The Selective Concern of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops

I call it the faculty lounge fallacy. It occurs when people who are far removed from the practical consequences of their ideas insist on advocating societal prescriptions that would never survive first contact with reality. For example, about 40 years ago, United Methodist Bishops composed a pastoral letter expressing their disapproval of then-President Reagan’s nuclear deterrent policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. The Bishops maintained that even the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent measure was immoral (notwithstanding the fact that our nuclear deterrence helped enable the right of Methodist Bishops to write asinine letters).

In a similar vein, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops appears to be trodding down an unfortunate path with a Special Pastoral Message that is more remarkable for what it doesn’t say than for what it does say. The message focuses with 8K Ultra High Definition resolution on the “fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants,” a self-evident and foundational truth not only of the Christian faith but of western civilization writ large, but it fails to mention even once the “fundamental dignity” of victims who’ve been been assaulted, raped, and/or murdered by violent predators who should never have been here in the first place.

Indeed, to the extent that the Pastoral Message draws any distinction between the legal and the illegal immigrant, it is to “…advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures,” adding that, “Human dignity and national security are not in conflict.” That last point, while correct, is curiously mute on the grave national security consequences of allowing millions of military age men from across the world to enter the country unvetted. It should be noted that while on the cross, Christ recognized the human dignity of a nearby thief who acknowledged his wrongdoing and asked Our Lord’s forgiveness. Jesus responded by forgiving the man’s sins, saying that he would be in paradise that very day. What Christ did not do was levitate the man from his cross and send him on his merry way, thereby relieving him of the earthly consequences of his misdeeds.

These are the sort of distinctions that are missing in action from the Bishops’ Pastoral Message that instead enjoins us to a cause in which:

We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. 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. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.

It’s at this point that the Bishop’s selective concern begins its departure from reality. If I breach the wall surrounding Vatican City, upon my capture I can expect a fine of $10,300 to $25,700 and imprisonment of 1-5 years, plus a 15-year ban from Vatican territory.

Under those circumstances I would feel a very real “climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement.” I wonder if a house of worship, a hospital, or a school inside Vatican City would offer me sanctuary and hide me from Vatican authorities? If I brought my kids with me, would they live with the fear of being separated from their father? Would the US Council of Catholic Bishops write a pastoral message on my behalf? For that matter, is there an American citizen who is currently a fugitive from justice who doesn’t feel the sort of anxiety here at home that has the Bishops so wrapped around their crosiers (pastoral staffs) in the case of illegal immigrants? Do they think the authorities abstain from picking up our own fugitive citizens because they have kids who may or may not be in school?

Where were their pastoral messages when upwards of 12 million unvetted people broke our laws by entering our country illegally? Where was their urgent pastoral concern when 20 year-old Kayla Hamilton was raped and murdered in her home by an illegal immigrant; or when five people including a third grade boy were shot in their home after asking their illegal immigrant neighbors to stop firing a rifle late at night; or when 11-year-old Aiden Clark was ejected and killed when his school bus was hit by a swerving vehicle driven by an illegal immigrant; when Rachel Morin (a mother of five) was beaten, raped and strangled to death by an illegal immigrant; or when Lizbeth Medina, a high school cheerleader, was stabbed to death by an illegal immigrant; or when two year-old Jeremy Poou-Caceres was fatally shot while walking with his mother and got caught in the crossfire of an illegal immigrant gang shootout; or when nursing student Laken Riley who was beaten to death with a rock wielded by an illegal immigrant while she was out jogging; or when 12 year-old Jocelyn was lured under a bridge in Houston, TX, by illegal immigrants who bound her, sexually abused her, and threw her body into the bayou?

I’ve not even named a fraction of the 13,000 to 15,000 American lives lost at the hands of people who should never have been here in the first place, and I can’t find any evidence that this carnage ever registered as a blip on the radar of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Oddly enough, the week during which these Bishops registered their ecclesiastical concern over America’s enforcement of our own immigration laws also marked the 10th anniversary of synchronized attacks by ISIS militants, armed with explosives, rifles, hand grenades and suicide vests, who slaughtered 158 people at public entertainment, leisure and public assembly areas in Paris. As Mark Steyn noted last week:

What was not yet known ten years ago was the extent of the torture of the victims - some were disembowelled; some were beheaded; others were castrated, with their severed genitals in their mouths. All because they went to a rock concert. The good news is that there will be fewer risks of mid-concert castration in the new France, because there will be no music. The only thing that would change this course would be an end to mass immigration and a policy of mass deportations. Instead, the Islamisation of western Europe has accelerated. So ten years on all that can be officially permitted is the old soothing delusion that "our love is stronger than your hatred", even though it's hard to sing with your genitals in your gullet.

To their credit, Catholic Bishops did issue a condemnation of the slaughter, yet they remain stone-silent on the conditions and policies that led inexorably to the carnage in France. Here at home they’ve yet to utter a peep about the tsunami of unvetted military-aged men who sauntered into America unopposed to set about their deadly work. Therein lies the everlasting blind spot of their pastoral message.

A friend of mine from Ricochet’s early days framed the issue perfectly when he wrote that, “To refuse to even affirm the distinction between legal and illegal immigration is dishonest and unjust, especially while paying lip service to a nation’s right (per Church teaching) to regulate and enforce its borders.”

The question is about a great deal more than Christian charity, or as my friend writes:

Much more than the inherent dignity of strangers is involved. These people are not deported because they are different or poor, but rather because they violated our hospitality, free will, and just laws. God loves justice and mercy. He calls us to lawful obedience.

Meanwhile, the Bishops might consider the old proverb that “Charity begins at home,” and write another pastoral message calling for the sort of migration to Vatican City that has yet to spark their indignation anywhere else in the world.