Joe tackles the recent message by the USCCB on US immigration and deportations, and the response from Boarder Czar Tom Homan.

Transcript:

JOE:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and today I want to talk about a contentious issue. What is a good Christian position on immigration? And I think it’s timely to talk about this on Thanksgiving for a couple of reasons. Number one, Thanksgiving is in many ways a story of people coming into the new world and these immigrants to a new country, to a new world were protected by the native population, the wampanoags. And had they not been, it’s not clear they would’ve survived.

And this is going to be an important reminder that there is this natural duty to protect immigrants. But additionally, I think it shows that there can be a danger with that. If you want to know what happens next to the wampanoag, it doesn’t go great for them. But the third reason I want to talk about it is because I think Thanksgiving is simply a time when people often find themselves with friends and relatives. They may not see the rest of the year, and occasionally some contentious issues come up and you might find yourself in a position where people are asking you as the Christian at the table or the faithful whatever at the table, what do you make of all this immigration stuff? And you’re on the spot and you hope to give some kind of coherent answer. And I want to suggest that a lot of the soundbite answers that we get from all parts of the political spectrum don’t do a good job of capturing the reality of a nuanced and complicated question, but that the catechism of the Catholic church actually does a great job and that we should combine what the catechism says with what the US Bishop said recently.

And then I want to look at that both in terms of the responses that it generated from the borders are Tom Holman, but also from the Holy Father, probably the 14th. I think that there are good principles being laid out here that I hope will get us to this point. I don’t think we’re going to be able to find some one size fits all. Everybody agrees on a solution to the problems related to immigration. I think the problems are complicated. They’re hard to solve no matter where you fall on them. Hopefully you can recognize any solution you might have is expensive or convoluted or complicated may not work, and that there are legitimate interests in different directions and it’s hard to meet the legitimate needs and interests of everybody involved. Hopefully we can agree on that much and hopefully at the end of this we’ll at least have some baseline parameters so we can at least say here’s broadly where we are and we can have a respectful disagreement within these broad boundaries.

But we also don’t want to go outside these boundaries. We won’t want to go to either of the kind of two extremes. So with that said, let’s look at the catechism, look at the US Bishop’s special message and then we’ll go from there beginning with the catechism in paragraph 2241. Now if you’re Catholic, this applies in a special way. You should give this a lot of consideration. If you’re not Catholic, I think you’ll find this to be pretty commonsensical. It talks about the different rights and duties of all of the different players involved and it talks about all kinds of immigration. This is not just about illegal immigration, which is the particular topic of discussion, but it begins by saying that the more prosperous nations are obliged to the extent they’re able to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood, which he cannot find in his country of origin.

Now, this is partly just talking about what a just and merciful immigration policy looks like, and it’s starting from this basic principle. And the principle is this is very much a New Testament principle that when God gives you gifts, those are not for your own private benefit. Those are for the upbuilding of the church, the taking care of those who are not similarly endowed with that gift. So think about the rich man and Lazarus for example. When you find the poor man at the doorstep and you have the means to take care of him, you ought to take care of them. And so similarly at the national level, if a country is very materially prosperous, those gifts that it has should be used to take care of the poor both within its borders, but also those who come seeking better prospects or better livelihood in that country.

The critical part there of course, is that line to the extent they’re able, we can say the rich have a moral duty to care for the poor. That’s true, but it doesn’t follow that the rich have a moral duty to give money to every poor person who has for money. That would be an almost impossible burden. And so it’s up to the individual to discern hopefully prayerfully. How am I called to exercise this generosity? I recognize I’ve been given these gifts. I can’t possibly use them everywhere. People might want me to use them. Where are good places to use them? And again, this is true of everything, whether you’re talking about natural or supernatural gifts, whether you’re talking about the individual or the nation. This basic moral principle applies like if you have a tremendous gift, let’s say, of explaining the faith, there are probably a lot of places you could go and share that gift.

You have to be prudent about which things you say yes to. You can’t possibly say yes to everything. You can’t give to everyone who needs. Well, similarly, a country that is very rich materially or it has a lot of opportunities for success, they should realistically determine where and how can we offer this kind of access to prosperity or to success to those who might not be able to find it elsewhere. Those are difficult, complicated questions that involve a lot of the virtue of prudence. But you’ll notice, you can’t just say, I don’t care about people who don’t have because I’m doing okay, just like the rich man can’t say I don’t care about Lazarus and my doorstep. You have to figure out who the Lazarus is at your doorstep. Nations have to do the same, but you can’t just say, we don’t care about anybody.

We don’t care about immigrants or whatever. That’s not an acceptable position as a Christian. We’ll get more into that at the end of this episode. That’s the first obligation. Second public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him. Now here I think what’s in view is legal immigration, but the principle is pretty straightforward. If you are on vacation, you should be protected by the public safety laws of that land that the police who protect citizens from being mugged should also protect you from being mugged. This is commonsensical. This is a natural right, but this natural, right, also extended even to those who weren’t invited guests. Now this natural right played out in a really big way in the ancient world. So imagine you’re crossing the desert and you come across a town.

There’s a fascinating bit in the history of etymology where different words come from that we have this family of words that refer to encountering strangers, foreigners, others, and there are words that are both positive and negative. So words like host, like a host of soldiers and army hostility hostage, all of those, but also words like hospital, hospitality, hospice, all of those, these are coming from the same route. And the idea I think is quite simple, that if somebody is traveling through the desert and they stumble into your town, you can’t just turn them away because there’s a good chance they’ll die and it’s look at them or the sun will run out of water, whatever. It’s on the other hand, you don’t really know these people and so you receive them, but you have a certain amount of prudence and caution about it because you offer them hospitality, but you’re also aware of hostility, same root word, the same idea.

We see this play out. If you read Genesis, this virtue of hospitality was huge in the ancient world. One of the things that demarcates Abraham, even from other faithful like lot are the ways that Abraham goes above and beyond in welcoming these unexpected visitors. The three angelic visitors in contrast lot receives them, but not with the same enthusiasm. He doesn’t run out to them. He greets them at the gates. He doesn’t prepare a fees for them, he gives them basic food. But notice this theme of hospitality is critical and it’s rooted in this natural right, that you have a duty to take care of the person who is under your roof. You can’t just leave them to die and you can’t exempt them from the laws protecting people. Third political authorities for the sake of the common good for which they’re responsible may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various judicial conditions, especially with regard to the immigrant’s duties toward their country of adoption.

In other words, you might’ve heard from those first two things like, oh, okay, I guess the Catholic church has just open borders and just says you can never regulate immigration. You have to let everybody in. That is not the Catholic position. The Catholic position is you should treat everyone with respect and you should take care of immigrants, but it doesn’t believe. Therefore, you have to accept everyone as an immigrant again, just as you don’t have to give money to every poor person you’ve ever seen. You can have legitimate structures in place to limit the flow of immigration and to make sure that it’s manageable. This is part of the exercise of prudence. So what those limits look like, what the appropriate conditions are for immigration, those can vary. One person, one country may have a different idea than another person or another country, that’s fine, but they should be rooted in justice, they should be fair and so on. One of the things I think you’ll see as a perennial criticism that the US bishops have is that the US immigration system is broadly broken. It is bureaucratic in really ineffective ways and it’s very hard to immigrate legally, which encourages illegal immigration. But the idea that there should be a structured approach to legal immigration is good. It’s perfectly fine.

Fourth, what about immigrants? We talked about the duties of the host country and political authorities. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens like don’t come to a country and then insult it and spit on it like don’t come to the US and burn a US flag. That sort of thing is an attitude that is radically inappropriate. So you can occasionally find people who come to a country and then seem to hate the values of that country and everything the country stands for and it’s like, well, in that case, find a country that you can respect with gratitude. Find a country that is more to your liking and go to that country instead. That’s a basic idea that it’s not just a one direction thing.

Immigrants are human beings with agency. They have dignity, they also have responsibility, and an aspect of that responsibility is to be grateful for the host country that is receiving them. So that’s the catechisms breakdown. I think it is simple, it’s straightforward, very broad parameters. There’s a lot of questions that prudentially still need to be answered, but at least we have a direction to say. Hopefully we can all agree on this much. Now let’s look at the US Bishop special message. Now, a special message sounds like the special episode of an eighties TV show where they give a PSA, but it’s actually pretty important that the US bishops gave this special message, and I’ll give a couple of reasons why As their office of Public Affairs noted, this is quite an unusual thing. This is the first time in 12 years that they’ve made a special message on any topic.

The last time it happened was in 2013 when the US bishops decried the federal government’s contraceptive mandate as part of the Affordable Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. So to even pass a special message, the US bishops needed a two thirds vote, and in fact, it was overwhelming. 216 votes in favor, five votes against three abstentions. So they overwhelmingly approved the special message and they applauded when it passed. But we can say even more than that. It’s not just, look, the bishops really want you to hear this. There was also a public endorsement of the message and an encouragement for all of us to read this message or listen to it as we’re going to see it’s in video form as well from pretty high places.

I appreciate very much what the bishops have said. I think it’s a very important statement. I would invite, especially all Catholics, but people of goodwill to listen carefully to what they said. I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have.

So with that, what are the points that the bishops actually talk about? What’s in this special message? Well, you can absolutely watch the whole thing for yourself. It’s only about four minutes. I want to highlight just a few of the points that they make that I think are good conversational points I don’t see a ton of people talking about in all of these cases. Some of these are things you’ll have heard before. Some of these are not really things I hear people focusing on nearly as much, but let’s start with this.

As pastors, the bishops of the United States are bound to our people by tithe of communion and compassion in our Lord Jesus Christ. And we are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement.

I think this is a good foundation that they’re approaching this as pastors and as pastors with a lot of immigrants who are Catholic and are part of their flock, even if they’re not part of their original flock, they’ve now come into their diocese, they’re in their spiritual care, they have a spiritual duty towards them just as the political leaders have a certain duty towards people in their borders, so too these bishops do. And so they take seriously that they’re bound by ties of communion and compassion to care for them. And so when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. And so one of the first things we can do is not just think of immigrants as a problem of them out there compared to us, we Americans versus those immigrants, but as Catholics, these are us. These are part of who we are regardless of what nation we might be part of something frankly even deeper than the national ties that bind us, bind us to Catholic immigrants in particular wherever they may be from. Okay, second point,

We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.

We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status.

So notice the point here is not about the number of people allowed to immigrate legally. The point here is not about whether people who immigrate illegally should be deported. The point is a more foundational one. Are we treating people with respect? Are we treating them with Christian compassion? Are we treating them in a dignified way? Think about it like this. You could have speed limit laws in your town and you could say, you know what? I think it’s really important that the police pull over people with speed and that they’re punished appropriately. But if you found out the police were humiliating and mocking people when they pulled them over, you’d still say, Hey, actually that’s inappropriate. I’m not fine with just carte blanche. Go as fast as you want down the school zone. No, absolutely have regulations in place but don’t dehumanize and diminish and act in an un-Christian way towards people.

Hopefully those two things are principles that are completely compatible. So often I think when we talk about the immigration debate, we’re looking at things like quotas. How many immigrants should we have? Maybe what should the punishment be, et cetera. But an important part is are we acting in a Christian way even when we’re enforcing just laws, even when we’re doing things like submitting someone to due process or are we speaking about immigrants in a way that demonizes them, vilifies them? Are we speaking in a way where we kind of undermine their humanity? Are we putting them in detention centers that aren’t up to the standards they ought to be as Americans and as Christians? These are important questions. There’s also this important question they raise, and this is going to be a recurring one of those who are being treated in a way where their legal rights are not being respected.

That is even someone who’s in the country legally has certain basic legal protections, things like due process. And you also have people who they’re worried are arbitrarily losing their legal status. So they were here legally and then those rights are being taken away. This is one of the controversies around, for instance, some of the people approved under the Biden administration in terms of refugees having those statuses just stripped away so that not just illegal immigrants are being treated harshly, but legal ones are being treated as illegal immigrants. The third area of concern that they raise involves sanctuary and house of worship and hospitals and schools.

We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools.

We grieve when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school or when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.

This is a really important point and it’s rooted. I don’t know how much people are familiar with the history of, you’ll hear people talk about sanctuary cities. There are sanctuary cities in the Old Testament, but the concept of sanctuary is really tied in the Christian context to the church where people would going all the way back to the three hundreds, would flee to churches to evade legal punishment. And this idea, again, rooted in the Old Testament even before the New Testament, was a way of moderating the harshness of secular law, but it also serves this other point. And so I appreciate them bringing up not only houses of worship but also things like schools and hospitals. You don’t want a situation where someone who is a fugitive from the law can’t go to mass or can’t go to the hospital when they’re in a state of dire sickness where their kids can’t go to school.

And the reason is because we want people for the sake of the common good to be able to go to the hospital, to be able to go to school, to be able to go to church, that those are real good things. And if people are afraid that they’re going to be arrested and deported and separated from their families, if they go to church, then they’re not going to go to church. And that is not just a violation of the legitimate dignity of immigrants that infringes upon the rights of the church. Now granted, these rights of the church have been infringed on in various ways by secular states for centuries now, but it is worth noting that even prior to or from the dawn of the legalization of Christianity, even prior to the object of Milan, there was this recognition that you could claim sanctuary in the church that has taken different forms over time.

But we want to protect the idea that we have an allegiance even higher than our national allegiance, even higher than our fidelity to national law, which is our fidelity to God. And so fulfilling your obligation to worship God in the manner he desires to be worshiped trumps. And so the state interfering with that, even if the state has a legitimate reason to arrest you, it can wait. So it doesn’t mean you can’t arrest people, but it does mean that there is good reason to have places of sanctuary where you just say, this isn’t the time or place. Don’t bring the police into church and have your arrest there. Find somewhere else to arrest people even if you need to make arrests. Alright, the fourth area is again related to an arbitrary loss of due process or treating immigrants in a way that’s indiscriminate, where you’re not giving the legitimate due process rights.

We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.

And what I like about this is that it is a very nuanced, even handed statement that they recognize that yes, there are people on one side of the political aisle that sometimes speak about immigrants in a way that’s dehumanizing. And there are people on the other side of the aisle that sometimes speak about ice agents in a way that’s dehumanizing. And we can do better than both of these and we need to do better and we need to ask God to help get us out of this cycle of dehumanizing our political opponents. So we pray for an end to that and we pray for an end to the violence against immigrants and violence against federal agents enforcing immigration law. Alright, the fifth and final area, I’m going to actually add a little more as we go, but the fifth area I wanted to highlight at the outset is just what they’re pushing for in a positive sense.

We pray that the Lord may guide the leaders of our nation and we are grateful for past and present opportunities to dialogue with public and elected officials.

In this dialogue, we will continue to advocate for meaningful immigration reform.

We need God’s guidance for those in positions of power and we should pray for our leaders. And moreover, we should push for a better immigration system. That doesn’t mean again, that we have to have open borders, but we can have a more effective, a better run system, a system that doesn’t treat prospective immigrants punitively, but makes it easier to enter the US through legal pathways, safe and effective. That’s the basic idea and hopefully something we can broadly agree on. Maybe we have a difference in terms of how people we think should be given that legal pathway, but hopefully the idea that the solution isn’t massive illegal immigration and the solution isn’t open borders that are unregulated and there’s no protection, the solution is meaningful immigration reform where people can safely, legally immigrate to the country while still protecting the legitimate national needs of the us.

So I want to look at how two people responded to this. The first one is Tom Holman, the Border Czar. The second one is Pope Leo the 14th, the Vicar of Christ. So Tom Holman, when he heard about this, I want to be very clear that I don’t know that he actually watched or read the U-S-C-C-B message. He might be getting this secondhand. So he’s going to make several statements that don’t seem to accurately reflect what the US bishops are actually pushing for. I don’t know that he’s doing that on purpose, and I don’t mean to suggest that he is. I do want to distinguish between what he describes the US bishop’s position as and what it actually is because what he describes it as is a belief that we should just basically have open borders, that we shouldn’t have due process and deport people even with due process. Here’s how he puts it.

Joe:

So according to them, the message we should send to the whole world is that if you cross the border illegal, which is a crime, don’t worry about it. If you get ordered removed by federal judge after due process, don’t worry about it because there shouldn... Read more on Catholic.com