The Bankrupt Catholicism of JD Vance
Through a lifetime of reinvention, the vice presidential nominee came to
embrace the meanest and most historically destructive aspects of his chosen
faith.
JD Vance arrives to speak at the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia,
Ohio.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
JD Vance arrives to speak at the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia,
Ohio.

Of many weird things that JD Vance said during the vice presidential debate,
the weirdest came after Tim Walz revealed that his son had witnessed a
shooting at a rec center.

�Christ, have mercy,� the newly Catholic Vance responded.

It was something that Catholic priests say during Mass, in their position as
a proxy for Jesus. Everyone then repeats. Here was Vance, misappropriating a
core element of Catholic ritual either to establish spiritual authority over
Walz or to dodge the reality of his party�s acceptance of slayings�Trump�s
running mate, you may recall, called such shootings a �fact of life� that is
curiously only prevalent in the United States. Or perhaps he meant to do
both.

�Peace be with you,� is what Catholics say to one another at Mass, a
sentiment taken from Saint Francis of Assisi, who like Vance was a
soldier�albeit one who actually fought (Vance was a Marine Corps journalist).
Francis, after being brutalized as a prisoner, used the word peace as a
radical rejection of the violence of battles fought for glory among medieval
warlords, and also of the kind of indiscriminate slaughter Walz�s son
witnessed. And yet these words, from Vance, would have been stranger
still�not only because they were uttered at a debate, and not church, but
because the kind of peace that Francis meant is something JD Vance doesn�t
seem to value very highly.

Much has been said about the fact of Vance�s conversion to Catholicism, but
less about its, well, weirdness�the way that he is, by his own account, drawn
to the angry, dogmatic, and often violent stuff that the rest of us longtime
and hereditary practicing Catholics had to learn to overlook, or flee
outright: For every one convert, six people have left the Church of Rome.

JD Vance joined up on an August morning in 2019.

Here was a man of twists and turns who�d already changed his name five times.
Born James Donald Bowman, he changed his middle name to David when his
parents divorced, and later took the surname of a stepfather, becoming James
Donald Hamel. When he enlisted in the Marines, he started going by J.D.
Hamel, and in 2013 he changed his last name to Vance in honor of his
grandmother. When he became a senator, he dropped the periods, going as JD.
He ran through selves pretty fast, journeying from the Rust Belt to Yale Law
by way of plundered Baghdad. This, however, was his greatest twist of all.

Here, in the presence of the unmoved mover, maker of heaven and earth, all
that is seen and unseen, Vance was joining a faith whose finest poets include
Gerard Manley Hopkins, who wrote, �The world is charged with the grandeur of
God,� and the aforementioned Francis who assures us, still, that �all the
darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.� These
are words that didn�t come close to Vance�s mind that morning.

Instead he heard the voice of his grandmother echoing from his earliest
years, way down beneath his pile of selves. What she said to him, as he
seemingly fretted right down to the wire, was: �Better shit or get off the
pot.�

All faith contains mystery, but this is something else.

In a 6,000-word essay titled �How I Joined the Resistance,� published in The
Lamp in 2020, Vance offers conversion as a radical act, and describes the
path that led him there.

He was raised on Protestant televangelists before joining the Marine Corps
after 9/11. In his own words, he was �a young idealist committed to spreading
democracy and liberalism to the backward nations of the world.� He returned
�skeptical of the war� and embraced Hitchensian atheism, then found his way
to the high altar of secular striving, Yale Law School, where he experienced
a personal crisis, a psychic split between his past and his present: �I had
immersed myself in the logic of the meritocracy and found it deeply
unsatisfying. And I began to wonder: were all these worldly markers of
success actually making me a better person? I had traded virtue for
achievement and found the latter wanting.�

Enter Peter Thiel, who made his fortune in semi-illegal banking transactions
(PayPal) and surveillance capitalism (Facebook) before turning (why not?) to
Christian moralism. Thiel (�possibly the smartest person I�d ever met�)
explains to young JD that his unhappiness is natural, because the Ivy League
doesn�t really create people. According to Thiel�s self-adopted mentor, the
French Catholic philosopher Ren� Girard, it is all �mimetic rivalry,� status-
driven emulation all the way down. In other words, Vance isn�t barren and
broken; everyone else is.

Thus consoled, he begins reading City of God, published just after the sack
of Rome in 410 C.E., by Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, a.k.a. Saint
Augustine. �The words of Saint Augustine,� he writes, �echoed from a
millennium and a half earlier articulating a truth I had felt for a long time
but hadn�t spoken ��

It�s a laundry list of human suckiness:

This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as
to supply his daily prodigalities, and so that the powerful may subject the
weak for their own purposes. Let the poor court the rich for a living, and
that under their protection they may enjoy a sluggish tranquillity; and let
the rich abuse the poor as their dependants.

Just when it might lead Vance toward compassion, the passage shifts to its
real targets, people who seem like they�d be fun to know:

Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud, immodest
laughter of the theatre, let a succession of the most cruel and the most
voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement.

This will not be a class war but cultural conflict; sure as what ails Vance
is cultural alienation, as he writes in his Lamp essay, �for an upwardly
mobile poor kid from a rough family, atheism leads to an undeniable familial
and cultural rupture. To be an atheist is to be no longer of the community
that made you who you were.�

The man of many names knows pains so great that where a better mind would
sense something fishy in Augustine�s shift from power to culture, he goes
weak-kneed:

�It was,� he writes, �the best criticism of our modern age I�d ever read.�

Vance is on his way toward becoming Catholic under yet another new name, that
of his chosen patron saint, Augustine. This is his saddest shape-shift yet
because the passage that means so much to him�which he references in almost
every interview about his new faith�is written in extreme bad faith, a slick
con echoing across the millennia.

On an August morning in 410, Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome, looting,
raping, desecrating the tomb of Augustus, ending a world, and opening a
psychic wound.

People blamed the empire�s new faith, Christianity. They did this for a
number of reasons, including that Rome�s sackers were, well, Christians,
freshly converted Teutonic barbarians who had only recently believed in
giants and dragons. Knowing this, Augustine responds by � blaming the pagans
entirely. It�s an early instance of Trumpian projection politics, which,
hilariously, betrays Augustine�s own very imperial Romanness. He simply
cannot part with the idea that God shows favor with earthly power, setting up
a generally catastrophic project for his later followers on the Catholic
right, to which Vance now belongs. In the twentieth century such horrors
include the fascism of Franco�s Phalange and Salazar�s Estado Novo, whose
greatest cultural output is Paula Rego�s paintings of women suffering from
back-alley abortions, horrors bound to be happening, as you read this, in
post-Roe America.

Add to this, now, the ghastliness of Vance himself, taunting refugees with
hate speech vile beyond anything on Augustine�s vice list, slandering Haitian
migrants as the eaters of their neighbors� pets, and even, during the debate,
blaming them for soaring housing prices. Look at these beasts, sacking the
temple of the American home.

This, bizarrely, is what he�s come for: Catholicism as a worldly faith �that
could speak against rising rates of divorce and addiction, not as sanitized
conclusions about their negative social externalities��or as we might call
it, compassion��but with moral outrage.�

Why? He finds it grounding, a trip back to his Appalachian roots: �It was my
Mamaw�s Christianity,� he writes. �And the name it gave for the behaviors I
had seen destroy lives and communities was �sin.�� He thinks he�s found a way
to change while staying the same, forgetting the words of the Red Queen to
Alice in Wonderland: �In my kingdom you have to run as fast as you can just
to stay in the same place.�

A sex crimes detective with the Memphis Police Department will keep her job despite leaking confidential investigative files to the family of a rape suspect, the Commercial Appeal reported last week. Before Detective Ouita Knowlton became the subject of a criminal investigation, she was the supervisor of the DNA Unit, which was formed in 2014 to investigate long-neglected […]

https://media.tegna-media.com/assets/WATN/images/6acf1a5a-ac45-4b41-ac0c-55528ba41b90/6acf1a5a-ac45-4b41-ac0c-55528ba41b90_1920x1080.jpg
Lt. Ouita Knowlton_1493157844610.jpg

A sex crimes detective with the Memphis Police Department will keep her job despite leaking confidential investigative files to the family of a rape suspect, the Commercial Appeal reported last week. Before Detective Ouita Knowlton became the subject of a criminal investigation, she was the supervisor of the DNA Unit, which was formed in 2014 to investigate long-neglected rape cases involving untested rape kits.

A rape kit contains physical evidence collected from the body of a rape victim. In addition to using DNA to identify an unknown perpetrator, the results from testing can be used to corroborate or refute statements from the victim or suspect.

Law enforcement encourages victims to submit to forensic examination as soon as possible after an assault to maximize the chances of evidence recovery. Exams, which typically last four to six hours, can be invasive, painful, and traumatizing for victims. The evidence collected varies depending on what happened during the assault, but rape kits generally include swabs, test tubes, microscopic slides, and evidence collection envelopes for hairs and fibers. The victim is swabbed for any biological matter that may contain the perpetrator’s DNA (e.g., skin, saliva, semen). The examiner photographs any bruising or other injuries and collects the victim’s clothing. The rape kit and other crime scene evidence, such as bedding, is transferred to law enforcement to log into its evidence facility. Then it is sent to a crime lab for DNA testing to solve the case.

But instead of sending rape kits to crime labs, police departments nationwide have often stashed rape kits wherever they could find space: in evidence warehouses, precinct closets, squad car trunks, some in environments with DNA-degrading high heat and moisture.

In 2009, a Human Rights Watch report exposed over 12,000 untested rape kits in law enforcement storage throughout Los Angeles County. That same year, inquiries by the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the failure of law enforcement to stop serial rapist and mass murderer Anthony Sowell spurredthe city’s police department to announce plans to process over 4,000 untested rape kits of its own. Also in 2009, after the FBI took control of the Detroit Police Department property room, officials revealed over 8,000 rape kits in police storage had never been submitted to a lab. In 2013, the Memphis Police Department admitted it had failed to test over 12,000 rape kits. In 2014, a New Orleans Police Commander who had been lauded in 2011 for testing at least 800 unprocessed rape kits revealed the department had failed to submit more than 400 rape kits collected since 2011. In 2017, the Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney’s office admitted at least 555 rape kits collected by Detroit Police since th
e 2009 public outcry weren’t tested until 2015, a fact that was never announced to the public.

In response to public criticisms, law enforcement blame their failure to submit rape kits on a lack of funding for DNA testing. But according to the National Institute of Justice, additional factors include victim-blaming beliefs by police, no written protocol for submitting kits to the lab for testing, high turnover in police leadership, and lack of community-based victim advocacy services.

It’s worth noting that today’s DNA technology has not always been available to law enforcement. In 1994, Congress authorized the National DNA Index System (NDIS), but modern DNA forensic analysis was not widely used until the late 1990s. Until at least the early 2000s, use of DNA databases was not common across the nation.

But when authorities began uploading DNA profiles from convicted offenders and arrestees and from missing persons and unidentified remains, they still failed to submit rape kits to labs for DNA testing.

Ohio Public Defender Tim Young, whose office has appealed convictions based on Cleveland’s neglected rape kits, told the Plain Dealer a false narrative has taken hold in the public imagination. “We’ve had DNA testing since the mid-1990s,” he said. “They (law enforcement) were dilatory in not using it. It’s a continuation of broken police culture that places the police first, not the victims, the defendants — or justice.”

Indeed, research at Michigan State University analyzed 1,268 police reports associated with Detroit’s untested rape kits. A report released in 2015 found “most cases were closed after minimal investigational effort.”

And even with advances in DNA technology, police solve fewer rapes than they did in the past.

Nationwide, the clearance rate for rape has declined sharply in the past decade, from 51% in 1995 to approximately 40%, where it has remained stable since 2005. In some cities the clearance rate for rape is in the single digits. During this same time period, clearance rates for murder and aggravated assault barely changed.

“Clearance” is a common way to measure an agency’s success in fighting crime. There are two types of clearance: arrest and exceptional clearance. The latter occurs due to circumstances outside law enforcement’s control, such as when the suspect dies or the victim stops cooperating. In these cases, despite being considered cleared, the suspect is never arrested, charged, or referred for prosecution.

Of the 111,241 rapes known to law enforcement in 2016, only 36% were cleared. And since the FBI counts exceptional clearance in the same tally as clearance by arrest, clearance rates likely overestimate how many rapists police are putting behind bars.

Untested rape kits are not indicative of underfunded police departments. Instead, they are symptomatic of a police culture that does not properly investigate sexual assault or take victims seriously.

https://theappeal.org/no-backlog-why-the-epidemic-of-untested-rape-kits-is-not-a-symbol-of-insufficient-police-budgets-but-instead-a-failure-to-investigate-rape/

Henry Bodkin wrote:
> “Christ, have mercy,”

Never.

But why are you death threat prosecution exempt by the Feds so far?

And after _so many_ public death threats you issued on Trump and Vance...

Let's do our best to change that, shall we:

Governor Swill /Rudy Canoza/Lou Bricano/J Carlson/Michael A
Terrell/Chris Ahlstrom/Intelligent Party/Alan Bond/Henry Bodkin/Malte
Runz and a few dozen other socks wrote:

Multiple death threats against Trump:
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From: Governor Swill <governor.swill@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: Triumphant Trump Photo After Assassination Attempt
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Oh poor me I got shot at ...

Swill
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Cheer up, maybe someone else will try.

Swill

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> No. I am a patriotic American who wants the country and its people to
thrive. Getting rid of Trump permanently
> is an important step to getting there.

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That constitutes a DEATH THREAT against a former President, Rudey:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/871
18 U.S. Code § 871 - Threats against President and successors to the
Presidency
U.S. Code
Notes
prev | next
(a)Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail
or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any
letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any
threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon
the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice
President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office
of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect, or
knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the
President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the
order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect,
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years,
or both.
(b)The terms “President-elect” and “Vice President-elect” as used in
this section shall mean such persons as are the apparent successful
candidates for the offices of President and Vice President,
respectively, as ascertained from the results of the general elections
held to determine the electors of President and Vice President in
accordance with title 3, United States Code, sections 1 and 2. The
phrase “other officer next in the order of succession to the office of
President” as used in this section shall mean the person next in the
order of succession to act as President in accordance with title 3,
United States Code, sections 19 and 20.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 740; June 1, 1955, ch. 115, § 1, 69
Stat. 80; Pub. L. 87–829, § 1, Oct. 15, 1962, 76 Stat. 956; Pub. L.
97–297, § 2, Oct. 12, 1982, 96 Stat. 1318; Pub. L. 103–322, title
XXXIII, § 330016(1)(H), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)

9-65.200 - Threats Against the President and Successors to the
Presidency; Threats Against Former Presidents; and Certain Other Secret
Service Protectees
The Counterterrorism Section of the National Security Division has
supervisory authority over 18 U.S.C. §§ 871 and 879 cases. As great
caution must be taken in matters relating to the security of the persons
protected by 18 U.S.C. § 871, United States Attorneys are encouraged to
consult with the Counterterrorism Section (CTS) of the National Security
Division when they have doubts on the prosecutive merit of a case. For
the same reason, dismissal of complaints under 18 U.S.C. § 871, when the
defendant is in custody under the Mental Incompetency Statutes (18
U.S.C. §§ 4244, 4246), requires approval from CTS. In other cases,
United States Attorneys must consult prior to dismissing a count
involving, or entering into any sentence commitment or other case
settlement involving a § 871 charge.

https://www.secretservice.gov/newsroom/releases/2024/01/phoenix-man-arrested-making-online-death-threats-against-president-and

PHOENIX –David Michael Hanson, 41, of Phoenix, was arrested on Wednesday
for making online threats against the President and Vice-President.
Hanson was charged by Federal criminal complaint on Tuesday with five
counts of Threats Against the President and Successors to the Presidency
and five counts of Interstate Communication of Threats.

The complaint alleges that in November and December of 2023, while
living in Arizona, Hanson used a social media platform to post threats
to murder the President and Vice President of the United States. On
November 19, 2023, Hanson posted online a series of threatening
statements including one that stated, “#joeAndKamala I’m asking you to
resign on Monday your alternative is death brutally murdered.” After the
U.S. Secret Service spoke to Hanson and warned him that it was a Federal
crime to post such threats, on December 23, 2023, Hanson posted another
series of similar threats aimed at the President and Vice-President.

Each count of Threats Against the President and Successors to the
Presidency carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a fine of
up to $250,000, and up to three years of supervised release. Each count
of Interstate Communication of Threats carries a maximum sentence of
five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and up to three years of
supervised release.