{"id":459,"date":"2008-02-29T13:50:47","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T13:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/those-wacky-bishops.html"},"modified":"2008-02-29T13:50:47","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T13:50:47","slug":"those-wacky-bishops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/those-wacky-bishops.html","title":{"rendered":"Those wacky bishops"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s been a slight burst of discussion this week about why, exactly, those Catholic bishops seem to fall on the “liberal” end of the immigration debate. The consensus is that it’s because the Church is collapsing around them, they’ve given up on native born Americans\u00a0and the only way to keep it going is to let all the Hispanics in and boost the numbers.
\nWhatever.
\nThis first starting swirling around in the Corner, the NRO blog. Then John Zmirak <\/a>picked it up and Rod Dreher <\/a>continued the thread. Irenaus comments here.<\/a>
\nNow, I have my disagreements with the bishops’ stance on immigration, both as a body and many of the individual bishops. I have a huge problem with the way, for example, some bishops seem to imply that thinking with them on the specifics – policy prescriptions – \u00a0of immigration\u00a0law and practice should take\u00a0the highest priority possible in a Catholic’s life. Cardinal Mahony, for example, has been at the forefront, declaring that he will ignore various laws and attaching deep approbation to enforcement attempts and so on. Which is his right. I suppose he can prioritize anything he wants. But in light of other issues out there on which he could also speak with such defiance, but doesn’t…it rings hollow.
\n\u00a0I simply think that sometimes the relationship between \u00a0general principles of Catholic social thought <\/a>– which are definitely supportive of the rights of the migrant and\u00a0of the aspirations of migrating individuals and keeping families intact in that world – and specific policy prescriptions collapse in the way that bishops and their policy arms discuss this.\u00a0 I think they ignore certain realities that greatly concern those on the “other side” of the issue and it is not right to dismiss those concerns as indicative of simple racism or xenophobia or “fear of the stranger.”
\nBut. To say that the bishops are taking the stance they do because they’re trying to boost the numbers is pretty silly.
\nWhy?
\nFirst of all because – and forgive me for saying this, but it’s true – the influx of Hispanics Catholics into the US is seen as a great blessing, of course, but it is also seen as a huge challenge, if you will, if you insist on looking at things in a brutal cost\/benefit analysis. Hispanic Catholics do tend to be poor, and the needs of their\u00a0parishes don’t exactly push diocesan coffers into the black. The influx of Hispanic Catholics has caused an enormous strain on already overburdened clergy resources.
\nAnd everyone is deeply aware that the Church’s ministry to Hispanic Catholics is woefully inadequate.
\n(Which of course begs the question which bugs me…when is the Anglo-dominated US Church going to be able to see Hispanic Catholics – soon to be about half of the US Catholic population – as something other than a “them” composing a \u00a0“minority” to whom “we” must minister?)
\nSecondly, I want to take on Zmirak’s and Dreher’s contentions that the bishops have given up on trying to form “old” Catholics so, they’ll try their luck with the new ones, and see if that can get things going again.
\nWell, of course, I’m no fan of the general course of Catholic formation and catechesis in the United States, but in regard to this specific issue, the contention just makes no sense and is incredibly cynical.
\nBecause, really, all you have to look at is some of the bishops who have taken what some, I suppose, would call the most “liberal” stances on immigration policy in the U.S.
\nGomez of San Antonio<\/a>\u00a0(pdf – pastoral letter)
\nSlattery of Tulsa<\/a>\u00a0(pdf – pastoral letter)
\nChaput of Denver<\/a>\u00a0(interview)
\nWhat a bunch of dissenting, do-nothing, indifferent catechetical slackers.
\nIt’s an amazingly complex issue, and no, I don’t agree with every policy prescription or analysis of the issue that comes from a bishop’s pen.\u00a0\u00a0But I also think that the perspective of pastors who have responsibility\u00a0 for these immigrants as they come to their parishes and are ministred to in other ways by the Church should be taken seriously. They often see things that the rest of us cannot – or refuse – to see.
\nIn my relatively uniformed opinion, the bulk of the current problem is caused by:
\n1. An understaffed, totally incompetent creature called the INS – Correction! ICE!<\/em>
\n2. The power of business and agribusiness to have its way in terms of the law and enforcement to keep the supply of cheap labor open and freely flowing.
\nWhenever I have an immigration thread, the most valuable comments, in my mind, come from pastors and others involved in ministry who are out there, on the ground, working with immigrants.\u00a0 I also find that these threads fill up as fast as the liturgy threads. We’ll see….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been a slight burst of discussion this week about why, exactly, those Catholic bishops seem to fall on the “liberal” end of the immigration debate. The consensus is that it’s because the Church is collapsing around them, they’ve given up on native born Americans\u00a0and the only way to keep it going is to let…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThose wacky bishops - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/those-wacky-bishops.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Those wacky bishops - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There’s been a slight burst of discussion this week about why, exactly, those Catholic bishops seem to fall on the “liberal” end of the immigration debate. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}