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...)

The Vatican called on Monday for sweeping reforms of the world economy and the creation of a 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 weaker countries. "Vatican urges economic reforms, condemns collective greed" - Reuters, 10/24/2011

One of the great frustrations this author has with the way news is covered is the abject failure of the press - and by the press, I mean both the mainstream legacy news organizations as well as the alternate, independent journalists who do their work on blogs, YouTube channels and podcasts - to relate the various political activities of the Roman Church-State to its overarching goal of establishing a new version of the Holy Roman Empire, this time one worldwide in scope.

Now when one begins talking about the push for world government, it's not uncommon to be charged with "fear mongering" and "pushing conspiracy theories." But Rome's lust for world government, while certainly a conspiracy, is perhaps the least secret, most openly admitted conspiracy in history. Many people suppose that, if the Vatican really did want world government, you'd have to go looking for proof in some musty, dusty ancient codex buried deep in a monastic library in some exotic location.

The truth is that proving Rome's desire for world government is, as they say, like shooting fish in a barrel.

Take, for example, the passage quoted at the top of this post. It's from a 2011 Reuters article about a new document issued by the Pontifical Council For Justice And Peace, the full title of which is Towards Reforming The International Financial And Monetary Systems In The Context Of Global Public Authority (emphasis mine).

Far from hiding its desire for one world government, the Vatican comes right out and says it. In fact, it's actually shocking to this author just how open Rome is about its goal.

Writing in the American Conservative, columnist Rod Dreher, a man who apparently is, or at least was, unaware of Rome's power lust, expressed his own shock at the Vatican's comments. He noted,

Lord have mercy. What was once only in the febrile prophetic imagination of Jack Chick and Hal Lindsey is now a press release from the Vatican. A friend (who is not Evangelical) writes:

This is going to FREAK the evangelicals out. But it makes me wonder what the heck is going on in the minds of these Vaticanites! Don't they have a clue how the world will preceive (sic) this? One world authority?? Really?

Count me with the Evangelicals. It freaks me out too, and will freak out many Orthodox Christians (Dreher was raised Methodist, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1993, and in 2006 converted to Eastern Orthodoxy) I bet it has the same effect on not a few Catholics as well. Maybe Malachi Martin wasn't such a conspiracy freak after all...

Dreher got it exactly right. His comments are remarkable, if for no other reason than they are the clearest example this author has seen of a big name columnist actually understanding the plain language of the Vatican and the implied worldwide tyranny of its words. But while Dreher nailed it at first, it appears that someone got to him. For in an apparent addendum to his original article he to some degree walked back his original comments. He wrote,

OK, let me take a second stab at this thing.

First, I don't think there's anything intentionally malicious about this document. It does not have magisterial authority, so it doesn't set out the Church's authoritative teaching on faith and morals. No Catholic is required to believe any of this.

News flash for Rod Dreher, the Pontifical Council's document says nothing new about Rome's lust for world government. It simply represents a reiteration of many, similar calls, both direct and by implication, made by the popes of Rome. As such, Dreher's shock at the Vatican's statement really is a commentary about his ignorance of Rome's long standing powerlust. The Vatican wasn't saying anything new in 2011 that hadn't been said many times before, or since for that matter. It's just how Antichrist rolls.

As proof of this, consider what John Robbins wrote in the chapter titled "World Government" in his 1999 book on the political and economic thought of Rome, titled Ecclesiastical Megalomania, "What the Roman Church-State accomplished on a small scale during the Middle Ages is what it desires to achieve on a global scale in the coming millennium" (187).

To back up his claim, Robbins quotes Gaudium et Spes, one of the major documents to come out of the Second Vatican Council.

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 (emphasis mine).

Now ask yourself, is there any significant difference between the 2011 statement from the Pontifical Council calling for a "supranational authority" with worldwide scope and "universal jurisdiction" and what was said the Gaudium et Spes in 1965? There's none apparent to this author.

This demolishes Dreher's argument that Catholics are not required to believe the statements from the Pontifical Council calling for world government. Unless, of course, Dreher wants to argue that Catholics are not required to believe Gaudium et Spes when it too calls for a "universal public authority." I doubt he's willing to do this.

By now you may be asking yourself what any of this has to do with the migrant caravan. It may appear that I've gone off on a bit of a tangent and forgotten the purpose of this post.

Far from it. I brought up the world government stuff to set up my main point. You see, Rome takes a multipronged approach to bringing about world government. Just as it attempted to use the public's anger about the 2008 financial crisis to further its goal of establishing a "supranational authority with universal jurisdiction," in like fashion it uses immigration, migration, and refugee resettlement as the means to the same end.

Although Rome's call for world government in Strangers No Longer (SNL) is muted by comparison to what one finds in Gaudium et Spes and the 2011 document from the Pontifical Council, nevertheless the idea is clearly implied. Let's take a look at it.

SNL is a Globalist Document

Several times in SNL, the USCCB and the Mexican bishops attack the idea of the nation state.

Paragraph 30 of SNL directly quotes the explicitly globalist Exsul Familia Nazarethana
(EFN), the 1952 Apostolic Constitution of Pope Pius XII which has been called the Church's Magna Carta for Migrants. For my earlier comments on this remarkably evil document, please see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The bishops write,

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:

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 John XXIII placed limits on immigration, however, when there are "just reasons for it." Nevertheless, he stressed the obligation of sovereign states to promote the universal good where possible, including an obligation to accommodate migration flows. For more powerful nations, a stronger obligation exists (emphasis mine).

Basically, the bishops and the Roman Church-State are saying that, the United States and other independent nations have the right to control their borders, until we say they can't. Then they have to listen to the voice of the Holy Mother Kirk and acknowledge their obligation to provide sustenance - i.e. rob their citizens - for as many migrants as we say they have to.

To put this another way, the nation state is no longer the highest civil authority. Rather, the Church is. Or to put this still another way, the Woman Who Rides the Beast is calling for world government with itself in the driver's seat and able to order mere national governments around, the expressed will of the electorates of those nations notwithstanding.

In the 2013 book On "Strangers No Longer", a collection of essays celebrating the 10th anniversary of SNL, Mark Ensalaco whined about the fact that politicians actually were listening to the voice of their constituents rather than to the bishops. He complained, "The bishops appealed for a civil debate about this urgent matter to no avail. It was as if their words fell mainly 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 (251).

What offends Ensalaco so much that he denigrates it as "politicians' worldly concerns about their electoral prospects" (187) would better be called elected officials simply doing the job they were put in office to do. But then, it's not surprising that a representative of the tyrannical Roman Church-State would be offended at the idea of elected representatives who actually represent the wishes of their constituents. Quite obviously, he prefers the Roman system where when the Pope says "jump," the only proper response is to ask, "How high, your Holiness?"

It is difficult to communicate to the reader the full extent of Rome's visceral hatred for independent nation states that refuse to confirm to its will, but perhaps the following quote may give him some sense. Writing in his papal bull Zelo Domus Dei in reaction to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, a treaty that permanently curtailed Rome's ability to meddle in the internal affairs of the allied nations and established the modern world order, Pope Innocent X raged, calling the provisions of the treaty, "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all time" (Larry Jay Diamond; Marc F. Plattner, Philip J. Costopoulo (2005). World religions and democracy, 103).

Now why didn't Innocent X tell us how he really felt about Westphalia?

Innocent X's epic rant on the Treaty of Westphalia must be understood in light of how the popes of Rome view themselves and their Church. According to Rome's teaching, the papacy has a triple power, being "the father of kings, governor of the world and Vicar of Christ." To such an exalted being, one simply does not say "no." And when he says you have an obligation to take in migrants and pay their freight, well, it's not yours to question why.

Diamond, Plattner and Costopoulo continue,

The Church tended its enmity well into the nineteenth century, when it condemned international law as a "Protestant science" [for once, the Church is actually right about somthing; the creation of  a humane system of international law that respects the territory and the property of the citizens of nation states is one of the great political achievements of the Reformation] and censured the works of the Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius, often considered the intellectual godfather of international law.

Westphalia drew the Church's scorn because it inflicted a mortal wound on the Respublica Christiania, the vision of society that the Church carried forward from medieval Christendom (103).

When the bishops demand in SNL that the United States - the US is the special object of scorn in SNL - accede to their arrogant demands to accept as many migrants as the bishops think right, they are not doing something novel, rather, they are simply bringing to bear Rome's megalomanical, medieval mindset on the modern problem of Mexican migrants coming to the United States.

Rome continues its assault on the Westphalian World Order it began in SNL paragraph 30 (cited above), repeatedly stating there are limits to the authority of national governments to control their borders. And this while Rome never mentions any such limit on its own power.

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 [Question: How does the Church determine when this is the case?]. More powerful economic nations, which have the ability to protect and feed their residents, have a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows [First, nations don't feed their residents, the citizens feed themselves by the product of their own labor; Second how is Rome's declaration that wealthy nations have "a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows" different from the Marxist doctrine of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need?] (36).

The Church recognizes the right of a sovereign state to control its borders in furtherance of the common good [What about the state's obligation to, as Paul put it, "punish evildoers and praise the good?" While this is the Biblical purpose of government, Rome's collectivist notion of "the common good" is put forth as the civil magistrate's reason for being.]. It also recognizes the right of human persons to migrate so that they can realize their God-given rights. These teachings complement each other. While the sovereign state may impose reasonable limits on immigration, the common good is not served when the basic human rights of the individual are violated [Obviously, Rome does not consider the right to property as a "basic human right," since it advocates national governments taking property from their own citizens and bestowing it upon its favored migrants] (39).

By now, I hope the reader has a sense of just how contemptuous Rome is of the concept of independent - specifically independent of Rome's control - national governments. Rome pays lip service to the authority of national governments, but, in the end, their authority extends only so far as the bishops, cardinals and popes of Rome say it does.

Closing Thoughts

While nowhere in Scripture are church officers given control over national governments, the Bible does speak about a false church that assumes such prerogatives. That false church in Revelation 17 is called Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth. In contrast to the true church of Jesus Christ, the Bride of Christ, this false church delights in fornication and is drunk with the blood of the saints.

In the opinion of the reformers and of this author, Mystery, Babylon the Great is none other than the Church of Rome. As Rome reigned over the kings of the earth in the first century, so she wishes to do so in the 21st.

In the view of this author, SNL lays  the intellectual groundwork for Rome's attempt to break the United States both financially and, by flooding the historically Protestant US with migrants loyal to Rome, culturally as well.  This is the same playbook Rome is using to break the historic nations of Europe, the only difference being the European migrants are largely Muslim.

Once Rome has destablized the US and the nations of Europe by making them financially insolvent and politically ungovernable, it will take little effort to absorb them into a new, globe spanning Holy Roman Empire. In the opinion of this author, this is precisely Rome's end game for the migrant crisis.

(To be continued...)

In last week's post, we began our look at Strangers No Longer (SNL), a 2003 document issued jointly by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Bishops of Mexico. 

As the title to last week's and this week's post indicate, SNL is a subversive document.  It is subversive in at least three ways.  First, in that it is a Marian document, it is subversive of the faith once delivered to the saints.  Several times in SNL, the bishops proudly reveal that the satanic Marian cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a key reason for their call for mass migration from Mexico, and by implication, from other places into the US. 

Second, in that SNL is a clarion call for international socialism, it is subversive of capitalism, the economic system of the Bible.  As the Bible clearly teaches throughout the pages of the Old and New Testaments, the ownership of capital goods, that is to say, the means of production, are to remain in private hands.  Further, the Bible teaches that title to property, apart from punishment for a crime, is absolute.  "Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things," said the vineyard owner in Jesus' parable.  Rome, on the other hand,  takes a far different view.

Finally, in that it is a globalist document, SNL is subversive of good government.  SNL is part of the Babylonian Harlot's multipronged, centuries long attempt to reinstate the Holy Roman Empire, this time on a worldwide scale rather than the regional scale she achieved during the middle ages. 

Last week, we looked at the Marian aspect of SNL.  In today's installment, I shall discuss the document's socialist subversions.       

Socialist Buzzword Number One:  The Common Good

When reading through documents related to the Catholic Social Teaching, one quickly comes to realize that Rome's prelates have a strong preference for writing and speaking in buzzwords, "Common good" and "solidarity" being two of their favorites.

Writing in Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins described the common good as, "the fiction by which the public authorities justify whatever they please to do" (42).  Elsewhere in the same book, Robbins commented, "The 'common good' is the great fiction used by the Roman Church-State to justify government control of society and economy" (187).

Robbins continues,

The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that "Human interdependence is increasing and gradually spreading throughout the world." The unity of the human family, embracing people who enjoy equal natural dignity, implies a universal common good.  This good calls for an organization of the community of nations able to "provide for the different needs of man...food, hygiene, education...."

All of this is driven by the theological premise that "The members of mankind share  the same basic rights and duties, as well as the same supernatural destiny" (Paul VI, Octogesima Adveniens, 1971).

"Because all men are joined together by reason of their common origin, their redemption by Christ, and their supernatural destiny, and are called to form one Christian family, We appealed in the Encyclical Mater et Magistra to economically developed nations to come to the aid of those which were in the process of development" (John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 1963) (Ecclesiastical Megalomania,188).

The basic argument of Rome is that, since the human race is one great big happy spiritual family - never mind that business about God's putting enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman - property likewise ought to be shared among all. 

The USCCB lays out in very clear terms the importance of the concept of the common good as it relates to matters of immigration, migration and refugee resettlement.  "In Catholic social teaching," they write, "individuals do not have the right to use private property without regard for the common good" (Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration and the Movement of Peoples).

Since the common good is such an important concept in Catholic social teaching, it should come as no surprise that it manages to rear its head in SNL. "We observe the struggles of landowners and enforcement personnel who seek to preserve the common good without violating the dignity of the migrant" (SNL, 4) write the bishops in error.

The struggle of property owners and civil magistrates in matters of migration is not concerning how to preserve the common good - nowhere in Scripture is the government called upon to do such a thing - rather, it is about protecting the property rights of private owners.  The job of the civil government is to enforce the Second Table of the Ten Commandments, none of which expressly state or imply anything about the common good.

In another place, the bishops write,

The Church recognizes the right of a sovereign state to control its borders in furtherance of the common good.  It also recognizes the right of human persons to migrate so that they can realize their God-given rights.  These teachings complement each other.  While the sovereign state may impose reasonable limits on immigration, the common good is not served when the basic human rights of the individual are violated (SNL, 39).

Here again we see the bishops' error in that they cite the common good, rather than the defense of the property and the lives of a nation's citizens, as the basis for a nation to control its borders.  

One interesting implication of the bishops' words here is that private property is not a "basic human right" in the way the migration is. The right to migrate is absolute, whereas the right to own and use property is contingent. 

This idea that private property is contingent is another major aspect of Catholic social teaching which will be treated below.

Socialist Buzzword Number Two:  Solidarity

Solidarity appears 16 times in SNL, leading one to think that the definition of the term would be relatively straightforward.  But such is not the case. 

In SNL's third paragraph, we are told that the bishops of the US and Mexico have solidarity.  "In the spirit of ecclesial solidarity begun in that synod and promoted in Ecclesia in America, and aware of the migration reality our two nations live, we the bishops of Mexico and the United States seek to awaken our peoples to the mysterious presence of the crucified and risen Lord in the Person of the migrant...(SNL, 3).

"The appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego revealed the compassionate presence of God reaching out to Mary to be in solidarity with and to give hope to a suffering people" (107), write the bishops near the end of SNL. 

After considering various uses of the term in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, John Robbins concluded that solidarity is, "a vague assertion of ethical and economic collectivism" (Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 151). 

Apart from its use by the Roman prelates, solidarity is a favorite term of secular socialists.  For example, socialist Bernie Sanders is recently reported to have, "urged New Hampshire workers to embrace the labor movement's principle of solidarity."   

New socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for, "Solidarity with Puerto Rico" as part of her Congressional campaign.

Solidarity is, in short, part of the argot of collectivists.  Especially, it seems, those who belong to what is commonly considered the political left. 

In SNL, the bishops make it very clear that they stand in solidarity, not with the citizens of the receiving nations who will foot the bill for Rome's migrant program, but with the migrants who will impose the tax burden on those citizens.

We speak to the migrants who are forced to leave their lands to provide for their families or to escape persecution.  We stand in solidarity with you...Faith in the presence of Christ in the migrant leads to a conversion of the mind and heart, which leads to a renewed spirit of communion and to the building of structures of solidarity to accompany the migrant...We stand in solidarity with you, our migrant brothers and sisters, and we will  continue to advocate on your behalf for just and fair migration policies.

One of the interesting aspects about the bishops' virtue signaling is that they never mention the costs of all this solidarity.  Reading SNL, one could easily come away with the impression that allowing open migration into the US from Mexico and other points south not only will not be a burden to the American taxpayer, but a positive economic boon. 

In one of the more honest statements on immigration from a Roman Catholic prelate seen by this author, Giulivo Tessarolo, editor of the commentary on Exsul Familia, the Church-State's most comprehensive statement on migration, wrote, "I took cognizance of a significant social fact of our time; that, due to enormous financial implications, the phenomenon of emigration will find some relief only in the English-speaking countries. 

Tessarolo admits openly what the US and Mexican bishops will not: that their program will cost a fortune, which fortune will be borne by the already hard pressed American citizen. 

In short, the bishops get the primp and preen in the international spotlight as if they were great humanitarian benefactors, all the while sticking American taxpayers with the bill.  You didn't expect the Holy Mother Church to actually spend its own money bailing out the migrants, did you? 

As the saying goes, that's nice work if you can get it.

The Universal Destination of Goods

Foundational to all of Rome's calls for socialism - including immigrant, migrant and refugee socialism discussed in SNL  -  is the Thomistic notion of original communism, a concept Roman Catholic thinkers refer to as the universal destination of goods.  "The Church recognizes that all the goods of the earth belong to all people" (SNL, 35), is one very clear statement of this principle.

It probably comes as a shock to many Americans, even American Catholics, that Rome has a very different view of private property than exists in the popular mind of the formerly Protestant West. But Rome has made it very clear that property rights extend only so far.  Ultimately, according to Rome, the only moral title to property is "neither possession, nor creation, nor production, nor gift, nor inheritance, nor divine commandment," (Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 31), but need.

The philosophic basis for the universal destination of goods is the Church's erroneous teaching that, when God created the earth, he gave it to man collectively.  Since private property is the result of later, man-made positive law, and not part of the original divine law, need is the only ultimate, moral title to property.   

According to Rome, if you need something, you have the right to take it.  Yet where in Scripture is there any evidence for this?  There is none. 

Further, there is at least one passage that explicitly teaches the opposite.  "Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry; but if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold; he shall give all the substance of his house" (Proverbs 6:30, 31).      

The thief needed, or at least thought he needed, to steal to satisfy his hunger.  But as this passage makes clear, what he truly needed to do was to obey the eighth commandment.  This is plain from the fact that Proverbs, although recognizing the mitigating factor behind the thief's actions, in no way calls for the thief to be let off the hook. 

When Rome demands that governments of receiving nations take property from citizens and turn it over to migrants, however dire their straights, Rome is an accessory to theft, the migrants who receive the loot are in possession of stolen property, and the government officials who do the Rome's wicked bidding are themselves guilty of theft.  The injured parties are the citizens who are forced at gunpoint to turnover their property to others who have no right to it.         

Closing Thoughts

When the Israelites' journey in the wilderness was coming to a close, Numbers chapter 20 records for us that they came to the border of Edom.  Before entering Edomite territory, Moses sent emissaries to the king of Edom, saying, "Thus says your brother Israel...Please let us pass through your country.  We will not pass through fields or vineyards, nor will we drink water from wells; we will go along the King's Highway; we will not turn aside to the right hand or to the left until we have passed through you territory" (verses 14 and 17).

Note well Moses did not think he had the right to barge into Edomite territory.  This was true, even though the Edomites were a close kindred people descended from Esau (Thus says your brother Israel).

Rather, Moses went out of his way to emphasize that Israel would respect the property of the Edomites - "We will not pass through fields or vineyards;" that is to say, we won't steal your food; "nor will we drink water from wells;" that is to say, we won't steal your water.

If ever there was a group of migrants who would have had the right to pillage food and water, it would have been God's chosen people on their way to the promised land. Yet from the text of Scripture we get not so much as a hint that it ever entered Moses' mind to plunder the Edomites' property.  On the contrary, he went to great lengths to emphasize that Israel would not steal Edom's food and water or make themselves a nuisance.

This raises the question, If Israel did not have the right to plunder the Edomites, what right do Honduran, Guatemalan and Mexican migrants have to plunder the American taxpayer?  And rest assured, plunder they will, all with the blessing of the Antichrist papacy and prelates of the Woman Who Rides the Beast.

The answer to that question is, None whatsoever.

Rome's arguments that migrants have a rightful claim on the property of the citizens of the United States of America is an evil fiction, built on a foundation of the vain imagination of Thomas Aquinas and his scholastic disciples. 

It is high time for American Christians to say so. 

(To be continued...)