Opinion

MORNING GLORY: The VP’s new book 'Communion' is not what the Beltway expected

This book is a spiritual biography that could spur many in the VP's generation to articulate and grapple with the problems of meaning

By Hugh Hewitt Fox News

Published July 14, 2026 5:00am EDT

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Father Henry Stephan is one of the heroes of "Communion," the new book from Vice President J.D. Vance. Father Stephan was integral to the Vice President’s journey into the welcoming pews of the Catholic Church.

Even if you don’t buy "Communion," if you pass it displayed in an airport shop or find yourself in our dwindling number of actual bookstores, turn to page 163 and read the good Father’s additional explanation to the statement that "for most of us, grace is not something that happens in a moment."

"You don’t feel God’s presence and then change in an instant," begins Father Stephan’s longer explanation. But to quote him further would be to rob you of some of the surprising clarity of his explanation of "the road map to God." More of Father Stephan’s full reflection on grace might discourage you from actually reading the whole of Communion — which is actually four stories, artfully woven into one book.

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The first story, and the one which stretches across all of its pages, is the Vice President’s lifelong quest to either accept or reject the idea of God and, having accepted it, the further account of how he landed in the Roman Catholic Church. Mass-attending "cradle Catholics" are likely to know at least a few converts, and their stories are often unique and uplifting. This one is most definitely that.

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The second story is simply a love story. The Vice President recounts in loving detail how he fell — hard — for his wife Usha and how the beer-drinking Marine/Ohio State Buckeye-turned-Yale Law School hyper-ambitious-striver tricked the future clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts into moving to Cincinnati and marrying him.

There is also a third portion, a short but disquieting sharp meditation (at least to this Boomer because the VP may be right) on how Boomers may be overly attached to the assumptions about the West they were born into and have long believed and defended.

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