(LifeSiteNews) — I got my hands on Vice President JD Vance’s new memoir Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith five minutes after my local Barnes & Noble started selling it. The book had been on my to-read list for months, so naturally I relished the opportunity to offer an honest review upon finishing.
By way of preamble, I don’t believe it strictly necessary to have read Hillbilly Elegy before Communion, though you should certainly consider taking it up at some point, because it provides a full account of Vance’s dysfunctional childhood, the struggles of working-class Americans ravaged by addiction and poverty, and how he understood himself and his sociopolitical vision in the years before his conversion to Catholicism.
The way Vance narrated his conversion brought to mind St. John Henry Newman’s concept of the “illative sense,” found in his Grammar of Assent. Here’s the basic idea: There’s no single knockdown argument compelling our assent to faith; every possible justification for faith is not conclusive on its own. Rather, we assent to faith through a unique combination of plausible arguments and reflections on our own life experiences.
Thus, it can be said that all of the following helped Vance assent to faith: his deep reading and intellectual curiosity; his appreciation of the Church’s art, architecture, and historical continuity; his conversations with Dominican priests who helped shed light on nagging difficulties; and the “little moments” where he “felt the touch of God … felt pulled to the faith in a way that reading books had never accomplished.”
But by no means is that an exhaustive list. Another indispensable ingredient was Vance’s deep wrestling with the problem of suffering and evil, not least because he had a front-row seat to it for the most formative years of his life. Vance, who grappled with the problem as an atheist and then as a Christian, is honest enough to acknowledge that there is no perfectly satisfactory account of evil we can understand. Only God knows why He permits it — a fact that was “oddly comforting” to Vance.
For Vance, a life without God and family feels empty, perhaps even meaningless. This hit him hard as a Yale law student. His sense of purpose was almost entirely bound up in his career, salary, and social status. He was ambitious for ambition’s sake, playing a “game” for the competition and desire to win in themselves — not because he actually desired a particular job. In fact, he came to loathe the idea of practicing law, admitting he only wanted to clerk for a Supreme Court justice because that’s what everyone else around him wanted him to do.
Digging deeper, Vance further noticed that “elite professional life demands a disconnection from what makes us human.” All of his “résumé virtues” were impressive, and flattering remarks from his family made him feel accomplished, yet in the end he found them all “unsatisfying” because they didn’t fulfill the deepest longings of his heart: a life where the “big questions” of meaning and purpose were paramount, and where he had ample space for the love of wife and children.
Which is where Usha comes in. Her role in the mindset shift that later opened the door to conversion cannot be overstated either. Whereas Vance had an “external” drive, Usha had an “internal” drive. His was motivated by what other people thought of his career; hers by a genuine interest in the work. Though Usha is not baptized, and we certainly pray for her conversion to the Catholic faith as well, it’s obvious that Vance sees in her a great deal of natural virtue that pushed him to become more virtuous himself.
Becoming a father for the first time also compelled Vance to think about his faith “in a far more intentional way” and to identify the values he wished to instill in his oldest son, namely that he focus on growing in virtue and finding love above all else. Many other parents may relate to Vance’s sentiment, but it’s particularly noteworthy coming from a recovering secular atheist whose identity had been wrapped up in the “prestige” of his work and social status.
Amid the reflections on his life, Vance articulates his views on various political and cultural topics. I only have space to touch on a small sample of them. First, pro-lifers may be surprised at how little he discusses abortion; those who hoped he’d argue for a federal abortion ban or restrictions on the abortion pill will be disappointed. Nevertheless, he firmly opposes the idea that “we should give up on the idea of protecting the unborn.” He sees his role in making abortion unthinkable by “building the kind of culture and economy that can actually sustain young families and the life they bring into the world.”
Second, Traditional Catholics may raise their eyebrows at how Vance perceives the late Pope Francis. In the book, he favorably cites a provocatively titled First Things article “Pope Francis, Trad Icon” and admits he was never skeptical of him “even when (he) disagreed with me directly — as he did on the question of immigration.” At the same time, however, he conveys frustration with the “trite platitudes” and “clichés” coming out of the Vatican, and though he doesn’t spell out this viewpoint in the book, it’s not hard for many of us to see that prominent Church leaders do in fact support mass migration, not just oppose “unjust treatment” of migrants.
Regardless of how one evaluates Vance’s views, overall they are well considered and worthy of your attention. Even if you wish he were more “trad,” there’s still plenty to like about him and his journey to the Catholic faith. How refreshing it is to read the vice president of the United States acknowledging his dependence on God’s grace and desiring to “pray more, to participate in the sacramental life of the Church, to live more fully within the obligations of a communion of believers, to confess and repent publicly!”
Unlike some cynical voices out there, I find it hard to believe Vance is merely saying these things because they sound nice or because he wants to run for president. I choose to believe he’s a sincere Catholic who makes a conscious effort to subordinate his thinking and acting to the truths of the faith. Faithful Catholics should be grateful to have someone like him in the public square.
Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith can be purchased wherever books are sold.
