Did Not Christ Himself Tell Us to Import a Whole Bunch of Cheap Housekeepers and Underaged Sex Workers for Our Pleasure and Leisure

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued “a Special Message addressing their concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States.” You can read the full text here, or watch them actressy-pity-face the whole message here:

You can tell from “the evolving situation impacting immigrants” that they’re addressing something they won’t face. They define the problem in the vaguest possible terms, and do it repeatedly. There’s a situation, and it’s, you know, occurring. We decry the various things that are taking place. Second sentence: “We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement.” What are those questions? Oh, pilgrim, let us not descend into the moral clarity of saying what we mean. There’s a situation, and questions of some kind are arising about the mumble mumble.

“We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.” Is it inherently immoral for law enforcement officers to detain someone who is taking a child to school? If I burglarize a house, does school drop-off morally immunize me from arrest? What does any of this mean?

The bishops say that “we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity. Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants.”

They don’t really finish the thought: arresting someone who has broken the law is a violation of that person’s “fundamental dignity” in what way, exactly?

Watch the strawmen pile up:

We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good. Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks.

We have that. You can apply to enter the United States lawfully. We have safe and legal pathways. I gather from immigration attorneys that those processes are frequently a giant pain in the ass, but we have them. “Without such processes…” means what, if we have such processes?

And so on: “The priority of the Lord, as the Prophets remind us, is for those who are most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger (Zechariah 7:10).”

You mean like this?

Religion as the vague expression of concern-face handwringing, muddled and half-considered, like AWFLs at brunch. Morality is being nice!

There are real moral questions to be debated about the flood of illegal and semi-legalish immigrants who entered the country during the President Autopen interregnum, and the dark question of why the border was thrown open to them, but the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops hasn’t even begun to consider those questions. A bunch of professional moral leaders have come up with the equivalent of a lawn sign.