When J.D. Vance’s memoir of his path back to Christianity, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, is described at a high level of generality, we see immediately that it is a book of the highest importance. Here is a leader on the world stage who grasps, and is not afraid to say, that Christianity has been the source of social unity for European – that is, Western – civilization, and also for that nation we call the United States, and even for neighborhoods and families.
The only two realities that unite us across disparities of wealth, race, and creed are the military and the Church, he likes to say. Economic bonds – trade agreements and business relationships – are insufficient. So too are procedural constructions of “international order” and human rights.
Rather, these systems risk dissolving subsidiary unities; and when they become “global,” they serve only to unite the elites of various countries, rendering them incapable even of understanding the concerns of common working men and women.
Now add that this perceptive world leader has embraced Catholicism as that realization of Christianity that he regards as best. I don’t think that commentators who anticipated a “Catholic moment”
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