We are likely to hear a lot more about “weird” during the Democratic National Convention that kicks off in Chicago today to run from 19 - 22 August. <br><br>The word “weird” has become a rallying call for Democrats in their campaign against the Trump-Vance ticket for the Republican Party in this November's presidential election, a phenomenon that began in late July when the Democrat’s vice presidential candidate Tim Walz used the word “weird” to describe what he sees as the ultra-conservative agenda of the former president and his running mate JD Vance.
It is, however, hardly surprising that a liberal ideologue such as Walz should regard Vance as “weird”, given that Vance converted not just to Catholicism, aged 39, but to a conservative version of it too – one that is a far cry from the “sanitised” version that is preferred to pass for Catholicism in polite, Washington society.
The belief that there is – fundamentally – an irreconcilable gap between the values of a secular-oriented world and the values of Christianity is an old one. In the early centuries AD, Christian men and women fled pagan, and later Christian Constantinople too, for the desert.
In so doing, these early Christians hoped to escape the ability of earthly powers to exercise authority over them, believing, instead, that they were citizens of heaven, rather than of an earthly Rome. <br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/are-catholics-really-fleeing-to-the-fields-to-escape-modernitys-mess/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Are Catholics really fleeing to the fields to escape modernity’s mess?</mark></a></strong>
The gap between the values of the world and those who followed Christ was well attested to by St Anthony when he declared that “a time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us'.”
St Anthony, needless, to say, believed that it was the Christians who were sane, and that it was the world that was mad.
In identifying with a post-liberal, Trumpian Right that is increasingly more closely aligned with a post-liberal, conservative Catholic ethic in the US, Vance has also firmly established himself in the company of many who would like to establish a more communitarian vision of the good society, one in which democratic institutions are somehow subordinate to a superior, moral vision of the human good.
Such communities are rarely especially democratic, at least not in the way that the victim-based approaches to human rights that drive contemporary liberal ideology have come to understand.
It remains to be seen how effectively the Trumpian post-liberal Right can work with the emerging conservative Catholic movement in the US, or indeed with JD Vance himself.
But according to <em>Politico’s</em> Ian Ward, Steve Bannon, who served as the White House's chief strategist for the first seven months of President Donald Trump's administration, is confident (and despite being let go by Trump and now being in jail) that a Vance-Trump partnership will work; with Vance proving to be, in Ward's words, “St Paul to Trump’s Jesus – the zealous convert who spreads the gospel of Trumpism further than Trump himself ever could".
Vance has explained that his conversion to Catholicism was deeply bound up with his belief that religious faith in general has the power to help communities in ways that liberal ideologies have failed to do.
For religious faith, Vance believes, can offset the kind of instability that derives from the drugs, fractured families, serial romantic liaisons and chronic unemployment that have so devastated the kinds of poor, working-class communities in which he grew up.
In a lengthy and compelling article for Catholic magazine <em>The Lamp</em>, Vance writes of the influence that St Augustine of Hippo had upon him. He alludes to Augustine’s summary of pagan Rome as a society oriented entirely towards consumption and pleasure, a society that spurned duty and virtue.
In the article, Vance states his belief that St Augustine's summary of Rome is also the best summation of the modern age that he has come across, noting in particular Augustine’s description of the priorities of pagan Rome’s elite:
"That every man be able to increase his wealth so as to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the weak for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich for a living, and that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquility; and let the rich abuse the poor as their dependants, to minister to their pride." <br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/jd-vances-catholic-conversion-inspired-by-st-augustine-and-wreckage-of-the-modern-age/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">JD Vance’s Catholic conversion inspired by St Augustine – and the wreckage of the modern age</mark></a></strong>
It is also established that Vance's conversion to Catholicism was heavily influenced by French Catholic philosopher René Girard, especially Girard’s core idea that society is enslaved to a process of “mimetic desire”, in which people learn to want the things that others have, strive to have them for themselves, and then regard themselves as rivals, when in fact that are just imitating each other.
Girard believed that the only way that the cycle of mimetic violence could ever ultimately be broken would be if human beings could learn how to love, and that the best environment in which human beings can learn how to love is the kind of community that has withdrawn from “the world”.
Given all this, from the point of view of a liberal ideologue such as Walz, the religious worldview of someone like Vance cannot but appear to be anything but “weird”.<br><br>Walz is a man whose ideology is rooted in liberalism’s great faith in the inherent rationality of mankind, and the inevitability of progress, so long as people are granted the right economic and social conditions. He is also rooted in liberalism’s great faith in the Westphalian understanding of nation states.
That understanding was condemned by Pope Innocent X as “null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time”. Similarly, the religious worldview of someone like Vance takes a view that is grounded in the hard-won, religious and very Catholic understanding that mankind is all too easily driven by desire, rather than by reason, as well as by a deep wariness about worldly power. It's the antithesis of what Walz holds as essential.
But surely the weirdest thing about Vance, for a liberal such as Walz, is that Vance knows that it will not – ultimately – be politicians who ever solve the crisis of our times. That will only come about when mankind finally submits to the authority of God, rather than to worldly power.
There is an ancient myth from Central Asia about a people who find themselves surrounded by an impenetrable range of mountains, to the extent that they find their path blocked in every way.
Suddenly, at precisely the moment when the people have reached the level of greatest despair, a wolf cub appears, and leads them on a path through the seemingly impenetrable mountains.
Similarly, René Girard knew too that mankind will ultimately be saved, but not by human genius, whether technical or political. Instead, mankind will be saved when it finally comes to accept that it is from God that its salvation will ultimately come.
And when this happens, a new civilisation will begin to emerge out of the ashes of our current chaotic post-logocentric, post-modern, post-Christian society – just as New Rome emerged out of the ashes of pagan Rome in the fourth century AD.
How about that for "weird"? <br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/how-catholic-philosopher-rene-girard-could-shape-us-politics-now-jd-vance-on-republican-ticket/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Catholic philosopher René Girard could shape US politics now JD Vance on Republican ticket</mark></a></strong><br><br><em>Photo: (left, detail) Minnesota Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz speaks during a stop on a campaign bus tour with US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in Rochester, Pennsylvania, 18 August 18, 2024 (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images); (right, detail) Republican vice presidential candidate, US Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) speaks during a fundraising event at Discovery World in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, 17 July 2024 (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</em>).
