Why didn't I plonk you before now? gone...
"BretLudwig" <bratzirules@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:1c5db026c966816cea2dd6e0507f5bd5@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>A Practicing Catholic Considers Why "The Church" Is Wrong About
> Immigration
>
>
> By Chilton Williamson Jr.
>
>>>"Pope Benedict XVI is back in Rome after his first papal visit to the
> United States. Before leaving, he had a private meeting with his
American
> bishops in which?"according to Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles who
> was there?"he expressed the thought that "newcomers" to the U.S. are
> "people of faith and we [Americans] are here to welcome them." [Pope
> Speaks Up For Immigrants, Touching A Nerve, By Daniel J. Wakin And Julia
> Preston, New York Times, April 20, 2008]
>
> Previously, aboard Shepherd One en route to the United States, Pope
> Benedict had announced to the media his intention to raise the issue of
> immigration with President Bush. His Holiness claimed special concern
for
> the "grave problem of separation of families", which he described as
> "really dangerous to the fabric?"social, moral, human?"of these
> [sending] countries".
>
> Wherever and whenever possible, Benedict added, family reunification
> should be effected?"by the receiving countries.
>
> These and other remarks by the Pope prompted Rep. Tom Tancredo (a former
> Catholic who wor****ps today at an evangelical Christian church) to
accuse
> the Pope of "faith-based marketing" and to suggest that the Pope?Ts
> sup****t for immigrants "may have less to do with spreading the Gospel
than
> they do about recruiting new members of the church". [VDare.com note:
This
> caused Kathryn Jean Lopez [Email her]of NRO to have a fit, writing
"De****t
> Such Talk."]
>
> Of course, Catholic immigrants, on their arrival in the U.S., do not
> become "new" members of the Roman Church, but are simply old members
moved
> to a new place. Moreover, Benedict, on his visit here, scrupulously
> avoided
> comment on specific issues relating to the American immigration debate,
> but
> confined his remarks to broader issues relevant to international
migration
> on a global scale.
>
> Like every Catholic who argues for patriotic immigration reform, I am
> frequently subjected to digs from my secularist allies, reproaching me
for
> my affiliation with a universal Church?"and also to insults from my
> co-religionists, right and left, who accuse me of infidelity to the
> universal humanitarian teachings of the Founder and the See of St.
Peter.
>
> I, and others like me, have no choice except to protest to those outside
> the Roman Catholic Church that the option for open borders is not, and
> never has been, a logical extension of Catholic doctrine?"while
insisting
> to our fellow Catholics that they are very much mistaken in their
> understanding of Church teaching if they think that it is.
>
> Hence this essay.
>
> For the Catholic educated in the tradition of his Faith, widespread
> ignorance on the part of non-Catholics of the teachings and practice of
> the Church is cause for distress. But similar ignorance on the part of
his
> co-religionists is simply scandalous.
>
> I planned originally to title my article "Why the Catholic Church Is
Wrong
> About Immigration." That was before I reflected that it is not the
Church
> that is in error on the subject but all too many of her members in
public
> life, a largely self-selected and self-willed group I think of as "The
> Church". On the formal question of immigration, as on most others, the
> Roman Church is in truth a model of logic and sensibility?"so far,
> anyway, as she has expressed herself on the matter at all.
>
> Immigration, whether one is for or against it, is not what the Church
> calls a matter of faith and morals. It is not an issue?"unlike, say,
> abortion, birth control, or homo***ual marriage?"on which a
communicating
> Catholic must believe the relevant Catholic teaching, if only on faith
> alone.
>
> The Roman Church has no defined teaching in respect of immigration. It
> stands as a subject open to more or less enlightened opinion and debate
> among the Catholic hierarchy and the laity. No one can claim?"so far,
no
> one has dared to claim?"that the Church has adopted a definitive
position
> on the issue, one way or another. Hence, with regard to immigration,
> Catholics are free to believe, and to argue, any way they like.
>
> On the other hand, two papal encyclicals, one released at the end of the
> 19th century, the other at the middle of the 20th century, do indeed
> directly address the issues of migration, emigration, and immigration.
>
> The first of these, Rerum Novarum, issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, is
the
> Church?Ts famous attempt formally to define the rights of the working
> classes in a capitalist industrial society. Embedded deep in the text, a
> slightly errant passage insists upon what Leo calls the right of
families
> to migrate from densely populated countries to more thinly settled ones
in
> search of living space, as a means to achieve a more favorable
> distribution
> of agricultural workers over the surface of the earth.
>
> The theme was reiterated in June 1951, on Rerum Novarum?Ts 60th
> anniversary, when Pope Pius XII in a radio address adverted to a right
to
> migrate from one country or region to another.
>
> The second encyclical, Exsul Familia Nazarethana, released by Pius on
> August 1, 1952, is the closest the Vatican has come to offering a
> definitive treatment from the Catholic perspective of the complex moral
> issues posed by emigration and immigration in the modern world.
>
> This document, inspired by the many millions of persons displaced by
World
> War II, commences by recognizing in the Holy Family?Ts flight into
Egypt
> the archetype of all refugee families before and since.
>
> Exsul Familia Nazarethana?Ts main concern is the Church?Ts appropriate
> role in aiding refugees and exiles, and the bureaucratic-ecclesiastical
> measures it has taken to fulfill that role. Nevertheless, the Pope
reminds
> the Faithful that he has "repeatedly addressed the Rulers of States, the
> heads of agencies, and all upright and cooperative men, urging upon them
> the need to consider and resolve the very serious problems of refugees
and
> of migrants?.We asked them also to consider," he adds, "how beneficial
> for humanity it would be if cooperative and joint efforts would
> relieve?the urgent needs of the suffering, by harmonizing the
> requirements of justice with needs of charity".
>
> Finally, Pius quotes from a letter he had addressed four years earlier
to
> the American Bishops, where he noted approvingly "Informed of our
> intentions, you recently strove for legislation to allow many refugees
to
> enter your land. Through your persistence, a provident law was enacted,
a
> law that we hope will be followed by others of broader scope." (Alas, in
> 1965, it was.)
>
> Popes in the past few centuries have used encyclicals to establish
matters
> of faith and morals, as Pius IX did in 1854 in Ineffabilis Deus,
> proclaiming as Church doctrine the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But
the
> vast majority of encyclicals have not been issued ex cathedra, meaning
> that they do not lie within the realm of papal infallibility, which is
> highly circumscribed.
>
> Moreover, the world has changed in the past half-century, as the
> Church?"as well, or better than, anybody?"knows very well. For one
> thing, an understanding of the right to migrate as founded in the very
> nature of land makes little sense today, when many migrants are leaving
> sparsely populated countries for densely populated ones, such as those
of
> Western Europe. And the word "migration," as used to identify the
movement
> of peoples in the first half of the 20th century, is clearly an
inaccurate
> description of the mass transfers of the 21st, to which the term
> "invasion" better applies.
>
> That is why it is unfortunate that Pope John Paul II, in attempting to
> update Church teaching and practice in the final decades of the last
> century, showed no understanding that what he insisted on calling the
> problem of "migration" had become totally dispro****tionate to the one
with
> which his predecessors concerned themselves. Where they emphasized a
right
> to emigration, John Paul asked, "What [is] the right to emigrate?worth
> without the corresponding right to immigrate[?]". He missed no
op****tunity
> throughout his pontificate to lecture the Western world on its moral
duty
> to accept as many immigrants from anywhere as wished to come.
>
> "The Church," he said in his annual Message for World Migration Day,
> 1996,
>
> "considers the problem of illegal migrants from the standpoint of
Christ,
> who died to gather together the dispersed children of God ?to
> rehabilitate the marginalized and to bring close those who are distant;
in
> order to integrate all within a communion that is not based on ethnic,
> cultural or social member****p, but on common justice".
>
> Thus John Paul II, in his public pronouncements in respect of
immigration,
> was far less circumspect than earlier pontiffs, including even John
XXIII,
> who had gone so far as to assert that "The fact that one is a citizen of
a
> particular State should not prevent anybody from being a member of the
> human family as a whole, nor from having citizen****p in the world
> community".
>
> And Pius XII, in his letter to the American Bishops in 1948, had
> significantly qualified the migratory right of access to foreign
> soil?""provided of course", he added, "that the public wealth [of the
> receiving country], considered very carefully, does not forbid this".
>
> Pope Pius thought this caveat worth quoting in Exsul Familia four years
> later. And, a few paragraphs earlier in that encyclical, Pius strongly
> qualified also his appeal that the requirements of justice be reconciled
> with the needs of charity.
>
> "In the first place," he wrote, "there must be justice, which should
> prevail and be put into practice."
>
> Quite clearly, by "justice," Pius had in mind the need to balance the
> rights of migrants against the interests and consent of the receiving
> countries.
>
> Guido Vignelli and Alberto Carosa, Italian Catholics who together wrote
> L?Tinvasione silenziosa (The Silent Invasion) published in 2002, have
> done much to develop this point. In "False Rights, Real Duties, Prudent
> Rules: A Christian View of Immigration" (Immigration and the American
> Future, The Rockford Institute, 2007), Vignelli charges that
progressives
> have elevated the right of immigration to the status of an absolute
right,
> indeed an idol. Yet "The right to emigrate is licit and feasible only if
> it
> is ?~relativized?T and set in the context of moral reality".
>
> As it stands, the liberal formula holds that immigrants have only
rights,
> host countries only duties. More fundamentally, the need is no longer to
> balance opposing rights, but rather to recognize the right of nations
and
> civilizations to resist destruction at the hands of alien peoples and
> cultures.
>
> In short, as an Italian bishop, Msgr. Alessandro Maggiolini, has
expressed
> it, the Church recognizes "no right to invade, neither a duty to let
> oneself be invaded." [Il Giornale,Milan, November 29, 1998]
>
> This is no more than traditional Catholic doctrine, which has always
> recognized the right of nations to self-defense, including the
regulation
> of their borders. St. Thomas Aquinas, discussing charity in the Summa
> Theologica, wrote that real charity is a) natural, b) divine, and c)
> directed at those closest to God. Further, according to Thomistic
> philosophy, our obligations are to those connected to us by nature, to
> friends rather than to strangers, and to one?Ts country rather than to
> the world.
>
> Pius XII himself spoke for this tradition when he observed that
>
> "There exists an order established by God, which requires a more intense
> love and a preferential good done to those people that are joined to us
by
> special ties. Even our Lord has given the example of this preference
> towards the country, when He cries on the destruction of Jerusalem".
>
> Contrary positions adopted by left-wing and liberal clergy are in
flagrant
> opposition to correct Catholic teaching. "If the question is between the
> right of a nation to control its borders and the right of a person to
> emigrate in order to seek safe haven from hunger or violence?we
believe
> that the first right must give way to the second" according to Roger
> Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles.
>
> Similarly, a Jesuit priest who worked as an organizer for the Sanctuary
> Movement has reflected that
>
> "The great question of who has a right to come to this country and who
has
> a right to decide that right is very interesting."
>
> And an aptly named Father Marx is on record from the 1980s as having
> confided to his congregation: I tell the Mexicans when I am down in
Mexico
> to keep on having children, and then to take back what we took from
them:
> California, Texas, Arizona, and then to take the rest of the country as
> well.".
>
> Such are the sentiments of the Church?Ts left-wing cadre today. They
have
> produced an unfortunate and dispro****tionate echo among moderate
Catholics
> who also happen to be politicians, and who (as Randall Burns has written
> recently on VDARE.COM) provide "the muscle behind immigration expansion
in
> the U.S."
>
> A researcher at Claremont McKenna College has recently concluded that
> Latino American immigrants are revitalizing the Church in America, which
> in turn is eager to remind American Latinos of their national identity.
> Yet a Gallup Poll taken in 1992 found that Christians were more likely
> than secularized Americans to want immigration levels reduced; that
> two-thirds of American Christians opposed liberal immigration policies;
> and that there was no statistical difference in this respect between
> Protestants and Roman Catholics.
>
> "As other societal institutions get on the anti-immigrant bandwagon,"
the
> National Catholic Register boasted in 1994, "the Church comes out
squarely
> on the immigrants?T side." But the truth of that statement depends upon
> what the NCR means by "the Church."
>
> Significantly, John Paul II himself insisted upon the im****tance of
> national identities and identifiable cultures when he wrote, in an
> Apostolic letter, that,
>
> "We have to do all we can to assume [our Western] spiritual heritage, to
> confirm, maintain, and develop it. This is an im****tant task for all
> societies, but perhaps more in particular for those which must defend
> their own existence and essential identity of their nation from the
risks
> of a destruction generated from outside or of a decomposition from
> inside."
>
> Guido Vignelli thinks that the "preferential option for the nation",
> assumed by Aquinas and Pius XII among many other Catholic writers,
> established the principle that at stake in the immigration debate,
beyond
> the needs of the im****tunate migrants themselves, is the defense of the
> common good?"in particular, the common spiritual good?"of the
receiving
> nations.
>
> In resisting immigration on a mass scale, the nations of the West are
> defending their peace, security, order, and stability, as well as their
> separate and unique identities.
>
> Ultimately, they are defending the spiritual identity and religious
belief
> that created their civilization and upon which Western civilization
> depends.
>
> Preserving that religious identity is more than a human
> responsibility?"it amounts, literally, to a sacred trust.
>
> This trust Benedict XVI appears to understand better than did his
> immediate predecessors, if only because he has a better understanding of
> the menace the West faces from beyond its borders.
>
> As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, he argued against the inclusion of Turkey
in
> the European Union, on the ground that that country belongs to a
cultural
> sphere wholly incompatible with the nations of Europe. In 1996, he
voiced
> reservations about the ability of Islam to adapt to modernity.
>
> And it is quite impossible to imagine John Paul II quoting, as Benedict
> did in Germany in 2006, the assertion by a medieval writer that Mohammed
> introduced into the world "only things evil and inhuman, such as his
> command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
>
> The French Revolution taught us to think grandly, inclusively, and
> therefore abstractly of the Rights of Man. Today, we speak more broadly
of
> Human Rights. These generic terms tend to obscure the fact that, when we
> moderns think about rights, we nearly always mean rights pertaining to
> individuals?"except in those instances when we are concerned with our
> other obsession, the rights of minority groups.
>
> We do so because it is the modern democratic habit, and we of the West
> have become idolaters of democracy, as Norman Podhoretz once boasted of
> being. And so it comes naturally to us to consider the moral issues
> involved with immigration in the same terms. Since the immigrants, no
> matter how numerous, are still only a small percentage of the peoples
who
> are expected to welcome them, they are much more readily understood as a
> group of individuals, however numerous, than is the host population,
which
> is always seen as an unindividuated mass.
>
> But this is wrong, or at least incomplete, thinking even in
individualist
> terms. A nation is, at one level, an association of x million
individuals
> each of whom stands to be affected in a personal way by such a
cataclysmic
> phenomenon as immigration has become.
>
> We might describe such considerations as appertaining to the ethics of
> micro-morality. Yet considerations of macro-morality have a claim on our
> conscience as well, and perhaps it is the larger claim?"especially as
> macro-moral issues, viewed inversely, are readly convertible into
> micro-moral ones.
>
> Church and state alike have a responsibility for the welfare of
societies,
> as well as for individuals, and very often the respective claims of each
> are irreconcilable.
>
> So it is with the contem****ary worldwide immigration crisis, which
> presents an even greater dilemma for the churches than it does for
> states.
>
> "I don't believe," the Catholic novelist Flannery O?TConnor wrote, that
> "Christ left us to chaos." But chaos is precisely what uncontrolled
> immigration to the West promises. The opening of their borders by the
> Western nations in the interest of alleviating Third World misery and
> chaos would only guarantee the spread of chaos and misery globally.
> believe
>
> Wise Catholics with a knowledge of history and a proper grounding in
their
> Faith understand this. "The demise of Europe," the Catholic political
> philosopher Augusto Del Noce has written, "would not thus be the
beginning
> of a new universality, but would perhaps encompass the definitely denied
> hope of any future universality whatever; the downfall of European
> mediation would imply the mere unresolved contraposition between
> Occidentalism and Orientalism."
>
> The Western nations, degenerate as they have become, continue to
represent
> systems of relative order in a world that succumbs a little more each
day
> to radical disorder. Can the salvation of man arise from chaos? Does the
> Roman Catholic Church really teach and believe that it does?
>
> The answer, despite the arguments of "The Church"?"ignoramuses, fools,
> scoundrels, heretics, and simply confused or misguided souls within the
> Church?"is unconditionally: ?oNo?.
>
> The Catholic Church, in its historical as distinct from its transcendent
> aspect, is a part of history, to whose failures and disasters it is
hardly
> less immune than any other human institution. And these times of ours,
> being low and dishonest ones, have left their mark on her.
>
> One cannot deny that an activist cohort within the Roman Church, working
> assiduously on behalf of immigration and of the immigrants themselves,
has
> done a great deal of harm to Western societies?"harm that is likely to
be
> irreparable?"and that it indeed intends further harm.
>
> Yet the destructive work upon which it is engaged is hardly justified by
> the teachings of the Faith, much less sanctified by it.
>
> Moreover, the phenomenon is surely not unique to Roman Catholicism. Its
> contribution to what Peter Brimelow calls "immigration enthusiasm" does
> not exceed that made by the Protestant churches taken together. The
> Sanctuary movement, though aided and sup****ted by many Catholics over
the
> decades, was founded by a Presbyterian minister in Tucson. "As
> Christians," the Presbyterian Church announced some ten or a dozen years
> ago, "we recognize that the boundaries of God?Ts kingdom are not the
same
> as the boundaries of nations?.In God?Ts kingdom, national borders
have
> no ultimacy."
>
> As this statement suggests, the immigration crisis is a serious
temptation
> to Christianity as a whole to confuse the worldly with the otherworldly,
> what is owing to Caesar?"and to Rome?"with what is owing to God.
>
> Apparently it is no easy thing for a universalist religion like
> Christianity to lay claim to the Kingdom of God while quitclaiming the
> Kingdom of Man. So far as it fails to do so, it only invites the chaos
it
> is charged with holding at bay.
>
> This is why the logic of Catholic theology points away from?"not
> toward?"the misbegotten but much-less-than-official position the
Vatican
> has taken on the immigration issue for over a full century now."<<
>
>
>
> http://www.vdare.com/williamson/080422_immigration.htm
>
>
>
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