What is the ‘ordo amoris’? JD Vance’s comments on Christian love spark debate

U.S. Vice President JD Vance speaks during a visit to East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3, 2025. / Credit: REBECCA DROKE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

CNA Staff, Feb 4, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Vice President JD Vance in a Thursday interview invoked the Catholic concept of “ordo amoris” — “rightly ordered love” — in the context of the ongoing societal debate over immigration policy, sparking a variety of reactions on social media. 

Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Vance opined, spurred by Hannity, that “the far left” in the United States tend to have “more compassion” for people residing in the country illegally — including those who have committed crimes — than they do for American citizens. 

“[A]s an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. It doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders,” Vance said Jan. 30.

“But there’s this old-school [concept] — and I think 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,” he said. 

He continued: “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.”

Later that evening Vance responded on social media to a British professor and politician, Rory Stewart, who criticized Vance’s comments as a “bizarre take on John 15:12-13” and as “less Christian and more pagan tribal.” (The Bible verse referenced by Stewart reads “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”)

“Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” Vance wrote in reply.

“Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?” he continued. 

What’s ‘ordo amoris’?

Though you won’t find the terms “ordo amoris” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Dominican Father Pius Pietrzyk, a canon lawyer and a professor, told CNA that the concept is a well-established one and is “evident both by revelation and reason.”

St. Augustine in his classic work “City of God” offers the term “ordo amoris,” often rendered as “rightly ordered love,” as a definition for the concept of “virtue.” 

Augustine, a highly influential early bishop and theologian, expanded on the concept of the “order of love” in his work “On Christian Doctrine.”

“Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things, and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally,” Augustine wrote in “On Christian Doctrine.”

St. Thomas Aquinas — a 13th-century doctor of the Church — in his “Summa Theologica” cited and expanded on St. Augustine’s work, writing that there must be “some order in things loved out of charity … in reference to the first principle of that love, which is God.” 

Aquinas defined this “order of charity,” or “ordo caritatis,” as a principle that dictates how we should love God, ourselves, and our neighbors in a hierarchical and interconnected manner. He cited Augustine to argue that while one should love all people equally, one ought to “chiefly” consider those who are more closely united by reason of place, time, or other circumstances.

In Aquinas’ analysis, he concludes that God is to be loved first and foremost, followed by oneself, then neighbors, and among neighbors, he wrote that there are those who should be loved with a more intense affection, such as family.

The hierarchy laid out by Aquinas is not meant to diminish the importance of loving all people as Christ commanded but does acknowledge that certain relationships, practically speaking, carry more immediate obligations. For example, a married person has a higher obligation to care for his or her spouse than for others and an obligation to provide for his or her own children before providing for those in other places.

Pietrzyk said that while the entirety of the concept of “ordo amoris” isn’t “revealed” teaching straight from God, some aspects of it are — the duty of every person to honor his or her father and mother, for example, is found in the Ten Commandments. 

As a matter of logic, he continued, the duty to “love your neighbor as yourself” relies on a prior love of self.

“Of course, all of this assumes a love of God as the basis for all other love. Revelation certainly shows us a hierarchical structure of charity in man. Sts. Augustine and Thomas use reason to help more fully understand and explain that notion,” Pietrzyk explained. 

While Pietrzyk said the existence of the ordo caritatis is well established, its practical application is complex and allows for legitimate disagreement. He also pointed out that Aquinas’ approach requires taking into account certain situational difficulties and urgent needs, especially the greater need of an individual in the moment.

“[W]e ought in preference to bestow on each one such benefits as pertain to the matter in which, speaking simply, he is most closely connected with us,” Aquinas writes in the Summa.  

“And yet this may vary according to the various requirements of time, place, or matter in hand: Because in certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one’s own father, if he is not in such urgent need.”

Social media debate

Vance’s mention of “ordo amoris” sparked a vigorous debate on social media, with some Catholic figures criticizing the vice president’s understanding and use of concept and others, including several Catholic theologians and philosophers, expressing concurrence and appreciation. 

Jesuit Father James Martin opined that Vance’s comments “[miss] the point of Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan.” 

“Jesus’ fundamental message is that everyone is your neighbor, and that it is not about helping just your family or those closest to you. It’s specifically about helping those who seem different, foreign, other. They are all our ‘neighbors,’” Martin wrote. 

“Jesus was often critical of those who would put family first,” he added. 

In a subsequent post, Martin argued that interpretations of Aquinas’ “ordo caritatis” that suggest one ought to prioritize family before strangers misrepresent both Aquinas’ intent and the Gospel’s central message. 

“Jesus’ command to love the stranger is not just a theological reflection and not just an important part of our tradition, it’s divine revelation. Jesus tells us clearly that at the heavenly gates, we are going to be asked if we welcomed the ‘stranger’: that is, someone who is not part of our family, someone we don’t know. That’s how we will be judged, as he says in Matthew 25,” Martin wrote. 

“[I]t’s not about the selective love of family but about a new kind of family. And within that family is the stranger, the migrant, the refugee. And I’ll bet that Aquinas and Augustine would agree.”

Michael Sirilla, a professor of philosophy at Franciscan University, said Vance had summarized the “Christian notion” of ordo caritatis “deftly.”

Catholic philosopher Edward Feser said Vance expressed “the correct view.”

“The view that one has the same duties to all human beings, rather than special duties to those closest, in no way reflects a conception of human beings as social animals,” Feser wrote, calling that view a “product of liberalism’s radical individualism.”

“The correct view (common to Confucius, Aristotle, Aquinas, and the common sense of mankind in general) is that our social nature and its consequent obligations manifest themselves first and foremost in the family, then in local communities, then in the nation as a whole, and only after that in our relationship to mankind in general.”