The bishops of communities along the southwest border, including Cardinal Robert McElroy of the Diocese of San Diego, have issued a statement in response to the developing situation of the large number of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Their full statement follows:
“Daily, we witness the human consequences of migration, both its blessings and its challenges. As pastors of border communities, we minister to migrants and native-born persons alike. Our congregations include asylum-seekers, enforcement officers, landowners, and elected officials, who come together, not as strangers or adversaries but as sisters and brothers, equal in dignity and worth before the Lord.
“Since our nation’s founding, Catholics across this country have been at the forefront of efforts to welcome newcomers of all faiths and nationalities. As Christians, we are called to see the face of Christ in those who suffer, those who lack the basic necessities of life, and we judge ourselves as a community of faith by the way we treat the most vulnerable among us. We are each bound by a universal call to serve one another and to protect the sanctity of human life in all its forms.
“Therefore, we remain committed to supporting the efforts ongoing within our dioceses and beyond to promote the God-given dignity of every person, including those who have recently arrived in our communities. Further, as a Church committed to the common good, we always cooperate in the administration of humanitarian aid with local, state, and federal officials, frequently in partnership with faith communities and like-minded secular organizations.
“Finally, we join together in prayer, entrusting these works of mercy to Our Lady of Guadalupe as a source of unity throughout the Americas. May each of us be blessed with a humanitarian heart that beats with fraternal compassion for those in need.”
The bishops endorsing this statement as the pastors of U.S. communities along the southwest border include:
Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of San Diego
Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio
Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces
Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville*
Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso*
Bishop Michael J. Sis of San Angelo
Bishop James A. Tamayo of Laredo
Bishop Edward J. Weisenburger of Tucson
Original story in Southern Cross.
They should not be crossing the border without permission. There are not hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers. Look at them: these people are healthy, well-dressed, and not fearing for their lives. They are trying to gain admission to the most prosperous and free country on earth, and Democrats are letting them in because they want their votes.
If your country was falling apart and there were food shortages and no money, would you wait until you were emaciated before you went looking for a better situation?
They should fix their own countries.
There is a certain amount of noblesse oblige in the bishops’ statement. We who live in the border communities, not in the inner sanctums of rectories, manses or parsonages, are dealing with the blunt-force reality of unfettered migration. Not all “migrants” are worthy of our Christian charity, because there are many wolves among them. In fact, the bishops must stop being pollyannas and start adding qualifiers to their statements on immigration, i.e., in charity we must help the poor and downtrodden, but we must also protect the innocent from the scourges of drug traffickers, violent gangs and murderers who steal across our southern border with evil intent.
Well said Axiom. Your posts are consistently well-written and thought out. Thank you.
There is a lot at play here. Our country is being overwhelmed with migrants. We are being invaded, and our livelihood is being taken away from us. The communities that we long to build and make stable where we can raise our families are being destroyed. We’re being asked to go beyond our means to help others.
As a person who is a citizen of the United States, on the one hand, and Catholic on the other my sense is that the bishops are out of touch with the desperation of seeing my country being overrun. No one is asking the common person in the pew. Can you handle this? Do you think that this is the right position to hold? Is this the really loving thing to do?
I would like the bishops to go out and walk the neighborhoods of the inner city, the suburbs, the Barrios, look around at all the homeless people who’ve invaded our neighborhoods. In particular here in California.
To rent a modest house is around $2500-$3000. More if you move closer to the city. Not long ago a dozen eggs was round a dollar 50 and now we’re looking at 4 to 5 dollars a dozen. A tube of toothpaste was a buck not long ago and that was for 8 ounces. Now for 6 ounces of toothpaste you’re paying about, four dollars.
Here in California our Catholic governor and Catholic president and all those Democratic Catholic congressmen are making us pay for abortion at any age. I don’t hear the bishops, and they should be screaming this at the top of their lungs, that abortion is wrong! And you can’t kill innocent little children without there being a Price.
I don’t hear that solid teaching, I know they just put out a document on the Eucharist, on Jesus. Our nation is collapsing, imploding, what we need is courage. We need to fight for our sovereignty. We need dignity and respect for ourselves. It is as if these weak men who are cowards are saying, don’t protect your home, don’t protect your country, just let them steal from you, let them rape your daughters. I’m tired of watching my neighborhood being overrun without anyone being held accountable.
If I were a bishop, the first thing I would do would be to excommunicate all of those politicians who are advocating that we kill innocent children. Next, I would encourage my flock to pray. I would go out from parish to parish as a Bishop and call them to repentance. I would ask them to close their businesses on Sundays, I would work hard to teach young men and women to be chaste, to get rid of pornography on the Internet, I would begin a ministry to the elderly and gather young people to go and visit these old people. I would ask the old people to shut off their TVs and and share with these young people, and fill the emptiness in their hearts with love. I would work hard to criminalize those drugs that have destroyed the people on the street. Then I would encourage the politicians to stop this mass migration, that is destroying this country. I would build this country up with moral fortitude to go out and love their neighbor. To go to Mexico and help them build their country so they don’t need to run here to the United States. Preach the gospel so they’re free to challenge the government that is so oppressive there. I promise to be more courageous. To be more willing to stand for the unborn. To be more willing to fast and give arms to the poor. To understand my faith, and how great a gift it is to me and to my children in my community.
Title should read: Borderline Bishops . . .
You are not being invaded. This is a result of poor governance for a century.
Inflation is not the fault of the migrants.
Migrant workers kept the prices down for a long time. The previous administration scared a lot of them into leaving and when Covid came people wouldn’t work for as little as migrant workers would.
Bishops do not need to consult with people in the pews. We are all the body of Christ and Christ was very clear about welcoming the stranger. Before Vatican II, it was called harboring the harborless.
Catholics are in the world but not of the world.
You seem to have a lot of issues and you sound scared and angry.
Would you be willing to give the migrants rosaries and Bibles?
If you would google the conditions in Nicaragua and some of the other countries, you may realize why they want to come here. Some people want the American dream and they should come in legally. Some people are fleeing from drug gangs, starvation, persecution. Educate yourself.
Thank you for your care for the unborn.
Have you prayed over what role God wants you to play or the service he wants you to perform?
Thanks to God for all he has done for America and ask him to give grace and strength and compassion to the Border Patrol and other agencies that are dealing with this crisis.
God bless you and your family.
If word got around that you left your doors unlocked, the fridge stocked, and let people come and go and sleep in your home, you’d soon be overrun with homeless people invading your home same as people are invading America.
I wonder how welcoming to such strangers you would be when you saw your home trashed and you being taken advantage of.
I have visited Bolivia, Guatemala, and Peru and traveled the world, My wife was born in Michoacan Mexico, I more than understand the tensions of immigration. The problem is that no one is listening or has compassion on those who’s world is being destroyed. I speak Spanish, I work to help immigrants. It is scary when you are living in a neighborhood and the house next door gets sold, and you have six or seven suv’s parked in front, You have people who are honking their horn at 4 in the morning to wake up his friend who is going out to work in the strawberry fields with him. there’s dirty pampers thrown on your front lawn, then on the weekend there’s banda being broadcast all over the neighborhood until one in the morning. Or you go to church and eveyone is double parked in the parking lot, there’s alote’s, and fruta being sold, the garbage cans in front of the church are overflowing. No one is addressing these things. I am scared, I am angry. It’s unjust. What? Do you live in a gated community?
No, not everything I mentioned is directly associated with immigration, but it has to do with life style, and justice, and living in a free society. Maybe you will understand when you get in an accident with an uninsured, undocumented, immigrant motorist and you have to foot the bill. Enough said.
Don’t you have uninsured motorist coverage?
And no, I do not live in a gated community.
I am very blessed to have good neighbors now.
It has varied through the decades.
If we lived in an honorable country with honorable citizens and immigrants, uninsured motorist coverage wouldn’t be necessary. That’s the point. The people coming in illegally are not respecting the social contract and not respecting laws.
For bishops to enable this in the name of mercy or Christian charity is despicable.
While I was pastoring in San Diego, I taught, sanctified, and guided every parishioner and those in the parish boundaries with word, sacrament and charity. I believe these particular bishops were carefully selected for border dioceses because they would approve and assist with migration even when the crossings were against the law. At the parish level, Catholics welcome people to worship, to know Jesus, and assist with charity as we can. Any sufferings of migrants in their deaths, exposure, poverty, trafficking, and so forth consequent to the bishops’ assisting migration falls on the bishops alone, not on the faithful Catholics in parishes. If a migrant assisting bishop cannot care for each migrant after entry, and proposes someone else spend their money instead of his own, then it is the bishop’s own responsibility for every bit of suffering and financial care once the migrants enter the U.S.
The saints would not say that.
Vatican City has a wall around it, it doesn’t allow illegal immigration, and it doesn’t offer mass asylum, and it doesn’t offer welfare benefits to border crossers. That’s church practice.
You haven’t been following actual news coming from either the Vatican or the Southern border with Mexico. I believe we turned away something like 3 million at the latter in the last 3 years, and the Vatican has an entire office dedicated to assisting the indigent. Besides which, the Vatican wall doesn’t extend all the way around Vatican City, and entry is free and there is no need for a passport. https://www.thevaticantickets.com/vatican-museums-entrances/#
#FactsMatter
What if we directed our weekly church donation to the migrant support?Would the border Bishops be happy if they felt the finincial support directly?
What if we contributed to both? There is only one thing stopping you…
Hate?
Remember: diversity is a “strength”
If diversity were a strength the former Yugoslavia would have been a world power.
Said by some other guy
I deliberately moved. Life is good here. Crime is low, there is hardly any litter, people are nice to each other. Other parts of America have become similar to conditions in third-world countries. The best days of America are behind her, and the American dream is dead in many places, but you can still find pockets of true Americana in this country.
People who support open borders should look up “Flesh-eathing ‘zombie’ drug saturating Los Angeles, official say”. The drug dealers are mixing a flesh-eating drug called xylazine in with street drugs. The results are a horrifying, fast moving leprosy like result. That is satanic and has nothing to do with “Christian compassion” or helping immigrants.
Who supports open borders? I don’t and I didn’t hear anyone on this thread support them. The bishops haven’t said they support open borders. Who are you talking about, or are you just making up things? What I support (and what I take it the bishops support) is care for everyone regardless of their situation, wherever they are (both physically and spiritually).
Santeria, Voodoo, Rasta. Aah, the future of America.