When Jesus was born He was hunted by the government, forcing His family to flee the country and seek refuge, Bishop Robert W. McElroy told an estimated 1,000 people who gathered outside the gate of a federal detention facility.
“I grieve because I think of the fact that if Mary, Joseph and Jesus had come to our border last week as refugees, the child Jesus would have been ripped from their arms and put in a cage,” he told them.
On June 23, Bishop McElroy and Auxiliary Bishop John P. Dolan joined dozens of faith leaders from across California who rallied outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center, where immigrants are held, to support families that had been separated after entering the country illegally.
The demonstration came three days after President Donald Trump issued an executive order halting the practice of separating the families after searing photos and audio recordings of desperate, crying children sparked widespread public outrage.
The order, however, continues the president’s “zero tolerance” policy, which calls for the criminal prosecution of anyone entering unlawfully into the U.S. The Pentagon announced that it was preparing to build temporary camps for detained immigrants at two military bases to house as many as 20,000.
Immigration authorities struggled, meanwhile, to explain how they were going to reunite 2,300 children in their custody with their parents.
The issue of immigration is a deeply divisive one, differences sharpened in recent years by the pronouncements of then-candidate Trump and his actions as president.
“We must understand the dignity of every single human person,” said Bishop McElroy. “That all of us together are brothers and sisters, and that is the foundational assertion of who we are as a people and what we believe.”
Working through Catholic Charities, the Diocese of San Diego is helping Dreamers renew their DACA permits, helping families to prepare for possible detention or deportation (particularly important for undocumented parents with U.S.-born children); and providing legal support for migrants in detention or in deportation proceedings.
At the same time, in response to the surge of families being detained, the diocese is working on a plan to provide temporary housing for mothers and their children who are released by immigration authorities and are able to legally stay in the country pending the outcome of their case.
The San Diego Organizing Project, a coalition of faith organizations, along with PICO California, organized the demonstration at the detention center and a candlelight vigil the night before at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish in San Ysidro. Catholic priests, pastors, rabbis and Buddhist nuns, among other clergy, participated in both events, some traveling from northern California to the border.
As they marched toward the detention center, the demonstrators chanted “No justice, no peace!,” “Let our children go!” and “No cages, no walls!”
Full story at The Southern Cross.
“I grieve because I think of the fact that if Mary, Joseph and Jesus had come to our border last week as refugees, the child Jesus would have been ripped from their arms and put in a cage,” he told them.
Did I miss something? I thought the cage allegation was dispelled.
Not cages, technically, but they were chain-link areas. It’s still inhumane and a human rights violation.
When Jesus, Mary, and Joseph fled their homeland and went to Egypt it was part of the Roman Empire so they didn’t need to sneak across the border. Joseph was a carpenter and was able to support his family.
Yes, and how do we trust the opinion of a bishop like Cardinal Dolan who thought the exposition at the Met was all right, when what I saw was borderline (excuse the pun) hard core porn? I have tried to defend the man before, but I will no longer.
Does the good Bishop have a solution to the problem? We cannot just allow people to enter the country willy nilly. There are points of entry where they can do so legally.
The solution is to do the same as Bush and Obama did: Treat these families’ cases as a civil/administrative procedure, not as criminals. They were able to keep about 90% of families together, and only had to criminally prosecute 10% who were repeat offenders, other kinds of criminals, etc. Trump reversed this with his zero tolerance policy: 90% are being criminally prosecuted and that is what is causing them to rip children from their parents. These government thugs have taken babies as young as 18 months old from their parents and taken them thousands of miles from the border. How is that humane or a solution to anything?
10K of the 12K children at the border are unaccompanied. What do you do with them?
They are unaccompanied after Trump’s thugs take them from their parents. Eighteen month olds don’t just show up at the border unaccompanied. Most of the other kids also didn’t show up at the border unaccompanied, but were reclassified as unaccompanied when the parents were sent up for prosecution and the children taken away from the parent. That is different from the situation of about 2 years ago in which older teenagers actually were showing up unaccompanied except for the coyote who was paid to take them to the border. Truly unaccompanied children ARE a problem. Artificially unaccompanied children are a Trump/Sessions creation.
Betsy, you need to know that people who come through the legal ports of entry seeking asylum have their children taken away from them and they are treated the same as those who come illegally. People seeking asylum are not the same as “illegals” and have constitutional rights to equal protection under the law. About 60+ percent of them are not given asylum and are sent back to their native country.
If you contribute to support this man and what he spends your money on, the causes he promotes with your donations, you have nobody to blame but yourself. If you agree with him and what he says, by all means continue. But if you disagree, why support him? if bishops want to act like politicians, start treating them like politicians. They can’t have it both ways.
“As they marched toward the detention center, the demonstrators chanted “No justice, no peace!,” “Let our children go!” and “No cages, no walls!””
McElroy is supporting open borders. He should be ashamed of himself.
No, he’s not supporting open borders. He’s saying we should have humane border protections.
Barbara, there is no evidence that Bishop; McElroy is supporting open borders. I don’t know anyone who does. But favoring closed borders, which I do, does not justify the way we are treating the families. The children are being flown all over the country to detention centers with nearly no way to reunite them with their families. The protests are about how the children and families are treated, not about the borders. What we are doing, with disdain, is not the American way or the Christian way. It has to stop!
Hey Bob One, you and the rest of Left were silent when this was happening under the community organizer and Chief…. its political theater
Bohemond, nobody accuses me of being on the left, except you perhaps. This is not theater. People who have a legal right to apply for asylum are having their kid taken from them and then sent across the country to who knows where. This is not the American way or the Christian way. It’s inhumane.
Bob One, when all your womenfolk attend the so-called Women’s March, and you think it’s great – guess what – YOU ARE ON THE LEFT! Admitting it is the first step toward recovery.
Kristin, why the insults? Is it impossible for you to disagree with someone amicably without using names and insinuating bad things about some one. People who disagree with you don’t need to take a “first step toward recovery”.
Hey Anonymous at 6:02pm, just putting into context certain information that Bob One has provided. This bishop is advocating very lefty policies and those who agree with him need to own that designation. To interpret this as insulting is all on you. “First step toward recovery” – come on, have a little thicker skin and smile :)
Where was the outrage in 2014 when Obama “caged” children?? Such hypocrisy!!
https://kielarowski.net/2014/06/14/obama-administration-says-child-immigrants-are-priorities-for-removal-from-us/
Good comment Peggy———– Robert Ferrez
To Jesus With Mary
However, Obama did not create this zero tolerance policy. POTUS Donald Trump and AG Jeff Sessions did. Watch the youtube video where he announces the change in policy, knowing that doing so would separate children from parents for the first time, and Sessions even predicted the chaos that ensued. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8oMzHMuogs
What inflammatory nonsense, but no surprise considering the source. If Sacred Scripture proves anything, it shows that Mary and Joseph were always obedient to the law, so, if they had come to the US border, they would not have last week, they would have presented themselves at a consulate or a port-of-entry and asked for LEGAL admission.
Asylum seekers, except for Soviet Jews and Evangelicals under the Lautenberg Amendment, cant present themselves at an embassy or consulate. They have to trek to a port of entry.
Sorry Bishop McElroy, but Joseph and Mary were obeying the lawful order given by the Roman Emperor concerning the census. They were not violating the sovereign law of another country by seeking to enter illegally. There is a big difference and your analogy does not work here. There are legal ways to immigrate to the United States and our laws must be respected and obeyed.
Asylum seeking is not illegal. In fact, it is protected under US and international law.
He’s talking about the Flight to Egypt not the Journey to Bethlehem.
But I agree that they did not break any laws.
Bishop McElroy has no shame. He should stick to Church teaching and leave politics to the elected officials. If we did elect Bishop McElroy, we would have him impeached.
I fear that too many priests and bishops view priesthood as a way to advance their liberal politics and they become priests because they don’t have the inconvenience of having to get votes and run for reelection. They automatically get audiences, attention, press coverage and authority. All they have to do is put up with seminary for 4 years.
AND a life of celibacy and indentured servitude. Is that all?
Did Bishop McElroy actually imply that Joseph and Mary would have broken the law. This implies that Mary might not have been preserved from sin after her immaculate conception. (Another interesting development from San Diego.)
The Bishop is doing a great disservice to the faith community by politicizing the Gospel. If he wants to push an ideology, he needs to leave the Church and become a political leader.
Notice how the rule of law is never mentioned. Very sad.
I really sincerely believe that large portions of the church and hierarchy have lost the sense of the church being supernatural and concerned with salvation. Almost everything we hear is about political this and that, earthly this and that, climate this and that, immigrant this and that. Count me fed up.
Still trying to get Papa Francisco’s attention, I see, so he can be rewarded with a red hat and the see of Washington, D.C. He sure does like to campaign for cardinal.
All the more reason to build an impervious border wall so that there will be no illegal entry. McElroy should support building the wall because it will keep families together — in Mexico.
Stan, know your facts: most of the people coming across the border, legally or illegally, are not from Mexico. They come from Central American countries to avoid the drug lords and the street gangs. In some of those countries the government does not control most of the land, the police are supported by the drug lords and life is not safe for anyone. That is why they want to come here for asylum, why they are willing to walk for months across the gang-infested wasteland to get a better life for their families. These are not evil people. The law says that they can stay together until their asylum hearings. Once you put your foot across the border, legally, you are protected by the US constitution, just like your ancestors were.
“The Catholic bishops of America, taken as a whole, are approaching a new low — even for them. This whole “holier than thou” approach to the immigration issue is sickening. They go on and on about children and their safety — about defending children.
Has everyone forgotten that many of these same men were complicit in the gay priest sexual abuse crisis just a few years ago? They didn’t seem to care so much when altar boys were being raped by their gay priests, so if there is any crowd in the country that should learn silence when it is appropriate, it would be this gang.”
Cdl. George, confessed privately that over a third of his priests in Chicago are homosexual. Cdl. Cupich this week, actually canceled all the weekday Masses at…
The latest Catholic teaching: putting anyone who is a parent in jail is intrinsically evil because it separates that person from his child(ren). Jail violates human dignity. The only punishment for any crime should be writing a letter of sorrow to the victims and doing community service. Henceforth all prisoners should be set free, and all jails should be abolished and repurposed into community service centers where illegal immigrants can receive benefits.
Tell the bishop that Trump is president, we love him and his policies, he’s not going away anytime soon, and the bishops are making fools of themselves.
Oh my hope that there is going to be a divine intervention that will bring good change in the atmosphere.
When will God save us from these bishops? Come to our aid, O Lord. How long? How long?
For all those protesting, put those words into action. HELP them become legal. Open your homes, and wallets…actions speak louder than words!
“Big Mac” is at it again.
Praise God for Bishop McElroy! The Bishop’s courageous advocacy for the dignity of all human beings – the unborn and the alien- is truly a sign that he is promoting the Kingdom of God and not the kingdom of man.
You can tell which kingdom he promotes by the amount of time he spends talking about earthly things.
Interesting the disposable time these episcopal squires have. Like the idle adults at Baltimore and Ferguson-style riots, they’re quite at their leisure.
Because they don’t have to work. Life’s easy when you don’t have to hold down a job.
Put the name Bishop McElroy in a headline and its good for 30-40 comments. Many comments, if not most, suggest that he and his fellow Bishops should stay out of politics and worry more about the salvation of souls. That’s a fair request if we can get everyone to agree on the difference between politics and following the teaching of the church. It’s important for us to be able to separate one issue from another. For example, calling for open borders would be getting close to political, whereas calling for humane treatment of those crossing the border is about supporting the teachings of the church. Taking care of the poor, including immigrants is the call of Christ, not politics. Feeding the hungry is the call of Christ, not politics.
Building a wall would be an act of charity and justice.
Give them a bottle of water and tell them to go back home.
Bob One, did you know that in latest Bishop pow-wow that there were proposals to use canon law against Catholic ICE agents. INCREDIBLE but not one of these buffoons would dare deny communion against the legion of abortion supporting so called Catholic politicians . Using the poor immigrant under guise of Catholic charity to make sure the Church coffers are filled is demonic. I pray I have a ringside seat when these frauds in miters are at the Judgment seat of Christ.. You want to know why these Bishops do not care about the salvation of souls, it is because they have lost the Faith..