Swiss priest: JD Vance conversion story shows why Pope Francis’ synodal church fails to convert souls

(LifeSiteNews) — On January 20, Donald Trump will take over the U.S. presidency. His running mate, James David “JD” Vance, will also take office. What this duo means for the USA and the rest of the world is written in the stars.

But a look back is telling. After all, JD Vance published an autobiographical work called Hillbilly Elegy back in 2016. In it, he paints a terrifying picture of North American society: economic decline, social and familial neglect, divorce and serial partnerships, unemployment, a lack of religious perspective, drug and medication abuse, crime, and the misuse of state social programs: Vance grew up in this chaos.

Due to his mother’s drug addiction and promiscuity, he experienced a “revolving door of father figures” in his childhood. He describes his family situation as follows: “I had a biological half-brother and a half-sister who I never saw because my biological father had given me up for adoption. I had two step-siblings or very many, depending on whether I limited the count to the offspring of my mother’s current husband or not. (…). Depending on how I counted, I probably had about a dozen step-siblings.” He concludes: “The only thing I ultimately learned from all this is that you can’t rely on anyone.”

Vance’s grandparents “saved” him to some extent. However, they brought him up in a Protestantism that was devoid of content and de-institutionalized, which offered the adolescent little support. “God helps those who help themselves” was still the best motto he had. Vance also got to know the evangelical world through his biological father.

Biblical fundamentalism, peppered with narrow-minded moralism and end-time fantasies, did not lead to faith in the Christian God, however, but to atheism. In 2020, Vance finally took the step of converting to the Catholic Church. Neither synodalism nor the rhetoric of the field hospital or the peripheries persuaded him to do so, but the fact that the Catholic Church is the only refuge in a sea of family neglect, disorientation, wokeism, drugs, and capitalist greed.

Vance gave the account of his conversion the title “How I Joined the Resistance.” Of course, conversion involves making a full profession of faith. Vance did so. The study of St. Augustine and the guidance of Dominicans, with whom Vance is close, helped him.

Nevertheless, the question arises as to the actual motive for the conversion. It would be presumptuous to judge from afar the reasons of a person who went through hell as a child. But one senses in Hillbilly Elegy and in the account of the conversion that the moral chaos in which Vance grew up played an important role. The Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage and family almost inevitably appears as a “last resort” for someone drowning in a sea of neglect.

If you consider this drama, which is not only prevalent in the “Rust Belt” of the USA but in large parts of the Western world, you have to conclude that the current leadership of the Catholic Church is living in a parallel universe. It is the indissolubility of Christian marriage that is essential to the foundation of a society that is not decadent. It is precisely this indissolubility that the current Pope has undermined by distorting marriage annulment procedures to such an extent that they can be and are put at the service of a “Catholic divorce.”

And, of course, Amoris laetitia has theoretically upheld the indissolubility of Christian marriage. But the “pastoral discernment,” which has to be carried out somehow and by someone, means that everyone, whatever their family status, now goes to receive Communion with a clear conscience.

Therefore, to the Church leadership, there is no longer an indissoluble Christian marriage. In addition, the new extra-liturgical Vatican speed-“blessing” has legitimized homosexual “couples” through the Apostolic See. For the post-Christian public, it is the practice that counts, not the lip service to Christian marriage consisting of one man and one woman, that is still contained somewhere in pretty documents.

The current Pope’s flirtation with homosexuals, “trans people,” and other woke activists further underlines how things are meant to be understood.

The situation is grotesque: We are seeing an increasing number of people like JD Vance who see the Catholic Church and its witness to God, which shows man a moral way through a world characterized by neglect, as the last refuge. And we have Church leadership that obscures this path through its actions.

Instead of conveying a spirituality to the faithful that helps them to survive as Christians in the metaphysical chaos of a nihilistically understood freedom, it huddles in circles of chairs and engages in detached discussions about structural issues.

All of this reveals a frightening degree of blindness. In the face of this, over 5,000 bishops remain silent because they fear being deposed. And the cardinals are silent because every one of them still wants to become pope. If it were not for the increasing number of cries from the darkness of metaphysical abandonment, which are witnesses to the hidden work of the Holy Spirit, it would be despairing.

Father Martin Grichting is a professor of Canon Law who taught at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He was the vicar general of the Swiss Diocese of Chur from 2009 until 2019.