JD Vance's Inspiring Journey to Catholicism

Newt and I recently attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. On July 17, we heard Ohio Senator JD Vance accept the Republican Vice Presidential nomination. and said: “My friends, tonight is a night of hope. A celebration of what America was, and with God's grace, what it will soon be again.”

During his acceptance speech, as thousands watched at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee and millions more watched from home, Vance told his story, articulated the values ​​he lives by and said he will fight for Americans who they have been ignored, forgotten and ignored.

Vance spoke of being raised by his Christian grandmother, “Mamaw,” in Middletown, Ohio, “a small town where people talked, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community and his country with all his hearts.”

Although Vance was surrounded by Christian faith and values ​​in his youth (and greatly admired his Catholic uncle), it was not until his teenage years that he joined an organized church.

As a teenager, Vance attended a large Pentecostal church with his biological father after the two reconnected. “I'm not sure if I liked the structure or if I just wanted to share something that was important to him—both, I guess—but I became a devoted convert,” Vance wrote in his best-selling memoir. .He chose Hillbilly.”

However, throughout his young adulthood, Vance's faith faltered, as he described in a nearly 7,000-word essay for The Lamp titled “How I joined the Resistance.” After finishing his service with the Marines and attending college at Ohio State University, Vance discarded his faith and claimed to be an atheist.

Surrounded by secularism in college, Vance was rooted in a culture that saw faith as “provincial and stupid at best; at worst, evil” and got caught up in “the madness of the multitudes”, which made him abandon his faith.

“Much of My New Atheism,” He wrote“it came down to a desire for social acceptance among American elites.”

Although Vance admitted to adopting a worldview tinged with an air of arrogance at this time, the seeds of doubt surrounding his new perceptions took hold in college and later in law school.

For Vance, the “first crack at [his] proverbial armor” would come from a meditation by St. Augustine that he read while attending Yale Law School as he contemplated his “twin desires — of success and character — and how they conflict (and don't).”

St. Augustine's passage criticized man's arrogant attempts to conform Holy Scripture to his own opinions when man's goal should be to conform his opinions to the truth of Holy Scripture.

While Augustine gave Vance “a way of understanding the Christian faith in a strongly intellectual way,” a law school talk from a Christian venture capitalist Peter Thiel it inspired him to re-examine what he was striving for and to learn more about the Christian faith. Later, the writings of French philosopher René Girard “the scapegoat theory and what it revealed about Christianity” inspired Vance to “reconsider”. [his] faith.”

After much thought about faith and virtue, Vance sought a “worldview that would understand our bad behavior” and finally realized that “he had already been exposed to this worldview: Mamaw's Christianity.”

In his essay for The Lamp, Vance spoke of reading St. Augustine's description of Roman debauchery in “City of God”, studying a book by policy analyst Oren Cass that criticized the veneration of consumption and learning of the Dominican friars, all of which ultimately led to his decision to become Catholic.

As Vance wrote of his conversion, “I realized that there was a part of me, the best part, that took its cues from Catholicism. … It was the Catholic part of my heart and mind that went demand that I think about the things that really mattered… And I needed grace. In other words, I needed to become Catholic, not just think about it.”

In August 2019, JD Vance was received into the Catholic Church. His lifelong journey to Catholicism is an inspiring and motivating journey of faith.

Ambassador Callista L. Gingrich is president and CEO of Gingrich 360, a media production and consulting company based in Arlington, Virginia. She is a former US ambassador to the Holy See.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/CSPAN)

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