From The New York Times:
Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, the newly announced running mate to former President Donald J. Trump, has gone on a rapid journey over the past eight years from best-selling author and outspoken Trump critic to one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest defenders and, now, his would-be second in command.
Before running for office, Mr. Vance, 39, was known as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a best-selling memoir recounting his upbringing in a poor family that also served as a sort of sociological examination of white working-class Americans. The book was published the summer before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, and many readers looked to it after his victory as a sort of guide to understanding Mr. Trump’s support among white working-class communities.
Mr. Vance himself harshly denounced Mr. Trump during his 2016 campaign. But by 2022, he had embraced Mr. Trump, winning a crowded Republican Senate primary with his backing and becoming a reliable pro-Trump voice in Congress.
Vance, an adult convert to Catholicism and married to a Hindu woman, has a complicated relationship with religion and, after his recent endorsement of the abortion pill, with the GOP’s religious base.
Vance converted to Catholicism in August of 2019, when he was baptized and confirmed at St. Gertrude Priory in Cincinnati, Ohio, by the Rev. Henry Stephan, a Dominican friar. According to an interview with American expatriate and writer Rod Dreher, who was present at the baptism, Vance chose St. Augustine as his patron saint.
Vance told Dreher that he’d converted because he “became persuaded over time that Catholicism was true” and had observed that the people who meant the most to him were Catholic. Vance said his conversion would have happened sooner if not for the clergy sexual abuse crisis, which “forced me to process the church as a divine and a human institution, and what it would mean for my 2-year-old son.”
Before becoming Catholic, Vance, now a father of three, was raised by Christian relatives, including many who didn’t go to church. Around when he started law school, he “went through an angry atheist phase,” as he told Dreher.
If elected, he would be the second Catholic vice president in U.S. history — after Joe Biden…
…On July 7, Vance told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he supported mifepristone “being accessible.” Mifepristone is used alongside misoprostol in abortions before 10 weeks of pregnancy. It can also be used to treat high blood pressure in adults who have Cushing’s syndrome and type 2 diabetes and cannot have or have failed surgery.
“This tawdry episode informs us that Vance has no principles, at least none that aren’t for sale, and the asking price is cheap,” C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, told the National Catholic Register.
JD Flynn, the editor-in-chief of The Pillar, a Catholic opinion and news site, wrote in an analysis on Friday (June 12) that if Vance was selected it could lead to a new conversation about Eucharistic coherence, or the idea that a Catholic’s belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist should be accompanied by actions that align with the Catholic Church’s teaching. An argument used most recently to suggest pro-abortion Catholic politicians Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi should not receive Communion.
In the video below, he talks about his faith during an interview at the Napa Institute.
Photo: by Gage Skidmore / Creative Commons license
