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1. I hope for Mahony's indictment, conviction, humiliation, incarceration for the rest of his execrable life, removal from his see, defrocking as a priest and some other things best not posted. Ahhh, but how do I really feel about Mahony???? Don't ask.

He needs to be indicted, etc., for his role in the pederasty and chicken hawk and seminarian abuse scandals and the cover-up of same.

2. The catechism language presumes as a precondition that the immigrant has been accepted by the receiving country. If not, the receiving country has not pulled the trigger on the immigrant's obligation to obey the laws of the receiving country (he may be obligated by any number of other strictures, however). In any event, obeying the law on "illegal" immigration is inherently contradictory to the catechism provision because it would cancel the trigger of our country receiving the immigrant (an ongoing trigger).

The argument (which is designed by others to divide conservatives) is going to be irrelevant in any event in most cases since, given Speaker Hastert's announcement that "guest worker" is acceptable to House leadership and the Senate's attitude on the subject, "guest worker" is going to become law. At that point, when folks complain about the immigration, pro-immigrant folks will be saying: What part of "legal" don't you understand? Morality is not determined by legislative action. Enacted laws prohibit (allegedly) two kinds of evils: malum in se (evil by its very nature such as murder, rape, robbery) and malum prohibitum ("evil" only because prohibited: parking regulations, environmental regulation of matters not adversely affecting your neighbors, crossing borders without "papers.")

These theories are Natural Law and were developed by the Church under God's guidance. Malum Prohibitum "crimes" ought to be avoided but are not as serious as crimes of Malum in Se. Think venial sin vs. mortal sin. Think traditional misdemeanor vs. traditional felony. Think: We need a better solution than slamming the door shut on people who only seek a better life by trivial violations like border crossings.

BTW, Pope John Paul II was very clear in justifying the very sort of immigration complained about here. We are the United States of America, a big populous country. We are NOT Liechtenstein or Luxembourg or Monaco. Courtesy of abortion, we are short 50 million people and their never conceived offspring.

If 50 million of the US population of 300 million were to die in a bird flu pandemic, do you doubt the adverse economic impact (never minding the intense human tragedies)?

3. The Rule of Law died here in the 1930s at the level of SCOTUS in any event. Roe vs. Wade and its progeny and Lawrence vs. Texas and its progeny (lavender rights) are proof that the Rule of Law is dead as a doornail in the USA.

4. The opposition to Mexican and Latin American immigration as we know it is not pretty and has not been pretty and does not promise to look any better. If it had succeeded, we would have forfeited the substantial Hispanic vote that we have been getting. We already have sustained losses. If we do not compete successfully for that Hispanic vote and/or black vote, conservatism itself will be as dead as the Rule of Law and as 50 million innocent babies slaughtered in its name. In the long run, I hope that conservative leaders such as Rush, Sean and others will concede that they were wrong on this issue politically.

There are ways to spread the impact of the immigration both economic and social. We can deal with all of the peripheral issues (many of which like WTO, GATT, NAFTA, export of jobs, refusal of other adjacent nations to build economies with laws that keep their folks home as cherished assets rather than send them abroad as rejected refuse (in spite of the fact that the rejectees are the ones with the gumption to leave these hellholes for a better life).

There are massive implications to this immigration business that far transcend: "What part of illegal, don't they understand????" This about who we are and what we are. Act in haste and we will be condemned to contemplate our folly and to repent at leisure and irretrievably.

Black Elk, you made some excellent points. Thank you. There's a lot there to think about.

I take a different attitude towards Mexican immigration than I would toward Muslim immigration.

Mexicans are culturally Western (if not Northern): Spain being Western Europe, and Spanish and Portuguese being closely derived from Latin, the classical language of the West; and Central America being Western Hemisphere, and Christian for the past 400+ years.

Unlike Muslims, Mexicans are not culturally committed to polygamy; genital mutilation; the whipping of women who show their bare elbows and knees; the physical destruction of most of the art, music, and literature of the West; the sawing-off of the heads of apostates; and other ugly domestic and judicial behaviors based on the Hadiths and the Qu'ran.

Despite sillies-on-stilts who talk about "Aztlan" (mostly at a University near you), the vast majority of Mexican-Americans don't want anything even remotely resembling a worldwide racial or religious caliphate.

Suppose (and this is not theology, not prophecy, and certainly not politics, just a "supposal") suppose, --- since demography abhors a vacuum--- God is allowing us to experience the logical consequences of aborting 50,000,000 American babies, by replacing them one-for-one with Mexicans.

If that's the case, then I'd still urgently want to regulate the border we can minimize the vulnerability, criminality, exploitation, and misery associated with illegal immigration, and at the same time I'd like the INS to issue many, many more visas so that Mexicans and Central Americans can come here legally and make swift progress towards becoming U.S. citizens.

(Covering head to avoid FReeperflames --- not from you, Black Elk! ---but I'm saying what I think all the same.)

I'd also say thank God that what we face, taking the bad with the good, is more taxes, more crowded ER's, higher fertility, more day-laborers, more kindergarten kids, more salsa, more ai Chihuahua!, higher GNP, more fiestas, more Nuestra Senora and more Jesucristo--- and not jihad, dhimmitude, and Shari'a law.