Posted on 11/20/2014 2:30:39 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Often at odds with the Obama administration over religious liberty, abortion, and gay marriage, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has come out on the president’s side this month, pleased with his decision to act unilaterally on immigration, a move they’ve been encouraging for some time.
In a little-noted September letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, they chided Congress for its inaction.
“We write to urge you to use your authority to protect undocumented individuals and families as soon as possible, within the limits of your executive authority,” the letter began. “With immigration reform legislation stalled in Congress, our nation can no longer wait to end the suffering of family separation caused by our broken immigration system.”
The letter asked specifically for deferred action for immigrants with “strong community ties and equities in the United States and [who] have lived in the United States for ten years or longer,” those with approved family and employment petitions, parents of children who are U.S. citizens, and parents of DACA recipients. DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a 2012 administration memo authorizing “prosecutorial discretion” when dealing with those who illegally entered the country while under 18.
The letter was signed by Eusebio Elizando, Auxiliary Bishop of Seattle, Washington, and Kevin Vann, Bishop of Orange, California. Elizondo is also Chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Migration, while Vann is Chairman of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.
“The Administration has the opportunity to provide this relief to families who have built equities in this country,” the letter concludes. “As Congress has been unable to pass immigration reform legislation, we urge you to exercise your authority—as conferred by, but also limited by, the federal Constitution and statutes—to protect these families from separation and exploitation. As pastors concerned with the physical and spiritual welfare of our people, we can no longer wait to end the human suffering caused by our current immigration system.”
“It would be derelict not to support administrative actions…which would provide immigrants and their families legal protection,” Elizando said last week. “We are not guided by the latest headlines but by the human tragedies that we see every day in our parishes and programs, where families are torn apart by enforcement actions especially.”
“It may be necessary for the president to step up and to act in a way that addresses the needs of families,” Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas told Catholic news site Crux. “The preference would be to have a bipartisan solution, and a comprehensive solution. But it seems as if for whatever reason there is a paralysis existing right now, and in the meantime, people are hurting, families are being separated.”
Sean O’Malley, Catholic Cardinal and Archbishop of Boston, famously held a mass at the U.S.-Mexican border in April of this year, distributing communion wafers through the fence to the faithful on the other side.
“We have lost a sense of responsibility to our brothers and sisters,” he said in his homily at the time. Afterward, in an interview with The Washington Post, he said that as a D.C. priest during the 70s and 80s, “most of my parishioners were undocumented refugees. To me, they’re not statistics; they’re people, and I’ve seen the kinds of sacrifices and the suffering they’ve endured.”
O’Malley drew criticism from some for the move, including Catholic commentator George Weigel, who said “It’s not clear to me how holding Mass in these circumstances can be anything other than politicized.”
USCCB support for executive action — and hope to influence it — goes back to June, when Obama first announced his intention to act unilaterally. Kevin Appleby, director of their Migration Policy and Public Affairs Office, has consistently pushed for a “progressive” solution, according to Aleteia, another Catholic news site.
“As pastors, bishops and priests are charged with ensuring that all Catholics and those of good will have the opportunity to know God and to be with him,” Appleby wrote in a 2013 op-ed. “It is also an obligation of all Catholics. Advocating for immigration reform is yet another way for the Catholic clergy, joined by the Catholic faithful, to fulfill that responsibility.”
They aren’t, they are overwhelmingly Catholic.
You’re giving the Catholic bishops credit for shrewdness most of them do not possess. If anything, they are incapable of dispassionately plotting anything that actually would benefit the Catholic Church in the US.
I "keep going on" about Central America because millions and millions of aliens are coming through and from Mexico into the US -- I assume you've noticed?
The immigration laws were certainly rewritten to draw in more foreigners, but I don't think the idea was more specifically Catholic foreigners -- if you proof that that was the reason I'd love to see it.
As an aside, the Catholic vote has been edging right, unlike mainline Protestants, Jews, and assorted non-Judeo-Christians. To blame the national shift left on Catholics exclusively is disingenuous at best.
All of Central America is part of North America.
I’m not Catholic and even I;m not surprised by this. Nothing new. Mexicans etc are very religious. It’s all about the $ for the church.
I volunteered at church functions and soup kitchens for years when I couldn’t afford to tithe. Once I had steady work and could afford to do so, I gave to the church very generously only to watch as our parish frittered away the money for needless upgrades to the building facade while the parochial school badly needed new windows, a roof, and AC units.
This whole thing is enough to make me stop going altogether. I’ve watched as several urban parishes have gone over to the Hispanics. I have no problem with that, but now three out of the 5 services on Sundays are in Spanish. Just 10 years ago, it was a thriving parish and is now one of the most destitute.
If the church thinks its doing itself a favor with this garbage, they’re about to see how serious the conservative parishoners are with their money.
Mexico has a distinct geographical location, it is North America, not Central. Beat this dead horse all you want but you are still dead wrong in saying that “Mexico is part of central America”.
U.S, Canada, Mexico. North America.
So much bull, Mexico accounts for the overwhelming number of Hispanic immigrants, and the Catholic vote is pretty much what it has always been, almost always democrat with 4 to five historical exceptions.
If the Catholic vote was going to switch to prolife republican, then the left would not love immigration and legalizing millions of new Catholics.
JFK knew what he was doing and that he had to replace the American voter with immigrants.
Central America consists of seven countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America
When we are discussing the issue of illegal immigration, cultural and demographic concerns are more pertinent, hence it is easier to lump Mexico in with the countries of Central America sub-region proper rather than keep saying "Mexico and South America."
I always separate my sacramental obligations from the Church administration; that isn’t reason to stop going.
In my area urban parishes either become Hispanic or they close; white areas that have gone black don’t have congregations anymore. Many suburban parishes are also becoming Hispanic, as we’ve had a de facto amnesty here in NJ for decades and Americans are fleeing the state (we lost an electoral vote because of that). If the newcomers can’t support the parish financially, it will eventuall just close.
I had no use for activist groups like Voice of the Faithful, but I had no problem with them wanting oversight on Church spending. They lost me when they went off into female ordination and other Protestant nonsense found nowhere in the Bible.
the pope never agreed to separation to church and state.
The conquest of North america is the goal
This Catholic says those cowardly bishops should focus on abortion.
Gibberish that has nothing to do with the actual discussion.
“Tectonic plate” to distract from the fact that they are overwhelmingly Catholic.
JFK and the left knew what they were doing, for instance California.
“During the 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles was a bastion of Anglo Protestantism, reflecting the values of Midwestern parishioners who had been carried to the Southland on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Well into the 1970s, Protestant denominational leaders enjoyed comfortable, influential ties with the city is still-strong “downtown business
establishment,” which itself was largely Protestant.
The Immigration Act of 1965, however, created the condition for a radically different religious future for the City of Angels-a future that would anoint Roman Catholicism as the area’s dominant religious group. Today Roman Catholicism is the single largest faith tradition in Los Angeles County, with 294 parishes and 3,631,368 adherents.
Among Christians, 71% are Catholics. Between 1980 and 1997, Roman Catholicism experienced a 36% growth.
According to Louis Velasquez, director of the Los Angeles Archdiocese Office of Hispanic Ministry, approximately 70% of Roman Catholics in Los Angeles County are Latino, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
Father Gregory Courier, speaking for the three-county Los Angeles Archdiocese, suggests that as many as one million undocumented immigrant Catholics probably remain uncounted. Sixty-percent of these Latino Catholics,
Valasquez says, speak Spanish as their primary language. Spanish masses are held at over two thirds of the Archdiocese’s 287 parishes, and in most of these parishes, Spanish language masses make up about 80% of the total number of masses offered.”
Of course they do. Just what do people think the Catholic Church is all about?
While “the poor” are frequently mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments, the frequency with which this concept is mentioned is really small potatoes compared to the many other more important aspects of man’s covenant with God.
And yet, The Church has always latched onto this aspect preferentially in the same way that socialists everywhere have, as a sacred cow that offers them indisputable sanctity they can leverage to gain power and wealth.
The number of legal immigrants from Mexico is about 2.1 per 1,000 per year and has been decreasing. Illegal entry has been increasing and Mexicans are estimated to make up about 57% of illegal entries (http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/44.pdf). A plurality, but not what I would call "overwhelming."
As for the vote breakdown, the Catholic vote has been edging right. You want people to believe that the Catholic vote belongs lock stock and barrel to the democrats, yet in recent elections the Catholic vote has been about half and half. If you want to say that a 50-48 split means that population belongs body and soul to the democrats, well, go right ahead. Such an assertion doesn't reflect reality.
2014 must have been a "historical exception", since the data shows a majority of Catholic voters voted Republican
Always obfuscating aren’t you.
The vast majority of Hispanic immigrants DO come from Mexico, including the illegal Hispanics, Mexicans alone account for 57% of the illegals coming to the U.S. from the ENTIRE world.
Obama won the Catholic vote both times, Clinton won it, Al Gore, the republican presidential candidate never wins the Catholic vote, with the exception of about 4 or 5 times in history depending on the polling.
But not a Presidential election when everyone shows up and votes for the national party.
I find it interesting that we are repeatedly hit with propaganda from other freepers that Catholics voting roughly 50% GOP and 50% RAT, and Catholics voting the same way the nation as a whole does (including voting for Bush in 2004 and voting Republican across the board in 2014), somehow means that Catholics are "totally owned by the Democratic Party" and a "dependable Democrat voting bloc".
On the flip side, Jewish voters have consistently voted RAT by huge margins in every election cycle for the last 80 years (usually between 60-80% of them vote RAT), and even Ronald Reagan himself couldn't even come to winning the Jewish vote during his 49 state LANDSLIDE, but every election we're hit with propaganda that the Jewish vote is supposedly "in play" this time and "winnable" for the GOP if spend lots of money pandering to them.
If geography was like religion, it would be similar to arguing that Ohio is "completed owned by the Democrats", but Massachuttes is a swing state that has a good chance of casting its electoral votes for the GOP in 2016.
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