- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s brutal treatment of racial minorities, mostly of Hispanic heritage, caused Pope Leo XIV to call upon Catholic leadership to issue a forceful statement condemning such actions.
Obeying the pope, the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops issued their first special message in 12 years at this month’s plenary assembly.
By a nearly unanimous vote, they wrote that they were “saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants,” and “concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”
The letter also addressed “threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools.”
“We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”
Following the meeting, the bishops issued a video denouncing the “dehumanizing rhetoric and violence” against those confronted by ICE. More than 1.4 million have watched.
Before their special message, many bishops have stood alongside their Hispanic congregants. In a previous column, I called attention to San Diego Bishop Michael Pham, whose presence at court proceedings caused ICE officials who were waiting to detain the litigants to scatter.
Auxiliary Washington, D.C. bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, a former undocumented migrant from El Salvador, denounces the cruelty shown by ICE agents.
Clergy members from various denominations have come to detention centers only to be turned away or arrested, wrestled to the ground or sprayed with pepper balls.
The Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership is suing the Trump administration for denying Catholic priests and ministers admission to its ICE facilities. The coalition’s executive director said, “For Catholics, pastoral care isn’t optional. We believe that it’s a lifeline.”
The response from Trump loyalists is to declare war on the Catholic Church.
“Boarder czar” Tom Homan condemned the bishops’ letter and the church as “wrong.”
“I’m saying it as not only border czar, I’ll say it as a Catholic. I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church, in my opinion.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) accused the Catholic Church of using government grants to profit from services rendered to refugees. Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft charged that the bishops squandered more than $2.3 billion dollars received from the government, and praised Trump for terminating them.
Following the bishops’ statement Trump loyalist Lara Loomer posted on X, “Are all of the Jew haters going to be calling out the Catholic bishops and the Marxist American Pope for condemning deportations?”
Matt Walsh, another Trump defender, attacked the bishops, saying they didn’t make a video criticizing the Biden administration “for supporting, funding, and facilitating the mass slaughter of children in the womb,” or “its support for the castration and sexual mutilation of children.”
These responses reflect the usual Trump tactics of name-calling and deflection. Almost immediately after his election, Loomer called Leo a “woke Marxist Pope.” Ben Harnwell, a journalist who promotes what he calls a “gladiator school” for the “Judeo-Christian West,” described Leo as having “[Pope] Francis’s DNA in him.”
Charging that the Catholic Church profits from immigrants is a bald-faced lie. While the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops received approximately $122 million in government grants for refugee-related services, audited financial statements show the bishops spent more money than they received.
Those attacking the bishops and making reference to the sexual abuse scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church over the past decades does not diminish the bishops’ call for humane treatment of immigrants and adherence to the Gospel teachings of Jesus Christ.
Trump casts himself as pro-Catholic and calls himself “the most pro-life president ever.” But that does not mean that the maltreatment of those living outside the womb is no less a sin.
As Leo has stated, “Someone who says I am against abortion but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Catholics are swing voters and often determine election outcomes. Joe Biden won their votes in 2020; Donald Trump had a 12-point advantage in 2024. Today, a majority of Catholics disapprove of Trump.
By contrast, a recent survey finds that more than 8 in 10 Catholics view Leo favorably. New York Times columnist David French calls Leo “the most important American in the world,” adding that he “will present a moral witness for years to come, and it’s a moral witness that is fundamentally incompatible with the cruelty and corruption of Trumpism.”
The Catholic Church is more than 2,000 years old. Declaring war on it is hardly civilized or politically smart. Trump has three years left in office. The Catholic Church will survive condemnation by those in power; it’s hardly the first time this has occurred in its long and storied history.
We’ve already had one Anglican splinter this bloody year…
Honestly, it’s kinda funny. Anglicanism technically formally split from Rome over marriage law (though if you believe certain interpretations of Branch Theory and the history of the Catholic Church in the Celtic Isles, the English Reformation was really just a formalization of a divide that had always existed to some degree, but I don’t come on Hexbear to slip back into my 14 year old self and argue niche Anglican church politics, if I want to do that there are better suited websites out there I used back then, so that’s all I’ll say on the matter), and then had a major schism now primarily over… marriage law. And Anglicans in the Celtic Isles… do have a record of sectarian violence. Nasty sectarian violence. Not just against Catholics.
And let’s be honest, American Protestantism has never gotten along with Catholics. Early revolutionary America very much had a problem of “Religious Freedom! Well, unless you’re Catholic.” Cold War Christianity kind of… put all the sectarianism on ice, for an ecumenical alliance against the Godless Commies. But sometimes, the Catholic Left pops out of the woodwork and does some good and I hate my alma mater a little bit less (I went to Catholic school, it sucked, I’m writing a novel turning the Cold War Crusade bullshit I witnessed and suffered through into a comedy), and we are reminded just how much America was, and still is, a deeply Protestant country.
The only thing worse than Catholics running an Inquisition: Protestants on a Crusade.
I’d suggest people start making a fuss about Anglicans being the Church of England and throw around some 1776 rhetoric, but if 1776 rhetoric about American Freedom didn’t work for “Unfinished Revolution” labor movement stuff in the 1910s and 20s, no shot it’ll counter religious sectarian violence a hundred years later. Besides, the involvement of Anglicans would be completely incidental.
This was always going to happen. True 1950s “Cold War Christianity” was never going to last forever. And its decline was always going to destroy the good parts, like the ecumenism and death of American religious sectarian violence, and we’d be insanely lucky to kill the bad too, like the Inquisition style Commie Hunting and the Holy War narrative that places Soviet state secularism as a Rival Theocracy. Before the Cold War, religion as a whole was declining in America, and those Protestants who were still practicing did not like Catholics. By 1955 it didn’t matter what church you went to, as long as you occupied a pew on Sunday morning. It was the Cold War and those Godless Commies were way scarier than the Catholics down the street. At least the Catholics were Christian! Which the Protestants definitely did not believe they were just decades earlier… that was always a shaky alliance. I’m just shocked it lasted a whole 30+ years post Cold War. Maybe the death of the unspoken ecumenical alliance means we can finally start to dissect and unravel the phenomenon of Cold War Christianity. That was always my personal polisci/anthropology hyperfixation. So as a foreign researcher on the subject observing America as a research subject, I love that I get to witness live this period of both Cold War Christianity and American Civil Religion. I might have missed the Cold War itself, but I do get to study its ripple effects live instead! As someone who has to live on Turtle Island while America goes insane, though… my head is going to explode, in a bad way.