Raymond Arroyo tells pope: Don't meddle with immigration!

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Soon after the new pope’s election, Fox News sidekick Raymond Arroyo (who also has a show on EWTN) rounded up his “papal posse” on The World Over and insisted (around 5:20) that immigration is “not the pope’s job!” These brusque words had no effect at all on Leo XIV, who spoke to the Diplomatic Corps on Friday and said a few words about the human dignity of immigrants and how all of us are responsible for it:

[N]o one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike. My own story is that of a citizen, the descendant of immigrants, who in turn chose to emigrate. All of us, in the course of our lives, can find ourselves healthy or sick, employed or unemployed, living in our native land or in a foreign country, yet our dignity always remains unchanged: it is the dignity of a creature willed and loved by God.

The pope, apparently, is going to talk about immigration as much as he damn well pleases, thank you anyway, EWTN.

But I try and fail to figure out what Arroyo means when he says immigration is “not the pope’s job.”

• Maybe he means it’s not the pope’s job to solve the immigration crisis in the United States. Maybe he means it’s not the pope’s job to make immigration policy.

If that’s what he means, then he very bravely took up his axe and hacked down the straw man that had threateningly followed him into the World Over studio. No one seriously suggests these things are “the pope’s job.”

• Maybe he means that immigration is a mere political question involving “prudential judgment.”

Now, prudential judgment is an actual concept in Catholic moral teaching—on questions, for example, like: For whom shall I vote? But too often Catholics appeal to “prudential judgment” as though it gives them an excuse to avoid demands of the moral law they don’t want to be called to account for. It could be that Arroyo is a cafeteria Catholic. If he finds that Church teaching runs counter to his politics, he pretends it’s not really Church teaching at all; in fact, it’s not really the pope’s business to get involved in that, and he should shut up about it or I’ll sic the posse on him.

Maybe this is rash judgment on my part. But somehow the same Catholics who appeal to “prudential judgment” on immigration or the death penalty never get upset when the Church tells us that the government needs to outlaw abortion and that Catholics have an obligation to oppose pro-choice legislation.

Oh, but Alt, abortion is an intrinsic evil! Whereas, the same is not true with respect to deportation. In some cases, deportation is perfectly just; and the Church has even said that nations have a right to control borders.

Except that that’s irrelevant to what Mr. Arroyo said. Mr. Arroyo did not say that there are some aspects of immigration that nations can work out for themselves as a point of prudential judgment. What he said was that immigration—apparently of itself—is “not the pope’s job.” What he said was that the pope has no business getting involved in immigration at all.

And this is so far from not only the long-established moral teaching of the Catholic Church, but the entire Judaeo-Christian tradition, that I marvel even Raymond Arroyo can say it with such a straight face, such a blithe wave of the hand, without bursting into flames. Ethical teaching on this begins with the Mosaic law:

The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:34)

Oh, but Alt, that’s from the Mosaic law; that was specific to the Hebrew people.

Oh? Then I have two questions:

• If Leviticus 19:34 is “specific to the Hebrew people,” why isn’t Leviticus 18:22 “specific to the Hebrew people”? That’s the one that reads, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Perhaps upholding Leviticus 18:22 is “not the pope’s job” either.

• Why is it that Jesus is so insistent that how we treat the “least of these” matters?—indeed, he even says that our very salvation depends on it: that how we treat them is no different than how we treat him.

Then he will say to those at his left hand, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they will also answer, “Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?” Then he will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.” And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matt. 25:41-46)

The Catholic moral tradition has never taught that we get to pit any one of “the least of these” against any other one of “the least of these.” The unborn are not in competition with immigrants, the sick and elderly are not in competition with the imprisoned. That is why Gaudium et Spes 27 speaks of all of them as inseparable (and quotes Matthew 25 into the bargain):

In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering for a sin he did not commit, or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord, "As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me" (Matt. 25:40).

Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.

Later, in his great pro-life encyclical Evangelium Vitae, St. John Paul II quotes this passage—at the very outset, in paragraph 3—and says it is “the genuine sentiment of every upright conscience.” In § 8, he laments the “lack of soildarity towards society’s weakest members” and includes immigrants on that list.

And while the Church concedes that immigration should be justly regulated—the key word there is “justly”—it also insists (Compendium 298) that they are to be “received as persons and helped.”

And of course, the reason the Church insists on all this is because the dignity of the human person transcends every other political and ethical consideration—as Pope Francis pointed out in his very last letter to the bishops of the United States:

In fact, when we speak of “infinite and transcendent dignity,” we wish to emphasize that the most decisive value possessed by the human person surpasses and sustains every other juridical consideration that can be made to regulate life in society. Thus, all the Christian faithful and people of good will are called upon to consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, not vice versa.

For Pope Francis, there is no such thing as an issue that is merely political, merely “prudential,” without the necessity of its being informed by the “infinite and transcendent dignity” of the human person. Immigration is a political issue, and it is a complicated one, but immigrants are human persons; and the Church insists—because God insists—that how we treat them is no different than how we treat Jesus Christ. The Church insists upon their humane treatment because Jesus says that our very salvation depends on it.

And I’m afraid—with all due respect, ahem, to Raymond Arroyo—that salvation is “the pope’s job.” Not to mention the fact that a great many immigrants are Catholic, and the pope is the supreme shepherd of Catholics. It certainly is “the pope’s job” to be concerned for their welfare and that they are treated humanely.

But it is not just that. The Church has such a high view of immigrants, refugees, and migrants that Pope Pius XII—that dangerous liberal—wrote an apostolic constitution establishing norms for their treatment and comparing them to the Holy Family. It’s called Exsul Familia Nazarethena, and this is how Pius XII begins:

The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, living in exile in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king, are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien and refugee of whatever kind who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil.

St. Teresa of Calcutta said of the poor she worked with: “Every single one of them is Jesus.” That is no less true of every immgrant, every migrant, every refugee. Every single one of them is Jesus. Every single one of them is “the pope’s job.”

Oh, but Alt, when the Church talks about deportation as such an evil, of course, it only has in mind the kind of deportations that occurred during World War II … you know, where legal citizens were rounded up and sent to camps without due process.

I see. Well, I’m sure glad that’s not happening.