JD Vance's Catholicism helped shape his views

Ohio Sen. JD Vance’s 2019 conversion to Catholicism helped shape his political worldview. It also put him in close touch with a Catholic intellectual movement known as postliberalism. Vance calls himself postliberal and echoes some of the movement’s ideas. It has been little known to the American public until Vance’s rise to the national stage as the Republican vice presidential nominee and running mate to former President Donald Trump. It’s been viewed by some critics as having reactionary or authoritarian leanings. Postliberals want a muscular government — one that they control. They envision taking over government bureaucracies, universities and other institutions from within, replacing “elites” and acting upon their vision of the “common good.”