The new pope is from America. That's neat. As people search his twitter account, they're finding more insight into his politics, including a criticism of JD and his application of Ordo Amoris to illegal aliens.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thank you for being here. There's a new Pope. I'm not Catholic so I have no connection to this and I don't know how it all even works. But I am an American and we have our first American Pope so that's something. The Catholic Church has had 217 Popes from Italy, 16 from France, six from Germany, five from Syria, four from Greece, and then on down the list,
the last Pope was from Argentina. And finally, America is an, is a underrepresented nation in something. This guy's from Chicago, he went to Villanova, served in Peru for a long time, he's a naturalized citizen of Peru.
And that is all I've learned from his Wikipedia page so far. Now in the few hours since he's been named Pope, people have perused his Twitter account. Now I don't know how much this guy was involved in his own Twitter account. Maybe he had some interns who don't know.
But if you look at his Twitter, big lefty guy, that's not really surprising. He is from Chicago. Now, since that's not really surprising, the Cardinals who voted for the Pope of Aspen, I'm guessing it was I think it was like 108 out of 133, something like that, of these Cardinals were put in there by the last Pope, so they're gonna vote for another guy who's kind of like this. One of the tweets that this Pope, new Pope sent out, was critical of J.D. Vance. It's something
that J.D. Vance said back in January. The new Pope tweeted this on February 3rd. He said, J.D. Vance is wrong. Jesus does not ask us to rank our love for others.
Uh oh.
So what is this about? This is back January 29th. J.D. Vance did an interview. The context here is illegal aliens versus American citizens. The left, they're the ones who have compassion for illegals
at the expense of American citizens. That's the argument. That's the concern here. That's what the election was all about. And here's JD Vance speaking to that.
But there's this old school, and I think it's a very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family and then you love your 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. 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. And I think the profound difference that Donald Trump brings to the leadership of this country is that the simple concept America first. It doesn't mean you hate anybody else. It means that you have leadership and President Trump has been very clear about this that puts the interests of American citizens first. In the same way that the British Prime Minister should
care about Brits and the French should care about the French, we have an American president who cares primarily about Americans, and that's a very welcome change.
A lot of progressive theologians, pastors, et cetera, did not like J.D. Vance for saying that. And they say, Oh, you know, how could you quote Jesus like that? We didn't quote Jesus. J.D. and then said, and I think it's a very Christian concept as well, which means it's compatible with Christian culture, not that it's an originally Christian concept. So first thing to note is we have two different spheres we're talking
about here. We're talking about the state and the role of the church. We got the role of the state and the role of the church, two different things. So that's the first point. There's another guy, his name's Heracles, Stoic philosopher. He wrote about oikosis. That's where we get the word economics. Economics means management of the home.
Oikos is home and the family in Greek. Heracles, we believe, was the first to come up with the concentric circles that we've talked about many times on this show before. And that is the self is in the middle, and then the next concentric circle out is the family, then the neighborhood, then the country, then the foreigners, the foreigner of the world.
His argument was that the natural thing is to take care of your family before others. And while Stoic said we should have greater concern for every circle beyond the next, he said that the key to the development of justice and ethical behavior is to concentrate or concern yourself first with you and your family and then you can move out. Jordan Peterson makes this point all the time as well. It's one of his central theses and one of his original messages at
least was focus on yourself before you go out and try to change the temperature of the planet, for instance. And I believe that's a Christian message as you yourself need to repent. You need to repent of your sin. Get the plank out of your own eye before you go trying to take the speck out of everyone else's, focus on you and you need to be born again. First and foremost, top priority before you go calling everyone else to repent
while you continue to live an unrepentant sin. Now, every social movement that I've ever lived through my entire life, it always concerns the outer circles of people, right? Black Lives Matter, global warming, right? The marginalized, right? It's always about these big outer circle things. And I've never lived through an era
where the main cultural impulse or calling was repentance of sin, of yourself, or as Leo Tolstoy called it, the regeneration of the inner man. Every social contagion, is a better word, that I've lived through is these outer circles of far away things and never a true focus on the self. Now, anytime there is a focus on the self in our modern world, it's all, you go girl, you're perfect just the way you are.
Everyone else is the problem. They just don't realize how wonderful you are. That's the self-help movement of the last couple of decades. And it's just as toxic. So what JD Vance is talking about here, the Latin term of it is ordo amoris, ordo amoris, ordered loves.
Lots of philosophers have talked about this. Go back to Thomas Aquinas was one of the first. And there is sight of this in the Bible. First Timothy 5.8 says, if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate family, there's an especially there, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. The progressive worldview is this undefined altruism and focus on the universe and love for
all of existence, oftentimes at the expense of those around you. So Thomas Aquinas, these ordered loves, ordo amoris, he says, but living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things. To love things, that is to say, in the right order. So that you do not love what is not to be loved.
Okay, we don't want to do that. Or fail to love what should be loved. Or have a greater love for what should be loved less. Or an equal love for things that should be loved more or less or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally. We're often all screwed up. There's things we should love that we don't.
There's things we don't love that we should. There's two things we love the same and we shouldn't. Or there's things we don't love the same and we're all screwed up. And Aquinas outlines the proper order. Remember the Stoics, it was self in the middle and then your family and you move out. Thomas Aquinas says, no, it's God who's in the middle. Then the self, spouse, family, extended family, community, nation, and then the world.
Augustine, he said, this, and then the world. Augustine, he said, this is true of everything created, but though it is good, it can be loved the right way or in the wrong way. In the right way, that is when the proper order is kept in the wrong way, when the order is upset.
So this is nothing new. This has been around for thousands of years. It's order versus disorder. Now, this new pope in February tweeted an article about a woman who was against what JD said, or at least JD's application of ordered loves. Now perhaps it's easier for the Pope to say, oh we should love the world because he's ahead of this this church that
has its arms in every corner of the world. So maybe that can be the Catholic church's first priority. And I would argue that the Protestant church, wherever your church is, my church has missionaries all over the world that we support and send out, and that's great. And you're called to do that.
But then there's also the role of the state. And the state should order its love. I believe as J.D. Vance has articulated it. If you're called as a Christian to go and minister to the world, great. But even that has an ordered love to it. There's no way that the Bible says to abandon your family, to go minister to people somewhere else around the world. I have a ministry field right here in my home that I need to pay attention to as well. And if we all focused more on a proper ordering of love,
then we would focus on the self and being born again and becoming a slave to Christ, slave to the Lord, where he is at the center and the highest of all order. I don't know what this Pope will do, who he will be, I don't really care. I'm concerned with your soul and mine. Let's put God in my children. Let's put God in my wife. Let's put God first. Seek first the kingdom of God. Let's pray about how the loves in our life should be properly rewarded.
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