J.D. Vance's Catholicism helped shape his views. So did this group of Catholic thinkers.

Peter Smith and Michelle R. Smith
| Associated Press

By his own account, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s 2019 conversion to Catholicism provided him with a spiritual fulfillment he couldn’t find in his Yale education or professional success.

It also amounted to a political conversion.

Catholicism gave him a new way of looking at addiction, family breakdowns and other social ills that he described in his best-selling 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”

“I was desperate for a worldview that understood our bad behavior as simultaneously social and individual, structural and moral; that recognized that we are products of our environment; that we have a responsibility to change that environment, but that we remain moral beings with individual duties,” he wrote in a 2020 essay.

His conversion also brought Vance into close contact with a Catholic intellectual movement, viewed by some critics as reactionary or authoritarian in nature, that had been little known to the American public until Vance’s rise to the national stage as the Republican vice-presidential candidate.

These are not your father’s Catholic conservatives.

The professors and media personalities who are part of this network don’t agree on everything, including what to call themselves, but most define themselves as “post-liberal.” Vance has used that term to describe himself, though the Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to questions about where Vance sees himself within the movement and whether he shares some of the beliefs promoted by many post-liberals.

Post-liberals share some long-standing Catholic conservative views, such as opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

But where Catholic conservatives of the past saw big government as a problem rather than a solution, post-liberals want a strong government, one they control.

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They envision a counterrevolution in which they would take control of government bureaucracy and institutions like universities from within, replacing entrenched “elites” with their own and acting according to their vision of the “common good.”

“What is needed … is regime change: the peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class and the creation of a post-liberal order,” wrote Patrick Deneen, a leading author on the movement, in his 2023 book, “Regime Change.”

Vance has signaled his alignment with some of the proposals of post-liberal Catholics. He has said that the next time his allies control the presidency or Congress, “we really have to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power” and has said that Republicans should take over institutions, including universities, “so they work for our people.”

Scholars of the movement caution that Vance has his own ideas and does not necessarily embrace everything proposed by post-liberals (or a subset of them, the integralists, who want a state that works in concert with the Catholic Church). The latter is not a label Vance has used for himself.

But Vance has spoken alongside prominent post-liberals at public events and praised some of their work.

At a conference in Ohio introducing the top post-liberal Catholics of 2022, he told his fellow speakers that he has “admired many of them from afar” as “some of the people I think are most interesting about what’s happening in this country.”

Vance praised Deneen’s book in a 2023 panel discussion with the author, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame.

Vance has also met privately with prominent post-liberals, who have posted photos of their meetings on social media and applauded his vice presidential nomination.

Catholic magazines have for years been replete with debates about post-liberalism, but with little public attention, in part because its followers are few and its views far from mainstream.

But now, post-liberals have an avid listener in Donald Trump’s running mate.

“You can go from being someone who writes an unusual Catholic theology blog to being a vice presidential candidate in the span of less than a decade,” said James Patterson, a politics professor at Ave Maria University in Florida.

Vance’s concerns show an influence from the movement, she said, citing his comments about those without children.

“Most ordinary American Catholics would not treat a single woman with no children and cats with this kind of contempt,” Patterson said. Even if Vance is not imbued with that philosophy, Patterson added, “he is picking up on the post-liberal vibe.”

Some Catholics, including conservatives, have raised alarm about the company Vance keeps, saying post-liberalism has historical connections to 20th-century European movements that are associated with authoritarian regimes like that of Francisco Franco in Spain.

“We’re talking about people who prefer right-wing authoritarian regimes,” Patterson said.

In a post-liberal society, Patterson wrote in an August commentary in The Dispatch, citizens become “subjects” and personal freedoms are subject to “administrative despotism.”

Vance has recently attempted to downplay the impact of his Catholicism on policymaking.

Trump-appointed Supreme Court members provided the decisive majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had legalized abortion nationwide. But the issue has become a political liability as voters in several states reject abortion restrictions.

Vance had strongly opposed abortion in the run-up to his 2022 Senate victory, at one point saying “two wrongs don’t make a right” when referring to exceptions for rape and incest. The campaign said in an email Wednesday that it supports “reasonable” exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

But Vance has aligned himself with the Republicans’ first post-Roe platform in 2024, in which he backed away from his longstanding support for nationwide abortion restrictions. He promised he could “absolutely commit” that a Trump-Vance administration would not impose such an abortion ban.

The bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States declared that opposing abortion is “our preeminent priority.”

In August, Vance told the New York Post that Catholic social teaching “certainly influences my thinking on certain issues,” but acknowledged that “there are a lot of things that the Catholic Church teaches that, frankly, Americans would never accept.”

He added that in a democracy, “people must be given the opportunity to have their own moral opinions reflected in public policy. There are many non-Catholics in the United States and I accept that.”

Julian Waller, a political science professor at George Washington University, said Vance has numerous influences outside of Catholic post-liberalism, from Trump-style populists to his mentor, tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

It remains to be seen whether post-liberal Catholics would land prominent appointments in a Trump-Vance administration, or even how often their calls would be answered.

“Someone like JD Vance can read them, be interested in them, attend talks, meet them personally, draw conclusions from them,” Waller said. “But he is not obligated to obey them.”

As an example of what an administration that uses state power for post-liberal ends might look like, Waller pointed to Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to remove diversity initiatives and critical race theory from public higher education.

“If you’re looking for the model that someone like JD Vance is really interested in, it’s probably the Florida model, changing institutions by force, capturing institutions,” Waller said.

Post-liberals’ ideas vary, but there are common themes, said Kevin Vallier, author of “All the Kingdoms of the World,” a 2023 book about modern post-liberal and integralist movements and their centuries-old roots.

Depending on who is talking, a post-liberal regime change might involve encouraging childbearing, easing or eliminating the separation of church and state, banning pornography for both adults and children, reimposing laws limiting business on Saturday, supporting private-sector unions and strengthening safety nets for the middle class.

It is common to hear post-liberals praise Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, in particular for his use of financial incentives for families who have more babies. Orban has championed an “illiberal democracy,” including restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights.

Vance has praised Orban for Hungary’s subsidies for married couples with children and “smart decisions” in taking control of universities.

Vance has echoed the rhetoric of regime change, which involves using a government, staffed by like-minded officials, to achieve post-liberal goals.

“You need to have a functional state that accomplishes some of the things we care about. You need good people who are going to work in that functional state,” Vance said at a 2022 conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, featuring prominent post-liberals such as Deneen and Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule.

Vermeule has argued for a “common good constitutionalism,” in which the government enacts “strong rules in the interest of achieving the common good.”

Deneen and Vermeule declined interview requests.

Vance’s choice to speak in Steubenville underscored his affinity with post-liberals, Vallier said.

“He could have given that talk anywhere,” said Vallier, a professor at the Institute for American Constitutional Thought and Leadership at the University of Toledo in Ohio. “Why is he showing up with these intellectuals if he doesn’t sympathize with their ideas?”

Vance’s religious journey began in a family that rarely went to church when he was young, he wrote in “Hillbilly Elegy.” But he said his grandmother — the most stable adult in his turbulent household — regularly read the Bible and taught a Christianity that called for hard work, forgiveness and hope.

For a time, young JD embraced the strict biblical literalism of his father’s Pentecostal church, considering it a stabilizing force, he wrote.

But in college, Vance embraced what he later considered an arrogant, fashionable atheism.

Finally, he wrote in a 2020 essay for the Catholic magazine The Lamp that he “needed grace” to gain the virtues necessary to be a good husband and father.

“I needed, in other words, to become Catholic,” he wrote.

Breaking

J.D. Vance’s Catholicism helped shape his views. So did this group of Catholic thinkers.

ByS. Jacob

By S. Jacob

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