Neighbour-Love and Nation-State: Can Ordo Amoris Offer a Framework for Just Immigration Policy?
Leave a Comment‘We should love our family first, then our neighbours, then love our community, then our country, and only then consider the interests of the rest of the world.’ These, the words of J.D. Vance, the Catholic Vice President of the United States, sparked controversy within the Church. Writing to the U.S. Bishops in February 2025, Pope Francis then framed the ‘true ordo amoris as… love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.’ We find here the central question: is the right ordering of loves, in accordance with God’s good design, exclusive or inclusive? Does a hierarchy of loves necessitate love contracted by category, or is love that images the divine necessarily universal?
We must begin, as so many good things do, with Augustine. The early Church Father differentiated between caritas (divine love) and cupiditas (disordered love), contending that the latter emerges when humans love other things above God (De Doctrina Christiana, I.27-29). Thomas Aquinas systematised this, framing right ordo amoris as: objects of love ordered in accordance with their proximity to God as they share in His goodness; informing the order of charity which places God, then ourselves, neighbours, and enemies in that order; a cosmic, moral order that structures creation to reflect God’s wisdom. Aquinas develops Augustine’s abstract ontological hierarchy of goods – originally a personal and spiritual orientation – into a systematic principle of virtue. Human loves are thereby ordered according to their participation in the divine good, that it might inform caritas (here, charity). The ordo amoris has been repackaged many times since. C.S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, reframes it as a pedagogical and cultural, not theological, principle: he contends that we must rightly train our affections that we may ‘feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are’.
But if love must be rightly ordered, what do we mean by ‘love’? Without labouring the subject, human love should be here understood as a participation in God’s own love that issues in acts of mercy; it is more an affection or adoration for an object but extends into the willing of the true good of others (De Doctrina Christiana, 1.27-29; Summa Theologica II-II, q.23-26).
This offers one of the best accounts for ordo amoris. Whilst we can will good to all, we cannot do good to all; our finitude necessitates a theology of caritas, or love-based action. Yet this also brings us to a crucial question. Augustine teaches that our love for neighbour flows from our love for God; we love ‘for the sake of’ God because He enables, exemplifies, and sustains that love (De Doctrina Christiana, I). But how can our love image God’s when His infinite nature allows Him to love all people equally as His image-bearing creations (Genesis 1:27; Galatians 3:28)? We simply were not created with such capacity.
It will not be a surprise that we must turn to the example of Jesus. Christ’s loves were perfectly aligned with the Father’s will (John 6:38), and yet this divine love was manifest within human limitations. Whilst incarnate Jesus loved all, His caritas was only directed towards a few, determined seemingly through proximity and encounter. However, what we do not find in Jesus is a Thomistic taxonomy of the rightful ordering of action.
This is exemplified in Jesus’ telling of the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-37). In responding to the question of who constitutes a neighbour, His reply dismantles the idea that neighbourliness is bounded by creed or kinship. Rather, we find a caritas of proximity that disrupts worldly hierarchies of belonging. Ordo amoris here appears dynamic and relational, rather than fixed in the stasis of predetermined identity. Traditional boundaries of animosity do not diminish neighbourly responsibility; in fact, the command to love your enemy (Matthew 5:44) extends that responsibility precisely into the dynamics of hostility. Such love reorders the affections not by convenience or similarity, but by participation in divine patterns of disruptive mercy. This is a pattern that Aquinas later echoes when he exhorts us to help those ‘who have greater want… rather than to one who is more closely united to us’ (Summa Theologica II-II q.31, 9).
When Vance argues that rightly ordered love requires privileging national loyalty over global responsibility, he echoes Aquinas only in part. Aquinas’ ordo amoris orders our loves but does not restrict them. Two other Thomistic principles point to a better reading. The universal destination of goods determines that created goods are designed for the good of all; the bonum commune (common good) as transcendent asserts that the good of any nation finds its true end in service to the universal good of humanity (Summa Theologica I-II, q.90, a.2; q.109, a.3). Through this lens, nation is not ultimate, and love, even in a domestic context, is not exclusive. As Revd. David Cassidy frames it, ‘America First can never mean America Alone’.
If God has created humans to be finite and material, it would indeed suggest that proximity is a necessary – and right – constitutive factor of ordo amoris. It is less apparent that this ordering should be exhaustive, rather than a non-exclusive prioritisation. Ordo amoris does not remove universal obligations, and nor does it align with social identifiers.
Moreover, our theology of proximity must be recalibrated in accordance with our times. While for Aquinas, proximity was localised, the globalised and increasingly technological world order necessitates a reconfiguring of our understanding of proximity. As the reach of our consumption, communication, and ecological impact broadens, so does our moral proximity to those we may never meet. Ordo amoris may be rightly interpreted as relating to proximity, but proximity can no longer be interpreted in spatial or tribal terms.
If the proximate now includes those bound to us through globalised systems, and if a biblical reading of ordered affections subverts identity-markers, then the ordo amoris cannot be credibly invoked to defend exclusionary immigration policies. Rather, it demands that our moral and political framework expands in proportion to our interdependence.
Pope Leo’s recent call for ‘deep reflection’ on U.S. treatment of migrants perhaps affords Vance the opportunity to re-open his Bible. Luke 10 might be just the place to start.
Victoria Paynter is a Parliamentary Assistant in the House of Lords and the Communications Officer for the William Temple Foundation.
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