JD Vance has said that Christian love means to prioritize your family, then community, then country, and last the rest of the world.
Before he became Pope Leo XIV, Prevost tweeted the reply above, reminding Vance and others that love cannot be ranked.
THE TWO VIEWS
I came across someone talking about this. He said that the views reflect the difference between (a) our fallible human tendency to prioritize those close to us versus (b) the ideal of loving everyone equally. To me, that’s missing the mark.
It’s not fallible to prioritize those close to us. It makes sense to do so since we are in the best position, perhaps among everyone, to make a difference to those close to us.
It’s also not an ideal to love all equally, it’s what we are and it doesn’t go counter to prioritizing those close to us.
ZERO-SUM VS WIN-WIN
To me, the two views – of Vance and Prevost – are really about the difference between a zero-sum and a win-win orientation.
Zero-sum
Trump, Vance, and MAGA tend to operate from a zero-sum view of the world.
If you win, it likely means that I – somehow, even if I don’t know how yet – will lose.
Similarly, I’ll seek out ways to win that makes sure that you lose. That’s the only way I can be sure I won.
We see this in just about all aspects of Trump’s policies, and this is very far from the life and words of Jesus.
It’s also very far from the reality of a profoundly interconnected world, a world that’s one seamless system where the health and well-being of the larger whole is profoundly interconnected with my own health and well-being.
Win-win
Prevost seems to come from more of a win-win orientation, and an orientation more aligned with the life and words of Jesus.
He knows that we can find solutions that benefit us and our families, and also the larger social and ecological whole. He knows we can find, chose, and live win-win solutions.
We can take care of our families, communities, and country, and do so in a way that also benefits the wider world, the living web we are part of, and future generations.
For me, that’s the essence of the difference in view between Vance and Prevost.
DOMINATION VS PARTNERSHIP LENS
There is a lot more to say about this, and I have written about it in other articles.
Trump and Vance’s view is an expression of a strong and relatively one-sided domination culture. Central to that culture is a view of separation, zero-sum strategies, either-or thinking, and so on.
Trauma is also central to that culture. Collective and intergenerational trauma is part of how it perpetuates itself, and a zero-sum orientation is – in many ways – a trauma response.
Although Prevost is part of an institution that has strong domination culture elements (a history of supporting fascist regimes, strong patriarchical hierarchy, an idea of the sacred as “out there”, dogmas you are supposed to pretend to “believe” in, colonialism/missionary work, and so on), he and the Catholic Church has elements of a partnership orientation, as expressed in his tweet.
Although that’s another topic for another time, there is a fundamental dissonance in the Catholic Church. As an institution, it’s an expression of a strong domination culture that far too often sides with the powerful. It’s supposedly built on the teachings and life of Jesus, who had a radical partnership orientation. And to acknowledge that, they need to soften their edges a bit and bring in some elements of a partnership orientation.