When JD Vance met Pope Leo XIV on May 18, he didn’t kiss the Fisherman’s Ring that had been placed on the new Pope’s right ring finger just hours earlier.
Not because Vance, as a Catholic, didn’t want to make the traditional gesture of reverence for the Petrine office. But because Vance, as vice president of the United States, felt like he shouldn’t.
“Some of the protocols about how I respond to the Holy Father were much different than how I might respond to the Holy Father, or how you might respond to the Holy Father, purely in your capacity as a citizen,” Vance told the Catholic journalist Ross Douthat, during a lengthy podcast interview released May 21 but conducted while both were in Rome for Pope Leo’s inaugural Mass. “So, no sign of disrespect, but it’s important to observe the protocols of the country that I love and that I’m representing and that I serve as vice president of — the United States.”
The insight was one of several that Vance shared during the hour-long conversation, shedding new light on how the vice president understands the relationship between his Catholic faith and his political office — but leaving questions unanswered about whether he’s offering a new approach or just a different version of the same Catholic statesmanship that’s been the status quo for decades.
Vance’s Middle Way
Vance described the ring-kiss episode as an illustration of the tension he sometimes feels between his Catholic faith and his political office; between being a son of the Church, and, as it were, being the right-hand man of President Donald Trump.
It’s a tension that Vance still seems to be trying to figure out — with implications for matters far greater than how he decides to greet the new pope.
At the heart of it all is a perennial question of how a Catholic statesman, particularly one in a pluralistic society like the United States, should or should not apply the moral doctrines of the Catholic Church to the social and political challenges his country faces.
Catholic politicians and theorists long before Vance have attempted to tackle this question, with a variety of answers. Former New York governor Mario Cuomo famously introduced a distinction between his private faith and public policy actions, one that Catholic public servants have used since to create distance between themselves and Church teaching on everything from economics to abortion.
On the other end of things, proponents of a view known as integralism have argued that Catholic politicians should be effectively subordinate to the Church, given that the salvation of souls is the ultimate common good.
Vance rejects both these views. In his conversation with Douthat, he criticized those who treat “religion” and “policy” as “two totally separate matters,” similar to how he has previously dismissed the idea that Catholic politicians “can ignore [clergy] when it comes to matters of public policy.” But Vance also made clear, in the same vein as John F. Kennedy, that he doesn’t think being a Catholic statesman is reducible to just doing “everything the Holy Father tells me to do.”
“I think that would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution,” Vance said.
Instead, Vance proposed a sort of via media — one that calls for combining acceptance of the Church’s teaching and deference to her leaders with the responsibility of an elected official to discern how best to apply them in their social and legal context.
“It’s not that you follow commandments,” he told Douthat. “It’s also not that you just disregard these things or say: Well, I know what this guy thinks, but I have to make a prudential judgment differently. I think it’s that you make a prudential judgment informed very much by the Church’s teachings as reflected by these leaders.”
The Vance approach is something different than the Catholic statesmanship of someone like former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who once said her faith has “nothing to do with the bishops,” a seeming dismissal of the Church’s teaching authority.
For instance, if Vance had used Pelosi’s logic to defend his own support for restrictive immigration policies and mass deportation, which some have argued are contrary to the Church’s related teaching, he would have simply denied or evaded the doctrine in question, as Pelosi did with Church teaching on abortion.
Instead, he affirmed it. In addition to citing the duty of states to enforce their borders, Vance also underscored the need to “respect the rights of migrants, the dignity of migrants,” adding that “there are obligations that we have to people who in some ways are fleeing violence, or at least fleeing poverty.”
“You have to be able to hold two ideas in your head at the same time,” said Vance, who later noted the need to enforce immigration law “consistent with the Catholic Church’s moral dictates.”
A Question of Consistency
Even the fact that Vance, who once authored a 6,000-word essay on how the Church’s social teaching helped lead him to become Catholic, agreed to an hour-long interview with Douthat is an indication that he’s at least committed to thinking through how his faith should inform his political positions in an ongoing way.
In addition to the New York Times columnist’s ad extra role as a sort of conservative Christian liaison to liberal America, the 45-year-old Douthat also has a reputation as an influential, above-the-fray assessor of major developments in U.S. Catholic intellectual and political life. Vance’s willingness to be interviewed by Douthat, knowing that nuanced questions about faith and politics were likely coming, shows that he takes such questions seriously — or at least wants to appear that way.
As he told Douthat when the journalist asked the vice president how his faith informed his politics, “It would be easier to ask what does your faith not cause you to think about.”
“It just kind of necessarily informs how I live my life,” said Vance.
At the same time, while Vance has presented a model of a Catholic statesman that sees the Church’s influence as more robust than, say, Cuomo or Pelosi, it’s worth considering how consistent his political actions have been with the vision he’s articulated.
On immigration, for instance, while Vance spoke of the need to treat undocumented immigrants “humanely” even while enforcing the law, his administration is widely seen to have failed this standard in a variety of ways, from rescinding a longstanding ban on conducting immigration raids at churches to producing social media content dehumanizing deportees. And when Douthat pushed Vance on concerns that the Trump administration is setting up a deportation infrastructure without adequate regard to due process and basic legal protections, Vance conceded the legitimacy of the concerns without acknowledging any need for remediation.
In these instances, it’s not necessarily the case that Vance is openly advocating for something contrary to the Church’s moral teaching. Nor is it clear that he is morally required to speak out — at least publicly — against injustices carried out by the administration he is a part of. But by not doing so, he certainly gives the appearance of acquiescing to them.
Something similar could be said on a topic Douthat didn’t press Vance on: his pro-life commitments. With Trump widely expected to soon release a plan for how to expand access to IVF, a process condemned by the Church, will Vance again remain silent? Or even more problematically, will he publicly give his okay, as he did regarding the availability of the abortion pill when angling to be Trump’s VP pick last summer?
AI and Beyond
Finally, while Vance spoke about AI and the Church, how he incorporates relevant teaching to the regulation of the technology remains a mystery — and will be perhaps the most consequential element of his relationship with Pope Leo, who has signaled that addressing the challenges of AI is a top priority of his papacy.
Vance has previously dismissed concerns that AI will lead to mass unemployment by arguing that it will enhance, not supplant, human labor. But in his interview with Douthat, he acknowledged that he worries about the impact of the technology on “pretty much everything noneconomic” — including human relationships and national defense. The vice president said he had talked with the Holy Father about these matters, and that providing guidance on the issue would be one of “the most profound and positive things” the new pope could do.
“The American government is not equipped to provide moral leadership, at least full-scale moral leadership, in the wake of all the changes that are going to come along with AI,” he said. “I think the Church is.”
But it’s not clear what Vance means by this and how it relates to his administration’s policies.
Did he mean he is eagerly awaiting guidance from the Church on how to morally manage the disruptive technology? The Church has already offered some guidance on the ethical use of AI in a January 2025 note from the Vatican’s doctrinal and education offices. It called for public authorities to regulate AI for the sake of the common good — but Vance has repeatedly called for deregulating the technology, at least insofar as U.S. businesses are concerned.
Did Vance’s appeal to Pope Leo’s guidance mean to suggest that it’s not the U.S. government’s role to regulate AI based upon sound moral principles? If so, his suggestion would be inconsistent not only with the Church’s understanding of the role of government, but also his own. As Vance told Douthat, he has no problem regulating the market more widely for the sake of American families. Does the same principle apply to AI and its possible social harms?
Or was Vance referring to a need for the Church to play a leading role in developing some sort of globally agreed-upon framework for ethical AI use — a kind of Geneva Convention for digital technology? If so, it’s not clear that his boss would even sign on, given Trump’s withdrawal of the U.S. from several international agreements related to everything from world health to environmental protection.
Vance can appeal to Pope Leo to provide moral guidance on AI. But what it means for the policies that Vance advances remains unclear.
Jury Still Out
In a nutshell, the same uncertainty characterizes Vance’s overall performance as a Catholic statesman. After all, he’s been in office for only 125 days, and the vice presidency is a uniquely high-profile but hamstrung office.
There can be little doubt that Vance talks about Catholic teaching and politics in a way that seems distinct from the Pelosis and Bidens before him. But it remains to be seen if he does anything truly different.
Does he represent a new kind of Catholic politician, one who seriously applies the breadth of the Church’s moral teachings to his policy decisions? Or is he a continuation of the longstanding practice of Catholic politicians picking and choosing aspects of the Church’s teaching that align with their partisan commitments, just presented in a new rhetorical package?
Vance may not have kissed the Pope’s ring. But what matters more is whether he’ll fully embrace the Church’s teaching in the execution of his office — or merely pay it lip service.