St. Joan of Arc & the Lesser Evil
The Vance-VS.-Bishops Immigration Spat Is Another Example of ‘No Heroes’
I don’t think there are any heroes in this.
Such was my assessment after reading transcripts from The Trial of Joan of Arc (translated and introduced by Daniel Hobbins) and discussing the events on the “History Homos” podcast episode, released Sunday, Jan. 19 (listen right here at SUBSTACK!!! or Spotify, Rokfin, Odysee, Rumble, Bitchute).
Born in 1412 to a farming family in northeast France, Joan lived her entire life — which lasted only about 19 years — during the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Eventually, Joan would join the war effort as a commander of troops on the side of the French, claiming she was led by God; many believed in her, and she became a folk hero amongst the pro-France contingent.
Her military exploits didn’t last, however, and the pro-English forces captured her. She was shuffled between secular and religious imprisonment, found guilty of heresy by the Church authorities, and then abandoned by the Church to the English occupiers to be executed for her part in the war.
She was, it seems, killed for political reasons.
Two decades later, her case was retried and her verdict was reversed, again for political reasons. In 1920, after nearly five centuries of popular (and politicized) folklore, St. Joan of Arc was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church; her feast day is May 30.
Awfulness all around
The Church officials conducting Joan’s original trial expressed views that had little in common with Jesus’ teachings. By their own trial transcripts, they behave more like the people who persecuted Jesus and the Early Church members.
In one startling passage, the officials discuss whether Joan should be tortured. As I said during the podcast:
And none of them says, “Because torture is evil, we should not torture her.” They all say things like, “Well, we think she’s too far gone where the torture won’t work.” Some of them are saying, “Well, I’ll defer to the people in Paris at the university if they want to torture her.”
But they’re all making these ridiculous arguments that, if you had an apostolic tradition to you, you would say, “No, of course we shouldn’t torture a person to get them to say what we want.” So their theology, I think, is awful.
Joan does maintain a stubborn defiance when questioned in ways that seemed designed to trap her and break her will. But this isn’t exactly a virtuous quality, merely making her look like the “lesser of two evils,” to borrow a phrase thrown around in modern politics.
She had her major flaws. Joan was an ethnocentric bigot who believed that God favored the French and hated the English. She was a war criminal, who quickly overcame any squeamishness to develop an unfortunate bloodlust.
The things she claims were told to her by angels and saints, don’t sound much like dignity-affirming, holy advice. On the contrary, they sound like exactly the kind of violent nationalism and bordering-on-pagan superstition that Jesus is supposed to save people from.
Signaling without virtue
I thought of this podcast dive into 15th Century history when I read about U.S. vice president J.D. Vance’s remarks during a CBS interview that aired Sunday, Jan. 26.
Vance had some admirably contentious moments with his mainstream-media questioner, as Joan of Arc did with her interrogators. The biggest fireworks occurred when Vance, who converted to Roman Catholicism a few years ago, addressed the recent pushback that the Trump administration’s immigration policy received from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
The V.P. wondered whether the dioceses overseen by the bishops — which receive millions of dollars in government money for partnering with government agencies to administer social programs, including for refugees — were “worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”
The public standoff between the highest-ranking Catholic in the federal government and the highest-ranking Church officials in the U.S. turned into a spinoff story, hot enough to lead the next day’s libertarian-leaning Reason Roundup.
The Reason writer astutely noted Vance “shifting back and forth between talking about refugees and immigrants more broadly.” It’s a frustrating conflation, for sure, but one that pales in comparison to the USCCB pretending that government apologetics and cronyism bear any connection to any genuine virtues like charity, mercy, and justice.
I’ve written very pointedly about government-regulated-and-subsidized migration (“Do You Favor ‘Open Borders’?”) and about Judas-like Church behavior (“Is ‘Spy Wednesday’ — Judas Plotting To Betray Jesus — the New ‘High Holy Day’?”).
And I’ve often expressed the principle that coercive civil authority is inherently, intrinsically evil. A monopoly-violence institution is never a Gospel-appropriate vehicle for fulfilling the responsibilities of discipleship, and is never aligned with consistently humane ethics (as I implore my fellow anarchists and voluntarists to cultivate, regardless of any traditionally religious leanings in their lives).
Vance, his interviewer, and the USCCB all defended different varieties of government intrusions. Leaving aside the question of whether the lesser evil is truly lesser, it’s still a serious problem of evil.
Until real virtue makes a public appearance, I don’t think there are any heroes in this dispute, either.
Whether in 1431 or 2025, real heroes are good neighbors, not power-adoring citizens.
Be a hero in the Comments
Did you know about Joan of Arc before reading this article? What are your impressions of her?
Do you like learning about history, even the messy parts?
If you listened to the HH podcast, what did you think of our analysis? Were we too lenient at times? Too harsh at times?
What do you make of the present disputes between governments and government-friendly religious bodies?
Anything else stand out to you about today’s themes?
Let me know your thoughts below …
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Reason Roundup’s “frustration” with Vance’s (alleged) conflation of ‘refugee and immigrant’, is Perfect Analysis in the Rear-View Mirror. Having the luxury of time sans TV cameras, retrospective analysis, and comparative privacy, RR overlooks a basic operating principle for politicians and other stand-up comics: Read The Room. Faced with network time constrictions and a drooling liberal pseudo-journalist starving for ratings, Vance had zero time to take Brenner et al to Funk and Wagnall’s to extrapolate the subtle distinctions between ‘refugee’ and ‘immigrant’. Reason’s otherwise excellent commentaries are too often victims of the congenital Libertarian reflex of sacrificing the Good for the Perfect. My take, “About Those Catholics,” focused on some additional interesting elements of Vance v. USCCB.