Vice President J.D. Vance recently published a book titled Communion. He states that “Communion is a spiritual exploration of what it means to be a Christian.” But the book reveals that J.D. Vance is a heathen masquerading as a Christian. His book is described as follows: “Communion reveals how Vance regained his faith and discusses his conversion to Catholicism.” Vance wrote in an article that “the Christ of the Catholic Church always seemed a little different from the Jesus I’d grown up with.” He is not wrong. The Jesus of the Catholic Church is a different Jesus from the Jesus in the Holy Bible. We were warned about just such a different Jesus.

For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. 2 Corinthians 11:4.

The Catholic faithful are being faithful to a false gospel with a false Jesus. They are under a curse.

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. Galatians 1:6-9.

J.D. Vance did not heed that warning and converted to Roman Catholicism anyway. He follows “another gospel” because he believed the lie that “Catholics didn’t … worship Mary.” In my book, Are Catholics Christians?, I prove beyond a reasonable doubt that, in fact, Catholics worship Mary.  J.D. Vance is a Roman Catholic, and Catholics are not Christians. The Catholic Church preaches “another gospel,” a perverted gospel, and is under a curse from God. Indeed, the Catholic Church is antichrist.

Vance Worships a Goddess

Vance Claims to be a Christian, yet reveals that he ascribes to the heathen Catholic religion. In the Dogmatic Constitution of the Catholic Church, Lumen Gentium, Pope Paul VI, states that the Virgin Mary served “the mystery of redemption,” not passively, but rather by “freely cooperating in the work of human salvation through faith and obedience,” she “became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.” That is how Catholic theologians and popes gave her the title of Co-Redemptrix.

According to Pope Leo XIII’s Iucunda Semper Expectatione, Mary is the sovereign Queen of Heaven. “And we honour her, glorified above all the Saints, crowned with stars by her Divine Son and seated at His side the sovereign Queen of the universe.” Indeed, Authoritative statements from respected Catholic theologians spanning more than 1,000 years have established that the Catholic version of Mary is an omnipotent goddess who rules as the Queen of Heaven. The doctrine of the esteemed Catholic theologians regarding the divinity of Mary is summarized by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical letter Octobri Mense. In that letter, the pope states that Mary is the intermediary to man through whom all the treasures of heaven are distributed to the Catholic faithful. No man can go directly to Christ. They must, by prayer, go through the gatekeeper, Mary. The Catechism of the Catholic Church assigns to Mary the regal title of “Queen over all things.” What does God think of this Catholic goddess, Mary?

Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (Luke 4:8)

Vance Submits to the Pope

Pope Boniface VIII, in his 1302 Papal Bull Unam Sanctam, boldly claimed that entrance into Heaven depends on submission to the authority of the pope. On 18 July 1870, Vatican Council I, Chapter 3, Session 4, reaffirmed unequivocally the long-standing Catholic dogma that the pope, as the Supreme Pontiff, is “supreme shepherd” over all rites in Christendom. According to Pope Leo XIII in his 1896 Encyclical, Satis Cognitum, the pope is the head of the church and has “the authority instituted in perpetuity for the salvation of all.” How does the pope have authority over salvation? According to the established Catholic dogma, reaffirmed by Satis Cognitum, the pope has divine and plenary power to forgive sins.

The Bible states that forgiveness and salvation from the penalty of sins come only from God. There is only one savior, and that is the LORD. “I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.” (Isaiah 43:11) Furthermore, the Bible is clear that Jesus Christ is the foundation and head of the church, not the pope. “And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.” Colossians 1:18.

Vance Practices Necromancy

The Catholic Church has a pantheon of gods to which it makes idols and the Catholic faithful pray. It calls these demigods “saints.” The Catholic Church has a process by which it identifies certain persons as “saints.” Canonization by the Catholic Church is an infallible pronouncement that the person is a saint in heaven. Once the Catholic Church canonizes a person as a saint, that person can be venerated (i.e., worshiped). Shrines, images, and statues can be made depicting the canonized saint. The Catholic faithful can pray to the saint. For example, on April 27, 2014, Pope Francis canonized Pope John Paul II, who contradicted the creation account in Genesis by announcing that evolution is compatible with Christian beliefs. In addition, Pope John Paul II ceremoniously kissed the Islamic (i.e., Satanic) Quran, signifying his approval of its antichrist text.

On that same day, April 27, 2014, Pope Francis canonized Pope John XXIII as a saint. Pope John XXIII commissioned a landmark church document that eventually became the Declaration on The Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, issued by Pope Paul VI in 1965. Nostra Aetate undermines the gospel, which provides that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven (John 14:6), by promoting heathen and antichrist religions. Nostra Aetate asserts that heathen religions like Buddhism and Hinduism contain true and holy teachings that should be preserved and promoted by the Catholic Faithful. Nostra Aetate further esteemed the religion of Islam, which 1 John 2:23 identifies as the worship of a false god. Nostra Aetate also states that God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers, which contradicts John 8.

This Catholic canonization rigmarole is an illusory construct that creates mythical demigods under the title of “saints.” But the Bible is clear that a saint is simply someone saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Notice in 1 Corinthians 1:2 the saints are identified as “the church” and “sanctified in Christ Jesus.” Praying to Mary and the other saints is communicating with the dead, which is the sin of necromancy, condemned by God. Indeed, God calls necromancy an abomination. Deuteronomy 18:9-12.

Why would one pray to the saints? God won’t listen to their counsel, because he doesn’t need counsel. Ephesians 1:11. God puts no trust in his saints. “Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.” (Job 15:15)

Vance Worships Graven Images

Shrines, images, and statues can be made depicting the canonized saint. The Catholic Church claims that it does not worship the graven image; it venerates the prototype (i.e., a saint or an angel) represented by the idol. But that is a distinction without a difference. It is precisely what the ancient heathens did. During the Roman Empire, they made graven images of their gods. They understood that the graven image, itself, was not the god they worshiped. They worshiped the god that was represented by the graven image. Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), reputed to be Rome’s greatest author, explained that an idol is a likeness of the god that points the worshiper to the god it represents. For example, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) referred to the statue of the Roman goddess Diana interchangeably as simulacrum (likeness) and signum (representation) of Dianna. According to Cicero, the statue was not the goddess herself. But many Romans treated the graven image as the gods and goddesses themselves and worshiped them, as Roman Catholics do today with relics and icons.

Even though the official dogma of the Catholic Church is that the images of the saints are not to be worshipped, Roman Catholics today, as did the ancient Romans, bow down before graven images, carry graven images in processions, light candles before the graven images, kiss the graven images, and pray before the graven images. That is precisely what God prohibited when he said, “[t]hou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” Exodus 20:5. The mind of man is easily seduced into bowing down and serving idols. God knew this, which is why he forbade making “any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Exodus 20:4. Just as the heathen did in ancient Rome, so also do the Roman Catholics do today. In ancient Rome, where the idol was supposed to be only a likeness of the god, the heathen worshiper soon found himself worshiping the image itself. The only difference between ancient Rome and modern Rome is that the Roman Catholic Church calls its pantheon of gods, saints, to whom it makes graven images and prays.

Roland Boer explains that the idol is typically not intended to be worshiped as a god itself but rather as a representation of the worshiped god. He explains that Isaiah’s criticism of idols in Isaiah 44 is not intended to reveal the idol worshiper as deluded into thinking the idol is his god. Rather, Isaiah, according to Boer, is revealing the ordinariness of the graven image. Boer points to God’s intent in the first commandment to not have any gods before him. The second commandment forbids the making of any graven images, because there “is a signifying link between god and idol, deity and representation, and the one who shows reverence for the idol does so in order to honor his or her god the [sic] whom the idol directs one’s attention.” Thus, the idol shifts worship from God to the false god it represents. Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church expressly states that “whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it.” Thus, both the image and the person it portrays receive the same veneration. In explaining the veneration of images, the Catechism of the Catholic Church provides the following quote from Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica:

Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. The movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is.

The key to understanding that truth is understanding that the passage from the catechism is only a partial quote from the Summa Theologica. The quote in the Catholic Catechism slyly omits the last sentence of that section, which provides the complete meaning. That redacted sentence says: “Hence neither ‘latria’ nor the virtue of religion is differentiated by the fact that religious worship is paid to the images of Christ.” Thus, under Catholicism, the same worship given to Jesus Christ is given to the images of Jesus Christ. Thomas Aquinas, in another section of Summa Theologica, stated, without equivocation, that the same adoration (latria) should be shown by the Catholic faithful to an image of Jesus Christ as to Christ himself; “His image should be adored with the adoration of latria.”

In conclusion, the Catholic Church doctrine is that the Catholic faithful can and should worship images. That is a clear violation of the First and Second Commandments, which prohibit making, bowing, or serving images of anything on earth or in heaven. There is no way around it; Catholics are idol worshipers; they are not Christians. J.D. Vance is a Catholic heathen trying to pass himself off as a Christian.

Vance Worships the Bread of the Eucharist as His God

The gospel states that we are to celebrate the Last Supper in remembrance of Jesus Christ. The memorial instituted by Christ during the last supper was for us to look back to the sacrifice of Christ, just as the Jews used to look forward to Christ’s coming in the ceremonial passover meal. We are to do it in remembrance of him and his sacrifice for us.

And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. (Luke 22:19)

The Catholic Church twists scripture to mean that the ceremonial bread and wine are turned into God himself. Indeed, because the Catholic Church teaches that the bread and wine are each turned into the body and blood of Jesus Christ, Catholic doctrine holds that Catholics should worship the Eucharist as God, since, according to Catholic dogma, it is God.

The Catholic Church does not intend the Eucharist to be merely symbolic; it teaches that it is God Almighty in the form of bread and wine. Pope Paul VI, in his 1965 Encyclical on the Holy Eucharist, Mysterium Fidei, explains that during the Catholic Mass, the bread and wine are changed ontologically into Jesus Christ. That means, in Catholicism, only the form of bread and wine remains; the bread and wine have been transubstantiated into the actual body and blood of God Almighty Jesus Christ.

As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred and a sign of spiritual food; but they take on this new signification, this new finality, precisely because they contain a new “reality” which we can rightly call ontological. For what now lies beneath the aforementioned species is not what was there before, but something completely different; and not just in the estimation of Church belief but in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine has been changed into the body and blood of Christ, nothing remains of the bread and the wine except for the species—beneath which Christ is present whole and entire in His physical “reality,” corporeally present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place.

Transubstantiation of the Eucharist into the actual Jesus Christ has been a long-established dogma of the Catholic Church. The Catechism of the Council of Trent declared that the Eucharist is their god; the Eucharist contains the Catholic version of Jesus Christ’s body, soul, and divinity in the form of bread. The Catholic Church is saying, in no uncertain terms, that Jesus Christ himself, God Almighty, is present during the Catholic Mass in the outward form of bread and wine. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

By the consecration the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is brought about. Under the consecrated species of bread and wine Christ himself, living and glorious, is present in a true, real, and substantial manner: his Body and his Blood, with his soul and his divinity. (emphasis added).

Because the Catholic church teaches that the Eucharist is God in the form of bread and wine, it requires that all worship the Eucharist as God. “Because Christ himself is present in the sacrament of the altar, he is to be honored with the worship of adoration.” According to the Catholic dogma, there is “no room left to doubt” that the Eucharist is to be worshipped as God because, according to Catholic dogma, the Eucharist is God. That is not Christian; it is heathen idolatry. J.D. Vance is a heathen.

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