not big on abortion,” just as he’s made his positions against capital punishment clear.

Vance, on the other hand, affirms, “I’m pro-life. I care about the rights of the unborn. That very much flows from my Christian perspective,” while ignoring that the catechism of the religion he picked out for himself holds that the death penalty is “inadmissible.” Maybe because those private prisons are a real moneymaker.

In a 2020 essay about his conversion, ironically called “How I joined the resistance,” Vance embraced Catholicism as “protective of children and families and with the things necessary to ensure they thrive.” So it’s a little bit mind-boggling that the same guy who shrugs off school shootings as “a fact of life” and justifies the decimation of aid organizations by musing, “How did America get to the point where we’re sending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars abroad to NGOs that are dedicated to spreading atheism all over the globe?” The man who wrote “If people die sooner in the midst of historic levels of consumption, then perhaps our focus on consumption is misguided,” now asks, “God forbid, if your country goes to a war and your son or daughter is sent off to fight — would you like to know that the weapons that they have are good, American-made stuff?”

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Catholics can range from the Nancy Pelosi to the Marco Rubio variety, from Amy Coney Barrett to Sonia Sotomayor. But Vance is unique because he picked this. He had to go through a whole formal process of religious instruction and make a bunch of promises that most Catholics have made for them when they’re babies. He knows the rules better than most baptized Catholics. He could have stuck with a vague, scripture-ignorant Christian whateverism that works well in the Church of MAGA. Instead, he launched his entire political career after joining a religion that famously does not like it when people push back against its doctrines. (Just ask Henry VIII.) So it’s kind of funny that for his administration’s callous policies, he has now found himself hip-checked by two pontiffs in a row.

Mario Cuomo understood the distinction between what one is required by the Church to regard as a sin and one’s duty to uphold the law. As he explained in a speech on “Religious Belief and Public Morality” in 1984, the Catholic “who is elected to serve Jews and Muslims, atheists and Protestants, as well as Catholics — bears special responsibility… to help create conditions under which all can live with a maximum of dignity and with a reasonable degree of freedom.” He was using integrative negotiation thinking there, recognizing the shared humanitarian ideals of Christianity and democracy to bridge his points of internal conflict. And he was expressing his compromise, acknowledging that a civil servant cannot conflate his personal values and behaviors with public policy. 

JD Vance, in contrast, wants to take communion on Sunday and separate families on Monday, because there’s no sincere recognition in there of the teachings of Christ. He may have gone to catechism class, but he hasn’t done his homework. And he hasn’t brought his Catholicism and his political ambition to the table to hash out their differences in a meaningful way. Rationalization is not negotiation, and I can promise that you can’t get into Catholic heaven disrespecting its fundamental rules.