JD Vance & “Childless Cat Ladies”

On July 15, 2024, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump announced as his running mate JD Vance, the United States junior Senator from Ohio and author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy (2016). Like Trump, Vance is more critical than most Republicans of the free market, standing for a postliberal (as in, liberal economics as well as liberal society) brand of conservatism that favors tariffs, protectionism, and economic nationalism. Of course, Vance originally defined himself as a Never Trumper, so one cannot help doubting the sincerity of his political convictions.

One thing Vance has been pretty consistent about, however, is his opposition to childlessness and advocacy of traditional right-wing views regarding abortion, gay marriage, and “family values.” Vance has stated that the teachings of the Catholic Church have influenced his sociopolitical positions. Having been raised as an Evangelical Protestant, Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, and it is not difficult to see how it might be reflected in his political stances as described above. But how much do his views actually reflect Catholic values?

Let’s start with Vance’s best-known controversy (so far), specifically his 2021 comments on Fox News that the United States is dominated by Democrats, who are in turn dominated by “childless cat ladies.” Those comments did not garner much attention when Vance made them, since in 2021 he was just another big-mouthed talking head on an already-controversial platform, but they were brought to popular attention when Vance became the Republican vice-presidential nominee, and predictably stirred considerable outrage.

Although I would describe myself as both a Democrat and a childless cat lady, Vance’s words offended me even more on the basis of the tattered remnants of my own Catholic faith. You see, the Catholic Church teaches that there are four different vocational callings, all equal in importance: marriage, priesthood, the religious life (to be a monk or nun), and the single life.

According to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (which, of course, is in Ohio, which, of course, our friend JD represents in the U.S. Senate), “The vocation to the chaste single life liberates the heart in a unique way, ‘so as to make it burn with greater love for God and all humanity.’ […] Lived in a spirit of faith and gift, the chaste single life can be one of the many roads by which the grace of baptism is realized and a person may advance toward the holiness to which we are all called.”

Those called to this vocation usually reach it through one of two routes, the Archdiocese says: “Out of a desire to love God and His people, you may feel called to dedicate yourself entirely to the Lord without a desire to join a religious community. Therefore, you may make private vows or promises to live in a permanent state of virginity or celibacy.” Alternatively: “You may feel called to marriage or the consecrated life but through experiences, difficulties, or circumstances have found yourself unable to fulfill that vocation.”

Based on Vance’s claim that liberal “childless cat ladies” are destroying America, does he sound like someone who understands or respects this aspect of Catholicism? The contempt he has long showered on childlessness in general, going out of his way to associate it with sociopathy for instance, makes one wonder why he would choose to join the Catholic Church, an institution known for its insistence on celibacy (and therefore, theoretically, childlessness) among its clergy.

Obviously, the issue is more complex than I’ve made it out to be. There may not be much overlap between the (probably very small number of) Catholics who choose to live single and celibately, on the one hand, and the (probably much larger number of) sociopolitical liberals who are childless—sometimes despite having active, often unmarried sex lives—on the other. The latter are who Vance really had in mind when he made his “childless cat ladies” comment.

The fact remains, however, that in decrying childlessness in general, Vance is ignoring a very basic tenet of the Catholic faith.

Specifically, there is nothing Catholic about feeling that one is obliged to reproduce. Despite Catholicism’s opposition to abortion and artificial contraception, Catholics are not expected, even when married, to actually have children. The only rule is that married Catholics must be open to having children (i.e. not use artificial contraception to avoid becoming pregnant). If pressed, Vance might protest that he has never actually claimed otherwise, but how much can one truly respect another person’s right not to reproduce, much less regard it as a legitimate calling from God, if one regards the childless as enemies of the state? Pope Francis, while refusing to soften the Church’s stance on artificial contraception, has made a point of saying that Catholics also need not breed “like rabbits.”

No, Vance’s hostility to childlessness strikes me more as a vestige of his Evangelical Protestant upbringing. One of the many things I dislike about the Reformation is that, in repudiating Catholicism’s ascetic traditions, it went to the opposite extreme in some ways and created a culture in which unmarried people were regarded with suspicion (especially unmarried women, for some reason), an attitude which remains influential in Protestantism to this day. Among other problems, an obligation to have children makes it rather difficult to imagine how we can hope to sustain the planet’s resources and not make it unlivable through global warming. The easiest way out of this conundrum is to deny the reality of climate change and many other commonly accepted scientific teachings, as many Evangelical churches—and JD Vance—do.

This, too, puts Vance at odds with the Catholic Church, which, even before Pope Francis issued his climate-themed encyclical Laudato Si’ in 2015, had long acknowledged the existence of the climate crisis and declared combatting it part of its duty of stewardship (“protection and preservation of the environment,” among other things). Francis’s conservative predecessor, Benedict XVI, was actually nicknamed “the Green Pope” on account of his efforts in this area.

Meanwhile, Vance has become running mate to a man who, as President of the United States, signed an executive order demanding the Environmental Protection Agency cut two regulations for every new one it adopted (a goal it in fact surpassed). During their traditional exchange of gifts at their first meeting, Pope Francis pointedly presented then-President Trump with a copy of his climate encyclical. Although Vance was not yet Catholic at that time, you’d think he might have since taken notice.

His ideology, however, does not bear it out if he has. Nor is it easy to see his Catholic values at work when he brags about having manufactured a narrative portraying Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, as criminals, purely to spread anti-immigrant sentiment among American voters. This obviously violates the “love thy neighbor” principle, but it becomes bizarre when one considers that most Haitians are also Catholic. (Although, coming as I do from two Catholic families that happen to be quite politically conservative, I can attest that it is in no way uncommon for national identity to, well, trump religious identity in the tribalist scales.)

The value of Catholic values, as I understand them anyway, is that they are uniquely about pluralism and unity. The very word Catholic, it is too often forgotten, means “universal.” The principle that there are many ways to serve, that there are many paths to the same goal, is one of the few Catholic teachings that continues to hold deep meaning in my worldview, even as an atheist. I would never dream of questioning the sincerity of Vance’s faith—I am not in a position to criticize anyone for a lack of it—but the fact that he seems to have missed this all-important lesson offends me as a Catholic as much as anything.

There are things I like about Vance. His willingness to stand up to corporate interests in some cases, as demonstrated by his collaboration with the progressive Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren on a bill designed to crack down on irresponsible banking practices, is commendable, even if it forms part of a broader economic nationalist ideology of which I cannot approve. His proposal to expand the child tax credit is probably a good idea, bearing a strong resemblance to part of a tax package recently proposed by Democrats. Vance’s pro-family label is therefore not entirely hypocritical.

Yet hypocrisy remains his defining feature. Like so many ostensibly “pro-life” conservatives, his platform is defined by policies that have already degraded the quality of life for millions around the world and threaten the survival of life on earth. For all his criticism of powerful business interests, he has chosen to join the ticket of a man whose presidency overwhelmingly favored those interests. Despite his very public conversion to Catholicism, he seems to have no regard for such Catholic values as pluralism, charity, or stewardship. Whatever Vance may be, he does not represent the qualities that give Catholicism its enduring, worldwide importance.