Now that Pope Leo XIV has hit the ground running — and done some fence-mending, albeit stiffly, with Vice President JD Vance and the Trump Administration — the Memorial Day weekend is a good moment to look at the overcomplicated idea that created the Trump-Vatican rift in the first place.
Read MoreVittore Carpaccio’s “St. Augustine in His Study” (1502, tempera on canvas). JD Vance used the idea of the ordo amoris, or ordering of love that Augustine expounded on in defense of nationalism on Fox News. His interpretation was rejected by Pope Leo XIV, an Augustinian friar.