Short of the Mark
At the end of January, in the face of the Trump administration’s ongoing aggressive deportation campaign, Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez released a brief statement in English and Spanish, “Regarding the Need for Balanced, Compassionate, and Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” I happened to attend a bilingual mass in the first week of February and heard the statement as read by my pastor. Pérez’s statement strikes me as emblematic of a common response we see from Catholic leadership in the United States when it comes to immigration and politically divisive issues more broadly. To my mind, it represents a missed opportunity for genuine leadership.
The statement begins by marking the divisiveness surrounding immigration, calling for prayerful discernment, appealing to Matthew 25:40, and reminding us that promoting human dignity is the essence of the Church’s moral and social teaching. So far, so good. This is, rightfully, the epitome of Church teaching as it pertains to the Trump administration’s plainly inhumane response to what it—often inaccurately—labels “illegal immigration.”
Many immigrants who had previously enjoyed temporary protected status have seen that status revoked, becoming “illegal” overnight. Some have already been detained or deported, and many more will be if the administration has its way. In many cases, the strategies Trump is employing are blatantly illegal—like his attempt to axe birthright citizenship, constitutionally enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment. The end goal is clearly not simply solving a “border crisis” or “comprehensive immigration reform” but fundamentally reshaping the American polity in such a way that betrays the country’s, admittedly checkered, commitment to upholding human dignity.
Yet, after its appeals to dignity, Archbishop Pérez’s statement shifts in tone:
At the same time, we recognize the need of civil authorities to enact measures that provide for the common good. Those measures include immigration policies that safeguard the life, liberty, and property of all those who call the United States of America home, natural born citizens and those working toward citizenship alike.
The statement proceeds to point to some specific goals for reform: preventing family separation, streamlining the process for becoming a citizen, and enabling law enforcement to block bad actors from entering the US. It then concludes with a prayer.
It is that shift in tone that strikes me as lacking. The first half of the statement is, of course, likely to be read as supportive of a liberal approach to immigration issues. The shift reads as if the archbishop recognizes he is leaning too much to one side and must correct course to ensure that the other side also gets its due. Given the facts on the ground, the statement comes across as an effort at public relations, written to ensure that it angers no one—or, at least, angers everyone equally.
First of all, keeping everyone happy in the midst of serious disagreement and making sure not to ruffle feathers is decidedly not the Church’s role, especially when it comes to this issue. Exactly the opposite. Statements like this are an opportunity to teach concrete lessons that may—and should—ruffle some feathers in the attempt to disclose truth and promote human dignity. Bringing the faithful into better alignment with the faith is meant to be challenging and uncomfortable. Instead, the statement ends up being equivocal and hollow. It’s too abstract to give its audience guidance on applying the Church’s moral framework to concrete issues. It thereby allows congregants to apply the framework in whatever way suits them.
Even worse, by framing policy in terms of “safeguard[ing]...property” it actually may distort the Church’s moral framework. That phrase suggests we apply a Lockean liberalism to the issue, a political philosophy largely incompatible with what the Church’s teaching. As Thomas Aquinas writes, and recent popes have reaffirmed, our right to property is a conditional right, measured against its promotion of a common good founded on universal human dignity. Property is below human dignity on the scala amoris because property is an instrumental good, whereas human dignity is intrinsically good. Many anti-immigrant American Catholics are, in effect, opting for Locke against the Church. It is paramount that its leadership provide clear moral and spiritual guidance, undergirded by the Church’s actual teaching, theological and philosophical reflection on human dignity, and practical reflection on how it can be safeguarded.
While such statements should help the faithful discern well how to respond to a given policy, political movement, or candidate, bishops should, of course, not simply tell congregants who to vote for. Indeed, guidance explicitly rejects the idea (see the USCCB’s Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, 15). Nevertheless, as Pope Francis states in Evangelii Guadium, “The Church’s pastors, taking into account the contributions of the different sciences, have the right to offer opinions in all that affects people’s lives” (182). The USCCB is clear that though bishops only speak with full magisterial authority when they are united or proclaiming authoritative doctrine, they have the “duty” to apply the Church’s moral principles “to key public policy decisions facing our nation, outlining directions on issues that have moral and ethical dimensions” (Forming Consciences, 56). Any judgments that apply “moral principles to specific policy choices” are necessarily prudential, but they have a normative obligation to be grounded in Church teaching and thus cannot be taken as merely “political opinion or policy preference” (33).
Bishops are, then, afforded significant authority to make specific, concrete judgments about policy matters, so long as they are grounded in Church teaching and so long as they are recognized as just that—judgments buoyed by the weight of Church teaching. In guiding the formation of conscience, they need not confine themselves to articulating the Church’s moral framework in abstract terms.
About ten days after Archbishop Pérez published his statement, Pope Francis published a letter to the American bishops on immigration. While Francis also acknowledges the right of nations to defend themselves and their citizens, he does so amidst a much stronger criticism of recent American immigration policy and the attitudes that shape them. Francis is quite clear: conflating immigrant status and criminality is inconsistent with a “rightly formed conscience,” and deportation “damages the dignity of many men and women.” Policy that “regulates orderly and legal migration” can’t come about “through the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others.” Further, Francis implicitly (but quite directly) shows how J.D. Vance, one of the most powerful Catholics in the country, has justified the administration’s barbaric approach to immigration with a fundamental misunderstanding of Christian love. As Francis rightly explains, pace Vance, “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests” from one’s own family and community out to the world, but instead demands that we affirm the “infinite dignity of all.”
In aggregate, the faithful are clearly confused about how to apply Church teaching on human dignity to the matter of immigration. Even beyond family separation, the Trump administration’s goals of mass detention and deportation are clearly contrary to Church teaching. The fact that many Catholics seem to be celebrating these policies indicates that they are not applying the Church’s teaching in concreto. Bishops are well placed to speak to these confusions and provide guidance on specific policies and political propaganda. They are in the habit of providing full-throated condemnations when it comes to grave moral matters like abortion. Why are they unable to do the same with immigration policies inconsistent with the Church’s most basic teachings, including Jesus’ own remarks about welcoming the stranger?
The danger in evading concrete judgments in this case is grave. When Church leaders prioritize keeping people in pews instead of speaking the truth plainly, they allow hypocrisy and prejudice to stand. They let politicians’ resentment and demagoguery lead congregants away from Church teaching. And they rely on abstractions that permit congregants to fill in the blanks in ways that are comfortable, instead of challenging them to change their minds and their lives. In short, they facilitate moral inertia rather than moral growth.
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