The following is from a statement by the California Catholic Conference:
Today marks the beginning of the Lenten Season, a time when Christian people devote ourselves more intentionally to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy in an earnest effort to reform our lives in the image of Jesus Christ. We use this occasion to call upon Catholics and all people of good will in California and throughout the United States to stand in solidarity with the vulnerable and excluded in our society. Urgent attention needs to be given to our neighbors who are migrants and refugees, especially those immigrants who are undocumented. They are being unjustly targeted and vilified.
As pastors, we witness firsthand every day the fear in our communities. We call upon the new Administration and Congress in Washington to do everything in their power to ease the climate of fear that is now gripping our communities. It is long past time for our leaders to stop allowing this issue to be used for political advantage and set themselves to the task of fixing our broken immigration system. The principles and priorities for immigration reform are well-known and they are reasonable. We urgently need reforms in our visa and guest worker programs. We need reforms that keep families together and recognize that those who are detained already have the legal right of due process. We need to provide those who are here and contribute to our economy and society but without documentation an immediate path to regularize their status with an eye to one day becoming citizens.
Some concrete measures are already under consideration. In Congress, the Federal BRIDGE Act, S.128/H.R, 496, for instance, will protect DACA students (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). In Sacramento, the California Values Act, SB 54, would protect the safety and well-being of all Californians by ensuring that state and local resources are not used to assist in deportations that would separate families.
The Catholic bishops of California and the United States support the federal government’s obligation to protect our borders and to uphold our immigration laws. We also hold that these legal principles should always be at the service of human dignity and the common good of society. The current immigration system is gravely flawed. And because it is gravely flawed, the current push to increase enforcement and deportations — without first reforming the underlying system — can only lead to further violations of human rights and human dignity.
Full story at California Catholic Conference.
Illegal aliens are not being unjustly targeted or vilified. Their presence in this country is illegal, and it is just to enforce America’s current immigration laws. The immigration laws aren’t broken; enforcement has been deliberately lax (by Democrats for political gain), which has resulted in the current situation. Bishops should blame Democrats for the current problems, not the Trump administration which is finally acting responsibly by enforcing the law.
The California bishops have no moral authority on this matter. NONE. More and more Catholics tune them out the more they speak nonsense such as this.
Moral authority? What Would Jesus Do?
Panther Mom, why don’t you spell it out instead of being coy?
But since you asked, I believe Jesus would tell people they should obey America’s immigration laws for the sake of the common good of the nation and that it is sinful to break those laws and take advantage of lax enforcement.
Now, if an illegal alien is dying of thirst or hunger then you have a moral obligation to give him water and food necessary to sustain life in that moment. After that, you tell him to go back to his country of origin and you have no further obligation to help him if he continues to put himself in danger willfully.
Catholic doctrine and tradition, Sawyer, would tell us that what Our Lord would say and do is exactly what the Magisterium here has said. Our Lord Himself has said to his disciples (into whose offices the bishops and the Holy Father have assumed) : “Whoever listens to you listens to me, whoever rejects you, rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the One Who sent me.” There is NOTHING in the statement above that contradicts the Catholic faith. NONE!
I don’t know. He hasn’t spoken to me about it. But I’ll bet you are sure He has spoken to you and given you all the answers. In my experience, when someone asks “What would Jesus do?” it’s not really a question. They are demanding that you do exactly what THEY tell you. Jesus never enters the picture.
The CA Catholic Conference is calling for violation of federal government laws. This disobedience undermines the credibility of the Catholic Church.
Thus proving that in general, Marxists don’t make especially good or faithful Church prelates. Perhaps they would be happier in Venezuela.
Were the bishops wearing or under the influence of Glitter Ashes when they issued their statement?
The Bishop of San Bernardino is conducting his annual Diocesan Development Fund drive. Enough is enough of this left wing nonsense. My wallet just voted a loud NO, and it will remain closed this year and until such time as these folks return to their senses.
What part of “Illegal” do our Bishops and Archbishops not understand? As the grandson of four legal immigrants, I am all for legal immigration but it is madness and self-destructive for our country to continue down the road of uncontrolled borders.
The outstanding vetting process by the US State Department (Oh: fake news, DHS’ own assistant head in October 2016 admitted he had no real way of verifying identity of Middle East migrants), was on display recently when a mother on British TV, a good bleeding-heart liberal, described how she took in a “child migrant age 12”:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/03/uk-woman-opened-home-to-muslim-12-year-old-refugee-he-was-really-adult-jihadi-said-ill-kill-you-all
Except, after initial misgivings, a dental exam showed he was 18, perhaps as old as 21 years old.
It gets better: after a short time, the poor Muslim began threatening to kill her and her two children. And, even better yet, he previously had stealthed into Belgium…
..as a “child migrant”, began using her computer to visit graphically violent jihad/ISIS web sites, and — well read the other lovely things she witnessed (warning: possibly graphic for some), before she luckily had police remove him from her home.
Her story is an allegory of what is happening to us.
Give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar and to God what belongs to God. Happily, ICE is deporting rapists and gang members first. The sun shines again across the fruited plain as the sadness of the Obama years is lifted. The bishops are in bed with the same Democrat Party that just passed Euthanasia here in California. Bishops should stick to fixing our pathetic Mickey Mouse Masses in California.
Lost to the new socialist-agnostic episcopal message of Lent is the traditional Latin Mass remembrance of the early Roman martyrs closely linked with stational church celebrations for the days of Lent.
Ash Wednesday is traditionally celebrated at St Sabina’s, virgin and martyr, setting the tone for Lent as sacrifice and martyrdom with Christ. Thursday was S. Giorgio in Velabro, “great George”, the soldier martyred in Asia Minor by Diocletian; Today Friday, SS John and Paul at the Coelian Hill church, two brother-martyrs mentioned in the Traditional Roman Canon, remembered for giving away all their possessions before being martyred under Julian the Apostate.
Each day, each stational church, the Latin Mass celebrating the…
..the true message of Lent: sacrifice, penance, joining with Christ and his martyrs in journeying to Calvary and participating in the mystery of His redemption in the only rite that is the propititatory sacrifice in universal expiatory atonement for the sins of the living and the dead.
The “only rite that is the propitiatory sacrifice in universal expiatory atonement for the sins of the living and the dead”? The “only” one? Are you saying that the Byzantine, the Chaldean, the Armenian, the Antioch, the Alexandrian are not propitiatory? Are you saying they’re not valid? Plus, the Latin rite has two legal forms. And they’re both expiatory, even if one is commonly not offered in Latin.
The ancient traditional Latin Mass stational church for the 1st Sunday of Lent (“The 3 Temptations of Christ”, Mt. 4:1-11) is St John Lateran, originally dedicated to officially “St. Saviour”; appropriate for the expiation of sin Christ exemplifies in his temptations.
For Monday of 1st Week of Lent, it is S Pietro in Vincole, St Peter in Chains, again one of the 5th century original Roman churches, commemorating the Gospel (Mt: 25:31), Peter the head shepherd of the sheep.
For Tuesday, today, it is S.Anastasia, the martyred daughter of a Roman nobleman, beheaded on Dec. 25th—commemorating following Christ in Lent is not about glamorous social-justice, immigration, climate-control, but about joining with Christ in His…
..supreme act of expiation for the sins of the living and the dead, as specifically stated in the Traditional Latin Mass (“Suscipe, Sancte Pater”; “Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas”, “Memento, Domine” prayers, unique to the TLM).