Reordering Hope

D onald Trump has gotten the commentariat to speak Latin. It probably wasn’t on your predictions’ list for the second Trump administration. And, yet, comments Vice President JD Vance made on the order of love — ordo amoris — in an interview with Sean Hannity have given life to the “dead” language. But do we have a prayer for bona fide grace to come?

“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community,” Vance said, “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.” Put your oxygen mask on before you help your neighbor’s with his. It’s practical and prudent. We’ve got a hot mess of an immigration situation, including missing children. That’s not loving anyone. Vance wasn’t saying anything we don’t already know — the floor has fallen in, we’ve got to buttress foundations.

The pope sent an unintentional valentine to the U.S. media in response: “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

Earlier this month, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, sent on his 75th birthday his mandatory resignation letter to Pope Francis. Dolan may remain in place for the time being. Perhaps that might allow for added articulation of prudence and power in public or private conversation between U.S. Catholic bishops and Vance. (If the pope holds on in naming Dolan’s successor, that would seem an obvious homework assignment from Rome.)

Shortly after Dolan was assigned to New York, a book-length interview was published, A People Hope. “Ultimately, how we mirror and reflect hope usually comes more from who we are than from what we do,” he told journalist John Allen. Vance may be a confident because he wants to be the next president of the United States, but if he cares as much about the substance of that Latin expression as the zeal of a convert might suggest, he’s raising considerations that precede and surpass partisan loyalties and alliances.

“Our message of hope sometimes is simply how we come across, who we are,” Dolan said. “If people can see that, in the midst of whatever you’re going through, you still do seem to reflect a sense of faith, an assurance, a sense of serenity and joy, I think that accomplishes more than any sermon or treatise.” Or than any Fox News interview.

The vice president goes on a Sunday show and makes an accusation about church bureaucracies and government partnerships, and the bishops fill in some gaps that the (scurrilous, the cardinal said in disappointment) slap-down didn’t allow for. Vance makes a broader claim and gets a papal reply. Everybody needs the opportunity for a deep breath, and it is all worth more than a prayer — as we are talking about human lives and souls (and, yes, of politicians and bishops, as much as anyone else).

Taking the long view — doing something other and more than the reactive — would certainly require grace. Peggy Noonan wrote in her book Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now (2008): “What we need most right now, at this moment, is a kind of patriotic grace — a grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we’re in, comes up with ways of dealing with it, and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative. That admits affection and respect. That encourages them. That acknowledges that the small things that divide us are not worthy of the moment; that agrees that the things that can be done to ease the stresses we feel as a nation should be encouraged, while those that encourage our cohesion as a nation should be supported.”

But here’s the thing: R-E-S-P-E-C-T? Can you have respect — never mind affection — for any aspect of Donald Trump or Pope Francis or JD Vance or Catholic bishops or whoever in the mix it is you disdain or who dispirits? Because it is in liberation from already knowing the answer to every question that there can be some room for grace to work. It’s not going to come from an endless ping-pong game of accusations and defenses and moral articulations. It requires eschewing the postgame commentary and assuming some desire for good faith in those we don’t know or have strongly decided we disagree with.

This year is a jubilee celebration in the Roman Catholic Church. In announcing the year of hope, Pope Francis said we’re going to live a life resembling a participation in something greater if, he writes, we are open “to God’s grace” and “enlivened by a hope constantly renewed and confirmed by the working of the Holy Spirit.”

We’ve got believers in the mix and talking — even if somewhat past one another. Could politics make room for the Holy Spirit — or, at least, a divine guidance that doesn’t endorse campaign platforms or executive orders. It could remind us of who were before reality-TV politics and who we want and need to be — including to those who are here illegally, some of whom were horribly lied to and abused.

Maybe even we Americans — on the eve of our own 250th birthday — have the hope of hope yet. Francis, Vance, Dolan . . . they/we all probably have a similar prayer. Oremus. Let us pray for patriotic grace and the miracles that love, in whatever order, works.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.