J.D. Vance is both among the most prominent American Catholics and the most prominent critics of US support for Ukraine. This is ironic, not only in my opinion but also in the opinion of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), which has articulated that the Catholic worldview and support for Ukraine go hand-in-hand.
A relatively recent convert, Vance seems sincere in his Catholic faith and respect for the Catholic intellectual, moral, and spiritual tradition. In forming his stance on Ukraine, however, he has failed to heed the cries of his fellow Catholics – specifically, the UGCC’s “call to the conscience of contemporary Christians” to stand in solidarity with suffering Ukrainians and acknowledge the moral and theological stakes of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Of course, Catholics are not obliged to agree on every political issue; however, in light of his Catholic faith, I believe that Vance should find the UGCC’s arguments deeply compelling.
Since Russia’s all-out invasion, Vance has repeatedly been against supporting Ukraine, not only monetarily and militarily, but even morally. In February 2022, he infamously commented, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” He has implied that Russia and Ukraine are morally equivalent in this struggle, suggesting that Ukraine’s undisputed problems with corruption somehow negate the justice of Ukraine’s cause. He has criticized Ukraine’s restrictions on the Moscow-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church as an assault on religious freedom, yet simultaneously failed to condemn Russia’s attacks on the freedom of religious communities, including the Catholic Church, in occupied Ukraine. In an April 2024 op-ed for the New York Times, Vance laid out his case for ending aid to Ukraine and, in early September, he expanded on the Trump-Vance ticket’s vision for “resolving” the conflict: Ukraine ceding all territory currently held by Russia and pledging not to join NATO. He shows no sign of acknowledging the genocidal nature of the war or the reality that, whether the US acknowledges it or not, the war against Ukraine is really a war against the West.
All this stands in stark contrast to the stance of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church – a Byzantine rite church that has been in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church since the 16th century and today comprises roughly 8% of Ukraine’s population. The UGCC has long been a staunch supporter of Ukrainian independence and national identity, and since the 2022 invasion, its leaders and laity have been vocal in their calls for international support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia’s invasion. Put simply, where Vance does not see Putin’s war on Ukraine as “an existential threat to Europe,” the UGCC sees it as an existential threat to civilization. If Vance takes his Catholic faith seriously, he should heed the UGCC’s arguments for three main reasons.
First, Catholic social teaching calls for solidarity: a recognition that “we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, wherever they may be.” This solidarity is due especially to the poorest and most vulnerable – and certainly the Ukrainians suffering under Russia’s brutal onslaught fit that description. Furthermore, Catholics believe that they are truly united in the Body of Christ through reception of the Eucharist; an attack on one member of that Body is an attack on the whole. Vance owes his fellow Catholics in Ukraine his deepest solidarity and compassion – qualities that have been seriously lacking in his public rhetoric. In theory, Vance could stand in Christian solidarity with Ukrainians while believing that US military aid for Ukraine is misplaced or that Ukrainian victory is impossible. However, I suspect his insistence that this is simply about “the math” masks the dismissiveness and antipathy he revealed with his “I don’t care what happens to Ukraine” comment. If Vance truly embraced the Catholic call to solidarity, he might suddenly find the UGCC’s understanding of events more convincing – and he might even find that the math begins to add up.
Second, the UGCC shares Vance’s Catholic values. As I have argued elsewhere, the skepticism of many American conservatives toward Ukraine is reactionary, driven by fear of agreeing with their liberal opponents. I suspect that Vance’s hostility toward Ukraine is partly fueled by such sentiments. In fairness, some do see Ukraine’s cause as part of a broader progressive agenda, so I can understand why a conservative Catholic with no prior knowledge of Ukraine might distrust the left-wing narrative. The fact that “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stepped in it when he and his advisers allowed Democratic elected officials to use him as a political prop” in late September certainly isn’t helping.
Yet the UGCC’s stance on the war cannot be explained away as some sort of liberal conspiracy. While the UGCC (and the Catholic Church as a whole) does not fit neatly into the American liberal/conservative dichotomy, it is certainly not a left-wing mouthpiece, unapologetically upholding the fullness of Catholic teaching on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Christ said, “Therefore by their fruits you will know them.” The fruits of the UGCC are centuries of fidelity to the Catholic Church, resistance to communism, and many martyrs who have died for the faith that Vance professes. Vance has no reason to distrust the UGCC or suspect it of a hidden agenda. On the contrary, he owes the church his deep respect and a serious attempt to understand its concerns. It seems that something like the Catholic principle of subsidiarity holds here; those who are closest to the problem are in the best position to understand it. We ignore their warnings at our peril.
Finally, the UGCC’s support for Ukraine’s independence and self-defense is not accidental, but springs from a deep understanding of the Catholic tradition of international relations and just war theory. As George Weigel has put it,
“Since the days of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, it has been understood that Catholics bring more than a sensibility to the debate over world affairs; Catholics bring ideas, and those ideas are organized in a distinctive way that leads to distinctive insights and a distinctive method of moral analysis.”
Vance cannot disregard the arguments of the UGCC without disregarding vast swaths of this tradition. In “The Letter of the Synod of Bishops of the UGCC in Ukraine on War and Just Peace in the Context of New Ideologies,” released in February, the UGCC bishops laid out their understanding of the causes and stakes of the war, clearly showing how the Russkiy Mir (“Russian World”) ideology, which holds that there is a single Russian Orthodox civilization comprising much of the former Soviet empire, is driving Russia’s invasion and that Ukraine’s self-defense is a just war, the goal of which must be a just peace, not merely the temporary cessation of hostilities. Their arguments are thoroughly rooted in knowledge of the history and contemporary context of Ukraine, but also in Scripture and the authoritative teachings of the Catholic Church. A serious Catholic cannot lightly dismiss these arguments but rather must address them on their merits. At least in his public comments, Vance has failed to do so, and his approach to Ukraine seems closer to the isolationist realism of the MAGA establishment than the moral realism characteristic of the Catholic international relations tradition. Provided he shows Christian charity and solidarity to his Ukrainian brothers and sisters, Vance may in good conscience continue to reject the UGCC’s application of Catholic IR theory; in doing so, however, I believe that he would be making a significant error of prudential judgment.
As he continues in his political career, with the potential to shape the course of the next Presidential administration, let us pray that J.D. Vance will remain steadfast in his faith and, in so doing, learn to listen with an open mind and heart to the cries of his fellow Catholics. If he does, he will learn the hard truth that the UGCC has articulated time and again:
“The belief of some parts of the world community that this war is a purely local conflict between two nations and therefore, after reconciling them, it will be possible to return to the usual comfort, is erroneous. Today all the foundations of human civilization are under threat.”
