On 11/28/2019, the Thanksgiving sermon was preached by Pastor Joe Rosales.

The pastor opened the message with the debate regarding the very first Thanksgiving. Traditionally we celebrate the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving, but there was an earlier Thanksgiving held in El Paso, TX by Catholics led by Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate, in which “a mass was said by the Franciscan missionaries traveling with the expedition” (https://texasalmanac.com/topics/history/timeline/first-thanksgiving). But as Protestants we unapologetically celebrate Thanksgiving with the Puritans, whether they were first or not!

George Washington gave the first national Thanksgiving Proclamation on 3 October 1789:

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor—and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” (https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0091)

Abraham Lincoln established it as a national holiday during the Civil War:

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. (http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm)

The Thanksgiving holiday, however, comes only once a year. It’s occasional. But Christians should always be thankful. The Heidelberg Catechism and Hercules Collins’ Orthodox Catechism distill the Christian life in three words: Guilt, Grace, Gratitude. Christians are called to be a eucharistic—a thanksgiving—people, as James White notes, to “pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks (εὐχαριστεῖτε); for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians‬ ‭5:17-18‬ ‭NKJV‬‬). We need to take back the true meaning of eucharist from the Antichrist Church of Rome.

The pastor also noted that cheerful brethren generally make everything better and more enjoyable, for “all the days of the afflicted are evil, but he who is of a merry heart has a continual feast” (‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭15:15‬ ‭NKJV‬‬).

Ultimately, God is good. Period. (Etymologically, good in the “Sense of ‘kind, benevolent’ is from late Old English in reference to persons or God.”) And we must be thankful for that, because we were not good, “but God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans‬ ‭5:8‬ ‭NKJV). ‬‬Gordon Clark puts it plainly:

God is neither responsible nor sinful, even though he is the only ultimate cause of everything. He is not sinful because in the first place whatever God does is just and right. It is just and right simply in virtue of the fact that he does it. Justice or righteousness is not a standard external to God to which God is obligated to submit. Righteousness is what God does. Since God caused Judas to betray Christ, this causal act is righteous and not sinful. By definition God cannot sin. At this point it must me particularly pointed out that God’s causing a man to sin is not sin. There is no law, superior to God, which forbids him to decree sinful acts. Sin presupposes a law, for sin is lawlessness. Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. But God is “Ex-lex.” (Religion, Reason, and Revelation, in The Works of Gordon Haddon Clark: Christian Philosophy, Vol. 4, pp. 268-69, http://www.trinitylectures.org/christian-philosophy-the-works-of-gordon-haddon-clark-volume-paperback-p-145.html).

The pastor closed with a prayer from William Jay, “For a Day of Thanksgiving—Evening.”

The pope, more than anybody else, has driven the migrant crisis in Europe...The Catholic Church is one of the worst instigators of this open borders policy.

- Steve Bannon, Former White House Strategist, June 2018

We interrupt this program...

When thinking about what to write for this week's post, it was my intention to continue with my series on the 2008 financial crisis.  But with the embarrassment of riches in the news just begging for a Scripturalist commentary, sometimes I find myself, as did the dog in the movie Up, saying "Squirrel!"

The squirrel, in this case, is the news of the Honduran migrant caravan slowly wending its way through Central America with the goal of arriving in El Norte. the United States.    

Many commentators have speculated about the origins of the caravan.  While it appears to have mysteriously sprung up almost overnight, given its size and the apparent organization, not to mention its timing near the November mid-term elections, it is difficult to believe that the caravan is a spontaneous uprising.

Among conservatives, it is fairly common to blame the United Nations and George Soros for instigating this latest attack on the United State's southern border.

Donald Trump has tweeted that the fault lies with the Democrats and their lax approach to border security. 

One financial commentator I follow has suggested, if I understand him correctly, that the migrant caravan was organized by financial interests in the federal government to give the Trump administration the excuse to borrow more money to fund the construction of the proposed southern border wall with Mexico.  In the opinion of this financial commentator, the federal government must borrow cash into existence in order to pay the interest on the existing government debt.  Deficit spending on the wall is one way of doing this. 

While this suggestion is not as off the wall (pun intended) as it may seem, it is not my intention to explore it here today.

In fact, it's not my intention to do a deep dive consideration of any of the popular theories about the source of the caravan's organization and funding.  It may well be that some, or even all, of the above suggestions are correct.  It is not my purpose here to rule out any of them.  But what I will say is that, even if they are true, none of them are adequate, for they fail to identify what is almost certainly the single most important sponsor of the caravan:  The Roman Church-State. 

It is the studied opinion of this author that the principal cause of the migrant crisis in Europe and in the United States, what Pope Francis has called a 'sign of the times,' is the Social Teaching and political activism of the Roman Church-State under the direction of its Antichrist popes.

Rome Promotes Mass Migration

One can find many statements in official documents of the Roman Church-State in support of mass, taxpayer subsidized migration.  These statements amount to an attack on the integrity, not just of a single nation, but on the entire concept of the modern nation state. Here are a few typical examples:

·         Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this (Pope Pius XII, Exsul Familia, 1952).

·         Again, every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own State. When there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there. The fact that he is a citizen of a particular State does not deprive him of membership in the human family, nor of citizenship in that universal society, the common, world-wide fellowship of men (Pope John XXIII, Pacem In Terris, 1963)

·         People have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families..This is based on biblical and ancient Christian teaching that goods of the earth belong to all people...individuals do not have the right to use [their own] private property without regard for the common good...the earth was given by God to all.  When a person cannot achieve a meaningful life in his or her own land,  that person has the right to move (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration and the Movement of Peoples).

·         While recognizing the right of the sovereign state to control its borders, Exsul Familia also establishes that this right is not absolute, stating that the needs of immigrants must be measured against the needs of the receiving countries (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Inc. and Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano, Strangers No Longer Together on the Journey of Hope, 1993).

Church officials, including Pope Francis himself, have not been shy about openly supporting migrants over the interests of the citizens of Western nations.  The Guardian ran a headline in 2017 that summarized the pope's position:  "Pope Francis:  prioritise migrants' dignity over national security."

So if the millions of welfare migrants flooding into Europe with the pope's blessing happen to rape, hack, shoot, bomb, or run over the hapless citizens of those nations, they can perish knowing that their deaths were not in vain, but served the greater good envisioned by the Holy Father.  Because, as we all know, the migrants' right to migrate supersedes the right of the actual citizens of the host nations to live in peace.  Or live at all, for that matter.

So determined is Pope Francis to see Europe overrun by Islamists that even the murder of a Catholic priest celebrating mass has not deterred him.   

Another example of Rome's promotion of mass migration is the book On "Strangers No Longer" edited by Todd Scribner and J. Kevin Appleby and published by the Roman Catholic Paulist Press.  This book, published in 2013, was intended to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the 2003 paper Strangers No Longer, which publication was quoted above. 

In Chapter 11, author Mark Ensalaco makes the remarkable statement, "The [Roman Catholic] bishops appealed for a civil debate about this urgent matter [migration from Mexico to the US] to no avail.  It was as if their words fell on flinty ground or among thorns where they withered in the white heat of politics or were strangled by politicians' worldly concerns about their electoral prospects."

Stated in less flowery and more honest language, Ensalaco is upset that, when it came to immigration issues, American politicians were listening to the voice of their constituents, as they should, rather than to the voice of the Antichrist pope and his henchmen on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Oh, the tragedy!

Antichrist's Endgame

So just what does the Roman Antichrist have to gain by promoting open borders and mass migration. 

The short answer is this:  Open borders and mass migration are designed to make Western nations ungovernable, and thus help Rome achieve its goal of ushering in world government.

During the middle ages, Europe was under the thumb of the popes to a degree that would make many modern day dictators envious.

The Reformation broke the political power of the popes in the nations to which it came.  But Rome, as John Robbins has pointed out, is an institution recovering from a mortal wound. 

What Rome accomplished on a regional scale in the middle ages, it hopes to effect on a worldwide basis in the future.  Call it scalable tyranny if you will. 

What Was That AMLO Said?

Since writing the first installment of this series back in June, the subject of that first post, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, sometimes referred to by the short hand AMLO, has gone from presidential candidate, to president elect.  He is scheduled to take office December 1.

It was a stump speech by AMLO that first prompted this author to begin this series of posts.  Four months later, AMLO's remarks are more pertinent than ever, so it's worth revisiting them. 

In June 2018, AMLO was quoted as saying,

Soon, very soon, after the victory of our movement, we will defend migrants all over the American continent and the migrants of the world who, by necessity, must abandon their town to find life in the United States...It's a human right we will defend.

This is a truly extraordinary statement, and a deeply disturbing one at that.  Clearly AMLO has no respect for US immigration law or the American people.  In other words, he's not a good neighbor.

Note well, just how much AMLO's comments dovetail with the statements quoted above from officials of the Roman Church-State.  AMLO is simply regurgitating the Social Teaching of the Roman Church-State. 

AMLO, who was raised Roman Catholic but in recent years has been somewhat coy about his religious affiliation, nevertheless named his newly founded political party MORENA, Spanish for brown, a reference to la Virgen Morena, which is what Mexicans call Our Lady of Guadelupe, the nation's matron saint. 

Very clearly, AMLO, whether he's currently a practicing Catholic or note, has deeply imbibed the Social Teaching of the Roman Church-State.

Apparently, this is true of a large proportion of the Mexican people as well.  If this were not so, AMLO would not have said what he did.  As Alan Wall, an American who lived in Mexico for a number of years, has noted, "It's not just AMLO who thinks like this.  All prominent Mexican politicians think Mexicans ought to be able to go to the U.S. regardless of what we want.  AMLO just spells it out clearly and invites the whole world!"

To give you a sense of how little the Mexican government respects US immigration law, or any American law for that matter, see this article issued by the Mexican government in 1994 titled Guide For The Mexican Migrant. 

To put it another way, the Mexican people and their elected officials are the intellectual thralls of Romanism.  That being the case, and given that the president elect of Mexico has promised people the world over to fight for their right to migrate,  it is unreasonable to expect the Mexican government to do anything effective to prevent the migrant caravan from reaching the US border. 

The Coming Border Showdown

That being the case, it appears a showdown on the US Mexico border between the caravan and the US military is quite likely.

It is the opinion of this author that the migrants must not be allowed to enter the United States.  To allow them in would be to invite more of the same sort of lawlessness, a state of affairs that would be bad, not only for the American people, but for the migrants themselves and for those who would imitate them in the future. 

Rome's perverse view of property rights - Rome believes in what it calls the Universal Destination of Goods; in effect, it means that you property belongs to you until someone comes along who needs it, then they can take it from you, or get the government to do their dirty work for them; put another way, the Universal Destination of Goods is the principle Rome uses to justify socialistic theft - combined with its aggressive globalist ambitions is a toxic politico-economic concoction which, if not defeated first intellectually, then politically, threatens to undermine the stability of every free nation on earth and take us all further down the road to world government.

As Steve Bannon, himself a Roman Catholic, has pointed out, it is the pope himself and the Roman Church-State that are most responsible for the migrant crisis in Europe and the open borders policy that fuels it.  Flooding the ancient nations of Western Europe with millions of migrants - some of whom are openly hostile to their host nations - destabilizes these countries, making it easier to fold them into the Roman Antichrist's planned world government.    

As Christians, let us pray that God would grant President Trump, his advisers, and Congress, the knowledge and the wisdom to defeat the threat posed by, what is in effect, a Roman Catholic caravan bent on doing to the United States what has already been done to the nations of Western Europe.  

This week we continue our look at Exsul Familia, Pope Pius XII's 1952 apostolic constitution which has been called "The Church's Magna Charta for Migrants." This exposition was inspired by the recent remarks of then Mexican presidential candidate, and now president elect of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who, during his presidential campaign, promised to defend the right of every person in North America, indeed, every person in the world, to migrate to the United States.

Lopez Obrador's comment struck at least one writer as not only a slightly bizarre campaign promise, but an actual invasion threat toward a neighboring sovereign state. 

But as strange as Lopez Obrador's comments were, he didn't arrive at his statements on his own.  Rather, his belief that everyone has a right to migrate to the United States, regardless of the cost to American taxpayers, is one implication of the Roman Church-State's doctrine of immigration, migration and refugee resettlement as set forth most completely in the afore mentioned apostolic constitution Exsul Familia.     

Thus far, we've looked at what an apostolic constitution is - according to a number of Roman Catholic source, apostolic constitutions are the most authoritative of all papal documents, outranking even papal encyclicals in importance - and have begun to examine the erroneous foundational economic doctrine that undergirds all of the Roman Church-State's claims that mass, taxpayer funded immigration, migration, and refugee resettlement are consistent with Christian teaching.  That doctrine is called the universal destination of goods.  The universal destination of goods holds that when God created the world, he gave it to humanity in common, that is to say, collectively.  In other words, Rome believes in original communism. 

But God did not give the Earth the men to men corporately.  As John Robbins notes, "God, holding ultimate ownership of the Earth, gave it to men severally, not collectively.  The argument for this may be found in the words of the seventeenth-century Christian thinker, Robert Filmer" (Ronald Sider - Contra Deum).   Contrary to Rome, the original economic order was not communism, but private property.  To put it another way, the Bible teaches original capitalism.  Lord willing, I shall present a more complete case for this in a future installment.  Readers who admire the work of John Robbins, as does this author, will be interested to know the basis for my argument for original capitalism is Dr. Robbins 1973 doctoral dissertation, The Political Thought of Sir Robert Filmer. 

But for this week's installment, I would like to show another implication of Rome's evil doctrine of the universal destination of goods, tyrannical world government. 

The Universal Destination of Goods, the Destruction of National Sovereignty, and Institution of World Government

As we noted in Part 4 of this series, the doctrine of the universal destination of goods holds that need, not possession, is the ultimate and only moral title to property.  One of the implications of this teaching is the welfare state, and it should come as no surprise that prelates of the Roman Church-State have been long been among the most ardent proponents of socialism and are largely responsible for the erection of the enormously expensive welfare bureaucracies imposed upon the formerly free nations of the West.     

But Rome isn't satisfied merely with setting up welfare state tyrannies in individual nations.  No, Rome's program of socialism is a scalable tyranny.  Rome's intends to use citizens of the wealthy nations of the West as tax donkeys to pay welfare benefits, not just to the native poor of their own nations, but to foreign migrants as well. 

It is my contention that Rome intends to use these welfare migrants as a means to disrupt the societies into which they come, socially, politically and economically with the ultimate goal of making them ungovernable and thus easily folded into a system of world government headed by the Roman Church-State and her Antichrist popes.     

For proof of this, let's turn to Pope Pius XII's words in Exsul Familia.  He wrote,

You know indeed how preoccupied we have been and with what anxiety we have followed those who have been forced by revolutions in their own countries, or by unemployment or hunger to leave their homes and live in foreign lands.

The natural law itself, no less than devotion to humanity, urges that ways of migration be opened to these people.  For the Creator of the universe made all good things primarily for the good of all [n.b. this is the universal destination of goods].  Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate reasons, denied to needy [n.b. need is explicitly cited as the basis for Rome's migration policy] and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this (emphasis mine).

Note well the implied globalism in this statement.  Rome claims that the sovereignty of the state must be respected, but that it, "cannot be exaggerated to the point," that needy migrants are denied access to the resources of its people.  But who decides whether a nation state is exaggerating its sovereignty or not?  Though not explicitly stated here, in the eyes of Rome the pope is the ultimate decider. 

When one speaks of Rome's desire for world dominion, he runs the risk of being labeled a conspiracy theorist.  But while Rome's thirst to rule the world is a conspiracy, it's an open one, and perhaps the world's worst kept secret.  In fact, it's really not a secret at all.  The pope's have grown so bold in recent decades that they explicitly and very publically call for it.

Guadium et Spes, one of the major documents of Vatican II reads,

it is our clear duty, therefore, to strain every muscle in working for the time when all war can be completely outlawed by international consent.  This goal undoubtedly requires the establishment of a universal public authority acknowledged as such by all and endowed with the power to safeguard on the behalf of all, security, regard for justice, and respect for rights (quoted in Robbins, Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 187).

More recently, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace released a document titled Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority. As Reuters reports,

The Vatican called on Monday for sweeping reforms of the world economy and the creation of an ethical, global authority to regulate financial markets...

The Vatican called for the establishment of "a supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" to guide economic policies and decisions.

Such an authority should start with the United Nations as its reference point but later become independent and be endowed with the power to see to it that developed countries were not allowed to wield "excessive power over the weaker countries"...

One section of the document explained why the Vatican felt the reform of the global economy was necessary and called for specific reforms such as taxation of financial transactions...

"In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of 'central world bank' that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks"...

"Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of part of each nation's powers to a world authority and regional authorities..."

This naturally raises the question, So just who will be in charge of this "supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction," not to mention who will run the "central world bank"?

Again, the papal document doesn't come right out and say so, but given that the statements are coming from the Vatican, there can be no doubt but that the Church has in mind the popes of Rome.  Consider, if you will, the symbolism of the papal tiara.

As the Vatican itself acknowledges, "The Triregnum (the Papal Tiara formed by three crowns)" symbolizes "the triple power of the Pope:  father of kings, governor of the world and Vicar of Christ."   Apart from any other argument or statement, the arrogant claims of the popes of Rome as symbolized by the tiara ought to be enough to remove all doubt about who Rome sees as controlling the envisioned apparatus of world government. 

Rome's hatred of sovereign nations that do not bow to the pope can be traced at least as far back as the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.  This treaty established what has come to be known as the Westphalian World Order, an international system in which national governments were the highest level of civil authority.  "The Westphalian peace...relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other's domestic affairs and checking each other's ambitions through a general equilibrium of power...[E]ach state was assigned the attribute of sovereign power over its territory.  Each would acknowledge the domestic structures and religious vocations of its fellow states as realities and refrain from challenging their existence" (Henry Kissinger, World Order, 3).   One could say that the Westphalian World Order was the application of the Biblical principle of MYOB (Mind Your Own Business) to international politics (see 2 Thessalonians 3:11, 12).

Of course, this is antithetical to the teaching of Rome, which holds that the pope is the "father of kings and governor of the world."  Rome's reaction to the Treaty of Westphalia is instructive on this point.

In his papal bull Zelo Domus Dei, Pope Innocent the X raged against the articles of the Treaty of Westphalia,  calling them, "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time." Given Rome's severe and historic case of ecclesiastical megalomania, such a statement should come as no surprise.

That said, it probably does come as a surprise to most 21st century Protestants, who have been taught from their youth up that the pope is a brother in Christ, that he is their friend, and that he is a fellow soldier in the culture war.  All this is an enormous lie. 

In truth, in the pope's raging one hears the voice of Antichrist.  It is the voice of the little horn of Daniel which speaks pompous words and makes war against the saints of God, prevailing against them.    

The popes of Rome are megalomaniacal James Bond villains in clerical garb.  They have never given up their desire to rule the world.  And, as Revelation teaches, they temporarily will succeed in doing so.  One of the ways the popes aim to effect this world wide rule is through mass, taxpayer funded immigration, migration, and refugee resettlement. 

Antichrist has laid out his program for world domination in very clear language in numerous papal documents.  Mass, taxpayer funded migration, immigration, and refugee resettlement is one of Rome's principle tools for effecting this outcome.  The program outlined in the apostolic constitution Exsul Familia has, by admission of the editor of Rome's official commentary on the document, "enormous financial implications."  More to the point, Rome's doctrine of migration, if followed to its full extent, will result in the financial bankruptcy of the host nations.    

But in addition to financial implications, Rome's program also has significant political implications.  When Rome calls for millions upon millions of migrants, refugees and immigrants - people who have no knowledge of the doctrine of Justification by Belief Alone on which those societies are built and thus no knowledge of the economic and political implications of that doctrine, namely, free markets and limited government -  to flood the formerly Protestant nations of the West, the effect is to Romanize those nations and to prepare them to be folded into Rome's planned system of "supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction," with the effect that, no one will be able to buy or sell except one who has the mark or name of the beast, or the number of his name.    

When popes of Rome speak of respecting national sovereignty, they lie and enormous lie.  The only sovereignty they respect is that of their own pretended authority. 

Over the past several weeks, Americans have born witness, whether they know it or not, to the practical outworking of the Roman Church-State's doctrine of immigration, migration and refugee resettlement. 

In the popular press, Americans daily have been treated to anguished wailings from the just and righteous about how the Trump administration's immoral border policies have caused children to be separated from the parents.  The blame for this, we are told in no uncertain terms, lies solely with the hard-hearted president and his deplorable supporters.  No fault whatsoever attaches to parents who deliberately put their children in harm's way while they knowingly violated US immigration laws. 

The condemnation has been especially sharp from Roman Catholic sources.  Here are just a few eexamples. 

·         The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized President Donald Trump's administration over immigration policy on Wednesday, declaring that separating mothers and children at the US border is "immoral"  ("Catholic leader calls separating mothers and children at border 'immoral,' " CNN, June 13,2018).

·         Leading U.S. Catholic bishops on Wednesday escalated their criticism of the Trump administration's immigration policies, calling new asylum-limiting rules "immoral" and rhetorically comparing the crackdown to abortion by saying it is a "right-to-life" issue.  One bishop from the U.S. - Mexico border region reportedly suggested "canonical penalties" - which cold refer to withholding the sacrament of Communion - for Catholics involved in implementing the Trump policies [please note the boldness some prelates of Rome have when it comes to interfering with the legitimate duties of the civil magistrate; it was for this very reason that many Protestants expressed concern about electing Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy president in 1960, their concerns were largely ignored] ("Trump's asylum rules 'immoral,' with one suggesting 'canonical penalties' for those involved," Washington Post, June 13,2018).

·         "I am on the side of the bishops' conference," Pope Francis commenting on the statement of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops condemning the Trump administration's border policies ("Pope Francis criticizes separating families at border", America The Jesuit Review, June 20, 2018). 

So, how do we deal with these charges as Protestants?  When you combine what these high church officials say, the amplification their words get in the mainstream media, the daily denunciations of US immigration policy by celebrities, the physical intimidation of Trump administration officials by radical leftists, mass demonstrations funded by anti-American activists such as George Soros, and calls form the leading Mexican presidential candidate for what amounts to a migrant invasion of the US, it's easy to be intimidated and feel as if there's no chance to stand up to these people.  On the other hand, it may be tempting to lash out in frustration and to revile those who call for what amounts to a migrant invasion of the US in the same way they revile us. 

But as Christians, we are neither to give in to despair nor lash out in anger.  Rather, as the old saying goes, we are to pray and work.  The good news is that despite all the pompous words of the prelates of the Antichrist Roman Church-State, Rome's pro-migrant, anti-American policies amount to a shaky house built on intellectual sand.  My purpose in this and in subsequent posts is to equip Protestants with the intellectual ammunition to knock down that house.

Exsul Familia Nazarethana - The Church's Magna Charta for Migrants

In 1952, Pope Pius XII issued the apostolic constitution Exsul Familia Nazarethana (The Émigré Family of Nazareth, henceforth Exsul Familia).  Written in the post-WWII years at a time when there were many displaced persons in Europe, the document was intended as a position paper, setting forth the Catholic Church's teaching about immigrants, migrants and refugees. 

In 1962, a commentary on Exsul Familia was published titled The Church's Magna Charta for Migrants, edited by Roman Catholic priest Giulivo Tessarolo. 

As we shall see, many of the basic assumptions about immigration in the mainstream media, as well as much of immigration rhetoric we hear on a daily basis, including AMLO's call for a migrant invasion of the US, can be traced to this document.  Further, it is this author's contention that Exsul Familia is a deeply flawed document.  This is not surprising given that its conclusions about immigration, migration and refugee resettlement are based on Rome's unbiblical and antichristian ideas about economics and politics, which John Robbins brilliantly exposed in his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania.  

In summary, Exsul Familia is a toxic mixture of communism and aggressive globalism, thus representing an attack on both the Biblical doctrine of private property and the Westphalian World Order, the Christian system of geopolitics resulting from the Protestant victory in the Thirty Years' War.   Further, Exsul Familia is a classic case of selective Biblical exegesis, one in which Rome has erected a gigantic superstructure of migration dogma upon a single and, in important respects, unclear passage of Scripture, while at the same time it ignores clearer and more relevant passages.

So Just What is an Apostolic Constitution anyway?

For non-Roman Catholics it's easy to get lost in the forest of the many types of papal pronouncements that seem daily to issue from the Vatican.  One suspects this is true for many Roman Catholics as well.  For example, in 1932 when Al Smith, the first Roman Catholic to run for president, was asked about papal encyclicals, he supposedly responded, "Will somebody please tell me what the hell a papal encyclical is?" If Roman Catholics struggle with papal pronouncements, perhaps Protestants can be forgiven their puzzlement on the matter.  But while Protestants don't need to become experts on cannon law, it is very much in their interest to know something about papal documents.  For in them one finds the intellectual foundation for the destructive politics and economics advanced by the papal Antichrist and various prelates of the Roman Church-State. 

Regarding apostolic constitutions, various Roman Catholic sources refer to these as the most authoritative of all papal documents.  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops defines an apostolic constitution as, "a most solemn form by which popes promulgate official Church documents."  An article in Our Sunday Visitor by Stephanie A. Mann give the following definition, "The apostolic constitution represents the highest level of all the papal documents."

Another Roman Catholic writer, Helen Hull Hitchcock, says of apostolic constitutions that they are, "solemn, formal documents on matters of the highest consequence concerning doctrinal or disciplinary matters, issued by the pope in his own name." 

A paper on church documents from The Catholic University of America gives the following, "Apostolic Constitution (Constitutio apostolic) - Apostolic constitutions are considered the most solemn kind of document issued by a pope in his own name.  Constitutions can define dogmas but also alter canon law or erect new ecclesiastical structures.  An example is John Paul II's apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, defining the role and responsibility of Catholic institutions of higher education."       

Finally, let's look at what Giulivo Tessarolo, editor of the commentary on Exsul Familia, has to say about apostolic constitutions.  Tessarolo quotes a German theologian by the name of Dr. Theodor Grentrup who wrote, "The papal documents on the spiritual care of of migrants bears as its official title - Apostolic Constitution.  Even though the word - Constitution - has a rather broad meaning, it is true, however, t hat when used by the Holy See, it carries an exact significance; namely, it indicates a document which is a solemn enactment carrying juridical binding force, an ordinance coming directly from the Holy Father (sic).  Hence, it is an ordinance of the church deriving from the highest source, in the clearest form.  Consequently, only the most important laws are issued through a Constitution...Constitution differs from encyclical.  Even though an encyclical can be binding, it aims directly at explaining truths and dogmas, not at formally issuing new laws. A Constitution, however, contains clearly formulated laws" (The Church's Magna Charta for Migrants, 14).  

From these Roman Catholic sources, it is clear that apostolic constitutions are considered the most authoritative of all papal decrees. Constitutions do not merely explain existing canon law.  They are used to issue new laws.  As an apostolic constitution, Exsul Familia is not just one of many co-equal pronouncements by Rome on the subjects of immigration, migration and refugee resettlement, but the most authoritative pronouncement by the Vatican on these topics.  As such, it bears careful scrutiny. 

It is this author's opinion that Exsul Familia's dogmatic assertions on migration, which amount to little more than a Roman Catholic variation on Marx's dictum "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," is a tissue of enormous lies which are themselves rooted in Rome's unbiblical, unchristian, pagan assumptions about economics and politics.  If it can be demonstrated that Rome's basic economic and political premises are wrong, which it can, then Rome's argument for unlimited tax-payer funded immigration as set forth in Exsul Familia also collapses, as does its pretentious claim to the moral high ground in the immigration debate. 

 (To be continued...)