Transcription
Well, welcome to a very special edition of Bishop Baron Presents. I'm here in the pool house of the Vice President's, uh, residence, and I'm here with the Vice President of the United States, JD Vance. Mr. Vice President, thank you for taking the time.
Of course, good to see you. I'm just eager to talk to you about a lot of things, but especially your new book, *Communion*, which is terrific and a great follow-up to *Hillbilly Elegy*. There are so many themes, you know, political, religious, personal, otherwise, makes for a very rich, uh, read.
But, you know, I want to start with the fact that, uh, your confirmation name when you were fully received into the Catholic Church is Augustine.
Sure.
And of course, you can't help but notice an Augustinian arc to this book. Augustine's a guy from the backwoods, you know, when he came to Milan and Rome, and he spoke Latin. He's a great master of Latin, but they made fun of his, uh, accent, his African accent from the backwoods. His ambition drives him to the top of what he wanted. He gets there and then realizes the emptiness of it. Um, obviously, you found resonance with [laughter] that Augustinian story. Tell me just a bit about that, the Augustinian arc of the book.
Yeah. Well, [sighs] it's, it's funny you, you draw that parallel, and I think others have drawn that parallel. It's not something I was even aware of entirely, just the, there are certainly parallels between our lives, but what, what always attracted me to, to St. Augustine was more the intellectual piece of it than the personal piece of it. I definitely read, you know, *Confessions* at some point. Actually, the, the Dominican friar who baptized me gifted me a copy, and I read it, and I was, you know, very moved by it. But I was much more interested in *City of God* and some of the things that he had written about, you know, Roman politics and Roman philosophy and sort of the, the way in which Christianity was, in some ways, an antidote to the things that he had seen in his own, in his own life, and, and frankly, some of the problems that he saw in the Roman Empire around him.
And, you know, in particular, there, there are two, two things that I point out that, you know, I was definitely in my kind of atheist phase, because I was raised evangelical, as I talk about in the book, fell away from my faith, called myself an atheist for some time. Uh, I was in college, and we read *City of God* in a political philosophy class, and I was just really moved and affected by it. I was like, this is like, clearly a very profound person.
Yeah.
And, you know, and when you're in that kind of atheist phase, or at least when I was there, there was sort of this idea that I had categorized religious people as simple, as subrational, or anti-rational, whereas it was the atheists, especially the new atheists, who were super smart with the rights.
That's right.
And, and, and there were many ways in which that story is obviously wrong, but St. St. Augustine is one of the people who sort of pierced that in a very early phase for me. You know, to me, it's interesting because I'm focusing there on the, on the *Confessions* narrative, but *City of God*, uh, the principal theme of which, I would say, is right worship. His argument there is Rome went bad because of bad worship. Worship gods who themselves were jealous and and resentful and violent. And the Christian God, the God of love and forgiveness and so on, is the right one to worship.
Correct.
And that all of our political arrangements should follow from right praise.
Yes.
That, to me, is an ancient idea, but a very relevant idea and lively in the conversation today. Don't you think?
That's right. Well, and I think that the subtext of it is that every society, whether it considers itself secular or not, every society has an underlying theology.
Worships something.
It worships something. And I think the, the Roman Empire, and I guess the fourth century that Augustine was surrounded by, had become very corrupted. And, you know, there's, there's this, there's this passage, I'm going to butcher it if I try to quote it, but I, I talk about in the book where, you know, Augustine sort of criticizes the Roman elites where, you know, they, they hang out and they care about money, and then they get really drunk, and then they, it's just like, it's a very vivid criticism of the decadence of the Roman elite. And it's like, any society led by people like this is eventually going to go by the wayside. And that, that is again, it sounded very resonant to me because I do think that there is something very corrupt about American elites in, in 2026, certainly in 20, you know, '13, '14, when I'm sort of struggling with this stuff and thinking about this stuff. So that, that is all true, but fundamentally, every society worships something. And I think that if you are worshiping the right things, a lot of virtue and a lot of goodness will flow from it. If you're worshiping the wrong things, eventually you're going to go off track.
You know, Paul Tillich, the Protestant theologian, who was a great devotee of Augustine, said that. He [clears throat] said, "All you need to know about a person or a society, you can derive from the question, what do you worship?"
Interesting.
What's of highest value to you?
Yeah.
I found that in spiritual direction with people, what are you worshiping? What are you after? And then everything else will fall in place around that central question.
Yeah.
Um, at one stage of your life, you were worshiping, uh, success. So you talk about it very frankly that you were after, uh, you know, um, rising in the world and getting to the top of the, you know, Yale Law School and then the legal world and all that stuff.
Um, and, and what you saw, it seems to me, is that was bad worship.
Mhm. That's right. No, that's exactly right. So, I, I don't know that this evangelical, um, you know, theologian you just mentioned, um, Paul Tillich, it sounds fascinating to me and sounds like something I, I should take a look at.
But, but no, I mean, so, so I get to this phase in my life, and I'm, you know, I've gotten into law school. I worship success.
And it's, it's not, I, I try to draw this distinction in some of the interviews, certainly in the book, where it, it's not that ambition is always bad, right? That's not, that's not the argument. But it's like, there are two kinds of ambition here. Um, there's the ambition to do something amazing or to do something transformative or to help a lot of people or to build a beautiful building. Like, you don't build, I mean, speak of Milan, if you've ever seen the Milan Cathedral, one of the beautiful buildings in the world. Ambitious people built this thing.
But there's a separate kind of ambition that I think is much more endemic in our, our society in 2026, again, especially among our leaders, which is like the desire to just get ahead for its own sake. You sort of have this sense of social rank, and you assign value based on where did people go to school, or how much money do they make, or what are their credentials? And that is, I think, very, very common among the set that I was running in. So, you know, I'm in my mid-20s. I'm at Yale Law School. And I just realized almost instinctively, the social currency is credential. People don't care about what you've achieved. They don't care about what you're going to achieve. They don't care about your family. This is a very weird thing to me because I grew up in a community where, like, the thing that people were most interested in you is how are your kids doing? How's your wife doing? How's your husband doing? And yet at Yale, it was who is going to get ahead in this game of life. And I found that very unsatisfying.
What I, you know, gathered from your book very strongly, and it's a standard bit of the spiritual tradition, is that makes you a complete slave of the opinion of others. What you were going for was not really something in itself. You were going for admiration.
Correct.
A Christ would call that the lust for honor.
Yes.
Right. The, the big four, he says, we seek in place of God are wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. Well, honor is that.
Yes.
But see, honor makes you a complete slave.
Because.
Exactly. I could be doing the greatest things, but the people, they don't recognize it. Or, hey, I got this big degree, and I got this big job, and it's big because people admire it.
Yeah.
But that is an empty spiritual space to be, and makes you a slave of other people.
That's exactly. And you care way too much about what they think. You allow what other people think to influence, again, not just what you do, but even the thoughts in your head. And this was another thing that I picked up when I was at Yale Law School is like, again, I, I assumed that there was this hyper-rational element to American elites. Yeah.
These, these are high IQ. These are high achieving. These are people who are people of the mind. They're not superstitious religious people like the ones that I discarded. And yet their way of thinking about the world is much more narrow and constrained for this very reason, because their opinions are so based on just what other people believe that it becomes derivative of the social set in which they run in. And this, you know, leads me to another, like, Catholic philosopher where, you know, René Girard talks about this idea that human beings are, look, we're naturally social.
Yeah.
And, and this can lead to certain virtues and certain vices. But one of the vices that it leads to is that we very often identify what we want based on what other people want.
Mimesis desire.
Mimesis desire. And that's exactly what was happening. It, it describes so perfectly the world that I saw around me.
Yeah. And then again, you start saying, well, okay, so I had this idea of what's right and what's wrong, that's become unsatisfying to me. And there are all of these people who happen to be, like, famous Catholics and famous Christians who seem to be identifying that there's like a fundamental weakness in this way of seeing the world. And again, that was, that was very powerful to me, and that kind of got me back on the right path.
Tell me more about Girard. You know, I had the chance to meet him toward the end of his career. He came to Mundelein Seminary to give a series of lectures.
Okay.
Marvelous person, great personality, and remarkable looking person, too.
Um, you discover him through Peter Thiel, and you call Thiel one of the smartest people you ever met.
Yes. I've met him a couple times, and he is indeed a, a very bright man.
Uh, I found with Girard, once you get it, you can't unget it. Once you see what he saw, it's like, oh my, that's everywhere.
Exactly. He's one of these, I think he'll be seen as kind of a father of the Church in 500 years, because the, the spiritual perception is so deep.
Um, and the mimetic thing is, I mean, all the advertising based upon it. Why do I want that product? Well, because someone else wants it, you know?
Right.
But then mimetic desire leads to mimetic rivalry.
Correct.
Now we're in conflict with each other, which also is everywhere in our society.
Correct.
Mimetic, uh, conflict leads to the scapegoating mechanism.
Sure. You say it there, and I, boy, have I sensed it. You know, you want to go to a Girardian playground? Go to social media.
That's right.
Of mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry, and scapegoating.
Yes.
The mobs that form online.
Correct.
I think he's the great prophet of our time.
No, I think that's very interesting. He is certainly the prophet of social media, because the thing about mimetic desire, again, this this idea that we identify what we want based on what other people want. And, and again, once you see it, like you said, it's very hard to unsee it. I mean, look, I, I have a nine-year-old, I have a six-year-old, I have a four-year-old.
To see it with children is unbelievable. Like my nine-year-old will pick up a toy that none of the kids has played with in six months, and instantly, all of them want that toy. You, again, it is such a powerful explanation of of human psychology. But here's the thing. In a normal society, pre-social media, right? This takes time, right? Like, like mimetic desire happens through normal social interactions. You see what somebody else is is focused on. You see what somebody else cares about.
But social media sort of taken this and supercharged it. It can spread like wildfire. And so you see what other people are talking about, what other people are thinking, what other people are desiring much more quickly, because the virality of social media puts it in front of you at such a quick speed. And so again, because it sets that desire aflame and and makes it spread so rapidly, it also makes the conflict side of it spread so rapidly. And how many times, I mean, you not even on on X or, you know, Twitter or whatever we're calling it these days, but if, if you go to like Facebook back in its early days, how many times would I see people that I knew and loved get into arguments on the internet where I, I would think to myself, this is not who you are. These are two really lovely human beings that are calling each other these terrible names on social media. Like, how did we even get here? You know?
Girard, and and your friend Peter Thiel, as well. And we'll talk, frankly, about the demonic element.
Yes.
The devil is two great names in the Bible, right? He's Satanas. He's the accuser. And he's the Diabolos, which means the scatterer.
Yes.
There they are.
Go to social media. Accusation and then division.
Yes.
No, but it's a, it's a playground for that. And I, I really think the Church has got to be involved, not just, you know, to inform people, but to name these dynamics that are going on. But you sensed them in your own, you know, rise, your own career. I want to stay for a second, too. The ambition thing is interesting to me because Aquinas talks about *magna nimitas*, which means big soul.
Yes.
He likes magnanimous people. To have a big soul means I want to accomplish something great for the Kingdom of God.
Yeah.
But see, the intake would be, hey, and you and I can both desire the same great goal. Let's say, so you're a politician, it's the common good.
Yes.
And like, hey, let's all get involved. We all want the common good. We're not looking at each other. We're looking together at a transcendent third. That's Aristotle, too. But see, that's the distinction between a healthy ambition and the one that's that becomes fussy and self-regarding.
Correct.
You know.
Yeah. And, and I think it can become even the desire. This is again, the social element to human beings. It's not always a vice. It's, it can very often lead to virtue, right?
But it has to be ordered in in the right way. And so, you know, if, if let's say you take two politicians who both are trying to achieve the common good,
Now, that can lead to them working together, them recognizing their respective strengths and weaknesses, and actually trying to sort of do that together, right?
That could also lead to, well, if we both want the same common good, and then we both, let's say, we both want the same office in order to get to that common good, then that leads to rivalry again, for rivalry's sake. And so I, I do think that one of the takeaways of sort of this, this throughline of Augustine to, um, to Girard is that you constantly have to be on guard.
And recognize that something that is good in you can be ordered to something very positive, but can also be distorted. And this is, you know, you talk about Satan, like, I, I think of, of, you know, I forget who has this quote, but the devil's greatest trick is to convince people that he didn't exist. There is this thing where it's like a very, very good thing and pointed in the right direction. If you just get a little off pace, it can become quite malicious very quickly.
It can turn like that. It's a subtle thing, which is why you need prayer and spiritual direction a lot in your life, because you can be going this path. Oh, I'm on the magnanimous path. I'm just seeking.
No, but you actually took a turn a while ago. But, and the, the signs of it, though, look at in Galatians, look at the fruits of the of the flesh. You know, Paul calls some, or look at at mimetic rivalry breaking out. Then, you know, you've deviated from the right path.
That's right.
But, to my mind, spiritually speaking, that's the great thing in this book that people can really get. It applies to anybody, no matter what field you're in. How are you desiring? What's the nature of your desire? And, and you tell a moving story about your own, you know, conversion.
Um, hey, tell me a bit more, because I was really interested in the stuff on Catholic social teaching on the economy.
Sure.
Um, *Rerum Novarum*, the great, you know, fundamental text of the Catholic social teaching tradition, Leo XIII, late 19th century, a text you read even in your atheist period and you found
Powerful and and naming dynamics in the political order better than many people were left center and right.
That's right.
Tell me, what was it exactly that that grabbed you about that text?
Well, there are a few things. I mean, one is, I, I was just, I was compelled by the fact that it was trying to strike a balance. Very industrializing, communism, fascism, all these things rising up. And yet, even though that, you know, like Leo XIII doesn't talk about the fascist movement, 70 years later, 60 years later, you can kind of see he's very worried about the tumult, and he's very worried that if we don't strike the right balance between human dignity and prosperity, between workers and capital owners, that that it's going to inevitably lead to this conflict. So that's, that's, that's one thing that I found profounding profound about it is just the recognition that the balance really mattered. The other thing that I think is very interesting, and I actually was, was sort of thinking about *Rerum Novarum* in the speech that I gave on July 4th. There's this idea that in, in Marx, that the classes have to inevitably, inevitably be in conflict against each other.
And then I think that there's this idea in more traditional libertarian or free market thinking that, you know, there, there's sort of never any real conflict. It's, and to the extent that it is, it's all a violation of individual rights. Whereas I think what *Rerum Novarum* is saying is that yes, conflict can sometimes be an inevitable part of these social changes, but the way to solve the conflict is by cooperating between these different sort of segments of society. And what a statesman should be doing, what somebody who's focused on the common good should be doing, is not pretending that like there isn't a problem if you have destitution on the one hand and extreme wealth on the other.
But also not pretend that the solution to that is conflict. The powerlessness versus the powerful, and then the powerless sometimes win, and the powerful sometimes win. There, there can be a real compromise. And what, you know, in some ways, the idea of a, of a labor union, you know, there's sort of the classical Marxist understanding of a labor union, which is conflict between the owners and the workers.
But in the Catholic view, it, it's actually not conflict. It's, this is an institution that is meant to give the workers some say, certainly some bargaining power, some anchoring, and there can be a more cooperative arrangement from there. Doesn't always have to be a zero-sum battle of one against the other. And I, I, I try to think about that a lot is how, how can we, how can we gear certain policy outcomes in a way that doesn't ignore the problems that come with destitution, but tries to solve it through cooperation as opposed to conflict.
Yeah. I think it's the central thing, and, you know, we bishops wrestle with a lot because we're trying to teach the Catholic social doctrine. And of course, it famously doesn't fit within the left-right
Correct.
You know, language of of our political parties. And the way you put it there is really good, because *Rerum Novarum* stands
Firmly athwart socialism. It offers like five strong arguments why we don't like socialist or communist arrangements. On the other hand, you have a line like this from Leo XIII: "Once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met in your own life, everything else you own belongs to the poor."
Yes.
Now, that's that's classical Thomas Aquinas. That's the universal destination of goods. Meaning,
This world belongs to God, really. We're all stewards of it. And so once, you know, necessity and propriety, now those can be defined broadly.
But once that's been met in your life, the rest of your property belongs to the poor.
Yeah.
And I've been saying that to Catholics for years. Like, that's a deeply challenging teaching. It's extremely challenging.
Just as the opposition to forms of socialism is a deeply challenging teaching. And Catholic doctrine is somewhere in that space.
Yes.
Not popular all the time. That's why, you know, we get caught in the crossfire a lot.
No. No. I, I would say like, not popular most of the time. And even in my own life, and I, I think about this all the time with our own economic policies in the administration, is you're trying to strike that balance between promoting prosperity, but also promoting the dignity of the poor, the dignity of workers. It, it, it is again, it's a hard balance to strike. I'm not saying that it's easy. But again, I, I do think at its best, what Catholic social teaching is doing is sort of asking very difficult questions and posing very difficult challenges to people like me. And I, I like one of the, the, the basic axioms or the basic principles that I try to apply when I think about this stuff is, to the extent that I get really comfortable that a thing that we're doing fits within Catholic teaching, I, that's the thing that I should resist, because it's not easy. It's, it's demanding a lot of both public officials, but also of all of us. And we, you know, we talk about this, of course, Bishop, with, um, with, with the immigration question, right?
And I, I think again, there, there is this demand that you treat people with dignity. There's also an acceptance, maybe even endorsement of the fact that nations are allowed to control their borders. How do you balance these things when controlling your borders inevitably leads to law enforcement operations that sometimes can, uh, can create, can create issues? That's the balance that we, we fundamentally have to strike. And I think to the extent that we ever feel comfortable, that's probably a sign that we should get out of the comfort zone.
Yeah. And, you know, it's, we can stay at the high level of abstraction, and, and we tend to agree at that level. When you get down to cases,
Okay, in this particular case.
Because I bring that up at our Bishop's conference. I mean, we're always very strong on, you know, Jesus welcoming the stranger and being open to the immigrant. And, you know, all of us, look, in my own diocese, we have a lot of folks from Honduras and Guatemala come to work in the port processing plants in my diocese. So, we all face the pastoral challenge of, you know, people coming to our country and, and being taken care of and so on. But then, yes, as you say, the, the right of a country to defend its borders, to enforce its immigration laws, and that, see, what I would say is, it's not my job as a bishop to work out the details of that particular policy. That's your job. That's a job of people who really know what's what's obtaining on the ground and so on.
Yeah.
And that's an ongoing problem. That's an ongoing issue. How do we bring these to bear? I think my job as a bishop is to bring the great principles to bear and make sure that they're, they're taught publicly and so on. But then it's the job of Catholic politicians, I would say, to now apply these in the particular case.
That's right. And that, that, that's how I think of it, too. And I think that for that to happen the right way, for you to play your role correctly, and for me to play my role correctly, it just requires a constant ongoing dialogue, because as you get into the nitty-gritty of applying these principles in the real world, you're not always going to do it perfectly. There are going to be ways in which the pastoral duties, sort of, maybe we're not taking proper account of it.
Yeah.
So I, I, I think at its best, again, there is going to be an inherent, sort of, there's going to be a relationship where the clergy are constantly sort of trying to engage on these issues in a positive way, and then we're constantly trying to apply these principles in the best way and the most consistent way. And, and that will, you know, as we've seen sometimes with, uh, the, the Vatican and, and our own immigration policies, that sometimes does lead to conflict. But, you know, one of the things I've, I've tried to drive home, just over the last, you know, few months where I've been talking a lot about this, and there's been a lot of discussion about, you know, the Catholic clergy disagreeing with the Trump administration on this or that issue, is I, I try to say, you know what, like, that's actually okay, because that dialogue is sort of how the clergy does its job, and it's how we sort of respond.
And, and that's not a bad thing to me. Like, the, there's this idea, and it's again, it's because of our, like, hyper-mimetic political media, but like, every time the Pope says something mildly critical of a Trump administration policy, it's like, oh, the Trump hat, the, the Pope hates the Trump administration.
Well, you know, actually, no. Maybe the Pope is trying to provide the kind of moral teaching that is inherently part of his job, and then we have to take that and try to apply it, which is part of our job.
And conversation is essential to, and not just,
Kind of exchanging invective at a high level of abstraction, because at the high level of abstraction, we tend to agree with each other.
Yes.
You know, openness to the stranger.
Yes.
A right to defend the border.
That's right.
Now, let's get down to cases. But to do that, you have to be in steady conversation.
Exactly. Which is why I kind of, you know, not to take this, obviously, you ask whatever questions you want to, Father, but I always found the conservative reaction to Pope Francis. I say this as a very conservative Catholic. I take the teachings of the Church very seriously. I'm obviously very politically conservative. But I always kind of liked that Pope Francis would just throw these bombs out there in the media because it would force a conversation. Now, sometimes, yeah, he would say things that I would say, wait a second, is that actually consistent or is that correct? But it forced a dialogue, and he was kind of a genius at that.
Stay, stay with Francis for a minute, because I think that document late in his papacy called *Dignitas Infinita*. Yeah. Is one of the best summaries of Catholic social teaching in its breadth and its variety.
Sure.
So all, you know, left-wing people, yeah, love this, this, and that. Right-wing people love this, this, this, and that. All the above.
And, uh, that was a good challenge, you know, to the political conversation.
That's right.
Um, no, Francis was, was, uh, another good example is that universal destination of goods. So in another one of his later documents, he talks about a nation's obligation to poor nations.
So again, once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, the rest of what you own belongs to the poor. That applies personally, but also at the national level.
Well, he was being criticized by a lot of right-wing Catholics as a Marxist. I hate Marxism, but I wrote frequently saying, "No, that's not Marx. That's Thomas Aquinas." What he's saying there.
So, that's a good example of how to shake up that conversation in a good way.
That's right.
And we should keep having it.
Yes.
That's what bugs me, in some way. We, we don't have it, uh, at the level we should.
Well, and that's again, back to the point of the, the devil being a deceiver, is one way to try to turn people's minds off of very traditional, and I think ultimately true, Christian teaching.
Yeah.
Is to name it as something else. Again, to the right, to your point, Catholics have very serious theological problems with Marx. Like, we are not Marx, Marxists.
But there are ideas that are very not Marxist, but are also extremely Christian about the universal destination of goods that we have to contend with. And, and again, like, I, I talk about this a little bit in the book. I'm not saying I have all the answers. I'm not saying I, I know how to apply all these principles in the perfect way. There's always this kind of balance between, you know, promoting economic growth, but then ensuring that everybody has their sort of, you know, a good, a good opportunity to get their piece of the pie, so to speak. But I, I, I find this just one of the things that I liked, and one of the things that more importantly spoke to some deep part of me about the Catholic social teaching, is this idea that Jesus Christ does not confine himself to little spheres of your life.
That if it's true, it has to be true everywhere.
And he's the Lord of your life, the whole of your life.
Exactly. And he, and he, yes, like Jesus really cares about how you treat your wife, and he really cares about how you treat your kids, but he also cares about everything else too. And I, I do think that this is, you know, one of the frustrations I had growing up as a, again, as a young conservative Christian, is this, this idea that it sometimes felt like whenever Christians engaged in politics, we were very comfortable engaging with this or that social or cultural issue,
But, but not anything else.
Mhm.
And I actually think there's there's an opportunity for us to rediscover a more fully Christian politics that says that actually Jesus has opinions about all these things. And, and in fact, if you don't get all of it right, you risk getting the most important parts wrong. You can't just confine your faith to these narrow little slices of society or of culture or of your own life. It's got to be true for the whole thing.
Remember C.S. Lewis's line about, "Most of us, if we invite Jesus in, it's to the front parlor of the house for an hour a week, and then please go away." Yes. But he wants to be lord of the living room, and the dining room, and the bedroom, and the kitchen, and the basement, and the pool house.
He wants to be lord of the whole operation. And that includes the, our economic and political lives. We can't bracket those. That's not spiritual stuff. Of course it is. Everything.
Yeah. No. And, and I, I think I gave into this again more in my, sort of, anti-Christian age. But there was a part of me that wanted to say, God should be about God and religion.
Churches should be about churches. Leave the politics to the politicians.
But, but again, I, if you really believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and you believe all the truths that flow from that, to your point, he actually has a lot to say about all parts of your life.
Right. And see, I think the answer is people like yourself and others that I've met, for example, in the Trump administration, a lot of Catholics.
Yeah.
Good. I Catholics in positions of high influence who understand the political, economic, social, all the details. I don't understand all that. That's not my bailiwick. That's your bailiwick.
But to bring your Catholic formation and sensibility into that work is a way to do it. You know, I love the chapter in your book on the dismal science, on economics, because it reminded me very much of my training not far from here at Catholic U when I was a kid, many years ago.
Yeah.
And we had great professors of philosophy who would say, we get it today completely backwards. In in the classical world, let's say Plato, Aristotle.
The point of politics was to make us virtuous. It was to make us good.
Yes.
To seek the common good, to create the right society.
Economics, right? Literally, the law of the household was a private matter. That's, it was a household affair, right?
And we reversed it, where now they, almost everything in politics is about economics. That's our main preoccupation, economics. And the moral order? Oh, that's private.
That's right.
Well, that stayed in my mind ever since. That's a really insightful thing. And you were catching that, I think, uh, as you look at how we measure the value of life, and how much of political discourse is about GDP, and it's read through an economic lens almost exclusively.
That's right.
And how problematic that is. Talk about that a little bit.
Yeah. And [snorts] and it's not to say that, you know, growth doesn't matter. If you don't have growth, if you don't have prosperity, then obviously a lot of people will suffer. But, you know, a friend of mine made this observation. He called it economic piety, which, you know, he was, he was, it's a play on words, P-I-E-T-Y. Okay.
Which this idea is that we, we have become so obsessed with the economic measurements, that that's how we judge ourselves. That's how we judge our success as policymakers. And, and like, fundamentally, let's just take, like, a, a very simple example. When a, you know, let's say you have a young married couple, both are in the labor force. Okay. Let's say Mom gets pregnant, they have their first child. And like, a majority of American women, right, if you actually look at the data, what most American young moms say that they want is that they want to spend a little bit more time with their kids when the kids are young, but they also want to have access to their career. Okay. Economically, right, if you're purely measuring it by the economic statistics, the very best thing is for that young mom to literally go back to work the day after she has the baby. So, if, and this is like, obviously it's an absurd argument that's meant to illustrate something, which is that if you obsess purely on what you're measuring economically, then you can come to all these like, very distorted conclusions. And you will sometimes hear, as as absurd as that example is, obviously we want, you know, even even the moms who want to go right back to their careers need a couple of weeks just to recover from, obviously [clears throat], the stress of delivering a baby.
But sometimes, you know, you will hear politicians on the other side say things like, well, you know, abortion is is really good because if you didn't have abortion, then you'd have way too many women who weren't able to join the workforce. It's like, wait, wait, wait a second. I, if, if that's our argument here, our argument is that it's good because it allows people to join the workforce, then we have made an idol out of the American corporation. We've made an idol out of economic growth. And again, that is what I think is a deeply anti-Christian idea, because the economy exists to serve the human person. We don't order our society so that we have a line on a chart go up. And if you do, then it leads to a lot of absurd outcomes.
And the market can make us good. Think of like a Michael Novak, you know, argument that there are virtues associated with participation in the market.
Think of John Paul II saying the whole purpose of regulating the market is not to eliminate it, is to invite more people into it and make it more entrepreneurial and make it more, you know, of a growth-producing reality. To me, that's a good place to get. It avoids the easy, you know, bifurcation.
Of course. Yeah. And, and it can also lead, I, I think if you're obsessed again with the short-term economic numbers, it can lead to a lot of short-term thinking. Like, one of the criticisms that I have of the, the 20th century economy, and I, and I think it actually previewed the rise of Donald Trump and his ascension within Republican politics, is that we didn't think enough about long-term investment.
And, you know, oh, let's, let's ship the factory to Mexico or to China. Now, if you measure it by the economic statistics, shareholder price goes up by 2.2%, 2%, and, you know, maybe GDP goes up by .1%, and that actually was a rational decision. But then all of a sudden, after 25 years of that, you look and you realize you've atrophied the skills of your workers, you've atrophied your industrial base, you've made yourself less self-sufficient as a nation. And so again, even by its purely economic logic, this short-term financial thinking can lead to some very bad outcomes.
Let's think of that for a second. Uh, I'm intrigued by how the two parties, the two great parties in our country have changed a lot in the last maybe 25 years.
Sure.
Um, how did Trump most change the party of, let's say, Ronald Reagan? The first election I was able to vote in was Reagan, 1980. Yeah, I was 20.
And, um, you know, the people that trained me were very much shaped by JFK and the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Corps and all.
My generation, it was Watergate. It was the end of the Vietnam War. It was the Carter malaise, etc. For our generation, my generation, Reagan comes along as this great, you know, sunny, optimistic figure that does bring the country back to greater economic health and so on. How is, how has the party changed from, let's say, Ronald Reagan, 1980 to to now? What's the biggest change? You know, Republican party.
There's a lot, there's a lot there, but I, I do think the single biggest change is in the way that President Trump thinks about the economic development of the country versus versus President Reagan. And again, I think we're all in some ways subjects of our time. I don't mean this as a, a great criticism of Ronald Reagan, but I, I do think that this idea that globalization in the economy was just an inevitable law that was going to march along, and to the extent that your economic policy mattered, you should be facilitating it rather than pushing back against it. And I think what President Trump has brought is a recognition, obviously I agree with this, a recognition that there is a national and community element to economics that, like, you know, if you look at it again, purely by the economic numbers, it doesn't matter whether your antibiotics are manufactured in China or whether they're manufactured in Milwaukee or Indianapolis. But if you look at it from the perspective of what actually makes nations strong, of course, you have to manufacture antibiotics closer to home, because if, God forbid, there was some conflict, or even just a COVID-like supply chain disruption, you don't want to wake up in a country, as we did in late 2020, where our doctors didn't have enough hospital gowns and hospital masks because of the supply disruptions.
So I, I, I think there's just this recognition that, you know, yeah, you can buy and sell with other countries, you can trade with other countries, but you have to have some native economic self-sufficiency. And, and that is a big difference. If you go back to the early Reagan era, if you look at what Milton Friedman was writing about economic policy at the time, there are a lot of things where he would say, you know, particularly, like, let's say, tariffs to protect your pharmaceutical industry. Milton Friedman would say that's insane.
Right?
I think that Donald Trump clearly had the better of the argument then. I don't know how you even, again, I'm biased, but now the president saying, of course, we have to protect our pharmaceutical industry, our steel industry. That has now, I think, become almost conventional wisdom to the point where, you know, one one way of measuring success politically is at what point does a given idea become broadly accepted, and then it's just a question of how to accomplish it. So if you go back to, you know, one of Reagan's great successes, Bill Clinton famously said the era of big government is over, right? He had sort of won that argument to the point where even the Democrats were mirroring his talking points. If you look today in 2026, Democrats may disagree about how we're doing it, but everybody pretty much agrees we have to bring more of our industry back to the United States of America. We have to be more self-sufficient.
It's, you mentioned Milton Friedman. I'm dating myself, but I remember this interview with, um, Phil Donahue. The younger people don't remember Phil, but he was, you know, this talk show host had serious people on, and Milton Friedman was an older man at the time and treated Donahue like a bright but not very well-read, you know, sophomore, and was laying out, you know, the fundamentals of the very laissez-faire, you know, hands-off economic approach.
And it's an entertaining interview, but it strikes me, he was, that's not Catholic social teaching. We believe in the market. We do. We don't like socialism. We don't like, we believe in the market, but a market regulated in a morally alert manner. Something like that. And I think that's what you're, you're gesturing toward there.
That's right.
Tell me, I asked the same question to, uh, Ruy. I had him on my show. I, I talked to Tom Suozzi about this.
You know, I'm from Chicago originally. I'm an Irish Catholic, which meant Democrat. My family was involved in Democratic politics in Chicago.
Roie Wade had a lot to do with, uh, Catholics getting uneasy with the Democratic Party.
But [laughter] what has happened like the last about 10 years where the Democratic Party today, it seems to me, is one that my father would not even recognize.
Sure.
Give me, what's your read? What happened to, sort of, to my, in my judgment, sort of radicalize the party?
Yeah. So, I think a few things have happened. First of all, I do think that the, the most fundamental change is religious. And in, in, you know, my, my grandparents were classic blue-dog Democrats. My grandfather was a Union steel worker. This is the man who raised me.
Scoop Jackson type Democrat.
Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, voted for Reagan in '84, and otherwise never voted for Republican ever in his life. Right.
So, what, what happened though is if you go back to that, that Democratic party in the 1980s,
And I actually talk about this, I think, some in the book, that, you know, religious identification, religious attendance, both Republicans and Democrats were equally Christian. Yeah. They may have went to different churches, and obviously, you know, Jewish Americans at the time were more in the in the Democratic party and the Republican party, but there, there's still just this sense of, we're like a broadly speaking, ecumenical, God-fearing country. You see that in both the Democrat and the Republican parties. I, I think that what has happened is that religion itself has become very disfavored among Democratic elites in, in some ways for the reasons that I talk about in the book. And I, and I think one of the really troubling trends in Democratic politics, and I always ask this question when I think about who is a really compelling Democratic politician on the other side. I always ask myself, who are the black candidates who came out of the black church?
Because that is such a core anchor of the the Democratic
party in this country. And if you look today, like go to go to the US Congress and ask yourself what Democrats under 50 came out of the black church, the answer may be none.
You won't find any. The answer may be none. So, so I I I I do think that what has happened is that, you know, Christianity has always had this moderating influence on politics and unfortunately the Democrats have become less and less comfortable with any sort of religious role in politics and I think that's again as Jester said that doesn't mean they believe in nothing that believes they believe in anything and I think you see that very much in today's modern Democrats.
Yeah. I mean look at somebody like like Martin Luther King. Um, so the civil rights movement is not just participated in by religious people. It was led by religious people.
Correct. Explicitly gospel-based people. Uh, King gives the great speech on the steps of Lincoln Memorial and effortlessly weaves together American themes and biblical faith.
Absolutely. Letter for the Birmingham City Jail. Same thing. Weaves together American civil rights activism and Thomas Aquinas.
Like a super theological letter from Birmingham jail is a super theological argument. People underappreciate that. And I, you know, I gave a talk at the 250th thing on the the mall and I made that point because I was saying just as you know Jefferson uh these rights come from the creator and we're created equal and so on that that's what King saw as well that the American ideal is grounded in a finely biblical ideal. It's not theocracy. It's not the imposition of religion, but it's the information of the political by the religious. And yeah, I I would agree with you there that that's been lost in a lot of our political discourse and convictions.
That's right. Um, tell me a little bit about I have a quote here from you uh when you went to the um Munich Security Conference.
It's a really interesting gathering of some of the leading lights in politics, economics, the military too, I suppose.
Here's your quote. It was Western Christian civilization and the values particular to it. The concept of natural rights including freedom of speech, a sense of duty to one's neighbors and obligation of the strong to protect the weak. Meaning that's what that undergirded the convictions.
Correct. And that's even that's been lost.
That's right. Yeah. So, so this is a very formative thing for me. So, I just become a United States senator.
Yeah. I was, you know, young. I was sort of up and coming and I go to the security conference which really is it's the defense conference in the world especially for the United States and its allies. And of course, you know, the Ukraine conflict is sort of top of mind there in Munich, but there are a lot of other sort of bigger and deeper questions like what is the Western Alliance stand for? And what I realized is there is an extraordinary Christian foundation to the entire Western security alliance. like the person who founded the Munich Security Conference was one of the Christians who was involved in the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and he was one of the few who survived.
But then you you actually look at, you know, that that early postwar western alliance. Look at Eisenhower, some of the things that he said. I mean, he religious be called a theocrat if you gave anything like Eisenhower's speeches today.
Or Konrad Adenauer on the German side, right? Absolutely. And and and but all of these western leaders, they thought that they were creating something very influenced founded on a Christian concept. And now and what I saw in Munich was was a certain sense of tragedy or sorrow. There was a nostalgia for that era. Like the Western Alliance in 1950 was so strong and everybody felt and this is I guess in 2023. Well, now it's so weak. And I I I was kind of struck by the fact that people weren't asking the question, well, what had really changed about the West from 1955 to 2023?
It's obvious what changed. And it's obvious, right? It's it's that our societies kind of lost that binding moral vision, that unifying moral vision, and they were trying to recapture all of the good things out of it without the underlying foundation. and they're and they're and they're they're almost, you know, there was something because I went into this conference and I remember I was kind of angry at them. I felt they were naive. I felt like they were dumb. I felt like they weren't really understanding what was really going on in the world. And I came out actually with this deep sense of respect but also sorrow because they're nostalgic for a world that doesn't exist anymore, but they can't quite bring themselves to get it back.
Well, you know, it's that Will Herberg, the cut flowers theory, you know, that we cut flowers, you put them in a vase, they'll look fine for a while, but then they'll die in short order. They're cut off from their base. Well, the same thing with the great moral values and political values that that inform people like Eisenhower and Adenauer and that generation. They were rooted in the ground of Christian faith.
Correct. Now, cut them out. Oh, human rights and the freedom and the individual and put them in the in the water. Yeah, they look good for a while, but they are going to fade.
Yes. And that's what you noticed, huh?
That's exactly right. You know, and my little sermon on that point, and I it's self-reproachful here, is I think the church has lost their nerve. The church that I came of age in, so not because of Vatican II, but after Vatican II was a hand-wringing church. It was an apologetic church. It was unsure of itself.
But that the church of the era you're invoking, that's a time of also like a Reinhold Niebuhr, right? The theologian, a Paul Tillich comes to mind, too. Thomas Merton, Fulton Sheen, of course, Edify him soon. But these sort of confident Christian voices that were drawing upon the Bible and Augustine and Aquinas, the great people, they were applying it to the political conversation in a robust way. The church I came of age in was this hand-wringing. I'm not sure we're here to listen to the culture. Uh I'm not I'm not here to impose upon you.
That was a disaster. I agree. It seems to me and what you're saying and I really agree with it. Both are stronger when right both religion and politics are stronger when they're in a robust confident dialogue with each other.
Uh and religion rightfully claims its place as as the ground the fertile ground out of which these values emerge. Augustine would have held that. Aquinas would have held that. Thomas Jefferson held it in his own enlightenment you know way. Uh Martin Luther King clearly held it, right? That's that would be my uh diagnosis. End of sermon on that.
No, I look I I totally agree. And this is, you know, again, I think this scares certain non-religious people because they assume, okay, you know, Senator JD Vance, when I was a senator, I'm going to pick up the the phone and call Bishop Barron to tell me how to vote on a particular piece of legislation. No, no, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is a more morally and spiritually assertive church. and the country just it needs it. And this is there are all these reasons why I wrote this book. I think the main reason I wrote this book is because I was trying to sort of puzzle through as a parent. Why does religion take for some kids and not for others? Well, why not start with me? Because I I I myself was raised in a religious family and then fell away from it and came back. But I I do think there is an implied message to the church itself and this is why I talk so much about Francis is like don't be so afraid to speak the truth of the gospel. The country actually needs it. And I and I, you know, I I talk about this a little bit, but okay, one of the craziest experiences I've had since being vice president is I went to do a TPUSA event.
And I was talking backstage to the kids.
And you I hate to say that, but they are kids to me, right? I'm 41 years old. They're all in their their late teens, early 20s to me. Yeah, that's right. [laughter] Um, but you know, I I just like was hanging out for a little while and talking to him and and and one just sort of crazy throughout, you know, she was like, you know, I think social media and AI is totally changing dating. And I was like, oh, really? Well, tell tell me more about that. And, you know, I live in a bubble. I'm surrounded by secret service agents. So, like whenever I like get in front of a crowd and I'm actually able to have a conversation, it's almost like, you know, a thirsty man gets to a well. I just like tell me all about this because it's so fascinating to me.
And she was explaining that her and her friends were like engaged in in text conversations with with boys that they were seeing was to feed the conversation into ChatGPT [laughter] and then to have ChatGPT spit out.
Like serum berserk, right?
And I'm like, whoa, this is this is crazy. And then and then I I realized actually talking to these these kids like you cuz some of them were, you know, they were actually close to getting married, some of them were dating, some of them were just like very very down on and it was almost like an itch had been scratched cuz all of them just all of a sudden were telling me what what a bad situation there was in the dating culture. And I realized that, you know, the the the technology that actually brings man and woman together successfully is the church.
Yeah. And yet, so you have young people who are using ChatGPT and they don't want to. And meanwhile, you've got a church that actually is really good on this stuff and is an amazing institution to bring young men and women together and yet still feels to me a little bit like what you talked about sensitive or almost there's a lack of self-confidence that I see in the church. But the country needs a more assertive church, I think, to get back on track.
Yes. You know, Pope Benedict said that the what people want out of a priest. He was saying it's not, you know, social worker, it's not psychologist, someone to hold your hand, they want a master in the spiritual life.
Yes. I thought right now of course who is his great hero Augustine. And what young people, anybody, but especially young people want, they want a guide. Doesn't mean someone imposing himself and all that, you know, proselytizing, not that, but someone that with confidence can say like what we talked about the outset of this conversation, there are certain dynamics in the spiritual life that the great masters have known forever and things that are making us very unhappy. The church has a lot to say about that.
Yes. Here is why. You know, um, and so yeah, an assertive church in that good sense. Absolutely. I think is what we want.
That's right. Hey, tell me a little bit. I was very intrigued by, you know, famously you're one of the last people to see Pope Francis alive.
Yeah. Uh and he asked to see you and you're very moved by that. And here was a very frail man literally about to die had the conversation with you. But then afterwards you sat down I think it was Cardinal Parolin and some of the other, you know, foreign policy people and and you just felt that they didn't get beyond I think as you put it, trite platitudes.
Yeah. It kind of speaks to our earlier part of the conversation but say a little bit more about that is what what was dysfunctional in that conversation.
Yeah. So and I should say it's um the Archbishop there who's who's from uh I think he's from Ireland, Gallagher. Yeah. So, you know, he and and Cardinal Parolin, I I've spent a fair amount of time with them over the past year and a half. I have a lot of respect for them, but I also think that there was in in the first meeting that I ever had with them, I I found Cardinal Parolin particularly fascinating, especially when it's just you and him one-on-one.
But in this formal diplomatic setting, you're in this beautiful castle at the Vatican and you're in this amazing room. It just felt like they were they didn't want to move past the diplomatic platitudes.
And, you know, they they would say, well, of course, a country has a right to control its borders, but, you know, we would really prefer that you show more respect for the dignity of the migrant. And it's like, okay, Father.
Which seems everyone of goodwill would agree with that.
Exactly. Like Father, I don't disagree with that. Yeah. But like let's talk. What what do you actually mean here? Or here's here's my my basic summary of that is is again, I I think that there is an impulse within the church that is very comfortable in dealing with the highest level of generality because then it's not challenging to anybody. But I think what the country actually needs, what society, what the entire world actually needs, again, is not there's like the nitty-gritty. We we don't need the Pope to be the president or a king, but we I think need more than the level of generality that we currently see coming out of of the clergy today. And that's of course a difficult balance to strike. You know, you get sometimes too close to the details, sometimes too general, but I feel very strongly that right now the current hierarchy is way too uncomfortable dealing with anything other than abstraction. And that has that just really has to change. And like I, you know, I'm the vice president of the United States encouraging them to be more active even though I know it will mean they sometimes are going to be more critical of the things that I do or the things the conversation is very important. And I I think, you know, Pope Leo obviously is is very new in his his pontificate. He's a very young man. Obviously, he understands American culture better than any any um pope in history. I really hope that he he actually changes this because I I think that he has he's clearly a brilliant guy. He's clearly a very holy man.
Augustinian.
He's an Augustinian. And I I think that at its best, he could make the church engage with the world in a much more direct way. And I, you know, we'll we'll see. I I think you see signs of that happening. I thought the AI encyclical was very, very good. But I I think that is what the world actually needs out of the church in this moment. It is in a period of crisis. And the church in some ways is in a technological age. It's the most ancient technology that's ever existed.
And the reason it survived this long is because it actually works.
Yeah. Let me in the remaining minutes uh shift back into maybe a more personal.
Sure. How do you pray? What's your prayer life like?
Yeah. Well, I'm trying to get better on this. This is one of these things where you get out of practice on it and it's hard to fully get back into practice.
But you got to take the time. That Thomas Merton, someone asked him, "What's the one thing I can do to improve my prayer life?" And Merton said, "Take the time."
Yes. That's That's.
Was the number one recommendation.
That's right. So what I I I normally will do and and this is you know a bit of practice is in the morning I will try to do a decade of the rosary and then before I go to bed as well and that's just kind of you know do the Our Father do the Glory Be do the Hail Mary um you know of course you know pray with the kids before dinner time.
But the thing that I'm I'm trying to do a little bit more is to get is to get the kids into it as well so to say prayers before bedtime, but probably 80% of the time I I fail on that because either bedtime is too chaotic or because I'm at the White House. So there's the thing I I one of the things that I lost from going from my Christian upbringing to becoming an atheist is I just got out of practice with it. Yeah. And I found actually one of the things that really attracted me to Catholicism is that when I got back into prayer, it's like I didn't have a natural voice for prayer anymore. And it's hard to describe, but it's like when I was 17 and I would get on my knees and clasp my hands together, I would know what to say.
When I was 28, I didn't know what to say anymore. But there are all these prayers. Yeah. That you don't, you know, you just doing it, getting into the practice of it. And this is one of the things that I always encourage people to do is.
You don't have to be perfect. You don't have to say you don't have to have this like super eloquent prayer. Sometimes just doing it is the most important thing. And so that's what I try to do at least once in the morning and once at night.
Practice your way into it, right? So take the time but also have a practice. Um I also I think it's great to carry some symbol of faith around with you. So someone like you, I mean who facing every day tough decisions, important decisions affecting the lives of millions of people literally around the world.
Sure. Um that you have a rosary in your pocket or you have a a crucifix or you've got an icon or something that you carry with you.
Yeah. That you can touch with your hand.
That's a good idea. Lord, help me.
Yeah. You're you're tempted or you're you're torn. What do I do? How Lord, help me with this. You know, something as simple as that. Yeah. the, you know, the.
Jesus, I trust in you is sort of I I probably say that a dozen times.
Which is terrific. And the Jesus prayer is thinking of, you know, Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, repeated over and over again. And you get a little thing called the chaplet, a little rope of of um knots, you know.
And carry that in your pocket.
Okay. I think that sort of thing that really concretizes it. Having the kids too learning the ways of prayer, that's great because you know, kids, you got to discipline. Say just do it. That's right. I don't care if you just do it. But then you can participate in that too and say, "Okay, I'm going to I'm going to kneel down with you." I I'm with C.S. Lewis there too that you know the body has so much to do with prayer and that's a very Catholic thing. It's not just a platonic exercise of I'm going to flee from the body up to God. No, God is incarnate and and so prayer is something I do. So that kneeling like folding your hand or as a Catholic I was even even holding the rosary can put me in an attitude of prayer because it's an embodied thing.
Sure. You know. Sure. But I think for someone like you as a Catholic in very high office and very important influence that right worship, you know, that you're ordered to God over and over again is uh is super important.
Yeah. You know. Yeah. No, that's that's absolutely right. And and I I just want to be, you know, the one piece of advice I'd give is you don't have to be perfect at it.
Right? Like I there are just all of these ways in which, you know, it's 8:15 and I'm like, "All right, I'm going to get home and make the kids pray before bed and then I get home and, you know, it's like one we're trying to get the pull-up on and the other is, you know, arguing about brushing their teeth and then it just doesn't happen." What what I try to do is is like just try just do as much as you can. And one thing that I again the devil is a deceiver. One thing that was definitely true when I was like, you know, first getting back into the faith was this idea that, you know, this should be easier than it is, right? This should come more naturally. If God's actually speaking to me, then why why does this require so much like practice? And you know that that I think is the exact wrong way to think about it. You know sometime the reason it requires so much practice is because you know we are fallen creatures.
Yeah. We're fallen and the way that we get back to that good place is through the practices heaven will do. Yes. But we're in this fallen state where our our minds and souls and bodies are off-kilter. And so but prayer is this conscious effort to say okay I'm going to I'm trying to get back online here.
I maybe we can end with this. You know, um, Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, someone was asking him about prayer and he said, and they thought, you know, I don't know how to pray. He said, the minute you say to God,
I don't know how to pray,
you're praying.
Yeah. That's a great. That's always helped me, you know, like, okay, that's all you need to do is take the time.
Even to say, Lord, I'm lost. I I don't know. That's Thomas Merton's famous prayer begins, "My Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going." That's the opening line. you're already praying, you know, but I think for someone like you to to carry that symbol of the faith around maybe and to make prayer just a great idea a touchstone, you know, of your life.
Well, with that, I think, Mr. Vice President, we'll bring it to a close, but thank you for taking the time out of your extremely important and busy schedule to talk to me today.
Thank you. God bless you.
God bless you. Thank you.
All right. [music]