US BISHOPS WRONG ON IMMIGRATION REFORM

American Bishops, the overwhelming majority of whom are the left of the Democratic Party on immigration reform, need to finally come clean.

The USCCB has  revealed how baldly political and self-serving their agenda is:  a desire to have mostly Catholic Hispanic immigrants come bolster demographics in America’s flagging dioceses.

Clearly, the USCCB seems not concerned about our Canadian border or about European, African, or Asian immigrants entering the U.S. through Immigration and Customs Enforcement stations at our air and sea terminals. 

Why?

If a European needs a visa and a green card on his way to citizenship, then why not the Mexican, Honduran, or any other immigrant from predominantly (for the moment at least) Catholic Mexico or Central America?

The USCCB also seems untroubled by certain so-called “sanctuary cities" refusals to enforce immigration laws already on the books.  

Rather, they are silent regarding certain local and state laws which will almost surely not secure the border or establish a chronological red line after which restrictive laws such as govern our northern, eastern, and western borders will actually be enforced at the Rio Grande, at the Baja border, or along the Gulf coast.

Actually, I am opposed to the USCCB having any stated policy on immigration reform or any other policy issue on the subject. 

As I have written in previous posts on this blogsite, national sovereignty used to be upheld by the Church:  the first principle of civil governance being respect for the law.  The USCCB has been all too eager to forget this “inconvenient truth”.

Sadly, in their pandering to the Hispanic community, the Bishops seem blind to a fundamental reality:  for all their “outreach” to immigrants who have entered the U.S. illegally, the Bishops will get the same sort of thanks the Church has been receiving from Catholics in those Central and South American nations that are the wellspring of immigration: Gracias y adiós.

American Bishops will never admit that the census of Hispanic Catholics in America is a charade. 

Most have left the Church, spiritually if not physically, but in Latin America it has been a veritable exodus into Evangelical and Pentecostal versions of Protestantism.

In 1980, 90% of Hispanics in the United States were Catholic, but according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, today just 60% practice the Faith.  In less than two decades, it could be closer to half that number.

American Catholics generally see through the thin veneer of the USCCB’s pandering to the Hispanic illegals in this country.  

The Bishops are making no friends among Americans who are bewildered both by the Bishops' rejection of the moral imperative of respecting just laws which protect and serve the country’s citizens as well as by their distinctively leftist, socialist political agendas.

And so, permit me to offer the following suggestion to the Bishops of the USCCB.  Either support the rule of law as the Church has throughout its history, or get out of the political arena altogether.  

If not, America itself will be permanently wounded and weakened at a time when the clear moral voice of the Catholic Faith is needed more than ever.