Defending Dives, Defunding Lazarus

“Let us ask Our Lady of Guadalupe to protect individuals and families who live in fear or pain due to migration and/or deportation. May the ‘Virgen morena,’ who knew how to reconcile peoples when they were at enmity, grant us all to meet again as brothers and sisters, within her embrace, and thus take a step forward in the construction of a society that is more fraternal, inclusive and respectful of the dignity of all.” — Pope Francis

J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States, caused a stir this January when he defended President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies in an interview on Fox News and charged that anyone who opposes them “hates America.” The interview would have been another unremarkable example of partisan rancor and hyperbole had Vance not invoked St. Augustine for support, citing the ordo amoris as a prop for his brand of radical and rivalrous nationalism. This brought great commentary from all sides, and even a papal rebuke.

Vance certainly has his defenders, especially on the Right. R.R. Reno, editor of First Things, in endorsing Vance’s nationalism, said that “they [the liberals, I presume] fear ‘nativism,’ or some other manifestation of xenophobia…. [But] the Christian tradition has a consistent teaching that we are to love those near with a greater fervor than those far away.” On Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire website, Richard Clements claimed that “the ordo amoris can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles radiating outward from ourselves, beginning with loving God,” an idea Pope Francis has specifically rejected. And in the pages of the Chilean Catholic publication Revista Suroeste, José Ignacio Palma claimed:

The abstract idea of ​​a love for humanity, which in practice is not expressed toward any specific person, is usually invoked by privileged and cosmopolitan groups for whom receiving massive migratory flows does not mean any serious impact on their lifestyle or that of their loved ones, and who will hardly make efforts to welcome migrants in their own neighborhoods and communities.

Palma’s charges might be justified, though as someone who lives in one of the most diverse ZIP codes in the United States, I am not convinced this is true. And I’m not sure how you can be “cosmopolitan” without “massive” migration. The “serious impacts” seem to be missing from my city, where, on my daily walks, I encounter people from South Asia, Hispano-America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East. In fact, my city hosts one of the largest mosques in the United States, right across the street from a Catholic church. There have been surprisingly few street battles.

Still, Palma’s explanation does save us from an abstract and pointless “humanism” or universalism that is impossible to practice, and which claims a love that makes no practical demands on us. G.K. Chesterton captured the problem exactly when he wrote:

The villas and the chapels
Where I learned with little labor,
The way to love my fellow-man,
And hate my next-door neighbor.

Yet, it is difficult to see just where in Augustine Vance and his defenders find this principle. Indeed, Augustine starts his discussion in De Doctrina Christiana by stating, “All men are to be loved equally.” He continues:

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you. For, suppose that you had a great deal of some commodity, and felt bound to give it away to somebody who had none, and that it could not be given to more than one person; if two persons presented themselves, neither of whom had either from need or relationship a greater claim upon you than the other, you could do nothing fairer than choose by lot to which you would give what could not be given to both. Just so among men: since you cannot consult for the good of them all, you must take the matter as decided for you by a sort of lot, according as each man happens for the time being to be more closely connected with you. (nos. 28, 29)

In other words, though love must be universal, actions can only be local. We are beings in time and space, which are accidents of physical existence. To put it another way, love is essentially universal and only accidentally local. Our love extends to the least of our brothers in the remotest corners of the world; our actions are local, addressing the problems of our families and neighbors. But it is a great mistake to make such natural limitations into a universal principle.

There is an ordo amoris in Augustine, but it is quite different from the one found in Vance, Reno, Clements, and Palma. In this ordo, we first love God above all things, even above family, then ourselves in holiness (but not selfishness), then our neighbor, beginning with those nearest us, and, finally, material goods, but as means and not as ends in themselves. Putting these things in their proper order is essential to the practice of the virtues, and getting them out of order (especially the last) is the essence of vice.

St. Thomas Aquinas, for those who enjoy detailed schematics, offers an order of charity in the Summa Theologica (II-II, 26), in which he presents — in 12 articles no less — a precise order. To wit: We should love God over neighbor, God over ourselves, ourselves over our neighbor, our neighbor over our bodies, those more connected to us over those less connected, those nearer to us over those better than us, those connected by blood over those not so, our parents over our children, our father over our mother, our parents over our wives, and our benefactor over our beneficiaries. But even Thomas would say we may assist a neighbor in need even in preference to our own father. The hierarchy is not exclusive but prudential; it does not relativize concern for our remote neighbors.

As useful as this schema might be, and some parts might even be used — out of context — to support an “America First” agenda, Jesus Himself gives us a much shorter hierarchy, namely, “love God, love your neighbor, love yourself.” And in answer to the question “Who is my neighbor?” He gives us the Good Samaritan, an answer that does away with all nationalisms. The priest and the Levite were of the “Judah First” school of thought and did not wish to become ritually impure by soiling their hands through contact with a dying man. Only the foreigner, and a despised foreigner at that, grasped the true hierarchy: The needs of the needy we meet on the road take precedence over our own comfort and fortunes. Concerning the hierarchy, that is all ye know — and all ye need to know.

But there is an even greater problem with Vance’s description of the ordo amoris: It makes a perfect defense of Dives, the rich man from Jesus’ parable. After all, Lazarus the beggar was not related (we may presume) to Dives by blood; they are not described as kith and kin. And being homeless (we could argue) Lazarus was not even Dives’s neighbor. So, is not Dives justified by preferring his friends and family over the beggar? Could not Vance act as his attorney before the Just Judge and get him released? Why, even the dogs had a closer relationship to Dives and so got first pick — and last pick — of the scraps that fell from his table.

It goes deeper still. “America First” is the ideology of rivalrous nationalism, and such rivalry is the basis of all wars. So, it is no surprise that the second Trump administration starts with threats against Panama, Greenland, Mexico, and Canada. And for those who think a war against Panama wouldn’t be much of a war, I can only respond that I am a veteran of a war in which a great nation was defeated by a tiny one. And these wars cannot be confined. Once you establish the principle of rivalrous nationalism, the effects are beyond your control. Two (or three or ten) can play the same game — and will.

But there is something much worse than all this. We see a lot of rhetoric about defunding the U.S. Agency for International Development, for example, because “we have to take care of our own people first.” If that were happening, it would be defensible. But it’s not. While food meant for the poor in foreign countries rots on the docks in places like Boston, New York, Miami, and Houston due to the suspension of overseas aid, the Trump administration is working to cut the programs that aid American poor (such as signing an executive order defunding the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness), while promising to lower taxes for the rich and rich corporations. His administration is, in effect, defunding Lazarus in order to enrich Dives.

Here we must say a word about Francis’s rebuke, titled “Letter to the Bishops of the United States of America” (Feb. 10). I will not go into the specifics, excellent as they are. Rather, I wish to address the problem of Church-state relations, a discussion usually dominated by the catchphrase “separation of Church and state.” Some have objected to the Pope’s letter as a violation of this principle. I maintain that it is not a violation but an affirmation of this principle — a principle I firmly support.

We must remember that the principle was first invoked by the Church over and against princes who claimed a right to appoint clergy and bishops in their land, to interfere in councils, to tax the Church, to control the publication of papal bulls, and so on. This principle protects the Church in another way: The Church must not seek after secular power, as power corrupts popes and bishops no less than princes and presidents. The proper model goes back to Pope St. Gelasius in the fifth century, who declared, “There are two by which this world is chiefly ruled: the sacred authority of the priesthood and the power of kings.” The king holds the sword of power, and the bishop of Rome holds the staff of truth; they should never be in the same hand. Thomas Hobbes, in The Leviathan, would have both powers held by the king, and Boniface VIII would have both powers held by the pope. Over the centuries, both sides have violated this separation, and always with disastrous results. Still, it is the duty of the Church to speak with the authority of truth and correct the powers that be. To put it in modern jargon, the Church must speak truth to power.

That’s what Francis has done. He is not calling for “open borders”; he is calling for human dignity. He reminds us that “what is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.” And it is difficult to dispute his conclusion that “worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.” That seems to be exactly what we are witnessing in these early days of Trump’s second term. Only now, it’s a deliberate political program — a program a Catholic should not support, even if he happens to be the vice president. I can only hope that the American bishops fulfill their role of speaking truth to power and spread the bishop of Rome’s message to their dioceses.

Clements, in his full-throated support of Vance’s comments, says, “The ordo amoris can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles radiating outward from ourselves.” Francis specifically denies this. He writes in his letter to the U.S. bishops:

Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception. (no. 6)

Now, I propose a simple test to see which of these is correct. When you dress in the morning, first examine the “made in” labels on your clothing. I suspect you will see places like Honduras, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan, or Mexico. What this should tell you is that your clothes are made by people (largely women) who labor for subsistence wages. Your seamstresses’ poverty contributes to your wealth. “Lazarus” is not some person in some remote “concentric circle”; he (or she) is right next to your skin. It’s hard to get any closer than that. Nameless to us though they may be, the names of their homelands are part of our lives and right there on our backs; they literally cover our nakedness. And as you go through the day, do the same thing with all the products you use. It is there that you will find Lazarus at your door.

We cannot escape the consequences of our lifestyles. Americans’ consumption habits, and the economic policies of the United States that support them, have contributed to the material poverty in Hispano-America, among other places. Not the least of these is Americans’ insatiable appetite for illegal drugs. All over Latin America (especially in Mexico), young men are faced with a choice: join the cartels or flee for your life. Many end up coming North, displaced by the drug trade. On top of that, deliberate oppression of impoverished Latin Americans by entities such as the United Fruit Company (“Chiquita banana,” for those of a certain age) isn’t merely a thing of the past; it is occurring right now thanks to the disastrous North American Free Trade Agreement, which, for example, has made it nearly impossible for Mexican farmers to compete with highly subsidized American corn. This, too, displaces the poor and pushes them northward — all so we can have low prices in our supermarkets and abundant drugs on our street corners.

So, no matter how “remote” these people seem, or to which distant “concentric circle” we wish to confine them, they are parts of our lives and our livelihoods, and we must take responsibility for our actions and the actions of our nation in their regard. By all means, let us have a rational border policy. But let us never make scapegoats of the poorest and most defenseless. Let us not ignore the “Lazarus” at our southern door or, indeed, on our backs.

©2025 New Oxford Review. All Rights Reserved.

To submit a Letter to the Editor, click here: https://www.newoxfordreview.org/contact-us/letters-to-the-editor/