"Ho appena incontrato il volto del diavolo?”

These were among the last words of this good, yet complex, man after he encountered JD Vance the day before his death. Please bear with me as I dive into a somewhat ecumenical discourse.

A little belated and thus "out of order," I just came across this piece from a couple of months ago. Pope Francis had excoriated Vance over his "butchering" of the Christian concept of "ordo amoris," the order of love, which Vance cited to justify his hatred of migrants and indeed anyone beyond the borders of his own pathetic soul.

In Francis's words, "ordo amoris" does not cast love in descending concentric circles. Instead, he cites the parable of the Good Samaritan, by which I see him as perhaps using the word "order" in a very different way. Be that as it may, the words were first recorded in the Jewish Torah, in Exodus 23:18 and Leviticus 19:18.

However, if you actually read the Torah text, the injunction is clearly tribal, extending only to "the members of your community" (Exodus) or "the sons of your own people" (Leviticus). This is how Orthodox Jewish commentary treats them, although progressive Jewish exegesis is more universalistic and aspirationally appropriate to our day, when we ourselves are too often the object of fierce hatred as a diasporic minority.

The Vancian Heresy, though, takes it further, with no room for interpretation, as his practice makes abundantly clear. No matter if it's your next-door neighbor or a fellow Catholic (a genuine one), in practice only White Americans (preferably males) fall in the concentric center and are worthy of your love. As for the rest, fuggem, as we say in New Jersey.

May those who follow our latter-day Devils come to see the error of their ways as they experience the bitter taste of the rotten fruits of their own corruption. May the rest of us rise up in nonviolent righteous indignation, whether Jew, Christian, of any faith or no faith, and blot out the evil from our midst, restoring to all the human dignity insisted upon by Francis.

Ken y'hi ratzon. May it be our will.