Lux Lucet

Scriptural Arguments

In SNL, the bishops appeal to four Old Testament passages: Exodus 23:9, Leviticus 19:9-10, Leviticus 19:33, and Deuteronomy 14:28-29. According to the bishops, these passages justify the massive influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal, that have come into America over the past few years.

Exodus 23:9 reads, “Also you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Sometimes, Christians can be swayed by Rome’s arguments from the Scriptures. But it’s important to keep in mind that the Devil can quote the Scriptures and did so in his temptation of Christ.  Another point to remember is to ask what the bishops mean by this quotation. The key here is that a statement gets its meaning from its context.  In this case, the context is the doctrine of the Roman Church-State, specifically, Rome’s Catholic social teaching. The bishops write:

The Holy Spirit has been present throughout the history of the Church to work against injustice, division, and oppression and to bring about respect for individual human rights, unity of races and cultures, and the incorporation of the marginalized into full life in the Church. In modern times, one of the ways this work of the Spirit has been manifested is through Catholic social teaching, in particular the teachings on human dignity and the principle of solidarity.[1]

The first thing to know about Catholic social teaching is that it is socialist; that is, it represents an attack on the Biblical institution of private property that traces back to Adam.[2] This attack began in earnest with Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII that is the foundation of Catholic social teaching. In his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins wrote,

One of the Roman Church-State’s most influential statements on economic matters is the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, On the Condition of the Working Classes. In this encyclical the Roman Church-State allied herself with the proletariat, which in Marxism is the great and final enemy of the capitalist order. The encyclical’s Marxism is so blatant that one Roman Catholic writer declared that “much of the encyclical [Rerum Novarum] appeared only to repeat in more orthodox language what Marx had said ten years before.”[3]

Because the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church begins with collectivist premises and not the Biblical premises of private property, Rome misinterprets the passages quoted in SNL as justifying welfare for aliens, both legal and illegal.

In SNL, the bishops tipped their socialist hand when they wrote,

Nevertheless, he [Pope John XXIII] stressed the obligation of sovereign states to promote the universal good where possible, including an obligation to accommodate migration flows. For more powerful nations, a stronger obligation exists.[4]

In the paragraph quoted above from Ecclesiastical Megalomania, a Catholic writer admitted that Rerum Novarum “appeared only to repeat in more orthodox language what Marx had said ten years earlier.”[5] With this quote from SNL, the bishops continue the Church-State’s Marxist tradition by paraphrasing the famous Marxist dictum, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Christians would agree that nations should not oppress immigrants and asylees, but unlike Rome, we do not believe the Bible teaches that Americans should be forced by their government to pay for welfare benefits for immigrants and asylees.[6]

Indeed, one of the principal problems with Rome’s theory of immigration is that it conflates private charity with government welfare. Christian charity is always the voluntary giving of one’s own things. Government welfare, on the other hand, is theft, a violation of the Eighth Commandment. Robbins puts it this way,

This is an axiom of giving: One cannot legally or morally give away that which one does not own. Giving is the voluntary transfer of a property title by one party to another, without receiving title to other property in return. (That is why government charity is a contradiction in terms: Government forces taxpayers to fund the welfare programs. There is no voluntary transfer of property titles.)[7]

As there was no welfare state in ancient Israel, all the passages in the Old Testament that speak of caring for the poor and the stranger are to be understood as acts of private charity, not government welfare. We know they were considered acts of private charity because no civil penalty was attached to the commands. To ignore them was a sin, but it was not a crime.

By contrast, Americans are forced to pay taxes to the government, which then uses some of these tax revenues to fund welfare benefits for aliens, legal and illegal, living in the United States.[8] There is nothing voluntary about paying these taxes. If you refuse, they send IRS agents after you, and you go to jail.

Nothing about the welfare state passes Biblical muster. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul wrote, “For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” Further, in Romans 13, Paul tells us the role of civil government, and it doesn’t involve the welfare state. The government’s job is two-fold: punish those who practice evil and reward the good. Giving handouts to illegal aliens, legal immigrants, or refugees[9] is not on this list and is, therefore, sinful. Specifically, it violates the Eighth Commandment, thou shalt not steal.

The costs of feeding, housing, schooling, and providing medical treatment to immigrants is an enormous and growing problem. Since both legal[10] and illegal aliens are receiving benefits at the expense of the American taxpayer, perhaps it would be better to speak of “socialist immigration” and “capitalist immigration” rather than “illegal” or “legal” immigration.

As John Robbins noted,

Giving per se is not a virtue. Only giving to the glory of God is. That implies, among other things, that Christians should not support non-Christian charities. It also means that Christians should not vote for or advocate government welfare programs.[11]

Since this is the case, Christians must reject Rome’s calls for immigration socialism. In SNL, Rome argues that the American people have “a stronger obligation” “to promote the universal good” … “including an obligation to accommodate migration flows.” This is a figment of Antichrist’s imagination. No such obligations exist for the American people, and teaching them that there are is sinful. The bishops who wrote SNL are like the Pharisees of old. As Jesus said, “[T]hey bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.”

Immigration Vocabulary

In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell wrote about Newspeak, the language the Party used to control what people said and thought. In a similar fashion to the Party, the Roman Church-State attempts to control any discussion of immigration by imposing its vocabulary on the debate. There are at least three examples of this in SNL.

Newcomers

Three times in SNL, the bishops use the word “newcomers.” This word has found its way into the discussion of the illegal aliens that have flooded into America in recent years under the current presidential administration. One headline reads, “South Texas nun tries to restore humanity for ‘desperate’ newcomers amid anti-immigrant rhetoric.” Denver mayor Mike Johnston’s office, whose principal aim seems to be to destroy the city of Denver with illegal aliens, has gone so far as to issue a guide titled “Newcomers Playbook.” Said Johnson, “Over the last year and a half, despite the federal government failing to support our cities, Denver has led by building sustainable systems that help newcomers get back on their feet and turning a crisis into opportunity.”[12]

Speaking about “newcomers” rather than “illegal aliens” helps the bishops and all those engaged in their treasonous, irredentist immigration assault on America make their destructive policies sound more appealing.

Root Causes

Four times in SNL, the bishops write about “addressing the root causes of migration.” The bishops are a bit vague about what the “root causes of migration” are, but they give us a clue when they write about “economic inequalities between the United States and Mexico….”[13] Given that there historically have been “economic inequalities between the United States and Mexico” and likely will continue to be into the future, this root cause will never go away and thus will always provide the Church-State with an excuse to advocate for more socialist immigration policies.

It should come as no surprise that many leading American politicians are now talking about solving the “root causes of migration.” In July 2021, the current Jesuit-influenced presidential administration issued a paper titled “U.S. Strategy for Addressing the Root Causes of Migration in Central America.”[14] Did the writers of this document borrow their “root causes” language from the bishops writing in SNL?

Family Separation

The bishops complain about “family separation” several times in SNL. In one place, the bishops claim illegal aliens face one of two alternatives: “either honor their moral commitment to family and migrate to the United States without proper documentation, or wait in the system and face indefinite separation from loved ones.”[15]

This is a false choice. There is another alternative that the bishops don’t want to mention: trust in the Lord to provide and obey the law. Doubtless, there are people in desperate circumstances in many nations in the world. As Christians, we can sympathize with their situation, pray for them, and even donate our own time and money to help them. But this doesn’t mean it’s moral for such persons to violate American immigration law. The bishops’ moral teaching here seems to be related to Rome’s doctrine of the universal destination of all goods,[16] a socialist teaching of Thomas Aquinas in which it is not sinful to take the property of another if one needs it. In like fashion, according to the bishops, one can violate American immigration law if there is a need to prevent family separation.

Preventing family separation has been a staple of the public pronouncements of the Roman Church-State for years. And there is no shortage of politicians within Rome’s orbit ready to hop on the bandwagon and condemn any and all attempts to stop illegal aliens from flooding into the United States by denouncing such attempts as leading to family separation. Perhaps those who violate American immigration law should bear the blame for causing the separation of their families together with the bishops who encourage them to act thus.

Attacks on the Border Patrol

The bishops are more than happy to excuse illegal behavior when it helps their irredentist cause. In “Romanizing America through Illegal Immigration,”[17] Ralph Ovadal notes SNL’s attack on American law enforcement.  Writes Ovadal,

They [the bishops] are also outraged that our border patrol would actually arrest individuals criminally crossing our borders. “Alarmingly, migrants often are treated as criminals.”

Church-State prelates want you to think that crossing into the United States isn’t a crime. And this same approach is taken by the media.  If we take SNL and the newspapers at their word, America is filled with millions of law-abiding illegal aliens.  This is obviously absurd as the fact that they came into the United States illegally proves that they are not law-abiding. 

Before writing this article, it had been some time since I had read SNL. And upon rereading it, I was struck by just how strident the bishops’ attacks on law enforcement were. The bishops complain extensively about the “physical abuse of migrants by U.S. Border Patrol agents” while never condemning the illegal behavior of illegal aliens. It’s enough to remind one of the BLM riots in 2020, in which mostly peaceful protestors were praised while law enforcement was regularly blamed.

Rome also seeks to blame the Border Patrol and U.S. policy for causing the deaths of those who choose to cross into the U.S. illegally. But the deaths of those attempting to cross into the U.S. illegally are not the fault of the Border Patrol or U.S. laws. Instead, the blame lies principally on the shoulders of the Roman Church-State. There are at least 2 reasons for this.

First, as noted above, the bishops like to speak of the root cause of migration as the “economic inequalities between the United States and Mexico.” Ask yourself this question, what has been the dominant institution in Mexico and Latin America for over 500 years? Clearly, it is the Roman Church-State. Is it possible that the economic theory of the Church-State is the actual root cause of the “economic inequalities between the United States and Mexico?”

In Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins quoted economist Peter Bauer on two papal encyclicals dealing with economic issues. Wrote Bauer,

Populorum Progressio and Octogesima Adveniens are documents which are immoral on several levels. To begin with they are incompetent, and they are immoral because they are incompetent…. The documents are also immoral in that they give colour to the notion that envy can be legitimate; and they spread confusion about the meaning of charity.[18]

If Peter Bauer is right, and he is, then the reason Rome cites as the root cause of the problem of illegal immigration is the incompetent and immoral economic thought of the Church-State itself, not the activities of the U.S. Border Patrol.   

Second, Rome continues to encourage illegal immigration into the U.S., knowing that some of those making the trip will die as a result. To shift the blame for the deaths of those attempting to cross into the U.S. to the Border Patrol, when in fact, it is Rome’s policies – both the Church-State’s incompetent and immoral economic thought and its irredentist war on the American Republic – that are to blame for the migrants’ deaths along the border is profoundly dishonest and evil.

---

[1] SNL 27, emphasis mine.

[2] In his essay “Biblical Principles of Giving,” John Robbins noted, “In the beginning God entrusted the Garden, indeed, the whole Earth (excepting one tree), to Adam…Adam lost the privilege of living in the lush Garden that God had prepared, for Adam stole fruit from God’s tree. He did not respect God’s property. But Adam did not lose his ownership of the Earth. That legal title passed from him to his children, as Adam determined.” Unlike what Thomas Aquinas taught and what Rome teaches today, God did not give the world to mankind collectively. He gave it to Adam as an individual, who then passed his property to his children. In other words, the original economic order at the dawn of creation was private property, that is, capitalism. Following Aquinas, the Roman Church-State, on the other hand, believes in original communism.

[3] John W. Robbins, Ecclesiastical Megalomania (Unicoi: The Trinity Foundation, 1999), 43.

[4] SNL 30.

[5] Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 43.

[6] The bishops who wrote SNL, and indeed Roman Catholic writers in general, studiously avoid stating clearly that it is the taxpayer who will be forced to bear the enormous costs of welfare for immigrants, either through direct taxation, inflation, etc. The bishops here write about “nations” having an obligation. But this is dishonest. The “obligation” they speak of will always fall upon the American people individually.

[7] Robbins, “Biblical Principles of Giving.”

[8] Illegal aliens are ineligible for welfare benefits. However, due to the American policy of granting birthright citizenship to the children of illegal aliens, the illegal parents can request welfare on behalf of their citizen children. Further, local school districts are required to educate the children of illegal aliens, which places an enormous strain on local schools in areas with large illegal alien populations. Illegal aliens amass enormous hospital bills as well. “Hospitals are required by federal regulations to provide life-sustaining treatment to uninsured undocumented immigrants who show up in the emergency department and to treat them until they can be discharged safely.” Such is the case according to the article, “This undocumented immigrant has been stuck in the hospital for six months. And she’s not alone.” By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas and Kasturi Pananjady, CT Mirror, June 15, 2021, https://ctmirror.org/2021/06/15/this-undocumented-immigrant-has-been-stuck-in-the-hospital-for-six-months-and-shes-not-alone/, accessed 10/23/2024. Who pays for the emergency room visits of the illegal aliens? The article states, “The state and federal governments are picking up the bulk of that bill.”
  

[9] To be clear, the same prohibition on the welfare state holds if the recipients are American citizens rather than illegal aliens.

[10] Many of the Haitian immigrants that have been in the news recently are beneficiaries of what is known as the CHNV Parole Program (CHNV standing for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) and are, therefore, legally in the country. According to America First Legal, beneficiaries of the CHNV program “are able to obtain work permits and ultimately claim public benefits, such as Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare, depleting critical resources from American citizens” https://x.com/America1stLegal/status/1833233638739349926, accessed 10/23/2024.

[11] Robbins, “Biblical Principles of Giving.”

[12] “Denver Mayor Mike Johnston created a how-to guide for cities welcoming new immigrants” by Kyle Harris, Denverite, April 26, 2024, https://denverite.com/2024/04/26/denver-mayor-new-immigrants-playbook/, accessed 10/23/2024.

[13] SNL 60.

[14] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Root-Causes-Strategy.pdf

[15] SNL 65.

[16] See Ecclesiastical Megalomania Chapter 2 for an in-depth discussion of the universal destination of all goods.

[17] “Romanizing America through Illegal Immigration,” by Pastor Ralph Ovadal, April 10, 2003, https://www.pccmonroe.org/romanizing-america-through-illegal-immigration.html, accessed 10/23/2024.

[18] Ecclesiastical Megalomania, 63.

Pages: 1 2