Bishops’ Statement on Immigration Falls Short
The U.S. bishops gave themselves a standing ovation after passing a special pastoral message on immigration at their fall meeting in Baltimore this week, but not everyone thought the proceedings were worthy of such high praise.
Yes, the immigration statement showcased a rare example of conference unity, passing 216-5, with three abstentions. And the use of the “special message” format indicated the seriousness with which the bishops take the issue. The last time they released a similar message was in 2013, over the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act
.The brief statement accurately describes Church teaching and lays out the crisis at hand, specifically mentioning profiling, vilification, and family separation. But it avoids any mention of President Donald Trump, the administration, or ICE. The whole first paragraph describing the current reality is written in passive voice, with the bishops as the subjects of the sentences: “We are disturbed…. We are saddened…. We are concerned…. We lament…. We are troubled…. We are grieved….” The statement makes no mention that deportation has been listed as an “intrinsic evil” in several Vatican documents, including one from Pope John Paul II.
Still dogged by credibility issues over their handling of the sex-abuse crisis and increasingly close alignment with Republican Party policies, the bishops now clearly want to be heard on the issue of immigration. But it’s unclear who they’re trying to convince: Catholic immigrants, including many foreign-born priests? The individuals and groups already working for migrant justice? The more than half of Catholic voters who voted for Trump, even as he promised mass deportations and used dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants? Or Trump and the Catholics in his administration who are overseeing violent immigration raids in U.S. cities?
The statement’s strongest sentence—“We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people”—was only added as a last-minute amendment suggested by Chicago cardinal Blase Cupich in the brief public discussion before the vote on Wednesday. The rest of the debate was held in executive session, closed to the media and public. The conference has held a larger and larger portion of the annual fall assembly meetings behind closed doors since the embarrassing debate over whether to publicly deny Communion to then-President Joe Biden in 2021.
A presentation from Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, during Tuesday’s public session on an immigration initiative called “You Are Not Alone” did not include time for questions and comments from the floor. The initiative encourages individuals and communities to offer pastoral support and accompaniment during this time of increased immigration enforcement.
Seitz, a longtime champion of immigrant justice, did not mince words in his presentation. “ This unyielding commitment to mass deportation and curtailing legal immigration, combined with the unprecedented funding for immigration enforcement that was included in the recent reconciliation bill, has created a situation unlike anything we’ve seen previously,” he said. “Allow me to state the obvious: Our immigrant brothers and sisters, from those who are undocumented to those who are naturalized citizens, are living in a deep state of fear.”
The bishops also mentioned immigration in their first message to Pope Leo XIV, though it was notably paired with support for secure borders. “Holy Father, please know that the bishops of the United States, united in our concern, will continue to stand with migrants and defend everyone’s right to worship free from intimidation,” the message says. “We support secure and orderly borders and law enforcement actions in response to dangerous criminal activity, but we cannot remain silent in this challenging hour while the right to worship and the right to due process are undermined.”
Pope Leo has urged the U.S. bishops to be more vocal and united on the issue, telling a U.S. delegation led by Bishop Seitz last month that “the Church cannot remain silent.”
In the limited public discussion before the bishops’ vote on the document, the final comment was from Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose, California, who supported the statement but added he was “hoping for something stronger.” Cantú later told Religion News Service that the group’s hesitancy to call out Trump may be because “a lot of Catholics voted for him—and a lot of Catholics who have been supportive of many of our dioceses.”
Oklahoma City archbishop Paul Coakley, the ecclesial advisor to the right-leaning Napa Institute who was elected president of the bishops’ conference the previous day, called the statement “balanced.”
In addition to advocating for the “God-given human dignity” of immigrants, the statement affirms a commitment to immigration reform and to a nation’s responsibility to regulate its borders. “Human dignity and national security are not in conflict,” it says. “Both are possible if people of good will work together.” Those involved in immigrant work praised the statement, but some wanted more.
The bishops’ “solidarity with the millions of immigrants in our nation who are being unjustly targeted, persecuted and scapegoated at a historic level is a source of enormous encouragement for the many Catholics on the front lines of responding at the grassroots level to the ongoing crisis unfolding across many of our cities and throughout the country,” said Michael Okińczyc-Cruz, executive director of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, which has led Masses and tried to bring Communion to those held in a detention center outside Chicago.
Katie Holler, a founder of the Dorothea Project, a group of Catholic women committed to highlighting Catholic social teaching, praised Seitz’s direct language and his focus on the need for action. “But [the bishops] didn’t talk about what got us here,” she said. “Over 50 percent of Catholics were okay with this, with the rhetoric of dehumanizing immigrants. They’re not talking about how we engage with those issues in the political sphere.”
The group, named for Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day and Sr. Thea Bowman, organized a letter-writing campaign before the meeting, urging bishops to revise their voter guide to emphasize comprehensive Catholic social teaching and “the sin of dehumanization.” The bishops did not take up that task at this meeting.
The real work of social justice must be taken up by everyday Catholics, according to Dylan Corbett, executive director of Hope Border Institute in El Paso. “When Pope Francis told us we have to welcome and protect immigrants, he wasn’t necessarily saying the bishops have to do that,” he said. “They have a role to play, but the subjects of our engagement in public life are really the people of God, the laity and the clergy.”
Yet the bishops still need to reclaim their leadership role in public life, Corbett said. But the conference structure is antiquated and too often operates out of “an ecclesiology of the past when the bishops had more political and social clout and more financial resources.” As Bishop Seitz said in his own presentation: “Statements are not enough.”
Marissa Flores Madden, director of family immigration services for Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri and a member of the Dorothea Project, said it will take “innumerable prophetic gestures for our immigrant sisters and brothers to believe they are not alone.”
“Will the people who already support, accompany, and work with immigrants just keep doing what we’ve always done, albeit perhaps a bit more encouraged or even emboldened with the bishops’ message at our backs?” she said. “Or will this message ignite change in parishes and dioceses that have been, at best, lukewarm in their outreach to immigrants? Will the message be read at every Mass? Printed in every bulletin? Will the message reach your average Catholic who doesn’t even know the bishops met this week? I hope so.”
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