TRANSCRIPT: JD Vance Remarks At National Catholic Prayer Breakfast

We’re grateful to his leadership and grateful for his friendship. He is a very good guy. So Chris, I assume you’re out there somewhere, though I can’t see you, but congratulations, man. We’re proud of you and I’m proud to be here with you.

I want to thank Mark Randall who, of course, has hosted an incredible breakfast. This is the 20th year, I believe, of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast and it seems like we’re doing pretty good here. This breakfast holds a very special place in my heart. As Maureen mentioned, I came here last year as a very young senator not knowing how much my life would change. I’m thankful to God but also thankful to the friendship of the people in this room for helping us get there because I think that we have turned a new page in Washington, D.C. and we are going to take advantage of the opportunity that God has given us.

Trump Administration Policy

I want to say a couple of words just about Trump administration policy because while you’re certainly not always going to agree with everything that we do in President Trump’s administration, I feel very confident in saying that between protecting the rights of pro-life protesters, between ensuring that we have an opportunity to protect the rights of the unborn in the first place and, importantly, protecting the religious liberty of all people but in particular Catholics, I think that we can say that President Trump, though not a Catholic himself, has been an incredibly good president for Catholics in the United States of America.

Now we know, of course, the last administration liked to throw people in jail for silently praying outside of pro-life clinics. We know that they like to harass pro-life fathers of seven, very often Catholic fathers, for participating in the pro-life movement and we know that the last taxpayer funded abortion right up until the moment of birth. On every single one of those issues, in 30 short days, Donald J. Trump has gone in the exact opposite direction and I am thankful for that and I’m sure that every single person in this room is thankful for that as well.

Peace and Religious Liberty

But I actually want to talk about a couple of other things. In particular, one of the most important parts of President Trump’s policy and where I think President Trump’s policy is most in accord with Christian social teaching and with the Catholic faith is that more than any president of my lifetime, President Trump has pursued a path of peace. We very often, I think, ignore the way in which our foreign policy is either an instrument or an impediment to people all over the world being able to practice their faith.

We know, as I learned at this breakfast last year, I believe there were some Nigerian priests who were being persecuted and were trying to protect their flock despite incredible persecution. We know that some of the biggest groups that are persecuted all over the world today are Christians. The Trump administration promises you that whether it’s here at home with our own citizens or all over the world, we will be the biggest defenders of religious liberty and the rights of conscience and I think those policies will fall to the benefit of Catholics in particular all over the world.

But I would say, my friends, that it’s not enough simply to protect the rights of conscience, to pursue funding opportunities and grant-making opportunities to protect the rights of people to engage in religious conscience. We also have to remember that oftentimes the biggest impediments to religious liberty have not come through malice from the United States government but have actually come through carelessness.

One of the things that, to be honest, that I am most ashamed about is that in the United States of America sometimes it is our foreign misadventures that lead to the eradication of historical Christian communities all over the world. So when President Trump talks about the need to bring peace, whether it’s in Russia and Ukraine, whether it’s in the Middle East, we of course have to recognize that as a policy oriented towards saving lives and carrying out one of Christ’s most important commandments.

I think we also must recognize it as an effort to protect the religious liberty of Christians because over the past 40 years it has often been historical Christian communities who bear the brunt of failed American foreign policy and that is, in my view, perhaps the most important way in which Donald Trump has been a defender of Christian rights all over the world is he has a foreign policy that is oriented towards peace. We have done it already so much in the past 30 days and I’m proud that we will work for peace all over the world in the remaining four years of President Trump’s term and I think that’s an important thing.

An Open Door Policy

Now of course we’re not always going to agree and I’m sure that there are people in this room who agree or disagree with some of our views on foreign policy on any number of issues. The one thing that I will promise to you is that you’re always going to have an open door with me and with the President. I think that you’ve already seen that and if you haven’t, please come and bring your concerns. Some of you have already brought many concerns to me over the last 30 days but also you’re at it boys because I think that part of being a good presidential administration for people of faith all over the United States, part of it is listening to people of faith when they have concerns.

I think that it’s important and I’ll make this commitment to you in front of God and in front of all those television cameras back there that we will always listen to people of faith and people of conscience in the United States of America. You have an open door to the Trump administration even and especially maybe when you disagree with us. So please use that opportunity, communicate with us when we get things right but also when we get things wrong and that is my solemn obligation but also my request.

Of course I’ve learned during the campaign, I got Secret Service protection and now it’s bumped up now that I’m the Vice President of the United States. I live in a bubble, ladies and gentlemen, I live in a roaming bubble and wherever I go I’m surrounded by armed agents. The only way to keep me honest and the only way to know what is actually affecting the real lives of people all over our country is for you to talk to us. So please consider that open door very much an invitation but also a request.

I will say that, I believe Maureen mentioned that I’m the first Catholic convert to ever… be Vice President of the United States and I appreciate that. I appreciate you guys clapping because it turns out there are some people on the internet who don’t like Catholic converts and in fact there are some Catholics who appear not to like Catholic converts. I’ve learned that the hard way but of course the gross majority of my brothers and sisters in Christ have been incredibly welcoming and incredibly charitable and for that I’m grateful.

I wanted to just reflect on being a Catholic and particularly a Catholic convert in public life in the hopes that maybe it would provide some wisdom or some guidance or maybe just some interesting stories for those of you who are enjoying your breakfast.

One of the things that I try to remind myself of as a convert is that there’s a lot I don’t know. When I was a kid we used to call new converts to the faith “baby Christians” and I recognize very much that I am a baby Catholic, that there are things about the faith that I don’t know. So I try to be humble as best I can when I talk about the faith publicly because of course I’m not always going to get it right and I don’t want my inadequacies in describing our faith to fall back on the faith itself.

So if you ever hear me pontificating about the Catholic faith, please recognize it comes from a place of deep belief but it also comes from a place of not always knowing everything all the time. I don’t try to comment on every single Catholic issue, I try not to get involved in the civil wars between Dominicans and Jesuits and conservative Catholics and progressive Catholics but as Michael Corleone said in the Godfather, sometimes they pull me back in. Sometimes I can’t help but spout off—I am a politician after all, ladies and gentlemen.

The Process of Grace

The thing that I have tried to remind people of and the thing that I try to remind myself of is that what attracted me to the Christian faith and what attracted me to this church in particular is the recognition that grace is not something that happens instantaneously—it’s something that God works in us over a long period of time, sometimes many years and sometimes many decades.

I think that when I was a kid my assumption is that grace is something where the Holy Spirit would come in and it would solve all of our problems. I learned the hard way as a Catholic, in part by following the sacramental life as best as I could, that grace is very much a process, that God works in us over time, he makes us closer to him and makes us better people in the process.

When I first became a Catholic, I would probably go to confession every other week because I would fail to go to mass every other week. Things would come up—you’d have business trips, the kids would get sick—and I just remember thinking, okay if I don’t go to church this week I’m going to have to go and talk to some stranger about everything that I did bad the last two weeks. That process worked in me a much better discipline, a much better prayerful life. I’m batting probably like 95% of Sundays now that I actually go to mass.

This is, I think, one of the geniuses of our faith—that it teaches us through repetition and it forms us through a process. That is at the heart of the mystery of faith: that somehow by practicing the sacraments even imperfectly as I certainly do, God transforms us. While I am as imperfect a Christian as any person in this room, I really do feel that God is transforming me every single day and that’s one of the great blessings of our faith and one of the great blessings of following the sacraments as I try to do.

So thank you all for welcoming a convert into your ranks because I certainly benefit from it and my family does too.

Faith and Public Service

The second thing that I take from my Catholic faith is a recognition that the deepest and most important things are not material, they’re not GDP, they’re not the numbers that we see in the stock market. The real measure of health in a society is the safety and stability and the health of our families and of our people.

We are in the business, of course, in President Trump’s administration of producing prosperity but that prosperity is a means to an end, and that end is the flourishing hopefully of the life of every single citizen in the United States of America. That’s why we care about these things.

I often remind myself that there have been times in the past where the GDP numbers were maybe moving in the right direction, where the stock market was moving in the right direction but the United States of America was losing life expectancy. I think that what the Catholic Church calls me to do is to say that if the stock market is doing okay but people are literally dying and losing years off of their life, then we have to do better as a country.

Catholicism, Christianity at its root, I think teaches our public officials to care about the deep things, the important things, the protection of the unborn, the flourishing of our children and the health and the sanctity of our marriages. And yes, we care about prosperity but we care about prosperity so that we can promote the common good of every citizen in the United States of America.

The Moments That Matter Most

When I think about the deep things, the things that really matter, there was something really amazing that happened to me in November of 2024. All my friends were there, all my family was there, we were gathered together in a great moment of celebration. And of course, I’m talking about when my seven-year-old chose to be baptized into the Christian faith.

Ewan is at school right now, so he won’t see this. But as amazing as it was to win the election in November of 2024, and as amazing as it was to know that President Trump would become president again and would get to accomplish so many good things for the American people, the thing that I was most excited about in November of 2024 is that the week after we won the election, my son chose to be baptized in the Christian faith.

For those of you who are cradle Catholics, I assume, typically, we do water baptism of infants in the Catholic Church very early on. But as many of you know, I am part of an interfaith marriage. My wife, though she comes to church with us almost every single Sunday, she is not Catholic herself. And so the bargain that we have struck is that we will raise our kids Catholic, but we will let them choose the moment that they want to ultimately become baptized. And if that’s terrible sacrilege, blame the Dominicans, because they’re the ones who came up with this scheme.

My seven-year-old elected to become baptized. And it was the proudest moment, maybe, that I’ve ever had as a father. And he took it very seriously. And he wanted to know, what are the right things to say, Dad? What do I need to do? What does this mean? Why is this important? And it was an amazing thing for me to see my seven-year-old working through these things himself.

When I talk about the deep things, the important things, that’s what I’m talking about. Of course, we care about our economic indicators. And of course, we care about the wages of our citizens. We care about those things, because when our people are doing better, they can have the kinds of moments that promote the kind of flourishing that all of us believe is the very core of a good human life. And that, of course, in my case, was watching my little seven-year-old son become baptized.

So while, again, I will never be perfect, I will always try to remind myself that the goal of our public policy is to promote the common good. And I will fight for that every single day that I am a public official. And that brings me to the final…

One observation I’d like to make as a Christian, a Catholic convert in public life, is that sometimes the bishops don’t like what I say. And I’m sure, by the way, sometimes they’re right and sometimes they’re wrong. My goal is not to litigate when I’m right and when they’re wrong or vice versa. My goal is to maybe articulate the way that I think about being a Christian in public life when you also have religious leaders in public life who have a spiritual duty to speak on the issues of the day.

And the way that I try to think about it is the Catholic Church is a kind of technology. It’s a technology that was developed 2,000 years ago. And it’s coming into contact with a technology that’s about 10 years old, 20 years old, and that’s, of course, social media. And what I try to remind myself of is that the clergy are important spiritual leaders. You’ll sometimes hear people say, well, we’ll let the clergy talk about matters of the church, but we can ignore them when it comes to matters of public policy. I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. That’s certainly not the right way to look at it for me.

But what I try to remind myself of is that we are not called as Christians to obsess over every social media controversy that implicates the Catholic Church, whether it involves a clergy or a bishop or the Holy Father himself. I think that we should, frankly, take a page out of the books of our grandparents who respected our clergy, who looked to them for guidance, but didn’t obsess and fight over every single word that came out of their mouth and entered social media. I don’t think that’s good. And I’m not, again, counseling all of you, but I don’t think it’s good for us as Christians to constantly fight with one another over every single controversy in the church. Sometimes we should let this stuff play out a little bit and try to live our faith as best we can under the dictates of our faith and under the dictates of our spiritual leaders, but not hold them to the standards of social media influencers because they’re not.

Navigating Public Disagreements with Church Leadership

And I think that brings me, of course, to the last point that I want to make, which is that, as you’ve probably seen publicly, the Holy Father, Pope Francis, has criticized some of our policies when it comes to immigration. Again, my goal here is not to litigate with him or any other clergy member about who’s right and who’s wrong. You obviously know my views, and I will speak to them consistently because I think that I have to do it because it serves the best interests of the American people.

What I want to do instead is remind, and I talk to a lot of conservative Catholics, and I talk to progressive Catholics too, and I think that sometimes a lot of conservative Catholics are too preoccupied with their political criticisms of a particular clergy member or the leader of the Catholic Church. And of course, I’m not telling you that you’re wrong because sometimes I even agree with you. I think that what I would say is that it’s not in the best interest of any of us, again, to treat the religious leaders of our faith as just another social media influencer. And I think, frankly, that goes in both ways, if I can be so bold. I think it’s incumbent upon our religious leaders to recognize that in the era of social media, people will hang on every single word that they utter, even if that wasn’t their intention, and even if a given declaration wasn’t meant for consumption in the social media age.

But every day since I heard of Pope Francis’ illness, I say a prayer for the Holy Father because while, yes, I was certainly surprised when he criticized our immigration policy in the way that he has, I also know that the pope, I believe that the pope, is fundamentally a person who cares about the flock of Christians under his leadership. And he’s the man who cares about the spiritual direction of the faith. And I say this because every day, me and my children have said a prayer for the Holy Father. And we pray for his health. And we pray for his comfort as he deals with what appears to be a pretty serious health crisis.

Remembering Pope Francis’ Message During COVID

And while, yes, some of our media and some of our social media influencers, and even some of us fellow Catholics, I think try to bring the Holy Father into every culture war battle in American politics. I will always remember the Holy Father, whether he makes his way through this illness, and I certainly hope that he does. I will always remember the Holy Father in March of 2020 at a time of incredible stress for really the entire world.

Remember, that was the height of the COVID pandemic. None of us knew how bad it was. We heard reports from Italy of people dying in mass on ventilators. And personally, I had just a few weeks earlier welcomed our second child into the world. And so when the COVID pandemic happened, I had a three-week-old baby at home. And I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods, and I bought 900 rounds of ammunition. And I went to Walmart, and I bought two bags of rice. And I sat at home with my bags of rice and my 900 rounds of ammunition and said, all right, we’re just going to wait this thing out.

And into that void, when a lot of people didn’t know how bad it was, and of course, thankfully, the pandemic was not as bad as the very worst predictions. It was quite bad, but not as bad as the very worst predictions. I think all of us can remember that moment of the Holy Father standing in an empty St. Peter’s Square, holding the Eucharist above his head, and giving a sermon that I returned to consistently because it was incredibly meaningful to me at the time, and it remains meaningful today.

And so if you’ll forgive me, I hope that you’ll be OK with me reading just an excerpt of the homily that Pope Francis gave.

“When evening had come,” which, of course, is from Mark chapter 4, verse 35, the gospel passage we have heard begins like this. “For weeks now, it has been evening. Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets, and our cities. It has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void that stops everything as it passes by. We feel it in the air. We notice it in people’s gestures. Their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost.”

“Like the disciples in the gospel, we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm. We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed. All of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat are all of us, just like those disciples who spoke anxiously with one voice, saying ‘we are perishing.’ So we, too, have realized that we cannot go on thinking of ourselves, but only together can we do this.”

“It is easy to recognize ourselves in this story. What is harder to understand is Jesus’s attitude. While his disciples are quite naturally alarmed and desperate, he is in the stern, in the part of the boat that sinks first. And what does he do? In spite of the tempest, he sleeps on soundly, trusting in the Father. This is the only time in the gospels we see Jesus sleeping. When he wakes up, after calming the wind and the waters, he turns to the disciples in a reproaching voice. ‘Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?'”

“Let us try to understand in what does the lack of the disciples’ faith consist, as contrasted with Jesus’s trust. They had not stopped believing in him. In fact, they called on him. But we see how they call on him. ‘Teacher, do you not care if we perish?’ Do you not care, they think, that Jesus is not interested in them, does not care about them? One of the things that hurts us and our families most when we hear said is, ‘do you not care about me?’ It is a phrase that wounds and unleashes storms in our hearts. It would have shaken Jesus, too, because he, more than anyone, cares about us. Indeed, once they have called on him, he saves his disciples from their discouragement. The storm exposes our vulnerability and uncovers those false, superfluous certainties around which we have constructed”

Our daily schedules, our projects, our habits, and priorities. It shows us how we have allowed to become dull and feeble the very things that nourish, sustain, and strengthen our lives and our communities. The tempest lays bare all our prepackaged ideas and forgetfulness of what nourishes our people’s souls, all those attempts that anesthetize us with ways of thinking and acting that supposedly save us, but instead prove incapable of putting us in touch with our roots and keeping alive the memory of those who have gone before us. We deprive ourselves of the antibodies we need to confront adversity. And I think that is an amazing phrase, that what we do so often in our lives, in our public life, in our private lives, is we deprive ourselves of the antibodies we need to confront adversity.

And that is how I will always remember the Holy Father, is as a great pastor, as a man who can speak the truth of the faith in a very profound way at a moment of great crisis.

Prayer for Pope Francis

And so I would ask all of us if you would join me in this prayer for Pope Francis. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Almighty and generous God, we thank you for your charity. Please grant your mercy upon Pope Francis so he may be restored from sickness and guide us in watchful care. We pray that you bless our Holy Father’s doctors, nurses, and medical staff with wisdom and capability so that you may work through them to renew the health of your shepherd through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Conclusion

And I think that as I conclude my remarks here, I’m not ever going to be perfect. I’m never going to get everything right. But what I will try to do is to try to be the kind of leader who helps our shared civilization build those true antibodies against adversity. And if the Holy Father can hear us, I hope he knows that there are thousands of faithful Catholics in this room and millions of faithful Catholics in this country who are praying for him as he weathers his particular storm.

God bless you, and thank you.

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