In February, Vice President JD Vance dropped a bombshell when he alluded to Saint Thomas Aquinas in an interview with Hannity on Fox News. A few days later, the Holy Father issued a letter to American bishops to “address a few words in these delicate moments.”
Ordo amoris was not mentioned by the Vice President himself. Let us quote Mr. Vance verbatim: “As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school [concept] — and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
Commentators associated his words to the medieval concept (also found in Saint Augustine) when he used “old-school” and “Christian” in the same breath. For Vance, the right order would be to love one’s family first, then one’s immediate neighbors and one’s own community secondly. The lowest rung would be the “rest of the world.”
In a masterful rejoinder, however, Stephen Pope, a moral theologian at Boston College, said: “If you are able, of course, you should run outside and hose down the side of the neighbor’s house, but what your neighbor really needs is for a team of firefighters to show up as soon as possible.” This means that a conscientious member of the community should hose down a neighbor’s burning house, but common sense also dictates that it is so much better to refer to the right “social structure” designed to achieve this purpose.
Do we love in concentric circles?
Richard Clements characterized loving as being a series of concentric circles: “The ordo amoris can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles radiating outward from ourselves, beginning with loving God.” Apropos this is an article that came out at the end of 20th century.
In 1996, David M. Gallagher in his article “Self-love as the Basis of Loving Others” wrote: “This priority of self-love shows up in Thomas’s doctrine concerning the order of love (ordo amoris).” Gallagher taught at the Catholic University of America at Washington DC. I cannot prove it, but perhaps this idea has been floating around those parts, especially amongst Catholic policymakers.
You read that right: some Thomas Aquinas scholars have argued that self-love is first in the order of love. It is a truly old school idea which dates back to Aristotle himself (cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1166a 1-2).
Thomas Aquinas speaks of self-love in many of his writings. For example, in Summa Theologiae II-II q. 19, art. 6, the Angelic Doctor talks about not one but three kinds of self-love. The discussion is highly scholastic, so I will not repeat it here. What seems to be main point? Hold your breath: self-love in Thomas Aquinas is the basis for love of neighbor and love of God. This is because if self-love does not lead to genuine love of neighbor, it is the love of self that is false. If one truly loves oneself, one desires beatitude, which one can find in God alone.
Aquinas says that humans naturally desire beatitudo (ultimate happiness), and this desire is deeply tied to self-love. When a person loves his or herself with the natural desire to attain the highest good (beatitude), it is self-love that drives people to seek fulfillment. The desire for beatitude is a form of desiring what is best for oneself. Interestingly, this is similar to how a person might love another person with the love of friendship, but in the case of self-love, the “person” being loved is oneself.
This is the true ordo amoris. Love of self is the basis for the love of God. We only truly love ourselves, if we desire fulfillment of our deepest desire, which is union with God — who commands us to love the least of our brethren (Mt. 25: 40-45). We love others because it is constitutive of our identity. We cannot be our best self unless we are in community with God and others.
This means, as the Holy Father’s letter to the American bishops states: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
I am grateful to Mr. Vance for initiating this conversation. Yet as the Holy Father implies, this cannot be resolved with a mindset that imposes the will of the strongest as a criterion for the truth. He is inviting all of us into a loving dialogue about immigration issues so that we can gradually mature in our Christian vocation. – Rappler.com
Jovino G. Miroy teaches medieval philosophy and philosophy of religion at the Ateneo de Manila University. He holds a PhD from Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven in Belgium, with a specialization in medieval philosophy, and is a member of the American Cusanus Society. He is the producer of the podcast titled “Thomas Unveiled,” commemorating the Double Jubilee of Thomas Aquinas.