And yet he kisses Putin's asshole.
Quote:JD Vance explains why he didn’t kiss Pope Leo’s ring
US Vice-President JD Vance has revealed that he made a conscious decision not to kiss the papal ring of Pope Leo XIV when he met the new pontiff, due to his political role for the United States and despite being a convert to Catholicism.
Although kissing the papal ring – also known as the Fisherman’s Ring – is a common act of respect toward a pontiff, Vance explained that kissing the ring of a foreign leader would be against the protocol for a US vice-president.
“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,” he told Douthat.
Vance explained that getting this balance right does not mean he will “just disregard” positions of Church hierarchy, rather “you make a prudential judgment informed very much by the Church’s teachings as reflected by these leaders”.
He highlighted that during his time in Rome he was “not there as JD Vance, a Catholic parishioner” but rather “I’m there as the vice-president of the United States and the leader of the president’s delegation to the Pope’s inaugural Mass”.
“So some of the protocols about how I respond to the Holy Father [as vice-president] were much different than how I might respond to the Holy Father [as a parishioner], or how you might respond to the Holy Father purely in your capacity as a citizen,” Vance told Douthat.
https://thecatholicherald.com/jd-vance-e...leos-ring/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
