Editorial: The Roman Catholic Church only wants the U.S. to increase immigration!

Editorial

Last week was a recent attempt for the Roman Catholic Church to lobby in the U.S. immigration debate. Unlike their approach in pro-life legislation, and traditional marriage legislation, the Roman Catholic Church's position on immigration seems to focus only on the U.S. accepting an increasing amount of immigrants, this policy does not apply to other nations such as Mexico, or to the Vatican itself!

Again, consider contacting key Roman Catholic bishops about this, whether you are Catholic or not!

A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about the Roman Catholic Church’s push on hurting America’s poor by encouraging more immigrants to compete with them for jobs and wages. This follows this post about GOP Representatives that FACEBOOK analyzes as leaning towards amnesty with all of their microtargeting. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what you can do click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.

From Under The Rubble | Catholic Bishops On Immigration—Here We Go Again!

http://www.vdare.com/articles/from-under-the-rubble-catholic-bishops-on-immigration-here-we-go-again

By Christopher Manion     

 [See earlier Is the Rule of Law Immoral? Ask Archbishop José Gomez!]
According to the New York Times, America's Catholic bishops are counting on the persuasive power of the pulpit this month to push "comprehensive immigration reform"—also known as amnesty for illegal aliens.
Unfortunately, we've already seen this movie, and it has an unhappy ending. Back in January 2010, our beloved shepherds launched a similar campaign supporting another amnesty bill.
Bishop John C. Wester chaired the Committee on Migration of the bishops' conference (USCCB) at the time. He told the Catholic News Service that "the church will prod lawmakers take action on the issue, beginning with a postcard campaign to members of Congress and prayer vigils across the country." [CNS,  January 8, 2010].
Hey, wait a minute. Wasn't something else going on in January 2010?
Oh, that's right—Obamacare! But Obamacare wasn't a problem. After all, it never would have gotten off the ground, had the bishops not supported "universal health care" as "a basic human right" for years.
So the confident bishops focused on amnesty, announcing a nationwide "Justice for Immigrants" campaign in January 2010. They planned to distribute millions of postcards to parishes throughout the country urging Catholics to demand that Congress "enact immigration reform as soon as possible."
Then ObamaCare passed with abortion funding intact. The betrayed bishops expressed shock and chagrin.
They had good cause. The Nobel Peace Prize winner with an honorary degree from Notre Dame—whose election so many of them had supported in 2008—had lied to them.
It's shocking, I know. Simply shocking.
Then the most pro-abortion president in history betrayed them again, directing HHS to issue its notorious "Contraceptive Mandate." And today, dozens of bishops, Catholic universities, businesses, and individuals—among them Notre Dame—find themselves suing Obama, whose "universal health care" regulations threaten to force thousands of Catholic institutions nationwide to close.
The Experts Flunk Out
"We want to try to pull out all the stops," says Kevin Appleby, [Email him] the director of migration policy at the bishops' conference.
But, to paraphrase Samuel Huntington, "Who Are We?"
Richard Doerflinger, [Email him] Appleby's colleague on the USCCB staff, answered that question in 2010. He said that "one organization in particular [the USCCB] has the role of speaking for the moral voice of the Church on these matters and also have [sic] the policy expertise of figuring out when legislation is acceptable to the Church's interests and our convictions…."
"We're not just an interest group that has an opinion," he continued. "We've actually researched the facts…. That's something that no other Catholic group can do in the depth that we've done it."
Oh, really?
On the face of it, this bluster blends in with the arrogant noise that echoes among the thousands of "experts" who populate Washington's bureaucracies.
The USCCB is, alas, "just another interest group," but Doerflinger has a point. It's different in one critical aspect: the laughable notion that no one else in America can do competent research reflects not just hubris—it represents a form of errant elitism unique to the Church that has been practiced, and condemned, for centuries.
It's called "clericalism."
Isn't This Supposed to be the "Age of the Laity"?

"I want to get rid of clericalism."
--Pope Francis at World Youth Day,
Rio de Janeiro, July 2013

Like the layman, the bishop has the right to hold private political opinions regarding issues on which good Catholics (and bishops) can disagree. The problem arises when the bishop attempts to elevate his personal agenda to the level of authoritative Church teaching. This constitutes an abuse of the prelate's authority and confuses not only the faithful, but the public as well.
Such theological errors have real-world consequences. Clericalism has diluted the genuine authority of the American Church to the point where most bishops are afraid to exercise it—as though they had lost the authority to teach anything at all.
Witness the Church's trying to oppose homosexual "marriage" or the Contraceptive Mandate without being able to address homosexuality or contraception on moral grounds.
USCCB President Timothy Cardinal Dolan is right—the bishops have had "laryngitis" regarding the magisterial teachings of the Church on sexual morality for fifty years. But they've filled the vacuum with the political agenda of the welfare state, and have used their "role of speaking for the moral voice of the Church" to pass off their opinions as official Catholic teaching instead.
As a result, America's bishops have inverted the Church's priorities. Eternal truths are ignored, while personal political agendas are canonized. They have become "just another NGO," lobbying on issues ranging from inflation, welfare, taxes, and budgets to the price of tomatoes in Florida.
Amnesty for illegal aliens fits right in with a clerical agenda that has become increasingly partisan, radical, and secular.
It is especially distressing to see politicized bishops cloak their agenda in religious language, as though no good Catholic—or good person!—could possibly disagree.
Catholics in my diocese are asking their pastors, in and out of the Confessional, "Is it a sin to oppose amnesty?"
Countless bishops would apparently like them to think so. Roger Cardinal Mahony once told an immigration rally that supporters of current law were "fanning the flames of intolerance, xenophobia and, at times, bigotry."
Curiously, the Rubble can find no record of Mahony or his successor, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez—or any other bishop or USCCB official, for that matter—condemning the blatant racism of La Raza—"The Race"—or that of many other pro-amnesty agitators who march alongside them in amnesty rallies.
Instead, the Cardinal implies that everyone who disagrees with him is irrational.
Such self-serving moral posturing is hardly pastoral. It ill serves—and even perverts—the Church's mission to "go and teach all nations"; it misinforms the public, scandalizes good Catholics; and is thoroughly lacking in charity.
It is also often lacking in truth. Good bishops and priests consistently refer to the Catholic Catechism's teaching that prosperous nations should strive to "welcome the foreigner" [CCC 2241]; however, they rarely mention what follows: "Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens."
The Church's amnesty advocates routinely criticize businesses for exploiting the immigrant; they rarely mention that lobbyists for those same businesses are swarming Capitol Hill, supporting amnesty because they want cheap labor.
The Church's amnesty advocates often bemoan the sins of amnesty opponents. But how many of them teach the immigrant that falsifying Social Security documentation is a federal felony as well as a violation of the 7th and 8th Commandments? That the same goes for "working the system" illegally to max out on education, medical, and food programs (among dozens of other welfare programs)?
Amnesty advocates want to bring illegals "out of the shadows." Shouldn't we bring the truth "out of the shadows"?
This refreshing approach would honor immigrants as fellow human beings, and not as mere incompetent wards of the Church or the State. It would affirm the immigrants' dignity, their worth, and their ability to be fully human. It would constitute an act of charity and justice, as well as simple common sense.
Towards A More Positive Pastoral Plan
Clericalism is condemned by the Church because it is an error in theory and a disaster in practice. In 2010, amnesty distracted the bishops and their "experts" until it was too late. Today, it distracts them from teaching the fundamental truths of Humanae Vitae regarding marriage and morality that our drowning culture is literally dying to hear.
The Vatican II document Lumen Gentium makes it clear that the layman, not the cleric, is responsible for the particulars of legislation.
Which brings up an important point. The bishops' clericalism would be just as egregious if they opposed amnesty and deficit spending and supported tax cuts for the rich.
Practical politics is the laity's responsibility. The responsible layman should just tell the bishops, "Please, do not endorse my legislation: politics divides us. Tell us the truths that unite us."
As Cardinal Dolan points out, since the bishops went silent on fundamental morality half a century ago, some thirty million Catholics have left the Church. Pope Francis wants us to reach out to bring them back. It's a slam dunk that preaching politics isn't going to do it—but preaching Christ crucified just might.

Christopher Manion, Ph.D.,  [send him mail] is Director of the Campaign for Humanae Vitae, a project of the Bellarmine Forum. He served as a staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years. He has taught in the departments of politics, religion, and international relations at Boston University, the Catholic University of America, and Christendom College.

This column is sponsored by the Bellarmine Forum, and distributed by Griffin Internet Syndicate and FGF Books.
Copyright © 2013 by Christopher Manion. This column is distributed by www.fgfBooks.com.

A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about the Roman Catholic Church’s push on increasing immigration to hurt America’s poor. This follows this post about a Roman Catholic’s perspective on immigration lobbying during Mass. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what you can do click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.

Catholic Bishops Push Amnesty Sunday in Church

http://www.vdare.com/posts/catholic-bishops-push-amnesty-sunday-in-church

By Brenda Walker    

On this Sunday, many American Catholics heard sermons recommending that amnesty be given to lawbreaking foreigners who are here to steal American jobs. It’s part of a more aggressive campaign organized by the Bishops to press a “moral” argument for amnesty, despite the inherent ethical weakness of contending that scarce jobs should be taken from poor Americans and given to poor invasive foreigners, redistribution being part of Marxist “liberation theology”.
Remember: over 20 million Americans are unemployed, and the recently passed Senate bill would allow 30 million “immigrants” to attain legal status in the next decade, reduce wages and increase unemployment.
How then does the Catholic pro-amnesty position support morality?
It doesn’t. Catholic elites are serving their customers alone. The fact that the amnesty policy harms the most vulnerable Americans as a whole is overlooked entirely. (Catholic parishioners, on the other hand, prefer traditional sovereignty: according to a 2009 Zogby poll 64 percent preferred enforcement over amnesty.)
The Catholic church in the United States represents a foreign power, the Vatican, which is a sovereign city-state, albeit small, with a flag, bordered territory and ambassadors. The church acts against the well being of American citizens by lobbying for its lawbreakers, yet the church doesn’t pay taxes. Worse, our national government gives the Catholics millions of dollars to perform activities like refugee resettlement and advising illegals how to break immigration law more effectively.
The chart below comes from the 2010 edition of Catholic Charities at a Glance. FYI, 62% (the Government Revenue, meaning our tax dollars) of the total = $2,895,092,130.

In addition, the church has spent well over $3 million in the past year lobbying for amnesty.
Below are a few snips from the special amnesty sermons given to push the Catholic open-borders agenda:

● Green Bay Diocese supports immigration reform: “When one part of that community is suffering injustice – the whole community is suffering,” explained Rev. Andrew Cribben.
● LA’s Archbishop Gomez joins Catholic churches nationwide urging Congress to pass immigration reform: “It’s not normal for a country of immigrants to not have a good system in place to welcome immigrants,” Mexican-born Archbishop Jose Gomez said to reporters outside the cathedral.
● Atlanta Catholic church calls for immigration overhaul: “Our moral tradition based upon our Catholic social justice calls on all people of faith and good will to stand up in defense of life and human dignity,” Deacon Gerald Zukauckas said.

One of the loudmouths for amnesty is New York City’s Cardinal Dolan, who has the gall to suggest America is insufficiently welcoming in its immigration policy, even when this country admits more foreigners than the rest of the planet combined.
It’s funny how these well paid moral paragons aren’t concerned about the Americans who will be replaced by the millions of new workers freed up to work any job by the amnesty and brought in through the “increased flow” so desired by employers looking to save a nickel — 46 million in 20 years according to the CBO.
Dolan is also pretty nervy to bring up Martin Luther King in the context of compassion, when black Americans get the worst of it from the endless stream of exploitable Mexicans.
Here’s Cardinal Dolan’s recent opinion piece, exhorting the troops:

Immigration reform: A moral imperative, New York Daily News, by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, September 6, 2013
As Congress comes back into session, it has a once-in-a-generation chance to fix our broken immigration system.
We cannot let this opportunity pass. Immigration reform would help families, it would help our economy and it would improve our security. Most importantly, it’s the right thing to do.
Pope Francis recently reminded us that “the measure of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need.” For generations, men and women have come to America’s shores in search of a better life for themselves and their families, and we’re justly proud of our heritage as a nation that welcomes people of good will.
But today, no one can be proud of the enormous underclass of undocumented workers that’s been allowed to form — millions of our neighbors who live on the margins, have their families fractured and are easily exploited.
We can’t be proud of the hundreds of migrants who die in the American desert each year in their quest to support their families back home.
We can’t be indifferent to these profound humanitarian problems. No wonder that, around the country, Catholics and citizens of other creeds are on the front lines in providing a compassionate response, as they were with Rev. Martin Luther King a half-century ago.
Every day, our parishes and charitable organizations encounter people struggling to make a new life for themselves and their families. We meet families who run the risk of being torn apart. We meet migrants who risked dangerous desert passages to get here. We meet young immigrants who want to get an education, find a job and raise a family like countless others before them.
Those who caricature these immigrants as “takers” couldn’t be more wrong. The plain fact is that immigrants, including those who are undocumented, make great contributions to our economy. They spend their wages on goods and services and also start their own businesses, driving economic growth and employment in their communities.
Studies have shown that by and large immigrant laborers complement the American work force by filling jobs in industries such as agriculture and service. And undocumented immigrants pay over $10 billion in federal, state and local taxes per year, according to some estimates; that number would rise if immigration reform moves forward.
Support for immigrant families multiplies these benefits. Families are engines of integration into American life, helping to root immigrants in communities. Families provide support for newcomers to get started and for those already on their feet to move forward, to start a business or to put aside money for an education. When families are united here, it means that immigrants’ paychecks get spent in the U.S. economy instead of being sent out of the country. Above all, keeping families intact gives people a full stake in American life.
Helping immigrants contribute to American life is what immigration reform is all about. Answering the Gospel call to “welcome the stranger” and looking to our teachings and our on-the-ground experience, the U.S. Catholic bishops have called for various reforms: a generous, earned path to citizenship; making family reunification a priority; protecting the integrity of our borders; securing due process for immigrants and their families; improving refugee protection and asylum laws, and addressing the root causes of unauthorized immigration.
We know that there’s room for disagreement on such a complicated issue, but we hope and pray for a law that moves us forward.
Just as Americans are proud of our immigrant heritage, we’re also proud of our can-do spirit. When we see a problem, we do our best to find a solution. There’s no doubt our immigration system is broken. Now’s the time to fix it.
Dolan is archbishop of New York and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about a Roman Catholic’s perspective on immigration lobbying during Mass. This follows this post about Syria and Immigration. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what you can do click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.

Walk Out? Argue? A Patriotic Catholic Ponders What To Do If His Priest Pushes Amnesty On Sunday

http://www.vdare.com/articles/walk-out-argue-a-patriotic-catholic-ponders-what-to-do-if-his-priest-pushes-amnesty-on-sund

By Henry McCulloch     

It has been widely reported that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is calling on U.S. Catholic bishops and priests to turn their prayerful pulpits into political bully-pulpits this Sunday, September 8^th.  Patriotic American Catholics—of whom I count myself one—must think about how to respond to this indignity should they be subjected to it.
The USCCB’s immigration-mad professional bureaucrats want bishops and priests to harangue the faithful—who come to Mass to worship their God and Savior, not to be a captive audience at political pep-rallies—with stump speeches in favor of the nation-destroying Gang of Eight bill the Senate so recklessly passed and that now looms in the House.
Of course, the mass-immigration dogmatism of U.S. Catholic bishops is not the Magisterial teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on immigration and the right of countries to defend their national character.
A look at what the Church has consistently taught about nations and peoples—teachings grounded in Scripture and almost 2,000 years of tradition—must lead any honest reader to conclude that no nation is compelled as a Christian duty to throw open its borders to the point of seeing its distinctive culture and character drowned by a flood of foreign migrants.
The liberal fetish for diversity, something most of America’s Catholic bishops have adopted, is nowhere found in Holy Writ. Indeed, the dissolution of nations and their distinctive cultures into a monoculture—the end-state for Open-Borders fanatics, who see America as a “proposition nation” rather than an organic ethno-cultural entity—is exactly what we are warned against in Genesis’s story of God’s confounding the arrogance of the builders of the Tower of Babel.
No faithful Catholic is obliged to suffer in silence misguided proselytism for Amnesty and Open Borders from any priest, no matter how eminent. On the political, economic and, yes, racial issues that immigration raises, bishops and priests are not arbiters. Their pronouncements cannot bind the faithful. These are matters of prudential judgment, not of faith and morals.
A reading of the USCCB’s posted position on immigration makes that clear—it is far too incoherent and unintelligent to be an authoritative statement of Church doctrine. Others have dissected this mish-mash of fallacies and emotionalism, so I won’t belabor it here. One of its clauses, however, is particularly noteworthy as a remarkable combination of left-over ‘60s-style liberalism wedded to a peculiarly American arrogance:

Addressing Root Causes: Congress should examine the root causes of migration, such as under‐development and poverty in sending countries, and seek long‐term solutions. The antidote to the problem of illegal immigration is sustainable economic development in sending countries. In an ideal world, migration should be driven by choice, not necessity.
 [Catholic Church's Position on Immigration Reform, The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, August 2013]

“Driven by choice” indeed—but the bishops obviously believe that the native-born who must bear the influx of immigrants should have no choice about that.
Even more divorced from reality, and smacking of Americanist hubris, is the notion that “Congress should examine the root causes of migration … and seek long-term solutions.”
So the U.S. government, at Americans’ expense, should so enrich countries that send America immigrants that the locals won’t want to leave? And how is it the duty of the U.S. Congress to examine and solve the problems of scores of other countries? Isn’t that just what America’s Founding Fathers warned their fellow-citizens against?
Lord knows (Catholic bishops should too), America has problems by the score of her own—and none will be solved by inundating America with the indigent of the Third World.
We can’t know until after this Sunday’s Masses just how enthusiastically America’s Catholic priests will respond to this call from the United States’ Catholicism Central.
I am a member of the Pastoral Council of our Catholic parish in a Northeastern town. Our pastor is quite liberal; his number two less so. Our bishop has a reputation for being very liberal. I went to the diocesan website to see if there were any announcements about pro-Amnesty events for this Sunday. To my pleased surprise, I did not see any (although there are links to pro-Amnesty articles from the USCCB web site).
Neither of our parish’s priests has said anything about special homilies or events in response to the USCCB appeal. There is nothing on our parish web site.
I take those to be good signs. I hope to worship at Mass this coming Sunday undisturbed by pro-“immigration reform” politicking.
Nevertheless, heavyweight Catholic prelates are certainly out there right on cue beating the drums for Amnesty. Just today (September 6) Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York and President of the USCCB, has an overbearing column in New York’s Daily News: Immigration reform: A moral imperative. “Immigration reform” of course means the Gang of Eight’s disastrous scheme. In Dolan’s view, America must remain a “welcoming nation”; the cost to Americans doesn’t matter.
Dolan’s column is not really worth quoting. Anyone used to Open-Border propaganda could recite most of it sight unseen: America the nation of immigrants; the “undocumented” in “the shadows,” whom Dolan insists on calling our neighbors instead of more accurately describing them as trespassers; etc. Dolan even works in the “Rev. Martin Luther King.” (I’m surprised the Daily News editors let him get away without including the usually obligatory “Dr.”).
So what should a faithful and patriotic Catholic do this Sunday if the priest at Mass does insist on delivering a pro-amnesty pitch instead of a real homily?
Some suggest that congregants get up and walk out. That appealed to me at first, but I think it would backfire. The primary reason for attending Mass is to take Communion—and that happens after the homily. Should one walk out and then walk back in? Pretty awkward and not very respectful to our Lord, whose house a church is.
Also, it’s very likely one’s fellow-congregants would find such a move disrespectful—and those on our side of the issue should not be doing anything that might give offense and make the priest pitching amnesty appear the aggrieved party.
So I will not do that. Nor will I interrupt the homily—that would be a serious breach of etiquette and even more potentially alienating.
However, in our church, the priest greets the congregants individually as they leave the church after Mass—a receiving line in reverse. I believe is a nearly universal custom in American Catholic churches.
What I’ll do, should the need arise: politely yet firmly tell the priest that I disagree with the substance of a pro-Amnesty message and that I believe that the Mass is not the place for political activism.
I will not make restrictionist arguments. There won’t be time, and it would be rude to others waiting their turn to greet the celebrant. I will follow up with a letter to our bishop—in it I would state the basic restrictionist case—saying that I disagree with the message and the misuse of the Mass to propagate it. I will send a copy of that letter to the USCCB.
Catholic immigration patriots are not questioning the bishops in areas where they have legitimate authority. But we have the right and duty to protest an improper intrusion of politics into worship—and to defend our nation.
Henry McCulloch (email him) writes regularly for VDARE.COM.

A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about Catholic immigration policy towards the U.S. (but no other nation). This follows this post about the reduction in immigration leading to the increase in Civil Rights. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what you can do click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.

A Democrat’s Sermon: Catholic Bishops’ Treason Offensive Hits Next Sunday, September 8

http://www.vdare.com/articles/a-democrat-s-sermon-catholic-bishops-treason-offensive-hits-next-sunday-september-8

By Donald A. Collins

No American patriot should have failed to study the recent New York Times cheerleading reportorial Catholic Push to Overhaul Immigration Goes to Pews (by Ashley Parker and Michael D. Shear, August 21 2013). A huge offensive is about to be launched against US citizens by a (tax-exempt) church, led by a foreign power, for its own secular and selfish motives:

Catholic bishops and priests from major dioceses across the country will preach a coordinated message next month backing changes in immigration policy, with some using Sunday Masses on Sept. 8 to urge Congressional passage of a legislative overhaul that includes a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.
The decision to embrace political action from the pulpit is part of a broader effort by the Roman Catholic Church and other faith groups that support President Obama’s call for new immigration laws…
"We want to try to pull out all the stops," said Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who said the immigration issue was at a now-or-never moment. "They have to hear the message that we want this done, and if you’re not successful during the summer, you’re not going to win by the end of the year."
Catholic leaders, who have tried to wield their clout against Mr. Obama on issues like abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage, are betting that their congregations will be able to exert pressure on reluctant Republicans and wavering Democrats to support the president on immigration. They say they are motivated by the Bible’s teachings and by the reality that many Latino immigrants are Catholics and represent a critical demographic for the church.
[Emphases and links added throughout].

This Appleby point man [email him] makes clear the rhetoric will be emotional and manipulative:

Underlying an effort by U.S. bishops to coordinate messages on the need for comprehensive immigration reform is a profound sense of pastoral care, said an official at the bishops’ conference.
‘Sometimes [the bishops] are criticized that they're encouraging lawbreaking, but the fact is, these folks are here, and their families are getting separated, and what the bishops are trying to do is change the law so they can help them,’ said Kevin Appleby, director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' migration policy and public affairs office.
Bishops' immigration outreach based on 'pastoral' concern, by Carl Bunderson, Catholic News Agency, Aug. 30, 2013

Whoa! Come here illegally and that gives you the right to stay?
Pass this kind of legislation and the U.S. on the way to becoming a banana republic.
And note that there’s no discussion of overall numbers, of unemployment—or anything resembling a concern for America’s national interest.
CNA even tells us that the appalling Appleby implicitly concedes that patriotic American Catholics aren’t buying their Bishops’ baloney:

Appleby described a disconnect between the polling which has overwhelming support among Catholics for a comprehensive bill with a path to citizenship and action.
"We've had a hard time transitioning from 'I support the bishops on this issue,' to people picking up the phone, sending an email, writing a letter, being active on it? With this push we're trying to change that a bit, we'll hopefully get more Catholics to speak up, and say, 'we want this done.'

Maybe that “hard time” is because the “polling” was just pollaganda?
CNA also reports that Awful Appleby implicitly concedes that there’s actually nothing in Catholic doctrine to support the bishops’ position on the Schumer-Rubio Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Bill. It falls into the area of “prudential judgment,” where laymen can make up their own minds.
But Arrogant Appleby still tries to bluster a way out for the bishops:

He explained that it is important for Catholics to read Church documents, and the writings and homilies of bishops on the issues. While “we can sit here and have an argument over whether something is a prudential judgment versus a doctrinal issue,” he said, it is important to remember that a bishop’s teaching, even on matters of prudential judgment, “calls for careful consideration by Catholics.”

Wow, let’s get it from on high, ignore the secular reality, and vote for more unemployment and cultural disarray!
And don’t think the bishops won’t be pushing the guilt trip on their flocks.

To disregard—refusing to even consider—the bishops' position on immigration reform because it is a matter of prudential judgment is a disconnect, Appleby explained.
“Even under a prudential judgment analysis, someone is required to at least consider the arguments being put forth by the Church, to take them into consideration there is a responsibility to at least consider what the Church is saying, and then incorporate it into their position to the degree that they can."
He added that the tendency of Catholics in America to put their party affiliation, be it Republican or Democrat, ahead of their faith, means that “there's a lot of education to be done.”

Translation: Catholics in America are behaving like Americans—difficult for their Leftist church bureaucrats to manipulate.
You really have to be impressed by this slick attempt to use religious arguments for blatantly secular ends!
CNA quotes Kim Daniels, spokesperson for the U.S. bishops' conference president, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York:

“We support immigration reform as a response to Pope Francis' call to resist indifference and to regain a sense of 'fraternal responsibility' regarding the suffering of immigrants,” she told CNA Aug. 27….
In a July 21 homily, Archbishop José Gomez taught that “God comes to us in the person of the stranger,” that hospitality is a “sacred duty,” and that immigration is “not only a matter of politics,” but is “a matter of our relationship with God.”

Archbishop Gomez, now enthroned in Los Angeles, is an immigrant from Mexico. Why doesn’t he urge Mexico to show more “hospitality” to immigrants, and stop mistreating illegal immigrants?
Even more important: did Gomez truly “abjure foreign potentates” when he took the U.S. Oath of citizenship?
VDARE.com has for years exposed the forces advocating Open Borders for legal and illegal migrants: Big Business; ethnic advocacy groups; religious lobbies like the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Immigration Table etc.
Tellingly, that we are mired in the worst economic situation since the Great Depression simply does not to matter to those forces.
It’s obvious that many faithful Catholics have been deeply affected by their church’s ongoing pedophiliac scandals and (I believe as a long-time liberal Democrat) its inflexible views on family planning, abortion, gays and divorce. By evading these issues, and instead speaking from its pulpits all over the US about “social justice” a.k.a. Amnesty, these prelates show they are just the same sort of self-interested crooks as the Latino tribes and the greedy business types who want cheap labor.
The New York Times piece tells us how powerful this push will be:

"The political campaign by Catholic priests is certain to catch the attention of Catholic members of Congress. Catholics are the largest single religious group in Congress, making up just over 30 percent of the members, according to the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project. The current House has 136 Catholic members, including Speaker John A. Boehner and 60 other Republicans, according to Pew.
For some Republican members, vocal support by local priests and bishops could provide the religious rationale they need to support an overhaul in the face of criticism from conservatives.

The Catholic Church has what are supposed to be deep differences with Obama over abortion, homosexual marriage and other matters. But, paradoxically, the New York Times article noted:

"White House officials said they were counting on Catholics and members of other religious groups to help pass an immigration overhaul through a Republican-controlled House that is filled with members fighting against one. Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said Catholic leaders had participated in outreach meetings at the White House.
"It’s pretty rare for the Catholics to take on an issue like this straight to the pews," said Ms. Munoz, who is leading Mr. Obama’s immigration effort.

When you add the fear, which I believe is vastly overrated, that Republicans must completely kowtow to Latinos, it adds up to trouble.
How can so many be so stupid, greedy, selfish—and blind to how this must inevitably appear to American patriots?
Donald A. Collins [email him], is a freelance writer living in Washington DC and a former long time member of the board of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. His views are his own.

***BUMPED & UPDATED*** Catholic bishops spend $3.5 million of anti-poverty funds to increase poverty among American workers

A very interesting post from www.NumberUSA.com about U.S. Catholic bishops increasing poverty among America's poor. This follows this post about the Senate trying to increase the amount of immigrants during this slow economy. This follows this post about the release of illegal alien criminals from jails. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what is happening in the nation now click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.

Catholic bishops spend $3.5 million of anti-poverty funds to increase poverty among American workers


Blogger's Note: You can contact these four bishops about this.
NY: Timothy Dolan http://www.archny.org/news-events/media-contact/
Philadelphia: Charles Chaput http://archphila.org/contact.php
Phoenix: Thomas Olmstead http://www.diocesephoenix.org/contact.php
Los Angeles: Jose Gomez http://www.la-archdiocese.org/Pages/Help/Contact.aspx

You can also contact the closest diocese  to you here 

and let them all know what you feel whether you are Roman Catholic or not!

By Roy Beck - posted on NumbersUSA



I have no doubt that America's Catholic bishops are nice people and that they mean well. But their callous indifference to America's unemployed and low-wage workers is astounding when it comes to their lobbying on immigration policy.



The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is going to expend another $800,000 of its anti-poverty funds to help pass a bill that will add millions more foreign workers to compete for scarce U.S. jobs.



The bishops’ anti-poverty program in the past year has invested more than $3.5 million in grass-roots immigration reform.



The organization of U.S. Catholic bishops said it would make $800,000 in grants available for projects aimed at mobilizing regular Catholics to push for the bishops’ immigration platform.



-- Washington Post, March 5, 2013



Wow. Not only are the bishops taking more than $4 million away from anti-poverty efforts in little more than a year, but they are investing it in a policy that will further depress wages in the occupations where the extra foreign workers will compete. And those occupations are disproportionately ones where the American workers in them already are making poverty or near-poverty wages.



Fortunately, our own polling has long found that most Catholics in the pews reject the bishops' priority of helping corporations gain more visas for foreign workers and of helping foreign citizens who have broken our immigration laws.



The Post seems to lament the fact, noting:



A recent Pew poll showed just 32 percent of churchgoing Catholics had heard about immi­gration issues at church. Among Catholics overall, just 7 percent said religion was the main force in shaping their immigration views.



That suggests that most priests are not as blind to the needs of their working-class parishioners as are the bishops, and that the priests refuse to preach the glories of a loose labor market.



About the 7% figure, I don't take the result to mean that Catholics' immigration views are uninformed by moral concerns. It may just mean that they use a moral compass that is stronger and different from the open-borders pronouncements of their bishops.



OK, my comments are harsh. I don't believe at all that the bishops WANT to help employers make more money on the backs of workers drawing lower wages. I don't believe the bishops WANT the gigantic economic underclass of Black and Hispanic Americans to grow. I don't believe the bishops THINK that loose labor markets that encourage greater and greater income disparity in our society are a moral good.



Really, I don't believe the Catholic bishops think those things at all -- even though those are the logical results of their preferred immigration policies.



But it doesn't seem like the bishops even THINK about the possibility of the results of their actions because they have made an idol out of immigration and a fetish out of concern for immigration lawbreakers as their priority concern. And they have allowed that to blind them to the pain and suffering of this country's most vulnerable citizens.



I can sort of understand how the bishops can make a mercy case for the 11 million illegal aliens. But I can't understand at all why they are spending anti-poverty funds to insisting on adding millions more new immigrant workers while 20 million Americans can't find a full-time job.



We should always remember that all these religious leaders who are demanding an amnesty for illegal aliens are also demanding a "comprehensive immigration reform" package that includes huge increases in future immigrant workers.



Would somebody explain to me what the bishops' argument is for increasing foreign workers in the future? If they were willing to care as much about poor Americans as they do about illegal aliens, the bishops would at least be demanding that the amnesty include large cuts in future green cards and worker visas? Why don't they?



Really, I would like to know because I have to believe that this nation's Catholic bishops are good people who mean well.



ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA



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