Donald Trump has gotten the commentariat to speak Latin. That probably wasn't on your predictions list for the second Trump administration. And yet, comments Vice President JD Vance made on the order of love -- ordo amoris -- in an interview with Sean Hannity have given life to the "dead" language. But do we have a prayer for bona fide grace to come?
"You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community," Vance said, "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." Put your oxygen mask on before you help your neighbor with his. It's practical and prudent. We've got a hot mess of an immigration situation, including missing children. That's not loving anyone. Vance wasn't saying anything we don't already know: The floor has fallen in, and we've got to buttress foundations.
Earlier this month, on his 75th birthday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, turned in his mandatory resignation letter to Pope Francis. Dolan may remain in place for the time being. Perhaps that might allow for added articulation of prudence and power in public or private conversation between U.S. Catholic bishops and Vance. (If the pope holds off on naming Dolan's successor, that would seem an obvious homework assignment from Rome.)
Shortly after Dolan was assigned to New York, a book-length interview was published, "A People of Hope." "Ultimately," he told journalist John Allen, "how we mirror and reflect hope usually comes more from who we are than from what we do." (Maybe we can stop the first-100-days stopwatch, then?)
The vice president goes on a Sunday show and makes an accusation about church bureaucracies and government partnerships, and the bishops fill in some gaps. Vance makes a broader claim and gets a papal reply. Everybody needs the opportunity for a deep breath, and it is all worth more than a prayer -- as we are talking about human lives and souls (and, yes, of politicians and bishops, as much as anyone else).
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Seeing the big picture -- doing something other than just reacting -- would certainly require grace, the kind that Peggy Noonan describes in her 2008 "Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now" as: "... a grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we're in, comes up with ways of dealing with it, and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative. That admits affection and respect. That encourages them. That acknowledges that the small things that divide us are not worthy of the moment; that agrees that the things that can be done to ease the stresses we feel as a nation should be encouraged, while those that encourage our cohesion as a nation should be supported."
But here's the thing: R-E-S-P-E-C-T? Can you have respect -- never mind affection -- for any aspect of Donald Trump or Pope Francis or JD Vance or Catholic bishops or whomever in the mix it is you disdain? Because it is in liberation from already knowing the answer to every question that there can be some room for grace to work. It's not going to come from an endless ping-pong game of accusations and defenses and moral articulations. It requires eschewing the post-game commentary and assuming some desire for good faith in those we don't know or have decided we strongly disagree with.
We've got believers in the mix and talking -- even if somewhat past one another. Could politics make room for the Holy Spirit -- or, at least, a divine guidance that doesn't endorse campaign platforms or executive orders? It could remind us of who we were before reality-TV politics, and of who we want and need to be -- including to those who are here illegally, some of whom were horribly lied to and abused.
Maybe even we Americans -- on the eve of our country's 250th birthday -- can have hope yet. Francis, Vance, Dolan and the rest of us ... we all probably have a similar prayer. Oremus. Let us pray for patriotic grace and the miracles that love, in whatever order, works.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York, and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
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