Kissing the Pope’s Ring: a Patriotic Duty?

Of course, Vance's "Catholicism" is questionable, given his support for the Trump administration's positions on IVF, abortion, and same sex “marriage”

From One Peter Five

By Charles Coulombe, KC*SS, STM

The most powerful Catholic politician refused to kiss his ring.

As all the world knows, on May 18, 2025, Pope Leo XIV was inaugurated.  Although not nearly as impressive or expressive as the coronations of once – and we pray – future popes, it was certainly not unimpressive in its way.  As foreign leaders and representatives of the World’s nations filed by the newly installed Pontiff, many kissed his ring.  One most certainly did not – Catholic convert and Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance.  Asked why, he explained that kissing the ring of a foreign leader would be an affront to American vice presidential protocol.  He then declared that “So, no sign of disrespect, but it’s important to observe the protocols of the country that I love and that I’m representing and that I serve as vice president of, the United States.”  This aroused some comment, particularly from more orthodox Catholics in the United States.

Former Disney Actor, and Catholic Family News Production Manager and Editor Murray Rundus had some relevant if caustic commentary on Twitter:

J.D. Vance did not just refuse to kiss the ring because of some convert awkwardness (confession: I too in my first years as a convert had no idea how to act when greeting a bishop).

Rather, he went out of his way to say that the reason he did not kiss the ring, when he would have otherwise, was because he cannot do so in his public role as Vice President.

Therefore, Immortale Dei applies, because this split-brain disorder would put: “man in conflict with himself; whereas he ought always to be consistent, and never in the least point nor in any condition of life to swerve from Christian virtue.” (Immortale Dei 47)

The fact is that this was an action that he, as a public representative of both his country and of his faith, planned and deliberated to show a division between his public and private life, one as an “American” the other as a “Catholic”. In reality, J.D. Vance is one person, not two. He deserves to be criticized and corrected for his reasoning.

We *all* have to work on bringing ourselves to greater unity with Christ. Most of us talk a big game here on Twitter, are we actually so virtuous in our everyday life? Let’s use this as an opportunity to repent of our own double lives that we create every time we sin.

“Further, it is unlawful to follow one line of conduct in private life and another in public, respecting privately the authority of the Church, but publicly rejecting it; for this would amount to joining together good and evil”

-Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei

Harsh words, to be sure.  But are they entirely inaccurate?  The sad truth is that, in some ways, our republican revolutionary attitude toward protocol can be bizarre, if not merely self-defeating.  No American – given our proud 250 years of fighting against Monarchy – are supposed to bow before foreign sovereigns.  But well do I remember an evening in 1988 at the Motion Picture Academy in West Hollywood, honouring the 300th anniversary of the settlement of New Sweden with a Swedish film retrospective.  The guests of honour were Their Majesties King Carl XVI Gustav and Queen Silvia of Sweden.  To my deep amusement, the great and near great of the film industry of that time bowed and dropped curtseys – although I’m sure if you had asked any of them before or after they would have held Monarchy to be a horrible thing.  Nor is this a Left wing hypocrisy only; six years earlier Reagan’s Chief of Protocol herself curtsied when meeting Queen Elizabeth II.  Asked why she had done it, she somewhat flusteredly responded, “I couldn’t help it.”  No, indeed. 

One of the high points of the Washington year is the Red Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral.  According to the John Carroll Society who organise it:

On February 15, 1953, Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle celebrated the first John Carroll Society sponsored Red Mass at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle. In succeeding years, the congregation frequently has included the President of the United States, the Chief Justice of the United States, and Associate Justices, other leading federal, state and local jurists, cabinet officials, members of Congress, diplomats, university presidents, deans, professors, students of law, and lawyers.

The Red Mass is celebrated annually at the Cathedral, traditionally on the Sunday before the first Monday in October, which marks the opening of the Supreme Court’s annual term. Its purpose is to invoke God’s blessings on those responsible for the administration of justice as well as on all public officials.

Since its inception, the Red Mass has remained the ceremonial highlight of the Society’s year. Liturgically, the Red Mass is celebrated as the Solemn Mass of the Holy Spirit. Its name derives from the traditional red color of the vestments worn by clergy during the Mass, representing the tongues of fire symbolizing the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Now, despite the increasingly bizarre tenor of federal legislative and judicial action since the 1950s, this has become an important event, which few presidents would miss; The West Wing TV show even devoted an episode to it.  Now, it is a fact that on a number of occasions presidents attending the Red Mass – including those of the non-Catholic persuasion – kissed the ring of the Cardinal celebrating the Mass.  To say that kissing the ring of one of those men who elects the Pope is fine but it is not fine to kiss the ring of the elected Pope is certainly an interesting proposition.

Now, to be sure, the relationship of these United States to religion in general, and Christianity or Catholicism in particularly is a strange and complicated thing.  Although portions of the country had established Churches – Catholic, Anglican, Dutch Reformed, or Congregational – the accidents of colonial and revolutionary history established a peculiar situation by the drafting of the Constitution in 1789.  Some of the States had established churches, some had none; so the First Amendment forbade the Federal Congress to establish a single one for the entire country.  Nevertheless, they remained for a time -and in 1892 the Supreme Court ruled in Church of the Holy Trinity vs the United States on the United States’ religious nature.  After citing numerous legal documents and charters to that effect, the Court declared that

If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life, as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs, and its society, we find every where a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters, note the following: the form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, ‘In the name of God, amen;’ the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town, and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing every where under Christian auspices; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe. These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.

In later years, of course, without specifically reversing this decision, the Court did so for all practical purposes by banning school prayer, etc.  In 1984, the remaining religious practices connected to governance were no longer seen as evidence of a religious nature to the United States, but as something entirely different.  Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion in Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984) declared that

…I would suggest that such practices as the designation of ‘In God We Trust’ as our national motto, or the references to God contained in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag can best be understood, in Dean Rostow’s apt phrase, as a form a ‘ceremonial deism,’ protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content. 

In other words, through repetition they had become meaningless.

During this same period – 1892 to 1984 – American relations with the Holy See changed dramatically.  The United States had maintained diplomatic relations with the Papacy from 1848 under President James K. Polk to 1867 under President Andrew Johnson.  But on February 28, 1867, Congress prohibited any future funding of American diplomatic missions to the Holy See.  This was due to the alleged involvement of Catholics in the Lincoln Assassination plot, and the flight of one to the Papal States, enlisting in the Papal army to avoid arrest (conveniently left out was the Holy See’s part in returning him to American custody, and his finally being acquitted).

In 1908, the United States ceased being missionary country, and were placed under the Congregation of Bishops.  In lieu of a Nuncio (given the non-existent state of diplomatic relations) an Apostolic Delegate was appointed as the Pope’s emissary not to the United States, but to the American bishops his role was strictly ecclesiastical.  Roosevelt and Truman appointed personal envoys to Pope Pius XII to deal with humanitarian issues surrounding World War II and its aftermath.  Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan did the same, and along with Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and all later presidents, and their first ladies, visited the Pope in diplomatic dress code black and mantillas.  But on October 20, 1951, President Truman nominated former General Mark W. Clark to be the United States emissary to the Holy See.  Congress refused to accept such an office; this would last until September 22, 1983, and such relations were at last legalised and funded.  The two countries – the United States and the Holy See – announced the establishment of diplomatic relations on January 10, 1984.  There was very little opposition from Congress, the courts, and Protestant groups – perhaps because, as acceptance of the idea of “Ceremonial Deism” shows, the first no longer considered themselves religious bodies of any kind.

Which brings us back to the question of what sort of an organisation it is that Mr. Vance represented at the Papal Inauguration.  There are very few Christian countries left in the traditional sense, and certainly, ours is not one.  But ours does claim to uphold individual rights and conscience; surely the Vice President can kiss Cardinal Gregory’s ring at the next Red Mass.  Would there have been an outcry had he kissed the ring of Leo XIV?  Possibly.

But we must not expect too much from Mr. Vance in any case.  He is a Catholic (and mutual acquaintances assure me of his sincerity) in the administration of a non-Catholic man who issues stirring messages on specifically Christian feasts such as Ash Wednesday and Pentecost on the one hand, and is sternly committed to IVF, abortion, and same sex “marriage” on the other.  In a word, he is in a delicate position.

But so are we all.  So long as the United States are nothing in particular in terms of creed, no Catholic can really be sure of where he stands in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free.  Should the Vice President have kissed the Pope’s ring?  I would have.  But I’m not in his spot.  The sad truth is that there is only one way to resolve this dilemma, and one we Catholic Americans have steadfastly refused to attempt since independence in 1783: evangelisation.

We are the inheritors of civil laws and institutions that derive their ultimate origins form mediaeval Christendom, were altered by the English version of the Protestant revolt, brought by the British Empire to American shores, and again by independence and our subsequent national history.  In a real sense, despite what generations of Know Nothings, Klansmen, and other anti-Catholics have thought, converting our nation would return her political institutions to something like their original vigour and meaning.  Under such a new civic dispensation, kissing the Pope’s ring would be the most American and patriotic act imaginable.