Memo to Tom Homan: Our Bishops Are Not “The Church”

And It's Time That The Laity Reminded Them

Disputation of the Sacrament, by Raphael

To: Tom Homan, Director, Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Dear Mr. Homan:

On November 12, a reporter asked you about allegations by some Catholic bishops’ that your “massive deportations” were “inhumane.”

In your reply, you said, “The Catholic Church is wrong.”

Mr. Homan, the Catholic Church isn’t wrong – the Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ.

But, if the Catholic Church isn’t wrong, who is?

Unfortunately, the bishops are.

Here’s why.

Prelates, Prudence, and Politics

When it comes to politics, both the bishops and the laity should be encouraged to express a variety of opinions on prudential issues.

What are “prudential” issues? They are those on which good and faithful Catholics can disagree. When it comes to politics, there are countless issues great and small with particulars that fall into that category – from tax rates and zoning laws to war and peace.

On such issues, the average bishop can be just as right – or just as wrong – as the average layman can. And when it comes to politics, the prudential judgments of an informed prelate carry no more authoritative weight than the opinions of informed Catholic laymen on the same issues.

Thus far politics.

Of course, issues dealing with Magisterial Truth lie in a different category.

For instance, the Church’s teaching on marriage, family, and children might be controversial, or even unpopular, but they are magisterial.

Every bishop, on the day of his consecration, has made a solemn oath to “accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.”

The bishop is called to teach these truths whether they are “in season or out of season,” as Saint Paul puts it:

“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.” (2 Timothy 4:2)

Many of today’s bishops find that command to be challenging.

That’s because many timeless truths regarding marriage, family, and children are rather unpopular these days. In fact, some of them have simply not been taught for half a century, even though the teaching has been repeatedly reaffirmed through the ages.

When Pope Paul VI promulgated his encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, our bishops simply stuck it in the bottom drawer. And why not? My goodness, the Sexual Revolution and The Pill were taking our secular culture by storm.

So the hierarchy abandoned that teaching. But how to fill the rather sizable hole that was left in their teaching priorities?

They filled it with “Social Justice.”

And ever since, our shepherds have embraced the agenda of the Democrat Party as “the Teaching of the Church.”

Let’s Face It – They’re Democrats!

After all, our bishops have been Democrats for well over a hundred years. They unanimously cheered Franklin D. Roosevelt and his “New Deal” in the 1930s, and supported Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs thirty years later (in fact, they’ve been cashing in on them ever since).

By the 1980s, things were getting out of hand. When our bishops mounted a concerted campaign against key policies of the Reagan Administration, Father (later Cardinal) Avery Dulles tried his best to make them come to their senses.

Dulles warned them that by entering political disputes in such fashion, “the bishops diminish their own credibility in speaking about matters with which they are specially charged as spiritual leaders of the church” – for instance, if they wanted to be political today, our bishops could easily be applauding President Donald Trump’s domestic and foreign policies on abortion.

After all, they are based on natural law and the Church’s Magisterial teaching.

Some bishops might well be doing just that –- but if they are, they’re being drowned out by the USCCB’s massive immigration campaign.

Don’t Like The Law? Ignore It!

Mr. Homan, many bishops criticize you for enforcing the Rule of Law, even as they ignore their own law of the Church.

For instance, Canon Law requires Joe Biden’s bishop to forbid “Catholic Joe” Biden from receiving the Eucharist (viz. Canon 915).

Biden was the most radically pro-abortion president in history. Why do the bishops refuse even to condemn him publicly to this day?

They love leading marches on ICE headquarters. Why didn’t they lead even one pro-life march on the White House during Biden’s four long years in office?

Could the reason be that he was giving them taxpayer billions for their immigration operations?

Well, whatever. They could have, but they didn’t. They don’t like their own rules, so they ignored them, and “Catholic Joe” kept right on going to Communion at Saint Ignatius Jesuit Parish in Georgetown.

And they treat the rules of their Catechism’s in the same way.

What? Immigrants Have Duties?

The Catholic Catechism devotes two key paragraphs to immigration:

1.The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him. (CCC 2241.1)

2. Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. 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. (CCC 2241.2)

Our bishops berate our nation for not respecting the “dignity” of immigrants because we enforce the law.

But when it comes to the duties of the immigrant described in the second paragraph, our bishops ignore them wholesale. In fact, they even removed the paragraph from their “Justice for Immigrants” website.

Why?

Because for starters, if immigrants had followed the law – which the Catechism calls their “duty” – they would not be illegal in the first place.

That explains why the bishops have banned the word “illegal” from their lexicon.

In fact, when Joe Biden used the term to describe Laken Riley’s murderer in his last State of the Union address, Archbishop Garcia SiIller of San Antonio was outraged. He publicly demanded that Joe Biden apologize.

Biden did.

But did the archbishop ever ask for prayers for Laken Riley?

Come to think of it, have our bishops ever made a public plea that the faithful pray for the thousands of victims assaulted, raped, and murdered by illegal aliens?

Why not ask them?

Moreover, “illegal” is not the bishops’ only forbidden word: another is “assimilation.”

Have our bishops ever obeyed the Catechism and admonished the immigrants whom they brought into the country to “respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of our country”?

No. Instead, they stoke envy, resentment, and entitlement. They use the faithful’s funds donated for “the poorest of the poor” to fund hundreds of immigration lawyers who coach illegals on how to game the system.

Let’s face it: If the bishops and the immigrants had obeyed the Catholic Catechism to begin with, there would be no immigration crisis today.

It’s that simple.

It’s Hard Work, But It’s Worth It

Mr. Homan, at the end of that interview, you asked, “why can’t we secure our own sovereign border?”

The answer is, “we can.” You’re doing it. We’re doing it.

Keep up the good work.