The whole armor of God

A little drill for the Veep

[Split screen showing DONALD TRUMP — dressed in a fluffy white robe, sitting in a geri-chair, a blanket on his lap, pretty blonde women wearing bikinis, high heels, and old-fashioned nurses’ caps adjusting his IVs — on the phone with JD VANCE dressed in his usual suit and apparently standing outside a conference room.]

VANCE: Sir, I know I can do this! I don’t need coaching, particularly from this priest.

TRUMP: Whattaya talking about, this guy’s like king of the Catholics. He’s been a Catholic all his life. Fish on Friday, rosaries, the whole thing. How long you been Catholic, fifteen minutes?

VANCE: Sir, he’s just so — this is going to be a highly intellectual debate, and I don’t think Father Flotsky has even done the reading.

TRUMP: What’s to read? Beside the Bible. And I hear they don’t even read that, the Catholics. Priests tell ‘em what to think. That’s why I sent you to this one. They read to you out of the catacombs. They don’t even —

VANCE: Cathechism.

[Small pause.]

TRUMP: Oh, you’re contradicting me? Some Catholic you are.

VANCE: I’m sorry, sir, I — [sighs] I’ll, I’ll try, sir, I’ll go back in there.

TRUMP: You do that, I want you ready for that Pope guy. This is gonna be a big deal, gonna make the UFC thing look like garbage and you better be ready.

VANCE: OK, sir, Mr. President.

[TRUMP hangs up; before the split screen resolves, we see TRUMP tap one of the nurses, get her attention, and make a jerk-off motion. VANCE goes back into the conference room. There’s no table; only some chairs, an old-school kneeler, some metal rulers on the floor, some long wooden pointers leaning against a wall. In clerical garb is FATHER FLOTSKY, about 60, head like a Rottweiler’s. He has a faint Irish accent but mainly sounds like a drill instructor.]

FLOTSKY: So — done with Mary Jane Rottencrotch, are you?

VANCE: I was talking to the President.

FLOTSKY: And that’s supposed to impress me? Assume the position.

[VANCE sullenly gets in the kneeler.]

Don’t slouch! You’re a regular Rag-Bag Randy!

[VANCE tries to kneel straight.]

Not used to it, are you? You converts are weak. By the time we confirm a boy, he’s a West Point graduate at kneeling. You know about West Point deportment, don’t you? Scott Fitzgerald said it: “the first year at West Point... during which no cadet can resign and from which none ever recovers.”

VANCE: I was a Marine.

FLOTSKY: Tighten your sphincters!

[VANCE does so. FLOTSKY takes a pointer, holds it with both hands behind his back.]

Now then — tell me what the Holy Ghost does.

[VANCE squints, thinks; then:]

VANCE: “The Holy Ghost dwells in the Church as the source of its life — and — and sanctifies souls through the gift of grace.”

FLOTSKY: And what’s grace?

VANCE: “A gift of God bestowed on us through the merits of Jesus Christ for our salvation.”

FLOTSKY: Good! Now, you understand that everyone can get grace if they want it — it’s not just for some “in” crowd decided up in heaven.

VANCE: [smirking] Father, I think you mistake me for a Lutheran.

[FLOTSKY whacks VANCE gently on the buttocks with the pointer.]

FLOTSKY: Tighten up there! Now what are the two kinds of grace the Holy Ghost gives you?

VANCE: Saving and empowering — D’OH!

[VANCE winces. FLOTSKY bounces on his heels, then circles VANCE.]

FLOTSKY: “Saving and empowering,” eh? Saving and empowering. You think the Holy Ghost is like a recruiting officer, eh? Signs you up and then sends you off to convert the heathen. Or he gets you speaking in tongues.

[FLOTSKY leans in on VANCE. In a funny voice, his face twisted:] GIBBY GABBA BUBB BUBB BUBB GABBA BIBBITY BIBBITY BIBBITY BLA! That what that Holy Ghost says when he takes you over, like a space alien in a monster movie?

[VANCE gets up out of the kneeler, mad.]

VANCE: Hey! Now that’s just disrespectful! Disrespectful of those good and decent people I went to church with in Appa-latch-ia! And elitist! Sure they spoke in tongues, what of it? What makes your religion better than theirs?

[Pause. FLOTSKY responds quietly.]

I thought it was our religion, Vance.

VANCE: Hey, I —

FLOTSKY: The religion some of us call the One True Church. You came in here, wanting to talk about Saint Augustine and the Doctors of the Church for this debate your boss thinks he can get you with the Pope in Rome.

[FLOTSKY emits a laugh like a cough.]

Well. That’d be fine if we were professors of theology debating the finer points of scriptural analysis. But we’re not. We’re soldiers of Christ. Men and women were martyred for this faith. I don’t mean they were teased or treated disrespectfully or excluded from salons or the better magazines. I mean they were tortured and murdered. That’s why we made the boys and girls tough in their minds. Told ‘em stories about children just like themselves struck dead with sin on their souls, the day before confession. Made them memorize their catechism before they knew what the words meant. Made them kneel on metal rulers. Drilled them the way you’d drill a soldier. Because this faith isn’t something you put on like a suit of clothes. It’s not something to be debated. It’s something to be defended. Either you were born with it in your hands, or you take it up like a sword.

[Pause.]

VANCE: I don’t understand.

FLOTSKY: [Not unkindly] And you never will.

[FLOTSKY leaves. VANCE sits in a chair, looks at his phone. After a while we can hear from the sound effects that he’s playing a video game.]