Should the Vatican control America's borders?
Leonard Abbott
The Catholic Church's War on Borders
The Social Contract (Spring 1995)
by David Simcox
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The Catholic Church has developed an elaborate theology of immigration
since World War II, and along with this an abundance of moral-political
prescriptions it promotes to secular governments for dealing with
immigration. These norms have been enunciated by the Vatican, and even
more energetically by The Catholic Bishops' Conference (NCCB) here in
the United States.
The Church has virtually sacralized immigration, proclaiming it as a
''sacrament of unity,'' a process through which the Holy Spirit moves
the world toward greater brotherhood. Migration, the Church preaches,
witnesses to God's goodness, promotes the unity of the human family, and
offers Christians a ministry of love and service to the stranger among
us.
Human dignity, as the Church defines it, becomes a critical litmus test
of the moral legitimacy of national responses to immigration pressures,
just as it has been in Church judgments of other population and
reproductive policies. The innate dignity of human beings entitles them
to seek work in other lands and to be joined by their families there.
This prerogative has in recent decades come to take precedence in Church
teaching over the rights of nation-states to protect their borders.
The Church's concept of migrants' rights has moved closer to the
absolute since Vatican II. Papal statements in the 1950s at least
recognized the need to reconcile the right to migrate with national
concern for the common good, as expressed in the regulation of
immigration. That prudent approach is heard less now, Since Vatican II,
and particularly in the thinking of John Paul II and the U.S. Bishops,
any conditions on the right of migrants to cross national borders in
search of work or to join family members have all but vanished. In the
words of Los Angeles' Cardinal Roger Mahony Catholic social teaching
takes what many view to be a counter-cultural position on this matter
and insists that the right to immigrate is more fundamental than that of
nations to control their borders.1