A Good Reasoned View on The Bishops and Immigration

I talked about this briefly at my post Mark Krikorian Slams Bishops On Immigration Again .

One of the Mega Catholic Bloggers Amy Welborn ,of Charlotte was Both, and writers has a calm reasonable post on this subject at Those wacky bishops.

I agree with both these statement she make in her good post:

I simply think that sometimes the relationship between general principles of Catholic social thought - which are definitely supportive of the rights of the migrant and of the aspirations of migrating individuals and keeping families intact in that world - and specific policy prescriptions collapse in the way that bishops and their policy arms discuss this. I think they ignore certain realities that greatly concern those on the “other side” of the issue and it is not right to dismiss those concerns as indicative of simple racism or xenophobia or “fear of the stranger.”.

and

It’s an amazingly complex issue, and no, I don’t agree with every policy prescription or analysis of the issue that comes from a bishop’s pen. But I also think that the perspective of pastors who have responsibility for these immigrants as they come to their parishes and are ministred to in other ways by the Church should be taken seriously. They often see things that the rest of us cannot - or refuse - to see.


Yes both are true!!!

Were there some racist and fear mongers among the anti immigration reform people. Sure there were. I talked to the nicest lady that ran the immigration office in my Diocese. The pure hateful and vile phonecalls(From Christians) was horrible. That is one reason why I urged conservatives no matter what there stand on the issue to help police our own!!! We do that in other areas but we did not do it as to this issue very well.

Whenever I brought this up I was accused of playing the "race card" No, but like in the Pro-life movement in which we must distance our selves from extremist and as in the "Latin Mass" movement we must police our own and distance ourselves from the extreme(that often have sites that seem anti semetic) we must do the same here.

It is a complex issue and I have to admit at times I got wrapped up in the emotion of the issue. It was not fun being called a "traitor", "a Quisling", a RINO, or being told I just supported immigration reform because All I wanted to get Catholics "butts" into the pew.

Just like I am sure it was not easy for people that very much opposed immigration reform to be called racist and haters of hispanics. I think our rethoric got out of control and hurt a lot of people. All of which did nothing to help solve theu underlying problem.

I sort of took a break from politics for a few months after the immigration and illegal immigration debate. I felt pretty wounded. Anyway I hope next time this comes up we can all handle ourselves better