Posted on 07/19/2014 7:37:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Perhaps the Catholic church would volunteer to pony up some cash for the illegals' care then? Hmm?"
"Pope should stay out of it. Matter of civil laws, not church laws."
"Thinking that the pope should want the illegals to go to Argentina to get better soccer players for World Cup."
Those were just three Twitter responses I was tagged in, in response to a headline about Pope Francis calling so many of us out on our indifference.
Based on some of the reactions, you would have thought Pope Francis himself was giving unaccompanied minors rides in his Popemobile into the United States, encouraging the dangerous journey and chaos at the end of the road. Headlines certainly don't always help matters. The afore-quoted Tweeters were reacting to: "Pope Francis calls on U.S. to welcome illegal immigrants." His message though, wasn't a call to abolish borders and law, but to see the humanity, for goodness' sake.
What this shepherd of the leading charitable organization in the world said was that people of good will cannot tolerate a "throwaway culture"; this happens to be a leading theme of his papacy. We so often don't even look at the person next to us on an elevator. So, of course, women and children and men showing up on our border -- what is clearly both a humanitarian crisis and a political headache -- wanting a better life is abstract and foreign to most of us at best. In a message to a conference on migration in Mexico, Pope Francis addressed our current border situation: "I would ... like to draw attention to the tens of thousands of children who migrate alone, unaccompanied, to escape poverty and violence." They've largely made the trip, he wrote, from Central America and Mexico "under extreme conditions and in pursuit of a hope that in most cases turns out to be vain. They are increasing day by day." He described it as a humanitarian emergency that "requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcomed and protected."
Now before you agree with the Tweeters, read on. "These measures, however, will not be sufficient, unless they are accompanied by policies that inform people about the dangers of such a journey and, above all, that promote development in their countries of origin."
Instead of demanding the U.S. open its borders to whomever, whenever, the Pope implored, "this challenge demands the attention of the entire international community so that new forms of legal and secure migration may be adopted."
We live during a time when our senses are overloaded and our attention spans for other people's problems can be short. But the situation at our borders is about people we have a responsibility to as fellow human beings in a country that has much, even as we aren't always good stewards of the gifts.
We're talking about people who see -- or were told -- their recourse for hope in their lives was coming here. At the very least, we can show them love, which is not a government program or political platform. It is the people of Sacred Heart parish and the Archdiocese of Chicago and Americans opening their homes to help give a brother or sister a place to feel safe.
We fear, among other things, of course, that our country can't sustain this. That's certainly true, and this crisis is a wake-up call and a scandal, exposing layers of incompetence, lawlessness and indifference in our government and culture when it comes to immigration. It's an issue that's used as a political battering ram, as pastors who see the human fallout daily have long pled for civic responsibility and human decency.
"Solidarity means taking responsibility for those in trouble," St. John Paul II wrote in 1996. "For Christians, the migrant is not merely an individual to be respected in accordance with the norms established by law, but a person whose presence challenges them and whose needs become an obligation for their responsibility. 'What have you done to your brother?' The answer should not be limited to what is imposed by law, but should be made in the manner of solidarity."
Oh, Brother, help us, if we cannot see we cannot see through to the heart and the urgency. Our laws, our rhetoric, our indifference -- and our Twitter reflexes -- are not worthy of who we say we are as Americans.
The irony is that this country is importing hordes of peasants from Latin America to replace the tens of millions of Americans we've killed off over the course of several generations.
If that ain't secular, nihilistic lunacy, then I don't know what it is.
Not quite following this. O’Malley?
Just a minor correction. Jimmy Akin is not a theologian. He is a senior apolgist at Catholic Answers.
Plunder Violates Ownership
I do not, as is often done, use the word in any vague, uncertain, approximate, or metaphorical sense. I use it in its scientific acceptance — as expressing the idea opposite to that of property [wages, land, money, or whatever]. When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.
Law Is a Negative Concept
But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed — then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property.
Try to imagine a regulation of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property. If you cannot reconcile these contradictions, then you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.
I say that this act is exactly what the law is supposed to suppress, always and everywhere. When the law itself commits this act that it is supposed to suppress, I say that plunder is still committed, and I add that from the point of view of society and welfare, this aggression against rights is even worse. In this case of legal plunder, however, the person who receives the benefits is not responsible for the act of plundering. The responsibility for this legal plunder rests with the law, the legislator, and society itself. Therein lies the political danger.
It is to be regretted that the word plunder is offensive. I have tried in vain to find an inoffensive word, for I would not at any time — especially now — wish to add an irritating word to our dissentions. Thus, whether I am believed or not, I declare that I do not mean to attack the intentions or the morality of anyone. Rather, I am attacking an idea which I believe to be false; a system which appears to me to be unjust; an injustice so independent of personal intentions that each of us profits from it without wishing to do so, and suffers from it without knowing the cause of the suffering.
The Law and Morals
You say: “Here are persons who are lacking in morality or religion,” and you turn to the law. But law is force. And need I point out what a violent and futile effort it is to use force in the matters of morality and religion?
It would seem that socialists, however self-complacent, could not avoid seeing this monstrous legal plunder that results from such systems and such efforts. But what do the socialists do? They cleverly disguise this legal plunder from others — and even from themselves — under the seductive names of fraternity, unity, organization, and association. Because we ask so little from the law — only justice — the socialists thereby assume that we reject fraternity, unity, organization, and association. The socialists brand us with the name individualist.
But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence.
/Bastiat
We *do* see the humanity.
There are suffering children all over the world; arguably, the children of Africa are *much* worse off than children in the Americas. No matter how much we may ache for those children, we simply cannot take in every single one, or even a significant fraction, of them. Furthermore, simply taking them in and dumping them onto the treadmill of endless poverty and subjugation does nothing to improve their lives or to improve the overall situations in their home countries that make their lives short and miserable. The best way to help? Fight the violence in their countries. Improve their economies. Educate them, focusing on the benefits and responsibilities of a free society. Yes, these measures are hard--they are infinitely more difficult than tossing children into detention camps until some slave masters posing as their families remove them. But the best actions with the most favorable long-term outcomes won't be easy.
Me either. We give every darn day to the millions that are already here. No more! Send every single one of them home regardless of their sob story.
I don’t care.
Oh. That’s right.
I do find Akin reliable
If you want a mission to Central America, Francis, get on a plane and go into the world to preach the gospel. You're not lazy or too comfortable to do that, are you?
Don't TEMPT these people to break the law. You're in the official role of TEMPTER now.
Me too.
Excellent post
You have a right to your opinion that no one can take away. That does not mean however that you are correct. (just saying)
Legal immigration destroyed America, has ended it forever, so what are you saying?
We are twistedly aborting our own and taking in others
I beg to differ, immigration legal and illegal populated the United States and made it the best place ever.
Really? You like this multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-religious, unrecognizable, unmanageable, no national identity or even an interest in such things, America that people who lived here before 1970 cannot even recognize and where you know it will be in 20 years and 50 years as it breaks apart into secession?
People who saw the old America know what we lost, the left that supports your vision for America sees only power, which is why they wanted mass immigration to replace us in the first place.
If you think this immigration is improving us over traditional America, then you are insane. America has ended, and already it’s history and past is disappearing from memory, and in 20 or 40 years no one and no voters will remember what it was.
Well ansell, I will tell you, I am old enough to recall how it was in the 60s and 70s. But we have many times been a melting pot. My mother is Irish and as you know, people thought there were too many trashy Irish coming in, “No Irish Need Apply”. People about had a conniption when Kennedy got elected because he was Catholic. Like we used to joke in law school, just let me get my bar admission and then tighten the standards....When I read Maria Von Trapp’s story, she told of the babble of foreign tongues you would hear on the street in New York City after WW II.
So, yeah, I stand by my original statement. Where we have lost it is, we used to demand people learn the language and assimilate, now we don’t.
That was all pretty lame for your argument for the continued destruction of America, something that the first wave of immigration in the 1840s helped create as it took over the cities and fed unionism and democrat political machinery.
How you can continue the left’s agenda of destruction through population replacement is baffling, perhaps you aren’t as conservative as you think and are more aligned with the average Catholic voter and the Kennedys.
Without importing foreign voters, the democrats as we know them today, would have died generations ago.
I get it about the Democrat voters, I also know the Republicans have been ineffectual, lazy and two-faced.
Good Lord, this is much bigger than your description, the nation is unrecognizable and will never recover.
While you just want to continue this erasing of the United States and turn it into just another geographical place for the world to flood to, and extract what they can from the skeleton of the original America.
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