At Leo XIV’s inaugural Mass, Vice President JD Vance drew a sharp line between Catholic conscience and public duty. What does the Church say about this?
(LifeSiteNews) -- Vice President JD Vance says his Catholic faith shapes everything from his views on tariffs to family policy. But when it comes to the Vatican, he draws a firm line.
“I’m not there as JD Vance, a Catholic parishioner,” he told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. “I’m there as the vice president of the United States.”
Vance discussed immigration, abortion, and supporting families – and explained why he wouldn’t kiss Leo XIV’s ring after attending his inaugural Mass.
“That’s against protocol for a vice president,” he said. “No disrespect, but I represent the country I serve.”
“The purpose of American politics,” he said, “should be to encourage our citizens to live a good life.”
On immigration, he defended border enforcement while affirming “the dignity of migrants” and acknowledging tensions with Church leaders. In February 2025, then-Cardinal Prevost shared an article criticizing Vance’s politics on the subject, titled "JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others."
LOOK: Older brother of Pope Leo XIV meets with Trump, Vance in Oval Office
LifeSiteNews has previously reported on Vance's support for chemical abortion pills.
A Catholic convert since 2019, Vance said he would “make a prudential judgment” informed by the Church but added: “I don’t just do everything the Holy Father tells me to do.” Asked if he’d follow Vatican directives on policy, he replied: “That would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution.”
A false separation?The sharp distinction, proposed by Vance, between “a Catholic parishioner” and a public official was condemned by Pope St. Pius X. Pius X denounced the claim that “the Catholic must be separated from the citizen,” and that the Church must not “prescribe for the citizen any line of action.”
More forcefully, Pope Boniface VIII taught that the temporal power must be subordinate to the spiritual, and infallibly declared in the Bull Unam Sanctam:
[I]t is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
Civil leaders are not exceptions to this. When it comes to “mixed” matters like marriage, morality or education – the pope’s authoritative teachings and judgments have more than a merely private or advisory role in a statesman’s conscience.(("For with truth as our witness, it belongs to spiritual power to establish the terrestrial power and to pass judgement if it has not been good. Thus is accomplished the prophecy of Jeremias concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power: 'Behold to-day I have placed you over nations, and over kingdoms' and the rest. Therefore, if the terrestrial power err, it will be judged by the spiritual power; but if a minor spiritual power err, it will be judged by a superior spiritual power; but if the highest power of all err, it can be judged only by God, and not by man, according to the testimony of the Apostle: ‘The spiritual man judgeth of all things and he himself is judged by no man‘ [1 Cor 2:15]." [Source]))
The same applies to the perennial teachings of the Church and the tenets of the natural moral law.
Mr. Theo Howard, of The Two Cities Podcast, told LifeSiteNews:
The dogma of separation of Church and State, that Vance no doubt believes he is simply following, leads, effectively to a separation of Church and State within Vance's soul, demonstrating why the Church has always condemned it.Clarificatory Note:He is the Vice President representing his country yes, but he is also J.D. Vance the Catholic man. These are not two separate men. They are the office and the man who occupies it.
The point of this article is not whether or not U.S. protocol about kissing papal rings is correct or legitimate, but the rationale offered for it by J.D. Vance.
Nor is this article about imagining that the U.S. should become a Catholic confessional state overnight.
On the contrary, it is about clarifying the principles of Catholic doctrine on the Church and state.
As recently as 1925, Pope Pius XI taught in his famous encyclical on the Kingship of Christ:
If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. [...] "With God and Jesus Christ," we said, "excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation."When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. Our Lord's regal office invests the human authority of princes and rulers with a religious significance; it ennobles the citizen's duty of obedience. [...]
[N]ot only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ.
These principles do not change simply because they are inconvenient, or because geopolitics have changed.
