Ecclesia militans. On the use of the word "Christian".

Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὰ μέρη Καισαρείας τῆς Φιλίππου ἠρώτα τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ λέγων· Τίνα λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου; 

οἱ δὲ εἶπαν· Οἱ μὲν Ἰωάννην τὸν βαπτιστήν, ἄλλοι δὲ Ἠλίαν, ἕτεροι δὲ Ἱερεμίαν ἢ ἕνα τῶν προφητῶν. 

λέγει αὐτοῖς· Ὑμεῖς δὲ τίνα με λέγετε εἶναι; 

ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ Σίμων Πέτρος εἶπεν· Σὺ εἶ ὁ Χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ζῶντος. 

ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Μακάριος εἶ, Σίμων Βαριωνᾶ, ὅτι σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα οὐκ ἀπεκάλυψεν σοὶ ἀλλ' ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. 

κἀγὼ δὲ σοὶ λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς. 

δώσω σοι τὰς κλεῖδας τῆς βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. 

τότε διεστείλατο τοῖς μαθηταῖς ἵνα μηδενὶ εἴπωσιν ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ Χριστός.

_____________________________________________ 

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi and

he asked his disciples,

"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" 

They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,

still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." 

He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" 

Simon Peter said in reply,

"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 

Jesus said to him in reply,

"Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. 

For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. 

And so I say to you, you are Peter,

and upon this rock I will build my church,

and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. 

I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. 

Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;

and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 

Then he strictly ordered his disciples

to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Matthew 16:13-20

The other day I saw an item on Blue Sky posted by Atticus Finch of Georgia which linked in an article on "post truth Christianity".  It brought into focus something that's really been increasingly bothering me in recent years. . .well more specifically the Trump era.

Then, as an example of synchronicity, I was speaking with a close relative of mine who absolutely exploded on the same topic.  I didn't bring it up.  That person did.

Then, this past Sunday, Matthew 16:13-20 was the Gospel reading.

Yesterday there was a post on Twitter in which an Orthodox Christian reacted the same way I am here.

So here's what that topic is.

When the term "Christian" is used recently, it tends to refer to "Christian" support of Donald Trump.  And, hence the error.

While you can find individuals of any stripe of Christianity and religion supporting Trump, in reality, the Christians that support Trump are, for the most part, and most significantly, Evangelical Christians.  Yes, you can find a Catholic or Orthodox cleric here and there that does.¹ And, in fairness, you can find Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, and any number of other sets of beliefs with individuals who support Trump.²  But the real core of the "Christian" support of Trump comes from a slice of the Evangelical world, and just a slice at that.

The "post truth" comment is what really got my attention.  

American Catholics generally try to make nice with other Christian denominations, although less so in the post 1960 world than we used to, but lots of Protestants don't try to make nice with us.  So we have tended, post 1960, to keep some of our weltanschauung to ourselves.³ So much so, in fact, that we've allowed the Protestantization of lots of Catholics, who now think like Protestants.  While there are exceptions, when you find a real pro Trump Catholic, they probably have a Protestant world outlook and don't realize it.

So, to post truth.

Protestants have been "post truth" for about five hundred years.  Protestants outside the mainline Protestant churches are very post truth.

We've known that all along.

Starting with science, Catholics are in favor of science, not against it.  The entire Big Bang Theory is our deal.  We're not opposed to the theory of evolution.  People evolved from earlier primates.  The world is not 5,000 years old.  It's billions of years old.

We know that. We not only accept that (most of us) but we rejoice in it.  We don't feel that God has to fit within our limited human imagination.

Our basic view is that God gave us the intellect to explore his creation.  So far, we haven't found one darned thing that causes us to question our faith.  Moreover, if you belong to a religion that requires you do deny science, something about it is deeply wrong, even false.

So, yeah, there's a lot of "post truth" Christians out there, and they're coming from the Evangelical end of the pool.  If you find a Catholic holding those views, they've likely dipped their toes in it.  Some are swimming really deep in it.

And here's another thing, which my relative was exploding on.

Catholics have taken a beating for decades simply for being Catholic.  It's okay, Christ told us that we would.  In the US we get, from Evangelicals, the question of "are you Christian?", with the reply from them often being that if we're Catholic, we're not Christian.

Well, I guess when people had access only to their friends and neighbors and a pastor who had been miseducated on these topics, that was not only to be expected but semi tolerable, but it isn't any more.

We are the original Christians.

Πάντες τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ ἀκολουθεῖτε, ὡς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς τῷ πατρί, καὶ τῷ πρεσβυτερίῳ ὡς τοῖς ἀποστόλοις. τοὺς δὲ διακόνους ἐντρέπεσθε ὡς θεοῦ ἐντολήν. μηδεὶς χωρὶς τοῦ ἐπισκόπου τι πρασσέτω τῶν ἀνηκόντων εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν. ἐκείνη βεβαία εὐχαριστία ἡγείσθω, ἡ ὑπὸ ἐπίσκοπον οὖσα ἢ ᾧ ἄν αὐτὸς ἐπιτρέψῃ.

ὅπου ἄν φανῇ ὁ ἐπίσκοπος, ἐκεῖ τὸ πλῆθος ἤτω, ὥσπερ ὅπου ἄν ᾖ Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, ἐκεῖ ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία. οὐκ ἐξόν ἐστιν χωρὶς τοῦ ἐπισκόπου οὔτε βαπτίζειν οὔτε ἀγάπην ποιεῖν· ἀλλ' ὃ ἄν ἐκεῖνος δοκιμάσῃ, τοῦτο καὶ τῷ θεῷ εὐάρεστον, ἵνα ἀσφαλὲς ᾖ καὶ βέβαιον πᾶν ὃ πράσσετε.

See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.

 The Epistle of Ignatius, 33 to 108, to the Smyrnaeans, written in 107.

Nobody with any religious education of a serious nature denies this whatsoever.  John Calvin and Martin Luther didn't deny that.  The only religion that can raise a hand on it are the Orthodox Churches, and they don't deny that we're first, they just take they position that they are also first, and that actually makes some sense.  There's a schism between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church, but we all go back to day one.  That's not to make light of the schism, but it's significant in that we all know that our churches go directly back to the moment Christ founded the church.

No Protestant Church can claim that and maintain the claim, although some try to.  Those that do have to acknowledge that the Catholic Church is first, and try to argue that they're related closely enough to it in order to make the same claim.  That is the claim of the Methodist and Anglican Churches, for example.

All of which brings up the next point.  Any Protestant Church that claims to be authentically Christian that doesn't have a good explanation for this is in real trouble.  Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.  You can't be a Protestant Christian and just claim you are like the original Christian communities.  Take a look at what St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote in 107.  St. John the Apostle had only been dead for about seven years when he wrote that.  You aren't like the original Christians if you don't look like the Catholic Church, with Bishops, priests, and deacons.  You can't claim there was a great falling away, a Great Apostasy, early on.  There wasn't. We have all the books and we know that there wasn't.  Ignorance, on this topic, is your only defense (and now that you've read that, you don't have that).

Indeed, if you aren't Catholic, you need to have a really good explanation for it, and there really isn't one.

So, here's the thing, now that Trump is in office and flaming out we're hearing from the same group of people who said that we're not Christians that we need to throw in with them and support Trump.

We do not.

Trump is not a religious man himself, and there's very little evidence that he has any deeply held religious beliefs, if any religious believes at all.  Personally, he's a study on certain of the Seven Deadly Sins.  He's a warning on the love of money.  He's a serial polygamist.  He's a liar.

He's an evil man.

Throwing in with evil is never justified save for the principle of Double Effect.  I.e., my tipping the pizza delivery guy may have just funded the purchase of illegal drugs, but that was not the intended effect.  My working for the post office may mean that I'm delivering pornography (well, I guess that probably doesn't happen anymore in the age of the Internet, but you get the point), but that is incidental to the occupation, not its purpose.

But this obviously crosses over a line, somewhere.  If, for example, I were a German and this was 1940, a hatred of Bolshevism would not justify joining the SS.

And that's sort of where we are at now, in a way.

Some thinking Catholics supported Trump either openly or quietly with their vote, earlier, as they were opposed to abortion and the weirdness of social trends in sex and gender in general.  Well, the Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade and the transgenderism thing is jumping the shark, if it hasn't already jumped it.  Indeed, in Europe, where it first appeared, it's in major retreat.  Obergefell hasn't been reversed, but there's been no case that presented an opportunity for htat to occur, probably because conservatives fear to advance one.

Irish born immigrant  Patrick J. Sullivan.  He became wealthy raising sheep in Carbon County and relocated to Casper in 1892, when he went into other enterprises.  He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1894 to 1896 and from 1898 to 1900, Mayor of Casper from 1897 until 1899, Senator from Wyoming from 1929 to 1930, appointed to fill the seat left by the death of Francis E. Warren.  While he was a practicing Catholic, he tended to deemphasize it at the time as it was damaging to his public standing, something that was the case up until Kennedy ran for President.

Now, mind you, I'm not telling you who to vote for, what I'm suggesting is whom you do not support, or to put it another way, what you should not get wrapped up in.

The MAGA movement isn't justifiable from a Christian perspective at this point, if it ever was.  It's weirdly nationalistic and in many instances engaged in idol worship in the form of fanatic adoration of Donald Trump, even somewhat crediting him with supernatural powers in "always being right".   The administration has committed the military to actions which are outright murderous in the Caribbean and South American Pacific.  It's waging an unjust and illegal war.  It creeps right up on being racist and some of its members hold beliefs that are deeply antithetical to Apostolic Christianity.  Some of the people in it are deeply evil, and all of them are deeply compromised.

Vote for those who you will, and in keeping with your conscience.  But some things to remember.  

Trump is not any kind of real Christian.  Attaching Christianity to this administration is going to have a massive negative impact as it falls.  It is in fact already doing so.  There are people in the secular world who truly believe that its the "Christians" who are supporting Trump, and that people like Mike Johnson and Mike Lee are posters for Christians. They are not.⁴  The fact that they're being made posters for Christianity means that they, and Trump, are driving thinking people away from the Church.  When Trump falls, he's going to take a lot of Evangelical Christianity down with him, just as the fall of the Confederacy during the Civil War heavily damaged the Episcopal Church in the South.

Catholics, we don't want to be part of that, and there's no reason that we should be.

Ecclesia militans.⁵

Footnotes

1.  A prominent example of that is Bishop Barron.  Bishop Barron shows up on occasion at Trump related religious gatherings and he servers on President Trump’s Presidential Religious Liberty Commission.

I'm not here to criticize a Bishop and I don't really understand what the Bishop is doing, or what the Commission does.  Nor have I followed it.  I'm just noting this.  Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is well liked, also serves on it.  Archbishop Elpidophoros of America and Bishop Salvatore Cordileone are advisory members.

2.  Stephen Miller, who just the other day accused the Protestant seminary student who is competing for a Senate seat from Texas of not being Christian, is Jewish.

3.  We can trace this to the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, as we have before, who basically promised to only be Catholic on Sundays.

Kennedy was a horrible example of a Catholic to start with.  But his election was such a thrill to American Catholics that a large number of them followed him into the same easy belief, which has been a disaster for a generation of American Catholics that we're only now just really beginning to recover from.

4.  Johnson is a Southern Baptist, which is presently the largest Protestant denomination in the US, having about 12.3M members.  In contrast the number of Catholics in the US is around 70M.  A person needs to keep in mind that not all Catholics are observant, but then neither are all Baptists.  Anyhow, Johnson also seems to adhere to the New Apostolic Reformation and sincerely believe that he's been licensed to lie in order to bring about a Protestant state.  Lee is a Mormon and therefore not a Christian at all.

5.  This huge icon is a Russian Orthodox icon.

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 135th Edition. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus

I've been saying for awhile, and statements like this really demonstrate it:

It looks like President Trump has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches than the Pope.

Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of the 14,000-member First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas on Fox News.

That comment was stupid.  But then, he's called Catholicism a cult.

The Catholic Church is an Apostolic Church.  It was founded by Christ.  John Smyth, an Englishman, founded the Baptists in 1609.  

Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is a Catholic doctrine. There is no salvation outside the Church.  None the less, the Church holds that those who did not come to Christ innocently, or those who did not come to the Church innocently, can be saved, which operates again through the Church.  You can't be held responsible for what you innocently didn't know.

But what about here?

We're in the death throws of the reformation.  Things Smyth could get away with believing in 1609 there's no excuse to believe now, other than invincible ignorance.

Being a pastor of a 14,000 member church puts a pretty heavy burden on you and your soul for remaining ignorant.

Smyth is also a Fox News contributor, which really figures.  

As an irony here, although one he will not be capable, right now, of appreciating, Smyth has gone after Mormons, Jews, and Muslims as well.  In normal times, he would not have a national television audience.  He would have a local Dallas one as Texas is part of the former Confederacy and the Baptist rose in the wake of the Southern defeat in 1865, replacing the Episcopal Church in the South as the dominant religion culturally.  Nationally, however, picking on Jews, Muslims, Catholics and Mormons would get you booted off of television.

Religious aspects of this aside, this brings up a political one I've warned about here repeatedly.

Catholics voting for MAGA candidates are voting for a group that not only doesn't regard the Church highly, they don't believe it's a Christian religion at all.  People like Lyin' Chuck Gray, Reid Rasner and Megan Degenfelder, who are Catholics who run as MAGA are making a political bargain that will cause them, as it seems to have already for Lyin' Chuck to decide between their faiths, and their political fortunes.  Degenfelder has signs up all over which say "Endorsed by President Trump".

They should say "Endorsed by Blasphemous Donald Trump".

And this isn't merely esoteric.  We're in the same position now that Catholic Germans were in the 1932 German election (and the Catholics in fact went for Hitler much less than German protestants did).  There's really going to be no good "um, well, the other guy . . . " excuse here.  The far right Evangelical edge of the Trump coalition isn't even pretending not to hate Catholics much anymore.

And what about Mormons?  

Mormons include a heavy MAGA contingent, although the only really devout Mormons I know here locally right now are heavy duty Never Trumpers, and openly so.  But then you have guys like Deseret Mike Lee who come pretty close to viewing Trump positively in some sort of creepy religious terms.  Deep in the Jello Belt it's always been the case that there was a sort of ignorant conservatism in some quarters, and in the last 16 years, in spite of guys like Mitt Romney, it's really come out.

Trump and Islam is simply laughable as a joke.  In the last election Trump drew a fair amount of Islamic support because Muslims were so mad about Joe Biden's support of Israel.  Well, they got what the should have expected. The only person Trump loves more than Putin (and of course Trump) is Benjamin  Netanyahu and as a result we've supported genocide in Gaza, a war in Lebanon and we helped Israel attack Iran and we can't get out of it.  I suspect that most Muslims are voting for the Democrats next go around, just like most Hispanics will be (and in both instances, this really gives the Democrats a chance to evolve away from their sea of blood positions).

And this sort of thing should even be a revelation for Jews of all stripes, although I think they're more awake to what MAGA is than most.  The strong Trump support for Netanyahu comes in part because Netanyahu is good at playing Trump, much like Putin is.  But it also comes from people like Hegseth or Huckabee, who have a radical Protestant view of Israel and want to bring about the Second Coming of Christ basically by force, which they see current events as an opportunity in which to do so.  Put another way, do you really want to get in the car with somebody who wants to drive you to a giant gun fight?

Donald Trump, of course, is sort of beyond all of this.  Trump isn't any sort of serious Christian and we don't really know if he has any religious beliefs at all.  Most of his life has been spent chasing cash through real estate development and his hobbies have been golf and chasing tail.  Christians are just a convenient vehicle for him.  If the Sultan of Oman offered him a bigger better airplane tomorrow if he'd convert to Islam, and remind him that Muslims can have more than one wife, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he signed on.  His personal conduct actually squares better with Islam than Christianity, which is after all a religion focused on the poor and duty.

In the end, all of this is going to fall apart.

Christians who aligned with Trump, just like Muslims and Mormons who did, are going to have to pay the cost.  It'll be different for each.  For Muslims, well their fellows are playing through blood right now.  Jews will pay by the backlash that's already started.  

For Christians, it'll be different, depending upon where their allegiance lay.  For the ignorant members of the American Civil Religion, and for the hardcore Evangelical right, this will be the beginning of an end of an era that started in April 1865, when the South fell and the Evangelical far right stepped into its own.  For the Protestant world in general, this will accelerate the death of the Reformation.

For the Catholic and Orthodox Christians who supported Trump, how could you be so blind?

Nonetheless, this will be a good thing for the Catholic and Orthodox.  A delusion that started in 1960 that you could be fully American and fully Catholic, or Orthodox, has ended.  National Conservatism will end with it.  

And that will be a good thing.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 134th Edition. Paying the cost of failed Reconstruction.

Labels: 1860s, 1960s, 2020s, It was because of the Civil War, Politics, Racism, Reconstruction, Slavery, The Lost Cause, The Second Trump Administration, You heard it here first, Zeitgeist

Religion, J.D. and Usha Vance.

Because this blog is steadfastly horrified by Donald Trump and his administration, it'd be easy to assume that it's run by a rampaging leftist.  

It isn't.  

Indeed, if you follow the thread you'll see where we come out on the right a fair amount, which in our view doesn't mean supporting fascism.  I'm a conservative, not a right wing populist.

We note this, as there's been a flap over J. D. Vance's comments about hoping that his wife, Usha, converts to Catholicism, as if that's somehow inappropriate.

It isn't, and any sincere Catholic with a non Catholic spouse, which includes me, hopes for that.

Vance wasn't a political figure that I followed at all until he started to campaign for the VP slot next to Donald Trump.  Frankly, I found and still find his political migration to Trumpian authoritarianism appalling.  Anyhow, I knew that he was a convert to Catholicism, but I wasn't really aware of how recent of convert he is.  Vance grew up in Evangelical Protestantism, which isn't surprising given his "hillbilly" background, and at least according to an interview I heard of him some time ago, his influential grandmother was of the non churched Southern type of Christian view.  Vance himself was an atheist by the time he went to college   By 2014, the time of his marriage, he had resumed being a non denominational Protestant Christian but he was evolving towards Catholicism by 2016.  He converted to the Faith in 2019.

Vance's path is a lot more common than people suppose.  Vance is an intelligent man, my numerous political disagreements with him notwithstanding, and he became an atheist in ignorance.  The more educated he became, the more Christian he became, and exhibiting Cardinal Newman's Rule, that lead him ultimately to Catholicism somewhat against his own will, much like C. S. Lewis became a High Church Anglican after having been an atheist, or like G. K. Chesterton argued himself into the Faith.

Vance's path to Catholicism coincided his increasing rightward political draft and his barely camouflaged transformation into a Illiberal Democrat.  He's trod the same path in that regard ad Rod Dreher, whom is a friend of his (and who is pretending, frankly, to be Orthodox).  There's numerous other intellectuals on the right at this time who likewise share that distinction, such as J. R. Reno and Patrick Dineen, and amongst them are notable converts like Eva Vlaardingerbroek.  Indeed, there's a notable movement amongst conservatives from Lutheran nations in this direction, even as a non political boom in conversions occurs in various areas in Europe.  For cradle Catholics the association with illiberal democracy can be disturbing, and even result in outright internecine fights, but it is going on.  We here will note, as we have before, that becoming politically conservative does not mean having to become a populist let alone an illiberal democrat.

Anyhow, one of the things about Catholicism is this.  We are not religious pluralist.  If Vance did not wish for his wife to become Catholic, he'd be a very bad Catholic.

Usha Vance is a Hindu.

Catholics believe extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.  There is no salvation outside the church.

Now that's a doctrine that Catholics don't emphasize much, and often real diehard radtrad Catholics don't understand.  It isn't the case that Catholics believe that only Catholics can go to Heaven.  For that matter, Catholics are very far from any kind of "once saved always saved" theology and accept that a lot of Catholics might very well go to Hell.  Rather, Catholics believe, as the Catechism states it:

"Outside the Church there is no salvation"

846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.

847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.

848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."

Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

Vance can of course hope, and should hope, that Usha converts, as her chances of salvation are heightened.  Does that mean that if she doesn't, she's damned to Hell?  Well, we can't know the state of anyone's soul, but the fact that she hasn't would suggest that she's not consciously rejecting Christianity, but rather hasn't overcome something.

Vance himself should be worried about the state of his soul. Catholics reject IVF, which he's been backing, and lying on serious matters is a serious sin, which Vance has been doing at an epic level.

At any rate, Vance isn't doing the wrong thing by hoping his wife becomes Catholic.  He's completely correct to wish for that, including openly.

This is, however, where the liberal side of American culture, and even the American Civil Religion, and frankly the Evangelical Christians, all come into conflict with Catholics.

At some point in American history and in American culture, and it goes back pretty far it became really common for people to be sort of religious relativist.  "It doesn't matter what religion you are, as long as you are a good person."  Well, it does in fact matter what religion you are, and of course you should be a good person no matter what religion you are.

Catholicism was an oppressed religion in the United State up until basically the 1960s.  Open oppression of it lessened steadily in the century prior to the 60s, and in fact was intense prior to the 1860s.  Catholics really kept themselves in a major way as a result, and only really began to enter the wider culture after World War Two.  Al Smith's Catholicism is generally regarded as what made it impossible for him to win the Presidency prior to the war.  An early Casper politician of Irish extraction was controversial in the town's Catholic community because of the distance he put between himself and his religion.  The first Catholic Governor of Wyoming was probably Frank A. Barrett, who was a devout Catholic who went on to become the state's U.S. Senator thereafter.  Joe Hickey, another Catholic came after him.  Both Barrett and Hickey were Governors in the 1950s.  Of course, Kennedy broke the dam in 1960, but in part by pledging basically not to let his Catholicism influence him, which was a despicable pledge. 

Vance hasn't pledged that.

The only U.S. Army generals known to be Catholic during World War Two, we might note, were Lieutenant General John E. Hull and Major General Patrick J. Hurley.  This fits into the culture of the professional military class at the time and it might be noted that the first Jewish general in the U.S. Army, Maurice Rose, was a practicing Episcopalian.  Patton, often noted to be very devout, was an Episcopalian, as was Marshall.  

Anyhow, as noted, it's not the case that Catholics feel all non Catholics are going to Hell as they are not Catholic, and Catholics certainly do not believe that all Catholics are going to Heaven as they are Catholic.  Rather, Catholics believe that the Catholic Church, which is the oldest and original form of Christianity, is the church Christ founded and the one entrusted with the instruments of salvation.  In some ways, everyone who is ultimately saved is saved in some way because of the Catholic Church.  As, to use a mistranslation of von Balthasar's statement, we wish "for all men to be saved", we want everyone to be Catholics as that makes it much more assured.

This puts us way outside of the American Civil Religions' views that all religions, or perhaps all Christian religions with Judaism thrown in for good measure, are equal.

One thing it should also do, however, and recent conversions should help cradle Catholics to refocus on this, is to be concerned about people in our immediate orbit.  Vance is basically doing that, but frankly he's in a bit of a tough spot because he and his wife married before his conversion.  

Simply being in a marriage in which one member is a Catholic and the other is not, if the Catholic is a sincere Catholic, has some real challenges.  Catholicism is different and even after decades the non Catholic spouse can be really surprised by the application of the Faith by the Catholic spouse.  In "mixed" couples where the non Catholic spouse is a member of one of the churches that's very close to the Catholic Church this is less so, but even here I've known couples who attended Mass faithfully where one was a Catholic and the other a Lutheran, for instance, with the Lutheran never converting in spite of the two churches being so close.  

As Yeoman's First Law of Human Behavior is a powerful force, general run of the mill Protestant spouses may attend Mass and support their Catholic spouse early on, but over a period time, simply stop attending as most Protestants aren't under a requirement to attend any service on a Sunday. That's inevitably extremely hard on the Catholic spouse who soldiers on.  This has to be even more difficult in a situation such as Vance's in which the other spouse isn't even a member of a Christian religion at all.

Indeed, at one time Catholics were very much discouraged from marrying non Catholics, although its always occurred, and it was often a stipulation by the Catholic spouse that the other convert.  I've known several Catholic couples where this was what happened, although I think it much less common now.  The religion where this frequently occurs is the Mormon religion, which is not a Christian religion and which isn't compatible with any.  Of note there, usually fallen away Mormons simply become intensely anti religious, rather than some other religion.

Catholics only marrying Catholics was a lot easier when Catholics pretty much were associated, culturally, only with other Catholics. That day is long gone, but there's still some wisdom to the old custom here.  As with many things, the Catholic viewpoint on something like marriage is much different than the cultures, if taken seriously.  Catholics married to non Catholics are adding weight to their cross, no matter what.  And part of that weight is the hope the other spouse become Catholic.