“States have the right to regulate migration flows and to defend their own frontiers, always guaranteeing the respect due to the dignity of each and every human person. Immigrants, moreover, have the duty to integrate into the host country, respecting its laws and its national identity” (Pope Benedict XVI, Papal Message for the 97th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Sept. 27, 2011).
“No one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter” (Pope Leo XIV, Castel Gandolfo, Nov. 18, 2025).
“I would like to know what Catholics feel about this indiscriminate mass deportation. I– I think that it’s very clear the American people are saying, ‘We really didn’t vote for this’ ” (Blase Cardinal Cupich, April 12, 2026, on CBS’s 60 Minutes).
“I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy” (Vice President JD Vance, Fox News, April 13, 2026).
“I’m a lifelong Catholic. I wish they’d stay out of immigration, they don’t know what they’re talking about. If they wore my shoes for 40 years, and talked to a nine-year-old girl that got raped multiple times, or stood in the back of a tractor trailer with 19 dead aliens at my feet, including a five-year-old boy that baked to death, if they understood the atrocities that happened on the open border, I think their opinion would change” (Tom Homan, U.S. Border Czar, during a street interview on April 13, 2026).
Authority And Authorities
On Sunday, April 12, Cardinals Cupich, Tobin, and McElroy appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss Pope Leo’s views on peace, and the conversation turned to President Trump’s immigration policies.
Catholics have varying opinions on the issue, as the moderator pointed out, but the prelates failed — as prelates often do — to make a distinction that would lower the “fog factor” — as the diplomats fondly call it.
The cardinals were invited because of their positions of authority, of course. But how far does that authority go?
The question often arises, but perhaps it should be put in another way — with the aid of an essential distinction: the magisterial versus the prudential.
All Catholics are bound to embrace the magisterial truths of the faith, and our shepherds are consecrated with the authority to defend those truths and to teach them to all nations.
When it comes to prudential opinions, however, a cleric’s political views are no more morally binding than those of the average layman (a priest friend of mine, when a friend wants to discuss politics, tells him, “Call me Harry”).
Yes, good Catholics can disagree on political particulars, Deo gratias.
And that includes disagreements among prelates and laymen. When it comes to the environment, gun control, immigration, and countless other issues that we call “prudential,” we can agree to disagree. As Catholics. As good, practicing Catholics. We can disagree and still receive Communion.
Recognizing and respecting that distinction would clear a lot of the fog that’s going around these days.
Whither Notre Dame, Continued
“Seven in ten Americans believe that U.S. higher education is headed in the wrong direction,” write the editors of the Irish Rover, a Notre Dame student on-campus publication. “Notre Dame is the only university positioned to lead the renewal that higher education needs. Guided by her mission statement, she can offer what secular universities cannot: an education founded on the fruitful pursuit of truth.”
The editors then quote the university’s mission statement: “The university is dedicated to the pursuit and sharing of truth for its own sake. Among every other institution inhabiting a comparable sphere of academic excellence, Notre Dame is unique in this claim.”
But something’s gone wrong. What is it?
Provost John T. McGreevy seems to have a different mission in mind. The Office of the Provost’s website “reformulates” Notre Dame’s mission, they write. It now reads, “The University of Notre Dame must be the leading global Catholic research university, on par with but distinct from the world’s best private research universities.”
“Even what McGreevy offers as distinctly Catholic ideals are not unique to Notre Dame. . . . [W]hat top-tier university does not claim to be global? What prestigious secular school does not fund research that aids the poor,” they ask.
“Let Notre Dame’s distinctiveness come in her relentless pursuit of truth. A belief in objective truth, grounded in the Eternal God, was once the cornerstone of the American university.
“Today, Notre Dame stands alone among her academic peers in including ‘pursuit of truth’ in her mission statement. At a time when trust in the great institutions is eroding, Notre Dame has the opportunity to lead the renewal of the American university.”
“ ‘Such renewal requires a clear awareness that, by its Catholic character, a university is made more capable of conducting an impartial search for truth, a search that is neither subordinated to nor conditioned by particular interests of any kind,’ writes Pope St. John Paul II in his encyclical on Catholic universities, Ex Corde Ecclesiae.”
But what has “imperiled and subordinated the impartial search for truth,” the editors ask. Might it be “a ‘particular interest’ in academic rankings?
“A rigorous pursuit of the truth, informed by the Logos, naturally finds expression in academic excellence and plays out through top-tier research. If Provost McGreevy really wants Notre Dame to have global, lasting influence, he must be anchored in what is universal and eternal: Christ, His Church, and His truth.”
We should rejoice that a critical mass of Notre Dame students “get it.” As our friend Dr. Charles E. Rice often observed, “the kids are the best thing about the place.”
What caused Notre Dame’s fall from grace? Ralph McInerny, Notre Dame’s most accomplished scholar ever (and my teacher 50 years ago), called it “the vulgar lust for prestige” — which tempted not only the faculty members (who might be jealous of their Ivy League “betters”), but leaders like Fr. Hesburgh, who my freshman year (1964) inaugurated a campaign for “academic excellence” (apparently we weren’t “excellent” enough).
Three years later, “Fr. Ted” and the presidents of some 24 other Catholic institutions of higher learning made it official. They adopted the “Land O’ Lakes” statement, a declaration of independence from the Catholic Church (but most insisted on preserving the “Catholic” brand).
In 2018, Provost McGreevy said that the Notre Dame of 50 years before — the year I graduated — was “mediocre.” At the time, our class was about to celebrate its 50th reunion, so I suggested that we distribute T-shirts emblazoned with “Mediocrities of ’68” to attendees.
Nobody seconded the motion, however.
Which confirmed the success of Antonio Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions” even in the Catholic higher education community.
It’s the time of year when high-school seniors are beginning to decide where they’ll go to college next year — or if they ever will. They can’t go wrong if they ponder their decision on the question raised by The Rover’s editors: Is the institution in question “anchored in what is universal and eternal: Christ, His Church, and His truth?”
