Posted on 02/07/2017 7:45:11 AM PST by GonzoII
What would Thomas Aquinas, in his wisdom, say about President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travel from seven Muslim countries, in terms of its justness and conformity to right reason?…
I am grateful to The Imaginative Conservative for publishing Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s reasoned defence of President Trump’s executive order placing a ninety day moratorium on immigration from countries deemed to pose a terrorist threat to the United States. I am grateful also for a recent essay by John Horvat II in which Mr. Horvat discusses what Thomas Aquinas says on the thorny topic of immigration.[1] Both of these essays have served as catalysts for my own thoughts on the topic of immigration in general and President Trump’s executive order in particular.
Little needs to be added to Fr. Longenecker’s upbraiding of the media for their rabidly irrational response to the President’s executive order and for the callous calumny to which journalists have succumbed in discussing it. One can only hope that reasonable people will respond to the media’s irrational rants by switching the channels on their TV, by switching the newspapers that they read, or, best of all, by turning to websites such as The Imaginative Conservative for a balanced perspective.
Leaving Fr. Longenecker’s essay to speak for itself, let’s turn to the quotations from Thomas Aquinas that Mr. Horvat discusses in his essay.
“Man’s relations with foreigners are twofold: peaceful, and hostile,” St. Thomas states, “and in directing both kinds of relation the Law contained suitable precepts.”[2] With insightful and incisive realism, Thomas Aquinas does not begin with the “nice” idea that we should all be “nice” to each other. He knows that we are called to love our neighbor and to love our enemy. This is a given. The point is that some foreigners are peaceful towards us and some....
(Excerpt) Read more at theimaginativeconservative.org ...
A number of his advisors are Catholic. Perhaps they have pointed him toward Aquinas.
Pence has likely read some Aquinas
So has Gorsuch
Compassionate admittance of foreigners is not a suicide pack....
Prequisite lesson from Republic: Most peoples opinions have been programmed by all inclusive advertising- marketing psychology amounting to brainwashing, in the service of ruthless, ultra - elite plutocratic forces - Soros - which seek to tear down local and national patriotism and cultural distinctiveness to make the world’s peoples more pliable and easily governable. Ref The Napoleon of Notting Hill by Chesterton
NB: Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Trump-basher and pseudo-intellectual (Bob Jones Univ. and a ministry school affiliated with Oxford), regularly used his Twitter feed to make snide comments about Trump (orange-skinned, etc.). Nasty personal attacks you'd expect from Glenn Beck or Hillary devotee. Disgusting. I'm done with him and any other Catholic who attacked Trump during the campaign. Mark Shea, George Weigel, Ross Douthat, Francis Beckwith, et al.
FROM THE PASTORFebruary 5, 2017
by Fr. George W. Rutler
In the margin of a public speaker’s manuscript was the notation: “Weak point. Shout.” Such is the rhetoric of those who place emotion over logic and make policy through gangs rather than parliaments. In Athens 2,400 years ago, Aristophanes described the demagogue as having “a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, cross-grained nature and the language of the marketplace.” That marketplace today includes the biased media and the universities that have become daycare centers.
The recent action of our government’s executive branch to protect our borders and enforce national security is based on Constitutional obligations (Art. 1 sec 10 and Art. 4 sec 4). It is a practical protection of the tranquility of order explained by Saint Augustine when he saw the tranquillitas ordinis of Roman civilization threatened. Saint Thomas Aquinas sanctioned border control (S. Th. I-II, Q. 105, Art. 3). No mobs shouted in the marketplace two years ago when the Terrorist Travel Prevention Act restricted visa waivers for Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. The present ban continues that, and only for a stipulated ninety days, save for Syria. There is no “Muslim ban” as should be obvious from the fact that the restrictions do not apply to other countries with Muslim majorities, such as Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Turkey.
These are facts ignored by demagogues who speak of tears running down the face of the Statue of Liberty. At issue is not immigration, but illegal immigration. It is certainly manipulative of reason to justify uncontrolled immigration by citing previous generations of immigrants to our shores, all of whom went through the legal process, mostly in the halls of Ellis Island. And it is close to blasphemy to invoke the Holy Family as antinomian refugees, for they went to Bethlehem in obedience to a civil decree requiring tax registration, and they violated no statutes when they sought protection in Egypt. Then there was Saint Paul, who worked within the legal system, and invoked his Roman citizenship through privileges granted to his native Tarsus in 66 B.C. (Acts 16:35-38; 22:25-29; 25:11-12) He followed ordered procedure, probably with the status of civis Romanus non optimo jure—a legal citizen, but not allowed to act as a magistrate.
It is obvious that the indignant demonstrators against the new Executive Orders are funded in no little part by wealthy interests who would provoke agitation. These same people have not shown any concern about the neglected Christians seeking refuge from persecution in the Middle East. In 2016 there was a 675% increase in the number of Syrian refugees over the previous year, but while 10% of the Syrian population is Christian, only one-half of one percent of the Syrian Christians were granted asylum. It is thankworthy that our changed government now wants to redress that. The logic of that policy must not be shouted down by those who screech rather than reason.
Oh to hear Fr. Rutler’s homilies weekly.
I second the praise for Fr. Rutler. I have had the opportunity to hear his Good Friday reflections and several of his sermons and lectures.
Hundreds of hours of his sermons and talks are available free— on MP3-from his parish website. I’d recommended the MP3 books app ($3?) at Apple. It works like the Audible app and is much better than iTunes (which doesn’t save place you leave off, can’t rewind last 15-30 seconds, etc).
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