Father Henry Stephan is one of the heroes of “Communion,” the new book from Vice President J.D. Vance. Father Stephan was integral to the Vice Presidents journey into the welcoming pews of the Catholic Church.
Even if you dont buy “Communion,” if you pass it displayed in an airport shop or find yourself in our dwindling number of actual bookstores, turn to page 163 and read the good Fathers additional explanation to the statement that “for most of us, grace is not something that happens in a moment.”
“You dont feel Gods presence and then change in an instant,” begins Father Stephans longer explanation. But to quote him further would be to rob you of some of the surprising clarity of his explanation of “the road map to God.” More of Father Stephans full reflection on grace might discourage you from actually reading the whole of Communion â which is actually four stories, artfully woven into one book.
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The first story, and the one which stretches across all of its pages, is the Vice Presidents lifelong quest to either accept or reject the idea of God and, having accepted it, the further account of how he landed in the Roman Catholic Church. Mass-attending “cradle Catholics” are likely to know at least a few converts, and their stories are often unique and uplifting. This one is most definitely that.
The second story is simply a love story. The Vice President recounts in loving detail how he fell â hard â for his wife Usha and how the beer-drinking Marine/Ohio State Buckeye-turned-Yale Law School hyper-ambitious-striver tricked the future clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts into moving to Cincinnati and marrying him.
There is also a third portion, a short but disquieting sharp meditation (at least to this Boomer because the VP may be right) on how Boomers may be overly attached to the assumptions about the West they were born into and have long believed and defended.
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That vision of the West actually succeeded in its long contest with the Soviet Union. That the principles and assumptions behind that success may now be an unconscious burden a that older generation, is a disquieting thought. The Boomer generation is well represented in the Senate from which the Vice President came, even after the sad passing of Senator Lindsey Graham. The Vice President suggests we ought to at least consider the cost of over-valuing the prized “the rules-based world order”, which may in fact be gone and not coming back. A reader doesnt have to be persuaded by that mediation to at least give it some much-needed consideration.
The Vice Presidents succinct critique of what may be the sunk costs weighing on my generation may actually stop and oblige some “Reagan conservatives” to wonder for the first time about that possibility. That clutch of pages punches hard.
Most of my generation was indeed blind to what the global economy was doing to Americas heartland even as it super-charged Chinas totalitarian quasi-empire expanded its power and unveiled its ambitions. The battle with the Soviet bloc was indeed existential, but it was
