Note from WPI: Given the importance of addressing the recent U.S. Immigration response, we have decided to dedicate this first week of March to highlighting the current situation in the U.S. and to discussing the Catholic response. We have chosen to begin the week with this thought provoking piece by new contributor, Brendan McInerny, in an effort to build a shared understanding of the Catholic social teachings that serve as a foundation for our response.
All readers of Where Peter Is are surely aware of the horrid events visited upon my home state of Minnesota this year. The Trump administration’s putative mission to arrest, detain, and deport criminal illegal immigrants has sown chaos and danger at the hands of federal law enforcement.
My purpose here is not to discuss matters on the ground in Minnesota. Rather, I wish to state and explain what is not obvious to enough Americans: the U.S. government’s mass deportation campaign is contrary to the Gospel. No Catholic should support it. The issue is not a matter of unintended consequences, unavoidable tragedies, tactics, or strategy. There is not and can never be a humane mass deportation strategy from an administration that ignores fundamental truths concerning the human person. In what follows, I do not claim to say anything that has not already been stated repeatedly by the magisterium of the Catholic Church. Rather, as a teacher by calling, I hope only to clarify for non-experts two fundamental principles of the Church’s teaching – the dignity of the human person and the common good – as well as their inner logic, their connection, and their implications for the present moment.
The Dignity of the Human Person
The opening chapter of Sacred Scripture gives a wondrous description of man and woman, “made in the image and likeness of God”. Each human being, simply by virtue of being human, bears God’s image irrevocably. Neither the Fall, nor the weight of original sin, nor any personal sin of any sort can blot out the image, but can only obscure it. Moreover, Christ himself, the perfect Image and Word of the Invisible God, takes our nature upon himself, joining it to his person, and floods it with his divinity. By his saving work, Christ heals our nature, restoring the image obscured by sin and raising it to a share in God’s triune life.
It is on the basis of God’s creative, redeeming, and deifying plan that the Catholic Church speaks of “human dignity”. The human being, each human being, is numbered among those chosen “before the foundations of the world” (Ephesians 1:4) to bear God’s image and share in His life of love. As originating in God himself, human dignity does not reside in a set of characteristics possessed by a race, ethnicity, or class. It does not even reside in quintessential human traits like reason and free will. As those familiar with the Catholic Church’s stance against abortion and euthanasia know, even those men and women unable to exercise their reason and free will (the unborn, severely disabled), or whose lives are burdened by suffering (the infirm) bear God’s image. Finally, in the eyes of Catholic faith, human dignity does not derive from constitutions, legal codes, or declarations of international organizations. Human dignity is prior to any and all human law; indeed, human law is given the clear ends of recognizing, protecting, and promoting our innate dignity.
Within Scripture, we see the implications of the dignity of the human person in the abundant commands, stories, prophecies, and proverbs concerning love of neighbor especially those neighbors overlooked and cast aside by society. After the Flood, God condemns violence against other men and women, “for in the image of God have human beings been made” (Genesis 9:6). God intervenes twice to save Hagar and her son Ishmael, who are not members of the Covenant community, but have been exiled to the wilderness by the fickleness of Sarah and Abraham. The care for the neighbor runs through the commands given in the Sinai Covenant. Israel is to “never take advantage of the widow or orphan” (Exodus 22:22). The poor in Israel are to benefit from the largesse of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, which includes the forgiveness of debts and the freedom to take grain from the field. To refuse this generosity is a sin (Deuteronomy 15:9).
As was the case with Hagar and Ishmael, God’s commands extend also to concern for the non-Israelite, the “resident alien.” “You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). Alongside the Israelite poor, the resident alien is owed justice (Deuteronomy 24:17) and access to the tithes of the land collected every three years (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). “Cursed be anyone who deprives the resident alien, the orphan or the widow of justice!” (Deuteronomy 27:19). The history of prophecy in Israel revolves in equal measure around the failure of Israel to worship God exclusively and the failure to care for the poor.
In the New Testament, what appear to be two loves – the love of God on the one hand and the love of neighbor on the other – fuse. When the scribe asks Jesus “which commandment of the law is greatest?” Jesus responds with two commandments: to love God with one’s whole being and to love the neighbor as yourself. Elsewhere in the New Testament, particularly in the works of St. John, the fusion is made even more explicit: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34). “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love…” (John 15:9-10). And, lest we be confused about what this love entails, St. John asks in his First Letter, “If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him? Children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:17-18). St. James says much the same, “If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” (James 2:14-16).
And again: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:20-21).
The decisive factor joining the love of God with the active love of neighbor is the advent of Christ in the flesh. As Jesus makes clear, whether we receive the inheritance of the Kingdom or the fire of punishment depends upon our treatment of the hungry, thirsty, naked, ill, strangers, imprisoned, “these brothers of mine,” “these least ones,” because whatever we do for them we do for Jesus himself (Matthew 25:31-46). As the American Servant of God Dorothy Day succinctly puts it, “The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him.” Or, as Venerable Madeleine Debrêl puts the same insight, “The poor person is the sacrament of our encounter with Christ and of our love that is given to Christ.” All Church teaching concerning human dignity rests on a mystical pillar: the neighbor, and especially the poor neighbor, is Christ himself.
The Common Good
The foregoing makes clear why the Church concludes that:
The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2241).
The refusal to welcome the immigrant as a nation is able is tantamount to refusing to welcome Christ. Moreover, because the immigrant in need simply is Christ, the Church’s care is not bound by legal status; to restrict care to citizens or legal immigrants would be idolatrous, placing human laws above God’s. For this reason, it is particularly distressing when churches have been targeted and surveilled by federal agents, or when governments bring suit against Catholic organizations caring for migrants.
None of the above is to say that law and borders are irrelevant to the life of a nation. The Church makes clear that nations and public officials within those nations have a responsibility to regulate migration for the sake of the common good. Law and the enforcement of law are necessary to achieve the goods of order and stability in society, goods which contribute to the flourishing of the members of that society. In the case of immigration, the particular challenge is the limited resources within communities suddenly overwhelmed by migrants. Hospitals, schools, police and other law enforcement can be stretched thin with unplanned population growth. Public officials have a responsibility to steward resources and cannot effectively do so if they do not even know how many people need resources. The Church does not deny, then, the propriety of regulating immigration.
But it is here that defenders of the administration’s mass deportation program often misunderstand the Church’s teaching. The common good is not an abstract ideal. It is the sum total of goods that contribute to the flourishing of actual men and women making up actual communities. Despite the administration’s insistence that it is targeting criminals, it has been widely reported that refugees, legal immigrants, and even American citizens, adults and minors, have all in fact been caught up in the mass deportation campaign. By virtue of the image of God within them, these men, women, and children are already members of the human community, and in the vast majority of instances already contribute to the good of their many local communities, regardless of their immigration status. Fathers and mothers contribute to the flourishing of their children, whether they are properly documented or not. Friends build up the joy of other friends, whether the United States wishes to recognize or refuse their asylum claims. Coworkers contribute to the productivity of businesses, which redounds to the benefit of the wider economy. The common good, the actual goods of actual communities, can only be harmed by mass deportation efforts.
I do not wish to be misunderstood. None of the above makes the work of crafting, passing, and enforcing immigration laws easy. Our elected officials are still responsible for the stewardship of the material resources of cities, counties, states, and the nation. And there is still real crime, which does indeed threaten the common good. Nevertheless, if we begin to see each person within the boundaries of our country through the eyes of the Church, we have a sound starting place to reform our laws. We will place the good of actual people in actual communities at the forefront of our efforts. We will enforce laws with care for the dignity of the human person, which has not been snuffed out even through crime.
Learning or relearning these teachings born of the Gospel is an urgent task for American Catholics. God judges us according to our deeds, and this judgment will surely include our civic deeds as well – how we vote, how we hold our elected officials to account, how we engage in public debate. American Catholics are called in this moment to remove partisan blinders and indifference, to help our country cast aside its errors and sins, and to make America great in the love of God and neighbor.
Image: “Angels Unawares” (CC BY 2.0) by D-Stanley
Brendan McInerny teaches and lives in Minnesota with his wife, children, and wonderful dog. He is the author of The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Introduction.
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