Meanings
- uncountableCatholicismThe method in which love for others is prioritized, with those most closely related and in close proximity getting priority.
Vance doubled down: “Just google ‘ordo amoris,’ ” he wrote on X.
2025 February 11, Paul Elie, quoting JD Vance, “J. D. Vance Brawls with the Bishops Over the Trump-Musk Agenda”, in The New Yorker, archived from the original on 11 Feb 20252 more examples
When explicated in Augustine’s On Christian Teaching or in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, the ordo amoris emerges as a concept that is both cogent on its own terms—reciprocal obligations incurred through birth and upbringing are, after all, self-evidently stronger than those we freely undertake through choice or circumstance—and entirely consistent with the moral grammar of the scriptural witness.
2025 January 31, James Orr, “JD Vance States the Obvious About Ordo Amoris”, in First Things, archived from the original on 08 Feb 2025The ordo amoris can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles radiating outward from ourselves, beginning with loving God, who is, as Augustine put it, “closer to us than we are to ourselves,” and ending with loving the rest of the world outside our own country.
2025 February 11, Richard Clements, “First, Love Locally: JD Vance and ‘Ordo Amoris’”, in Word on Fire, archived from the original on 15 Feb 2025
Origin
- Latinōrdō amōris“order of love”
- Englishordo amoris
Borrowed from Latin ōrdō amōris (“order of love”).
More words from Latin
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
ordo amoris. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ordo%20amoris
“ordo amoris.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ordo%20amoris. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “ordo amoris,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/ordo%20amoris.
Source: ordo amoris on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.