By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — Often-ignored aspects of Catholic teaching about “migration” were cited by three Catholics contacted by The Wanderer about Pope Francis’ planned February visit to Mexico, scheduled to include Mass celebrated just next to Texas, by the U.S-Mexico international line.
The three Catholic laity issued reminders that justice and mercy also must be provided to nations that receive the border-crossers, not only to migrants — who might break the law by entering the United States.
A longtime Arizona border-area resident said El Paso Catholic Bishop Mark Seitz acknowledged only certain problems but not others in his statement about the Pope’s visit to Juarez, Mexico. The Catholic Arizonan asked that her name not be used because of concerns about repercussions from speaking out about the border.
Also commenting to The Wanderer were a former U.S. congressman who had represented part of southern California, and a teacher at an independent, orthodox Catholic school approved by the Diocese of Phoenix.
Former Cong. Robert Dornan, a conservative Republican, said he hoped the Pope tells young men “to stay in your own country and improve it,” both fighting for their welfare and against hostile conditions and forces, rather than come here.
Citing the saying that it’s better to teach a man to fish and provide for himself than to give him a fish, Dornan expressed concern that the Pope instead will tell them not to fish and fight for themselves in their home setting, but to cross borders.
And young women shouldn’t try to cross the border illegally, where violence and rapists await them, Dornan said.
Dornan voiced worry that the Pope, like Barack Obama, directs “his passionate criticism” against traditional Christians, or Republicans, not others.
Catholic-school teacher Remi Ruiz acknowledged recognized rights for people to immigrate, including for reasons of threats to life and severe economic deprivation, but Ruiz told The Wanderer that Church teaching “also refers to the other side of things…the rights that are owed to that populace who are now hosting the new immigrants,” including the natives’ “own economic well-being, their safety from social unrest. . . .
“If we adjust to the native population and adjust to the immigrant population, we will have conditions for social tranquility,” Ruiz said. “If we violate those conditions, we have the potential for social unrest.”
The border-area Arizona woman told The Wanderer in an email that Bishop Seitz’s statement “need not have been confined to the usual focus only on the immigrants. His is a statement echoed over and over in similar words by the leadership of the Church. The bishop, as do most in the Church, put the emphasis on the plight of the immigrants. But there is so much more to the phenomenon of both legal and illegal immigration, and, sadly, it is rarely mentioned.”
Seitz’s statement said in part: “Pope Francis’ visit will undoubtedly call attention to many realities that are lived on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly the plight of so many migrants and refugees fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries, in search of better lives for themselves and their children.
“The Diocese of El Paso is very active in responding to the challenges of migrants and refugees, in collaboration with local U.S. immigration officials, to ensure that the most vulnerable in our midst (especially children and families) are clothed, housed, and loved,” Seitz continued.
“We hope that in a special way, Pope Francis’ visit to this region will give voice to these often voiceless people. And we hope that his presence here will facilitate a much-needed national dialogue that will help unite our own country around a compassionate response to the poor in our midst,” the bishop said.
The El Paso diocesan website linked to a liberal’s guest column in the El Paso Times that said: “The symbolism of the visit is clearly intended to deflate narratives which justify harsh attitudes towards migrants, generate social exclusion and facilitate willful ignorance of the struggles of the worker. (The Pope’s) trip will expose the moral dimensions of policies which treat so many classes of people as ‘leftovers,’ undeserving of mercy or justice.”
The Arizona woman who didn’t want to be identified told The Wanderer:
“Those of us immersed in the realities of immigration on the southern border can hope that both the Pope and the participating Mexican and American prelates will take advantage of what will be a huge and watched media involvement to elaborate on some of the whole of the Church’s teaching on especially illegal immigration and, just as importantly, on the facts of the issue.
“Pope Francis, in recent remarks pertinent to his Year of Mercy, has emphasized the need for a union of both mercy and justice,” she said. “The Pontiff’s remarks are an echo of a wisdom spoken centuries ago in the Old Testament: ‘Mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed’ (Psalm 85:10).
“Experience demonstrates the truths set forth by St. Thomas Aquinas that justice without mercy is cruel. And mercy without justice literally dissolves into chaos,” the Arizona woman said.
“It is so apparent at this time that the world must focus on that unity of justice and mercy, which only, when so united, can bring true peace. Emphasis only on the plight of the immigrants is unjust to those people subject to most of the rest of the realities to which Bishop Seitz refers.
“Some of the facts and ideas which should be applied to the unity of mercy and justice in the current immigration crisis are easily found,” she said. “For instance, Mexico, the source of most illegal and legal immigration of the most recent two decades, is now a thriving economy, with an unemployment rate much lower than that of the United States. But where is the Mexican government’s mercy and justice in regard to its own citizens?
“Should not the Pope and the bishops take advantage of their status to remind the Mexican leadership of their duties to their own? Should they not chide all the leaders of the sending countries about their cruelty in dividing families and causing the displacement of their very own peoples into a foreign and increasingly less hospitable welcome?”
She wondered whether hospitality has decreased for new arrivals “because of the unsustainable financial and social burdens caused by excessive numbers of people trying to enter.”
And she pointed to the fact “that illegal and legal immigration have harmed the American family, depriving people of the ability to pay their debts, to find work in keeping with their families’ needs because of the marriage of unmerciful corporations and their political lackeys. Will the Pope and the bishops speak strongly about the need for justice and mercy for suffering Americans?
“Will they finally echo St. John Paul II and the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” she continued, “and teach loudly that countries are only obliged to take immigrants to the extent they are able, and that America has fast become unable? Will they finally say that the ultimate solution to massive emigration from sending countries is to be found in the structural dysfunctions of the sending countries, and it is primarily there that just and merciful solutions are to be found?
“Just as crucial is the need to wed mercy and justice to the acceptance of Middle Eastern refugees into the United States, without doubt infiltrated by terrorists bent on death and destruction,” she said. “Will the Pope and the bishops talk about the right of the refugees to be helped in their own cultures, or at least closer to home? Will they speak about the accepting countries’ right in justice and mercy to be kept safe from terrorists?”
She said the Pope’s planned border Mass “is not a vehicle for remarks like Bishop Seitz’s, seemingly rooted in the limited version of the preferential option for the poor spawned in the discredited liberation theology. Rather, the expanded preferential option for the poor set forth by St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, which mercifully includes all the marginalized, taught that ‘love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind, is as essential to (the Church) as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel” (Deus Caritas Est, n. 22).
“This preferential option . . . includes all who are marginalized — the unborn, persons with disabilities, the elderly and terminally ill, and victims of injustice and oppression,” she said.
“We need to pray the Pope and the bishops will start articulating a balanced and inclusive message about migration which speaks about the need for both mercy and justice for suffering Americans and other host countries’ citizens, as well as the migrants at the Mass on the border. We are all suffering at the hands of the rich, the powerful, and the indifferent,” she concluded.
Our Lady Of Guadalupe
Ruiz, the Phoenix-area teacher, also cautioned against liberation theology, saying St. John Paul II carefully rejected this “liberal mumbo-jumbo.”
People should look at the Church’s social doctrine, Ruiz said, “in its complete form. . . . We have to see Christ in each person we meet. From that principle of charity follow many other things.”
He began the interview by expressing concern about the Pope going to Juarez, “a place where so many people have been gunned down” by cartel violence, “all the disappearances, all the people murdered, all the tragic kidnapping and killings. . . .
“I would say to Wanderer readers. . . . Let us pray very much to Our Lady of Guadalupe, number one, that God’s will will be accomplished through this visit and, number two, to protect the Holy Father from any danger,” Ruiz said.
“I’m very concerned with the border issues going on, and the violation of Catholic social teachings going on,” regarding mass movements of populations, he said.
A PR Disaster
Dornan, the former California congressman, who lives in Virginia now, said he hopes the Juarez border Mass won’t resemble the public-relations disaster of the Nogales, Ariz., Mass offered by prelates right by the border fence on April 1, 2014.
Although U.S. bishops at the Nogales Mass apparently thought photos of distribution of the Eucharist to anonymous hands stretched through the high, slatted metal fence would evoke compassion in the U.S., there instead were expressions of shock and dismay.
People can cross the border through recognized Nogales checkpoints, and the Mexican side of Nogales has its own Catholic churches, critics said. There was no need for staged photos of arms stretching through the protective barrier as if to catch a ball at a baseball stadium.
Moreover, the fence was there in the first place because illegal border-crossers had shown they couldn’t be trusted to respect national boundaries. Respect the law and no fence would be needed.
Dornan told The Wanderer that “it was sacrilegious, it was offensive in the extreme” for a cardinal to pass the Body and Blood of Christ through a fence, “and he didn’t even know who was on the other side.”
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