Mexico, Mass Migration, and the Example of Moses Part XII: Strangers No Longer, Odds and Ends (A)
We seek to measure the interests of all parties in the migration phenomenon against the guidelines of Catholic social teaching and to offer a moral framework for embracing, not rejecting, the reality of migration between our two nations.
- USCCB and the Catholic Bishops of Mexico in Strangers No Longer
Over the past three weeks (please see here, here and here), this author has examined in some detail the document Strangers No Longer (SNL), authored jointly by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and their counterparts in Mexico. The main purpose of SNL, as the quote at the top of the page indicates, is to bring to bear the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church on the issue of migration between Mexico and the United States.
The three preceding posts on SNL represent my attempt to demonstrate some of the serious, antichristian ideas in the document. To that end, I have analyzed the errors in three broad categories, noting that SNL is 1) a Marian document, 2) a socialist document, and 3) a globalist document.
After considering the express and implied propositions found in SNL, it is this author's conclusion that the ideas put forth by the bishops in SNL are not only harmful to the people of the United States, but destructive to the point that they imply the end of the United States as an independent nation. Further, it is this author's contention that the implied collapse of the US is not some accidental by-product of the ideas found in SNL, but actually one of the bishops' intended effects.
That said, today I would like to turn my attention to a few additional issues in SNL. These are issues that may not fit neatly into one of the three categories listed above - Marian, socialist, and globalist - but which nevertheless are worthy of commentary.
Birthright Citizenship
In paragraph 67, the bishops write, "Family unity also is weakened when the children of immigrants are left unprotected. In the United States, birthright citizenship should be maintained as an important principle in U.S. immigration law."
This author could not disagree more vehemently. Birthright citizenship as it is practiced in the US represents a gross cheapening of American citizenship and is an outrageous abuse of the American people. Birthright citizenship is an enormous scam.
Earlier this year, and in a previous series on immigration, I explained that, according to the Bible, there are two, and only two legitimate ways for someone to acquire citizenship: 1) Be the child of parents, at least one of whom is a citizen, and 2) By taking an oath of allegiance, which in the US means taking an oath of allegiance to the Constitution.
Why do I say this? For a longer version of the answer, please see here. The shorter version runs this way. According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, "The visible church...consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children" (WSC XXV.1). Baptism is the means by which the party baptized is admitted into the visible Church (WSC XXVIII.1). Baptism - that is to say, the sacrament indicating one's membership in the visible church - is to be administered to two classes of persons: 1) Infants descending from parents, either both, of but one of them, professing faith in Christ and obedience to him 2) adults who make a profession of faith in Christ of obedience to him (Westminster Larger Catechism, 166).
To put these ideas in less formal language, baptism is a sign of one's membership in the visible church, and that sign is administered to the infants of at least one believing parent and to adults who profess their faith in Christ.
To put it still another way, one becomes a member of the visible church (n.b. I do not say one is saved, only that one becomes a member of the visible church) either by being born to parents, at least one of which is a member of the visible church, or by an outward profession of faith as an adult.
So much for church membership. But what does this have to do with national citizenship? In my opinion, quite a lot. For the same God who ordained church government also ordained civil government. Because of this, the Bible's definition of church membership can be applied with equal force to the question of determining who's a citizen.
Translating the language of the Westminster Standards into the language of civil government, we can say that the Bible's teaching on the question of who is properly to be considered a citizen is as follows: 1) Adults who have taken an oath of citizenship and 2) the children descending from parents, either both, or at least one of whom, is a citizen.
On this analysis, it is no more appropriate to call a child born on US soil to non-citizen parents - their immigration status notwithstanding - an American citizen than it would be to baptize, and declare a church member, an infant born to unbelieving parents on church property.
Throwing Shade on the Border Patrol
The document points the finger at the US Border Patrol as being as an abusive group, the agents of whom "perpetrate abuses and who are not held accountable by the U.S. government. As back up, the authors of SNL argue that only a few of the reported cases of reported abuse by the Border Patrol led to government prosecution.
One problem here is that SNL refers to a 2001 report by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. Given the report was produced by an agency of the Roman Church-State, it is fair on those grounds alone to question its honesty.
By way of example, a recent article on the Catholic Answers website titled "Is Sex Abuse a Catholic Problem?" concluded, unsurprisingly, that, no, the rate of sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church is comparable to that found in other organizations, including Protestant churches. Citing the John Jay report, the article concluded that, not only were the number of sexual abuse cases no more than those found among Protestant ministers, but there actually were fewer.
What the article doesn't tell you is that the John Jay report, according to the report's Executive Summary on page 3 of the report, was "authorized and paid for by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops."
So, at least if we're to believe Catholic Answers, a report bought and paid for by the USCCB concluded that, compared the competition, Roman Catholic priests are no more likely, and perhaps are less likely, to abuse children, and further, we're supposed to accept the report's findings at face value.
Sorry, but with such recent headlines as this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this floating around, color me skeptical.
And if it's fair to question the Church-State's bought and paid for report on the Church-States obvious and serious problem of child abuse, it's also fair to question their reporting on abuse by the US Border Patrol, an agency whose activities Rome very clearly despises, if for no other reason than the agency's efforts prevent Rome from inflicting even more damage on the US than it already does.
The Implied Costs of SNL's Recommendations
The bishops wax grand eloquent on the rights of migrants and the obligations of receiving nations to take care of them. Noticeably absent from SNL is any discussion of the costs associated with the bishops recommendations.
According to paragraph 33, the bishops, having examined the Social Teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, deduced five principles, "which guide the Church's view on migration issues."
For example, Principle II teaches that, "The Church recognizes that all the goods of the earth belong to all people." As has been mentioned elsewhere, the is an expression of a Thomistic principle known as the Universal Destination of Goods (UDG). In short, the UDG states that need to the only moral title to property. If someone needs your supposedly surplus property, he has a right to take it. The UDG is one of the key philosophical principles underlying the Church-State's incompetent political and economic teachings.
The UDG also underlies what the Church-State says about national borders. According to the Church-State, nations have the right to control their borders until the pope says they can't.
The church recognizes the right of sovereign nations to control their territories but rejects such control when it is exerted merely for the purpose of acquiring additional wealth . More powerful economic nations, which have the ability to protect and feed their residents, have a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows (36, emphasis mine).
But while the Church-State is quick to lay obligations on the United States, more to the point, while the Antichrist pope and his henchmen in the USCCB and the Conference of Mexican bishops are quick to lay enormous tax obligations on the American people, they are coy about the costs of their program, never quite getting around to mentioning them.
The only honest assessment of the costs of Rome's migration demands this author has seen from a Roman prelate come from the pen of Giulivo Tessarolo, editor of Rome's commentary on Exsul Familia, the 1952 Apostolic Constitution on Migration by Pius XII. There, Tessarolo wrote, "due to the enormous financial implications [of Rome's demands on behalf of migrants], the phenomenon of emigration will find some relief only in the English-speaking countries" (13).
Of the Pharisees Jesus remarked, "[T]hey bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers" (Matthew 23:4). In like fashion, the bishops, cardinals and popes of Rome love to go on and on about their compassion for the poor of the world, but they want you to foot the bill.
The Matthew 25 Argument
The bishops invoke Matthew 25 to bolster their argument. They write,
St. Matthew also describes the mysterious [the bishops here, as is their wont, misapply the term mysterious] presence of Jesus in the migrants who frequently lack food and drink and are detained in prison (Mt. 25:35-36). The "Son of Man" who "comes in his glory (Mt. 25:31) will judge his followers by the way they respond to those in need: "Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brother of mine, you did for me: (Mt. 25:40).
Though they don't quite get around to saying it outright, the implication behind the bishops' argument is that, if you don't support their program, you're one of the goats on Jesus left hand, whom he sends to hell for their refusal to give to those who were hungry, thirsty and in need.
Sounds convincing, right. Well, not so fast. There's a principle of Biblical interpretation known as the analogy of Scripture, or the term I prefer, comparative exegesis, which is found in Westminster Confession of Faith I.9. So just what is comparative exegesis? The Westminster Confession reads, "[W]hen there is a question about the true and fell sense of an Scripture...it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly."
Jesus very clearly enjoins his disciples to be generous and help those in need, but what did he have in mind? Was Jesus thinking, as the bishops seem to be, of welfare state handouts, the money for which is forcibly extracted from taxpayers by the government and distributed to those deemed in need, or did Jesus have something else in mind?
Consider the parable of the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10 and ask yourself where did the Samaritan get the funds to pay for his charitable act? Did he go demand his neighbors cough up the money to reimburse him for the cost of the bandages and oil. Did he demand the state pay for his transporting the wounded Jewish man on his donkey, or for the cost of the inn, or for the delay the whole affair caused him?
Of course not. The Samaritan fully bore the costs of his good deed.
Christian charity is always and only about giving of one's own resources, not one's neighbors.
Forcing others to pay for one's charitable work is not Christian charity at all, it is theft. And theft is condemned in the Eighth Commandment.
For this reason, the bishops appeal to Matthew 25 to bolster their case for international socialism (theft), is not only wrong, but is itself a sin, in that it makes them guilty of misinterpreting, misapplying, and perverting the Word of God, which is a violation of the Third Commandment (Westminster Larger Catechism, 113).
Rome loves to lecture people about welcoming the stranger, but deliberately blurs the important distinction between Christian private charity, which is always voluntary, and the sort of welfare state socialism promoted by its migrant policy. They are very different things.
(To be continued...)