It won’t surprise you that the mainstream media didn’t pay much attention to Vice President JD Vance’s wide-ranging conversation last week with Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, host of a show titled, “Conversations at the Crossroads.”
Officially assigned to the Diocese of Winona–Rochester in Minnesota, Bishop Barron is a theologian and founder of “Word on Fire,” a media ministry that produces and distributes sermons, videos, books and Bible studies. In many ways, he’s a modern-day Archbishop Fulton Sheen, the Catholic clergyman who hosted one of the top-rated television shows in America in the early days of the medium.
Vice President Vance, who is a convert to Catholicism, joined Bishop Barron on the show last Friday to talk about religion, philosophy, and public life – hence the relative silence about the appearance in secular media.
For the past year, Bishop Barron has served on President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, a group that was created to advise the White House on a broad range of issues involving religious liberty. Just before Independence Day, the commission submitted a report with a comprehensive list of recommendations that President Trump has vowed to implement.
In the midst of Friday’s conversation, Vice President Vance addressed head-on the reported tension between Pope Leo XIV and President Trump. Seated at a table inside a house looking out onto a leafy backyard and pool, the vice president suggested that perhaps the perceived strain wasn’t all that surprising – and maybe even an indication the system is working as it should be.
“Every time the Pope says something mildly critical of a Trump administration policy, it’s like, ‘Oh, the pope hates the Trump administration,’” Vance noted. “Well, you know, actually, no, maybe the pope is trying to provide the kind of moral teaching that is inherently part of his job. And then we have to take that and try to apply it, which is part of our job. Conversation is essential to that.”
During both the first and second Trump administrations, that tension has most frequently bubbled up over immigration policy. Both Pope Francis and Pope Leo have acknowledged that while countries have a right to enforce their immigration laws and their borders, they have often suggested the government should nevertheless provide a legal pathway to remain in the country and become integrated into the culture. Both popes have also stressed the need to treat illegal aliens with dignity and respect – a value that our government has likewise shared, but which is subjective when officials are forced to deal with violent, aggressive and uncooperative offenders.
During the conversation, both Vice President Vance and Bishop Barron advocated for the need for an active citizenry and noted that people of Christian faith need not check their faith at the church door.
“Growing up as a young conservative Christian, it sometimes felt like whenever Christians engage in politics, we were very comfortable engaging with this or that social or cultural issue, but not anything else,” VP Vance observed. “And I actually think there’s an opportunity for us to rediscover a more fully Christian politics that says that, ‘Actually, Jesus has opinions about all these things. And in fact, if you don’t get all of it right, you risk getting the most important parts wrong.’”
He continued:
You can’t just confine your faith to these narrow little slices of society or of culture or of your own life. It’s gotta be true for the whole thing … Jesus really cares about how you treat your wife and how you treat your kids, but He also cares about everything else, too.
Bishop Barron and Vice President Vance went on to discuss C.S. Lewis’ famous reference that God doesn’t merely want a place in your house, but the entire house because He is the architect who understands and is sovereign over every inch of it.
Reflected the vice president: “If you really believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and you believe all the truths that flow from that to your point, He actually has a lot to say about all parts of your life.”
It should encourage Christians that the vice president of the United States is openly and enthusiastically encouraging believers to seek God’s wisdom and then bring their deeply held convictions into the public square.
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