A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Dallas Diocese Opposes Texas “Anti-Sanctuary” Law……. May 15, 2017

……..apparently endorsing lawlessness and law-breaking on the part of municipalities and others. Or, probably more accurately, but even more pernicious, a double standard when it comes to the law: the leftist coalition that provides (bribes) the Church to the tune of about $100 million per year for ostensible services for immigrants, legal and otherwise gets special rights and privileges, while others get the full force of the law.

At any rate, I was very sad to see one local priest I have always thought highly of strongly endorsing this diocesan effort to oppose a very fair and common-sense law.  I should also add that the Diocese of Dallas has stepped up its efforts in support of illegal immigration of late, lending support for a recent mass march in downtown Dallas in favor of immigrants rights (that only drew 3000 people, far, far less than the 100,000 predicted by its organizers):

Their message was direct: Break silence, speak out.

Their target: The impact of a new law that expands local law enforcement power over immigration matters and is billed as “anti-sanctuary.”

Senate Bill 4 was signed into law on Sunday by Gov. Greg Abbott and goes into effect Sept. 1.

“This law does not make Texas more safe,” said the Rev. Rudy Garcia, the Catholic rector at the Cathedral Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. “In fact, it makes all of us less safe as it discourages people from reporting crime and wrongdoing to local authorities, who now have to act like ICE agents.” [No, it is intended to avoid things like the recent case in Boston, where a legal immigrant green card holder was deliberately given a 364 day sentence by liberal prosecutors there, because green card holders who serve more than 1 year in prison can be deported.  That is, can be, not automatically or always are.  This was the prison term given for TWO armed robberies.  The same man turned around and murdered two people not long after getting out of jail.  They were unavailable for comment on the Diocese’s reflexive immigration endorsement.]

Garcia quoted from another pastor at a news conference Thursday at the Latino Center for Leadership Development in downtown Dallas, attended by more than a dozen clergy members, lawyers and social activists justice warriors.

It was the now-deceased Martin Niemoller who was an outspoken foe of Adolf Hitler. The lines attributed to him begin: “First, they went after the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.” [Got that, Trumpistas? You’re all fascists, just like Adolf Hitler.]

………In a tearful exchange at the news conference, Dinorah Sierra introduced herself as an immigrant mother who was “indocumentada,” without legal immigration status. [She is here illegally.  She has broken federal laws, laws that are far more strict and far more rigorously enforced in Mexico and most lands from which the vast majority of illegals hail.  She is demanding, in reality, special rights and privileges for herself at the expense of those native born.]   She said she didn’t want to leave her home to attend the event. “But it gives me strength to see so many organizations united fighting for our rights,” Sierra said.

“Many of the buildings downtown have been made by Hispanic hands,” she said with her voice trembling.  ”The vegetables have been picked from the dirt by Hispanic hands, even though they don’t want us.” [Note the clever switch, from the issue of immigration to the issue of race.  The not-so-subtle implication is that if you oppose measures to curb illegal immigration and deport those here, you only do so from a standpoint of racism.  This entire press conference appears to have been conducted deplorably, relying on character assassination and reflexive appeals to emotion rather than logic or even rational analysis on the level of virtue.  I imagine that is because there is so little rational argument on the pro-illegal immigration side.]

About that, continued mass immigration, especially illegal but also legal, can often be, and in the case of the US I think manifestly is, unjust to the poorest of US citizens because this mass immigration artificially depresses wages, especially among the poorest and least skilled.  The Church is in this case helping keep wages depressed and tens of millions of US citizens out of work.

Throughout Catholic moral theology, it is an established precept that one’s duty in virtue applies first to those closest, and then radiating in a sort of concentric circles to expanding groups of people from the neighborhood, perhaps then to the parish, then to the city, the state, the region, the country, etc.

Thus Catholics have a higher moral duty to their fellow citizens than they do to those of other nations.

But for what to many appear to be selfish reasons, the Church has chosen to subordinate the rights of those who have a higher moral claim to those who have a much lower one.  So much lower, in fact, that on the matters involved – citizenship, access to social services, access to jobs, etc – it is quite arguable that citizens of those other countries have almost no claim at all, at least not when those claims put them in direct competition with natives of this country.

And I have left out entirely two enormously important factors that almost never get mentioned: the destruction of the family that frequently occurs with illegal immigration, with spouses and children often abandoned in the native land and bigamous marriages conducted here (and entirely as a matter of choice), and the fact that from the Church’s perspective, nearly half of this flood of Hispanic immigrants will leave the Church for the sects within 20 years, and an even larger proportion of their children will do the same, whereas the percentage of Catholics in Mexico (from which a huge majority proportion of the illegal immigrants come) has been relatively stable over the past 20 years, which means support for illegal immigration is support for a clear and present danger to the Faith, and, hence, the eternal destination of millions of souls.

Of course, the super with-it “church of accompaniment” established in 1965 cares little for such minutiae.  As I was told over and over again in San Antonio last week, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and concepts like hell and purgatory are just hoary old obsolete ideas that have no place in the new church, with a new pentecost, established in the sainted Sixties.