Cardinal tells priests to ignore law ?

[dilloduck]

Is this crap or what ?

Cardinal Mahoney: Mr. Bush, Tear Down That Wall!
by DL
Controversial liberal prelate Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles, a top dog at the often left leaning, U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, has essentially called for treating the USA’s borders as if they were the Berlin wall. One could almost hear him demanding “Mr. Bush, tear down that wall!”

This open-borders, leftist-leaning cleric is directing his priests to violate immigration law and to encourage illegal immigration, thereby encouraging other Catholics (the illegals) to violate Church law, which clearly requires Catholics to recognize the rights of politicians to establish immigration law.

His directives also fly in the face of required Roman Catholic behavior. A Catholic — be he citizen, priest, illegal, or cardinal — is required, under pain of sin, to submit to civic authority and follow all civil laws, with the rare exception being serious moral wrong, as in performing or assisting at an abortion. This requirement to submit to civic laws is not to be a submission to law as if it were a cavalier, cafeteria-type "pick and choose" – in the manner such as those “pretend Catholics” when they “follow” their own Church law as is convenient (e.g., certain liberal Catholic politicians from, say, Massachusetts).

Well then: is our immigration policy seriously immoral?

This is certainly not the case, as America has a generous and loose immigration policy, and is even under criticism from liberal unions for establishing generous economically beneficial treaties with those poorer countries to our south. The fact is that no illegals are at the biblical rich man’s gate starving to death. If having a poverty gap is sufficient reason to tear down our borders, then the vast majority of the world's peoples would soon be here (along with the terrorists) and the Cardinal would no doubt be demanding some other country take us poor Americans in.

Several questions come to mind for the good Cardinal about his position against Americans strictly controlling their own borders while allowing and encouraging legitimate immigration.

The first is why you are directing (under pain of sin?) your priests to defy legitimate immigration law when the Church law, as laid out in the Catholic Catechism, tells you that you may not?

More at http://www.tmhbaconbits.net/2006/03/03/mahoney-immigration/

 

[Annie]

Is this crap or what ?



More at http://www.tmhbaconbits.net/2006/03/03/mahoney-immigration/

It's not just the Catholic clergy. What I don't get, aren't there enough people HERE that need their help? What do they have against LEGAL Immigration?:

http://www.courierpress.com/ecp/editorials/article/0,1626,ECP_768_4541154,00.html

Some religious leaders resist tougher immigration law

By DANIEL B. WOOD Christian Science Monitor
March 15, 2006

America's faith communities are keeping careful watch as Congress wrangles over border security - a process expected to yield the most dramatic changes in immigration policy since the 1980s - and many religious leaders are not liking what they see so far.

Increasingly, they are making their presence felt on Capitol Hill, where the Senate is now drafting its version of immigration reform. In their own churches, synagogues and mosques, many leaders are striking a defiant pose toward an immigration bill the House has already approved.

At stake is the moral high ground on immigration. The religious leaders see new border-tightening moves as intruding on their obligation to care for strangers - no questions asked. Those who argue the other side, that immigration must be curtailed and the border secured, also couch their position in moral terms, saying it is unprincipled to aid and abet those who have entered the United States illegally.

A key sticking point: part of the House measure that would force any individual, including church workers, to see documentation before giving help to immigrants, or risk imprisonment.

"It is none of the government's business who and how religious people serve," says the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of Interfaith Alliance. "Would the U.S. Congress have told the Good Samaritan not to help a stranger in the ditch?"

Cardinal Roger Mahony in Los Angeles, who leads the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the nation, created a stir recently when he said he would order priests under his supervision to defy any federal legislation that requires churches or other social organization to press immigrants for legal papers before giving them help. The rhetoric over immigration reform has become inflamed of late. A coalition of religious leaders has said the legislation the House approved in December reflects "hysterical" anti-immigrant sentiment.

The measure's supporters, meanwhile, say the faith groups are engaging in some hysteria of their own and are deliberately mischaracterizing the House bill.

The House legislation "does not target churches and aid providers as some have claimed," says Jeff Lungren, spokesman for Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the bill's sponsor. "The opposition to this is a real stretch and based on such a misapprehension of our motivation that we can barely comprehend it. We wish all this energy would be exerted toward fighting alien smuggling."

The House measure includes reforms that have raised the ire of religious leaders. It expands "alien smuggling" to include those who help an immigrant remain in the United States when they know that person is in the country unlawfully - and imposes criminal penalties for those who provide such help.

This definition, say faith leaders, makes no distinction between smuggling operations and social-service organizations, refugee and aid groups, and churches. Moreover, they say, it will make church officials into unwilling enforcers of policies with which they disagree.

The House measure would create a new federal crime of "unlawful presence" and broaden the definition of immigrant violations, as well as grant state and local law-enforcement agencies more authority to detain immigrants they find.

At its heart, the debate pits those who feel that the large influx of immigrants is imperiling America's economic and national security and those who feel that it is enriching society and revitalizing church communities with new congregants.

"What we want is immigration reform that finds a way to assist those who have come across (the border) and been productive citizens," says the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches. A former member of Congress, Edgar earlier this month stood alongside Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, D.C., Reformed Judaism officials, representatives of the American Jewish Committee, and Hispanic evangelical leaders in support of Mahony's call to followers to resist any federal law that criminalizes those who aid illegal immigrants.

"We would not have had the changes of the civil rights era if Dr. (Martin Luther) King (Jr.) had not used nonviolent civil disobedience," he said. "Clearly, the tactic that King and (Mahatma) Gandhi used is an alternative." Supporters of the House bill contend it does no such thing.

"Americans have a right to demand that their government protect their security and interests by enforcing our immigration laws, and to hold all institutions, including churches, accountable if they knowingly aid and abet people who are violating the law," says Ira Mehlman, Los Angeles spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The House bill "will not prevent clergy from administering Communion or feeding people who show up at a soup kitchen," he adds. "Rather, when religious workers cross the line and actively assist people in violating the law, they will be held accountable, just as any other American would."

The measure's new antismuggling provisions, supporters say, are a response to rising concern that existing immigrant-smuggling laws are inadequate to cope with increasingly violent and organized human-trafficking rings.

In the Senate, the sentiment is similar.

"Americans who provide emergency care or humanitarian services to illegal aliens are not the target here," says William Reynolds, communications director for Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican, whose Judiciary Committee is in the throes of hearings on the issue. Even as religious leaders voice their objections, the people in the pews are not as united against the proposed immigration reforms, say observers. "If you did a survey of general Catholic churchgoers, you would see a split right down the middle over this," says the Rev. Rick Ryscavage, professor of sociology and international studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

Some Los Angeles parishioners have criticized Mahony and other Catholic leaders for wading into a political issue. Ryscavage sees it the other way around.

"Politics has forced itself on the church ... and the church has to respond," he says.

The dividing line between church and state can be hard to pinpoint, Ryscavage says, but he does not believe that religious institutions have crossed over it in this case.

"The church can forcefully stand up in the public arena and say, 'Look, we've got to think about these people as human beings.' That is valid," he says. "That is not interjecting in politics. It is calling political attention to broader humanitarian, ethical issues."

 

[dilloduck]

It's not just the Catholic clergy. What I don't get, aren't there enough people HERE that need their help? What do they have against LEGAL Immigration?:

http://www.courierpress.com/ecp/editorials/article/0,1626,ECP_768_4541154,00.html

Aiding and abetting---they should be losing thier tax exempt status.