The Pope, the Bishops, and Immigration Enforcement

The ecclesiastical hierarchy of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church — both the pope and American bishops — have entered the debate over immigration enforcement in the United States under the Trump II administration. Many of their points merit serious examination and response, but their activity in this matter risks stirring prejudices and misunderstanding that plagued American Catholics in the distant past. Long story short — Church teachings make clear that faithful Catholics must rely on the cardinal virtue of prudence to determine what is right and what is wrong.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a summary of the institution’s teachings on issues of morals and faith. I am a practicing Catholic myself, and one thing I must make clear for my brethren from other faith traditions (read: “Protestants”) is a fundamental point: It is not a substitute for, and it does not take the place of, the Gospels and the other books of the Bible.

From Clement of Rome to Saints Ambrose, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, and John Henry Newman, theologians and “doctors” of the church have parsed through, analyzed, and debated the scriptures for the better part of two millennia, and the Catechism is the most user-friendly synopsis of what they and others have found and concluded.

I don’t know if you can call such a massive document “user-friendly”, but in any event the first section of paragraph 2241 speaks to the obligations Catholics owe to aliens in their own lands:

The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.

If that were all the catechism had to say on the matter, one could conclude that nations — and rich ones in particular — have only limited rights of sovereignty over their own borders.

But paragraph 2241 goes on, in section two:

Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. 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.

In other words, immigration is a two-way street: The immigrant must obey local laws and customs, but while the destination country should help them to the degree it can, it’s also appropriate for a nation to limit the number of immigrants it receives “for the sake of the common good”.

“Immigration Enforcement and the Christian Conscience”

Keep in mind that the Catechism isn’t Google Maps — it doesn’t tell you how to get to a destination in the quickest manner avoiding hazards and back-ups.

That’s because, as Benjamin Mann explains in his recent article in the Catholic Accountability Project, “Immigration Enforcement and the Christian Conscience”:

Rightly understood, Church authority does not mean that the pope and bishops simply dictate everything, to a purely passive laity whose role is merely to “pay, pray, and obey.” Clericalism is a useful term for this misconception.

. . .

Accordingly, while popes and bishops may sometimes express an opinion on specific “systems and programs,” the Catechism’s paragraph 1806 makes it clear that such practicalities are the proper domain of Catholic laypersons — applying their faith, reason, and the virtue of prudence.

“Prudence” — defined in paragraph 1806 of the Catechism as “the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it”, is (along with “temperance”, “fortitude”, and “justice”) one of the four “cardinal virtues” in Catholic teaching, and the one that guides us in determining right from wrong.

“With the help of this virtue”, paragraph 1806 explains, “we apply moral principles to particular cases without error and overcome doubts about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid”.

Mann explains how that affects the decisions the laity makes with respect to moral and other issues:

It is certainly true that the pope and bishops have a unique God-given teaching authority both in matters of revealed faith and moral truth. However, there is often a difference between the moral teachings of the Church and their prudential application — that is, how this teaching should be practically applied in cases where different legitimate options exist.

If the pope or the bishops express their own opinions on matters of practical political judgment, they should be taken seriously. But one may conscientiously reach a different conclusion about how best to apply their moral teaching, without in any way dissenting from that teaching. Prudential applications of Catholic doctrine are not the same thing as the doctrine itself. [Emphasis added.]

The Pope and the Bishops Express Their Own Opinions About Immigration Enforcement

Keep all that in mind when you consider two separate, recent statements, one by Pope Leo XIV and the other by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), on immigration enforcement under the Trump II administration.

On November 12, the USCCB issued a “special message”, which stated, among other things, that:

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.

Pope Leo thereafter spoke to reporters and was asked what he thought about the USCCB message. The pontiff responded:

I would invite, especially all Catholics but also 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. If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts. There’s a system of justice. I think there are a lot of problems in the system. No one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has the right to determine who enters, how, and when. But when people have lived good lives — many of them for 10, 15, 20 years — to treat them in a way that is, to say the least, extremely disrespectful, and with instances of violence, is troubling.

What’s Actually Happening

There is a lot to unpack in both statements, but critically each rests on a series of challengeable, if not questionable assumptions.

With respect to the USCCB message, those include that individuals are being “profiled” for immigration enforcement, that immigrants are being “vilified”, ICE detention facilities are lacking, detainees are being denied “access to pastoral care”, and aliens “have arbitrarily lost their legal status”.

Having explained, in detail, the findings immigration officers must reach before they engage in detentive questioning (so-called “Terry stops”) or make immigration arrests, I would definitely question the “profiling” contention.

And, having worked at and toured various ICE detention facilities — most recently a few months ago — I’d dispute that they are in any way lacking. The National Detention Standards the agency follows are among the most stringent and demanding in law enforcement, and if ICE were failing to comply with those standards, it would front-page news on most papers and websites.

It’s not.

It is true that ICE barred a Catholic delegation from bringing communion to detainees at the agency’s facility in Broadview, Ill., on the feast of All Saints (November 1), but Broadview is a “short-term processing hub where ICE books and transfers people to other locations” — not a long-term detention facility appropriate for pastoral care, let alone Mass.

It’s not clear what the USCCB meant in describing “immigrants in the United States” who “have arbitrarily lost their legal status”, but DHS must obtain removal orders for any alien that it seeks to deport from this country, and under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), those orders are generally only issued at the end of removal proceedings before an immigration judge. Regardless, however, all aliens subject to removal are entitled to due process.

Finally, the only aliens “vilified” by DHS in its press releases are those who’ve committed significant crimes (murder, rape, drug trafficking) and other heinous offenses (child sexual abuse). Most Americans likely have sympathy for other aliens facing removal, but also understand the law must be enforced.

As for the pope’s argument that “there are a lot of problems in” our immigration system, and his tacit contention that those here illegally for a decade or more merit immigration benefits, as Mann noted:

Of course, a truly broken system should be fixed. But the “broken system” talking point is typically a setup for the pitch of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” — meaning mass amnesty, for starters.

When immigration activists in the Church use this language, they are usually signaling their typical trifecta: not only amnesty, but also more legal immigration and less law enforcement.

By their interpretation of “welcoming the stranger,” it is hard to imagine any number of immigrants they would realistically regard as too many, or any societal condition they would see as calling for consistent law enforcement.

. . .

Yet if America’s immigration system can be called “broken” just because more people want to come here than the law currently allows, then it is hard to realistically imagine any situation in which the system will not be “broken.” [Emphasis in original].

Mann also quoted my colleague Jan Ting, who told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2014:

I believe that what’s broken is our willingness to make the hard choice between simply allowing unlimited immigration, as we did for the first century of the republic, or alternatively enforcing a numerical limit on immigration, with all the attendant difficulty, complexity and expense that entails.

As Mann explains, “the United States already does a remarkable job of ‘welcoming the stranger’ through its legal immigration system”, and I would respectfully add that the only “problems” in that system writ large have stemmed from an unwillingness of various administrations to enforce the INA as Congress has directed them to.

Or, as Mann puts it:

Weak borders and lenient law enforcement are often presented as “humane” and “compassionate” policies demanded by Christian love. Yet the reality is that these policies frequently have a terrible human toll — such as when they enrich and empower the criminal cartels, clearly harming both Americans and foreigners in the process.

. . .

Such reckless border policies thereby violate both parts of a basic Catholic teaching, summed up in paragraph 409 of the Compendium of the Catechism: “The most complete realization of the common good is found in those political communities which defend and promote the good of their citizens … without forgetting the universal good of the entire human family.”

Finally, like the pontiff, I too, am troubled with the violence that has occurred in connection with ICE’s recent enforcement efforts, but that violence has usually been initiated by aliens forcefully resisting arrest and protesters clashing with ICE and state and local cops to impede enforcement.

All law enforcement at every level involves either force or the threat of force, and part of our social contract gives the state a near-monopoly over the use of force (though we have reserved the right of self-defense).

Try not paying your taxes for a while and see what happens, but the advice I give anyone subject to a stop or arrest is that there’s a time and a place to fight your case, and it’s not on in a parking lot or on the side of a highway with a squad car behind you and a trooper in your window — or when somebody else is in that situation.

“Politicians, Business Leaders, and Activist Groups Have Long Exploited this Issue”

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, a former USCCB president and leader of the nation’s largest archdiocese, offered a similar but more nuanced take in a November 18 article in Angelus News titled “Beyond deportations: There is still a way forward on immigration reform”.

He reiterates many of the points in the USCCB “special message”, but offers critical insight on the immigration mess the Trump II administration inherited:

We are punishing individuals; and it is true, they have responsibility for their actions. But they are part of a system that for more than 40 years has been left broken by our leaders.

Many who are here illegally came with the implied understanding that the authorities would look the other way because businesses needed their labor.

Politicians, business leaders, and activist groups have long exploited this issue for their own advantage. That is why the problem persists.

That’s a better explanation for the so-called “broken” immigration system than others have offered, and it is admittedly well-balanced. Not surprisingly, his ultimate solution is amnesty, but at least he spreads the blame around.

“I Do Not Speak for the Church on Public Matters and the Church Does Not Speak for Me”

“Anti-Catholicism” has been described as “’by far the oldest, and the most powerful of anti-foreign traditions’ in North American intellectual and cultural history”, but it is effectively a vestige of the past.

It would be laughable for any U.S. Catholic to claim victim status today, particularly given that their fellow Americans overcame whatever prejudices they had to elect two Catholics to the presidency, and that the current vice president and six Supreme Court justices share their faith.

Intermarriage between the faiths and intranational mobility stripped away most of those prejudices, but the willingness of Catholic political leaders to separate the religious from the secular in their official capacities likely sealed the deal.

As then-candidate John F. Kennedy told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in September 1960:

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters — and the church does not speak for me.

It’s logical and appropriate for religious leaders to speak on moral issues, but when the ecclesiastical hierarchy makes sweeping — and questionable — claims about such a fraught issue like immigration, there’s a danger other Americans (including many Catholics) could misconstrue them.

Mann notes that immigration policy is a “prudential political judgment, an area of responsibility that belongs properly to Catholic laypersons rather than the bishops”. It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

American Catholics should carefully consider what their religious leaders have to say about immigration, but the Church itself expects them to use the cardinal virtue of prudence to look at the facts and determine what is right and what is wrong. But then, that’s a good policy for their fellow Americans to follow, as well.