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U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

(LifeSiteNews) — Vice President JD Vance defended traditional Catholic teaching regarding care for one’s own family and country before foreign immigrants, sparking leftist outrage and debate online.

During an interview on Fox News, Vance and host Sean Hannity discussed the fact that left-wing political pundits and influencers seem to care more about illegal immigrants than their fellow citizens who have been murdered or raped by illegal aliens.

“There is something very deranged in the mind of the far left in this country, where I really do think they feel more of a sense of compassion for illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country than they do for their fellow citizens,” Vance said.

“As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens.”

“It doesn’t mean that you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there is this old school – and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way – you love your family, and then you love 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,” he explained.

“A lot of the far-left has completely inverted that, they seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.”

Vance’s comments went viral on X, sparking theological discussion. Many leftist and “progressive” lay people and “theologians” slammed Vance for allegedly misrepresenting Christian teaching because they claim we are called to love everyone equally. Among those criticizing Vance was the notoriously heterodox LGBT activist Father James Martin, S.J.

Vance defended his statements on the order of charity and obligations, saying:

Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?

Orthodox Catholic theologians and philosophers chimed in to defend Vance’s statements as a summary of traditional Catholic teaching.

“It is a Christian notion called the ‘ordo caritatis,’ the order of charity,” theology professor of Steubenville University Michael Sirilla wrote. “St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas express it eloquently and Vance summarizes it here deftly.”

Philosophy professor Edward Feser also defended Vance and wrote:

The correct view (common to Confucius, Aristotle, Aquinas, and the common sense of mankind in general) is that our social nature and its consequent obligations manifest themselves first and foremost in the family, then in local communities, then in the nation as a whole, and only after that in our relationship to mankind in general.

Many conservative Protestants came to Vance’s defense as well.

“JD Vance is, of course, correct about the proper ordering of loves,” Calvinist influencer Allie Beth Stuckey wrote. “Allowing a stranger into your home to sleep in your kids’ beds and eat their food doesn’t make you a good person, it makes you a bad parent.”

Evangelical professor and author Nancy Pearcey also agreed with Vance, citing St. Augustine and prominent Anglican author and theologian C.S. Lewis, who reiterated the concept in his book The Abolition of Man.

“According to Lewis (and Augustine before him), we must love things to the degree they ought to be loved: it is wrong to love something too little, but it is also wrong to love something too much. We must establish a priority among the things that we love,” Pearcey wrote.

“Most important for the Christian is the love of God, followed closely by the love of family. There is something like a concentric circle of loves radiating out from each person, with the innermost circles deserving our greatest focus.”

St. Thomas Aquinas, known as the universal doctor of the Catholic Church, teaches this order of charity in his Summa Theologiae, where he states that “in matters pertaining to nature we should love our kindred most, in matters concerning relations between citizens, we should prefer our fellow-citizens, and on the battlefield our fellow-soldiers.” (Summa Theologiae II, II, Question 26)

JD Vance vs. the USCCB and Fr. Martin

Vance recently came into conflict with USCCB on immigration policy after the bishops conference called the Trump administration’s plan on immigration “deeply troubling.”

Vance fired back at the U.S. bishops, stating, “The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million dollars to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”

Vance continued by noting that “if the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is worried about the humanitarian costs of immigration enforcement, let them talk about the children who have been sex trafficked because of the wide open border of Joe Biden; let them talk about people like Laken Riley who were brutally murdered [by an illegal immigrant].”

Canon lawyer Father Gerald Murray recently laid out why the USCCB and Martin are wrong on immigration, explaining that Catholic teaching does allow countries to limit immigration and deport illegal aliens in order to protect their own citizens.

READ: Fr. Gerald Murray debunks Fr. James Martin, USCCB claims on immigration and deportations

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