| Since the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops was formed in 1966, the Conference has
issued hundreds of statements, documents, and pastoral letters on
everything from abortion to religious liberty to the liturgy to racism
to immigration reform. Most of these documents are little read. Very few
people surfing the net gravitate toward the USCCB website, and some of
the documents, while important, can come across as abstract, repetitive,
and sounding as if it were written by a committee (which they often
were). In the midst of this vast desert of words, I came across a recent
statement not from a conference of bishops but from one bishop, Bishop
Mark Seitz of El Paso, titled Sorrow and Mourning Flee Away.
He writes as a pastor of a border diocese under stress, and offers what
I believe is an important personal perspective on the issues surrounding
immigration and what he calls “our broken immigration system”.
Bishop Seitz begins his letter by
pointing out that the area defined by the Diocese of El Paso has been a
place of constant migration of peoples for hundreds of years and that it
is not “a place of chaos, violence, and mayhem” as one might imagine
from some sources. He goes on to say that while not all agree about what
should be done about our immigration system, “We can all agree that the
present system is not functioning adequately. . . . Our border community
bears disproportionately the burdens of a broken system. I am shepherd
of a diocese with multiple immigrant detention centers that hold untold
numbers of human beings every night, where anguish multiplies and hope
is dimmed. I am pastor of a diocese divided by walls and checkpoints
that separate individuals from loved ones. I am bishop of a flock
frightened by the flashing lights of police cars in the rearview mirror,
who wonder if this family outing or that drive home from work will be
the last. I am spiritual father to thousands of border patrol and ICE
agents, who put their lives on the line to stem the flow of weapons and
drugs and those who carry them. Many agents are troubled in conscience
by divisive political rhetoric and new edicts coming from Washington,
DC. I am a citizen of a community where children worry whether mon or
dad will be there when they return from school. In this situation, daily
I ask the Lord to give me the right words to console, to denounce
injustice, and to announce redemption.”
Later in his pastoral letter,
Bishop Seitz says that “though our Church has been clear about the
imperative to solve this perennial problem, our elected leaders have not
yet mustered the moral courage to enact permanent comprehensive
immigration reform. Still migrants are treated, as Pope Francis says, as
‘pawns on the chessboard of humanity’. Their labor and talents are
exploited but they are denied the protection of the law and are
scapegoated for our social and economic ills
. . . Every human being bears within him or her the image of God which
confers upon us a dignity higher than any passport or immigration
status. On account of this dignity, the Church has long recognized the
first right of persons not to migrate, but to stay in their community of
origin. But when that has become impossible, the church also recognizes
the right to migrate. While countries have a duty to ensure that
immigration is orderly and safe . . . law should be at the service of
human beings and ensure the sanctity of all life. Laws that do not
respect human dignity and ensure due process must be changed. While
respect for the rule of law is essential, we recognize that ‘our true
citizenship is in heaven’ (Phil 3:20) and so we judge every law,
including our immigration law, according to a higher criterion.”
Bishop Seitz places the
situation of immigrants within a larger context of our rapidly
secularizing culture. “More and more people go about their daily lives
today as if God did not exist. The growing indifference toward God seems
to exist side by side with a growing coldness toward the poor and the
suffering.” He points out the many migrants offer something we all need.
“Migrants are prophetic in their lived testimony to values increasingly
sidelined in today’s culture: faith, life, and family. And they wake us
from our indifference, opening our eyes to the injustices of
globalization and (what Pope Benedict called) ‘an economy of exclusion
and inequality’”
If you would like to read the
entire twelve-page document, which includes some of the Bishop’s
personal stories, go to
www.elpasodiocese.org. By the way, our Servite friars have been
ministering in the El Paso Diocese since 1954. |
