It’s been an embarrassing day for Western statesmanship.

If you haven’t yet familiarized yourself with today’s Oval Office encounter between Trump, Vance, and Zelensky, please do read my colleagues’ work on the explosive exchange.

You might not know that JD Vance foreshadowed this afternoon’s catastrophic meeting in his speech at the 20th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast this morning in Washington, D.C.

Early on in his 30-minute address — which was met with howls, hoots, and a standing ovation — Vance presented a “Catholic” defense of Trump’s foreign policy to a room full of top-brass American Catholics.

One of the most important parts of President Trump’s policy, and where I think President Trump’s policy is most in accord with Christian Social Teaching and with the Catholic faith. Is that more than any president of my lifetime, President Trump has pursued a path of peace. We very often, I think, ignore the way in which our foreign policy is either an instrument or an impediment to people all over the world being able to practice their faith. . . . We know that some of the biggest groups that are persecuted all over the world today are Christians, and the Trump administration promises you — whether it’s here at home with our own citizens, or all over the world — we will be the biggest defenders of religious liberty and the rights of conscience, and I think those policies will fall to the benefit of Catholics, in particular.

Vance continued in this vein with an absurd claim: that American intervention in foreign affairs over the last 40 years has led to Christians being persecuted globally. If America backed out of volatile regions, Vance argued, Christians would be free to worship again around the world.

We have to remember that oftentimes the biggest impediments to religious liberty have not come through ballast from the United States government, but they’ve actually come through carelessness. And one of the things that I — to be honest — am most ashamed about, is that in the United States of America, sometimes it is our foreign misadventures that lead to the eradication of historical Christian communities all over the world. And so when President Trump talks about the need to bring peace, whether it’s in Russia and Ukraine, whether it’s in the Middle East, we of course have to recognize that as a policy oriented towards saving lives and carrying out one of Christ’s most important commandments. I think we also must recognize it as an effort to protect the religious liberty of Christians, because over the past 40 years, it has often been historical Christian communities who bear the brunt of failed American foreign policy. And that is, in my view, perhaps the most important way in which Donald Trump has been a defender of Christian rights all over the world is he has a foreign policy that is oriented towards peace. We have done it already so much in the past 30 days, and I’m proud that we will work for peace all over the world in the remaining four years of President Trump’s turn.

As a member of the press on site, I was surprised that the vice president homed in on foreign policy as a speaking point for the event. He made no mention of abortion, IVF, euthanasia, or other pro-life issues that keynote speakers at this event typically discuss.

Soon, however, Vance changed course and moved on to familiar topics. He presented an amicable — nay, admirable! — depiction of a committed Catholic layperson, father, and public servant. He made self-deprecating jokes, poked at centuries-old infighting between the Dominicans and the Jesuits, brushed off fights with the clergy on social media, and honored the seriously ill Pope Francis. To close, Vance read out loud the powerful prayer the Holy Father offered at the onset of the pandemic, and he called on each person in the room to pray for the pope daily.

Other than his out-of-place foreign policy apologia, the vice president’s speech was quite excellent.

Only a few hours later would the weight of that initial aside become clear.

In today’s fateful Oval Office meeting, Vance demanded, multiple times, that Zelensky thank Trump for trying to bring peace to Ukraine. When Zelensky tried to describe how much his countrymen have sacrificed and suffered in the fight against Putin, Vance shrugged it off as “propaganda.”

Taking the view of a self-righteous “realist,” Vance asserted that Zelensky was “disrespectful” for voicing his skepticism of Putin’s commitment to a cease-fire.

I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media. . . . You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.

The exchange became egregiously worse from there.

Zelensky certainly could have danced with a lighter foot and greater agility during the meeting. But one can understand the exasperation of a leader who has seen more than 100,000 of his countrymen — soldiers and civilians — die in the fight against an aggressive dictator. The aggression of Trump and Vance against an ally at a crucial juncture — just to feed their domestic base — is less understandable.

I don’t think Vance’s conception of “ordo amoris” justifies a Trumpian foreign policy that villainizes Ukraine and celebrates Russia — a country where Christians are not allowed to worship if their beliefs differ from the state-backed Russian Orthodox Church. Both Protestants and Roman Catholics have received systemic pushback from the Russian church. Russia’s manipulation of the state church to accord with Putin’s agenda is International Affairs 101.

While I am sure those in the MAGA foreign policy camp can conjure examples of how American involvement led to worse outcomes for the local Christian community, these cases are certainly the exception — not the rule. In fact, America’s primariy adversaries over the last century — from the Nazis and the Soviets, to the CCP and the Taliban — all share in their relentless persecution of faithful Christians. Without a history of American intervention, the fate of Christianity globally is hard to imagine.

God willing, Christians around the world will not have more war.