Vice President Vance Deftly De-Escalates Conflict With Pope Francis at National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, by Peter Wolfgang 

By Peter Wolfgang, Catholic Culture, March 02, 2025

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own.

“What the heck did you guys feed Vance for breakfast?”

That was my wife, texting me last Friday, the day of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. I was one of the 1,400 breakfast attendees who had the privilege of hearing a stellar speech by JD Vance, the first Catholic convert ever to be elected Vice President. Later that same day, Vice President Vance and President Trump threw down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in front of the media during a Q and A in the Oval Office.

We will save the Ukraine stuff for another time. Today, I want to address the worldview present in Vance’s speech. Call it Vanceism. Or the Vance Doctrine. A more specific subset of the populist nationalism that many have struggled to define since Trump first came down the escalator in 2015—and a more Catholic one. To the extent that Trumpism is a hodgepodge of often conflicting ideological tendencies—tech bro transhumanism mixed in with anti-woke libertarianism and Manosphere podcasters—Vanceism is the particular strain of Trumpism that Catholics should be rooting for. …

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