Daily Archives: November 7, 2025

Jeremy M. Christiansen (FT): On Converting Your Spouse

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This is an excellent piece. I commend the author for recognizing true love being expressed when he sees it. No shrill voice here. Neither liberal idolatry or shortsightedness. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

At a recent Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi, JD Vance remarked that he hoped his wife, Usha, would convert to Catholicism. The backlash was swift and savage. People criticized the vice president for being a bad husband and not respecting his wife’s choices and Hindu faith. Most of it was just noise. The backlash does, however, express an unfortunate reality. It is the terminus of American small-l liberalism: The ultimate truth is individual autonomy, and by publicly expressing a desire for his wife to convert, the vice president committed the cardinal sin in the religion of liberalism.  

The vice president’s marital situation is common. According to the latest data from Pew Research Center, just over 25 percent of marriages in America consist of spouses with different religions. And for a few years, I too was counted among them.

My wife and I were both raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, served as missionaries for the church, were married in the Los Angeles temple, come from devout LDS families, and were ourselves devout. We had been married about ten years with four children when I left the LDS religion and converted to Catholicism. My wife had no interest in leaving her faith at that time. But eventually, she too became Catholic. Not everyone’s experience is the same: Since writing about our conversions in various publications, I have received a number of emails over the years saying: “I converted to Catholicism, my spouse did not. What do I do?” There are, to my mind, two related answers.

First, a simple directive: “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it” (Eph. 5:25). Given that to love is to will the good of the other, that God is the greatest good, and that religion is an aspect of the virtue of justice whereby we render unto God what is owed him, it follows that husbands are to will that their wives believe and practice the true religion. JD Vance ought to will that his wife convert. To do otherwise would be unloving. 

I told my wife on more than one occasion that I hoped she would convert, and I even expressed that desire publicly. Willing the good of the other is a concept mostly lost on liberalized Americans. “You do you” is the motto of our day. But it is an uncharitable motto.

Second, once we desire the conversion of our spouse, we need to know how to prudently direct our will to that end. I am grateful to the pastor I had during the time in which my wife and I were of different faiths, because he counseled me against both indifference and coercion. He advised prudence. As Aquinas writes, “it belongs to the ruling of prudence to decide in what manner and by what means man shall obtain [virtue].” Each marriage is different; each will need a different approach. When is the time to have that “hard conversation”? When is the time to just let something go? No one knew my wife and our relationship and our family better than I did. Prudence helps us to do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right time, and the right place.

Ultimately, it is God’s grace that first moves our wills toward him. We are merely instruments. And we never know when the right moment to say this or that thing, make this or that invitation, will be. My pastor wisely told me to faithfully live the sacramental life and use prudent judgment. And that is ultimately all I can tell anyone who finds themselves in that situation. Trust God. Never doom. And remember, prudently and publicly expressing the heartfelt hope that one’s spouse convert may just be the means by which God gives that ever important “twitch upon the thread.” JD Vance should be commended, not condemned.

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John M. Grondelski (FT): Where the Church’s Immigration Rhetoric Fails

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A good and balanced piece on immigration. Would that the Church’s leaders pay attention. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.

Catholic discussions of immigration frequently omit salient facts, most prominently the legal status of the “migrant.” I criticized this curious neglect in Pope Leo XIV’s apostolic exhortation Dilexi Te. In that document, the discussion of “migrants” ignores the question of their legal status. Since then, Pope Leo has acknowledged state sovereignty while saying it must be “balanced” with the duty to provide “refuge”—telling us neither how such balance is achieved nor assuring that the Church won’t always fault nations for addressing a migration crisis. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich’s latest video insisting the “Church stands with migrants” likewise evades the question of legality. 

An honest discussion would not circumvent the issue of legal status, which is why growing numbers of people are beginning to ask whether the Church is a good-faith interlocutor on questions of mass migration. Glossing over the distinction between legal and illegal residency cannot be ecclesial oversight; too many critics have pointed out that the Church regularly sidesteps this issue. Church leaders at times formally acknowledge state sovereignty over immigration, but in practice the rhetoric (“undocumented”) suggests otherwise. Which makes one think the Church is dodging the question of illegal status, a posture more befitting a lobbyist pushing an agenda than an honest broker addressing a question that affects the common good. 

The Church seeks to frame the discussion of illegal immigration through the lens of “human dignity.” This is a fitting concept with which to begin. But the Church’s selective use of this framing neglects to address the way in which illegal immigration offends human dignity.

Free will is an essential aspect of human dignity. Man is alteri incommunicabilis:Nobody can will for me. Nobody can ultimately makeme want something. I can be influenced, pressured, and even physically forced, but I cannot be made to will something. Even God does not interfere with free will; in the end, he respects what we have chosen, even if we damn ourselves in the process.  

Willing is not limited to individuals. Political sovereignty is also an act of will. It is a decision of a community, exercised by its designated leaders. In Catholic thought, sovereign decisions are accorded deference, because the one charged with attending to the common good is supposed to employ an objective overview of the common good—which individual parties with individual interests might not see—when making a decision. It’s why distributive justice belongs to the one responsible for the community and not its individual members.

In modern political structures, the sovereign will is expressed by the democratic choice of a majority, adopted through processes established by rule of law. In our constitutional order, this is done through passing legislation in accord with proper procedures. These laws are entitled to the presumption that they serve the common good, which means that they are not subject to veto by parties outside of the legislative process. There is a profound moral reason for the presumptive respect for validly enacted laws: They express the rightly adopted will—an essential aspect of human dignity—of the organized political community on a question. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 fits that requirement.

Thus, if we recognize human dignity to be expressed through free choices, individual as well as collective, and that the latter deserve our deference as decisions made for the common good by those responsible for that common good, then validly enacted laws also deserve recognition as expressions of human dignity. A political community’s free choice of a morally legitimate option (no one has claimed immigration restrictions are intrinsically evil) by a collective decision in the name of the common good cannot be dismissed on the ground that it affects the human dignity of an individual, as if the individual is the only party that has a dignity claim.

The Church’s unartful dodges on the migrant question have especially disturbing consequences. It practically canonizes the isolated individual’s decision to judge laws, find them wanting, and justify disobeying them. This undermines the coherence of Catholic teaching. It makes an unjustified exception to a Catholic’s responsibility to obey legitimate laws, suggesting an anthropology that asserts that the only dignity at stake is the individual’s. This marks a departure from Catholic tradition, which accords dignity to the valid expression of a collective community will embodied in duly adopted laws. 

When churchmen speak about the human dignity of migrants, they are drawing attention to an important principle, one that rightly governs law enforcement’s treatment of any person who is suspected of breaking the law. But it is baffling to think that the mere assertion of the human dignity of an individual can serve as justification in practice for ignoring immigration law. Does “dignity” immunize somebody against enforcement of a valid law? Does “dignity” nullify a state’s right to enforce a valid law against a violator? 

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