EXCLUSIVE: JD Vance Tells Bishop Barron What’s Gone Wrong In America

Vice President JD Vance sat down with prominent Catholic theologian Bishop Robert Barron this week to discuss his new book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back.” The conversation ranged far beyond typical book tour talking points, touching on Vatican diplomacy, artificial intelligence, faith, and family life. 

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The most candid moment of the discussion came when Vance reflected on a Vatican meeting that followed his conversation with Pope Francis shortly before the pope’s death. As he did previously, Vance reiterated that the discussion never moved beyond surface-level diplomatic language.

“It just felt like [Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Paul Gallagher] didn’t want to move past the diplomatic platitudes,” Vance told Barron. He recalled Vatican officials telling him the Church “would really prefer that you show more respect for the dignity of the migrant,” but argued that was something everyone already believed.

“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,” Vance said, adding that he believes “the current hierarchy is way too uncomfortable dealing with anything other than abstraction.”

Vance said he hopes that changes under Pope Leo XIV, whom he described as “a brilliant guy” and “clearly a very holy man.” He acknowledged the pope would likely criticize some Trump administration policies but said he welcomed the dialogue and didn’t believe the Church and the administration had to agree on everything.

“I think again 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,” Vance said. “How do you balance these things when controlling your borders inevitably leads to law enforcement operations that sometimes can create issues? That’s the balance that we fundamentally have to strike.”

Much of “Communion” deals with Vance’s admission that he spent his younger years “worshipping success” while attending Yale Law School.

“The social currency is credential,” Vance told Barron. “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.” He contrasted that with the community he grew up in, where “the thing that people were most interested in you is how are your kids doing.”

“And yet at Yale it was who is going to get ahead in this game of life. And I found that very unsatisfying,” he added.

Vance made the distinction between being ambitious and what he now sees as the disordered pursuit of success. 

“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,” he said. “But there’s a separate kind of ambition… which is like the desire to just get ahead for its own sake.”

Barron and Vance spent a significant portion of the conversation discussing French philosopher René Girard and his theory of mimetic desire, the idea that people desire things because others desire them.

“Once you see it… it’s very hard to unsee it,” Vance said, describing how it happens at home with his kids. “My 9-year-old will pick up a toy that none of the kids have played with in six months. And instantly, all of them want that toy.”

Vance argued that social media makes mimetic desire spread faster.

“Because it sets that desire aflame and makes it spread so rapidly, it also makes the conflict side of it spread so rapidly,” he said, recalling watching friends on Facebook “get into arguments on the internet” and thinking, “these are two really lovely human beings that are calling each other these terrible names.”

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The two also discussed Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, a foundational document of Catholic social teaching. Vance said the document was impressive for trying to strike a balance between two extremes rather than picking a side.

“He’s very worried that if we don’t strike the right balance between human dignity and prosperity, between workers and capital owners, that it’s going to inevitably lead to this conflict,” Vance said of Leo XIII. He argued the encyclical rejects both the Marxist assumption that class conflict is inevitable and the libertarian belief that there is no conflict.

“There can be a real compromise,” he said.

Vance argued that same philosophy also separates President Donald Trump’s economic approach from the Reagan era.

“What President Trump has brought is a recognition… that there is a national and community element to economics,” Vance said, pointing to shortages of masks and hospital gowns during the COVID pandemic.

Vance described his grandparents as “classic blue dog Democrats” and said the biggest difference between their beliefs and today’s Democratic Party is the absence of religion. 

“I do think that religion itself has become very disfavored among Democratic elites,” he said.

Later in the interview, Vance described a backstage conversation at a Turning Point USA event in which a young woman told him she and her friends were using ChatGPT to help respond to boys’ text messages. 

“I realized that the technology that actually brings man and woman together successfully is the church,” Vance said. “You have young people who are using ChatGPT and they don’t want to.”

He said the rise of AI presents an opportunity for churches to step in.  

Barron also asked Vance about his prayer life. The vice president admitted that praying consistently with young children at home can be difficult. 

“Probably 80% of the time I fail on that,” Vance said. “Either because bedtime is too chaotic or because I’m at the White House.”

He said part of his return to Christianity involved relearning how to pray after years as an atheist.

“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.”

“You don’t have to be perfect at it,” he said of praying. “Try to just do as much as you can.”

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Vance’s book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back,” is on sale now.