The migrant caravan on its way to the United States. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops calls them missionaries. Others may use a different term.
One of the mains goals of this blog is to bring a Scripturalist analysis to bear on the events of the day. That is, it is my aim to apply the Scripturalist axiom that the Bible has a systematic monopoly on truth to current events.
As Christians, it can be easy to fall into the trap of supposing that, while the Bible is good for learning about how to be saved, when it comes to the important political and economic questions of the day, we need to look for answers elsewhere rather than in the Word of God.
For a number of years now, the related issues of immigration, migration and refugee resettlement have been at the forefront of the news in Europe, the United States and other areas of the world.
Because of its prominence in the news and because the subject, for the most part, is treated incompetently by the mainstream media, liberals, conservatives, and even Evangelical Christians, I had long wanted to write about immigration but felt somewhat inadequate for the task.
My first systematic foray into the topic was with my series Immigration, Citizenship and the Bible, which I wrote on this blog over a period of about a year and a half from September 2016 through the spring of 2018.
I guess I just can’t leave well enough alone. For it was a just a few months later that I started a second immigration series, this time called Mexico, Mass Migration and the Example of Moses, of which this post is the ninth installment.
This new immigration series was prompted by an extraordinary statement made last summer by then Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO as he is known in Mexico). Said AMLO, “And soon, very soon – after the victory of our movement – we will defend migrants all over the American continent and migrants of the world who, by necessity, must abandon their towns to find life in the United States…It’s a human right we will defend.” That was in June 2018.
I have to admit that I didn’t plan it this way, but just a few months later it appears that, with the Honduran migrant caravan getting a free pass through Mexico as I write, the Mexican government appears to be attempting to make good on AMLO’s promise, and he isn’t even scheduled to take office until December 1st!
If nothing else, the caravan certainly makes the timing of this series propitious. But it gets even better.
As part of the Mexico, Mass Migration and Moses series, it was my intention from the start to write about one of the key documents supplying the intellectual foundation of the caravan, a 2003 pastoral letter by the Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States titled Strangers No longer Together on the Journey of Hope (hereafter SNL).
John Robbins often made the point that the things men do, their practices, always are based on some prior theory. As practical Americans, we tend to disdain theory and focus only on actions. But if it’s true that man’s actions always represent the practice of some prior theory, and it is, then it is theory that is primary and actions that are secondary. Further, it is theory that should interest us the most.
If a man’s ideas about the way the world should work are sound, his practice likewise will tend to be sound. If his world view is based upon false ideas, his practice will tend to be corrupt.
In my review of SNL, I would like once again to focus on the Roman Church-State’s theory of migration – in two earlier installments of this series I focused on the most important Roman Catholic migration document of all, Pope Pius XII’s 1952 apostolic constitution Exsul Familia; you may read these installments here and here – by comparing the words of the bishops who wrote it with the Word of God. If their ideas – that is, the intellectual foundation of their calls for mass, taxpayer subsidized migration – do not hold up under the light of Scripture, then likewise their proposals for mass migration, immigration and refugee resettlement – including their defense of the caravan – fall too.
And not only does a refutation of SNL devastate the Roman Church-State’s theory of migration and nullify its petulant demands that nations pay it heed, it also exposes AMLO’s proclamation – which is nothing other than a restatement of Exsul Familia and SNL in his own words – to defend the right of all migrants to come and live in the US as the dangerous absurdity it truly is.
The truth is, refuting SNL from the Scriptures is not all that difficult. In short, SNL is a very Marian document, it is a very socialist document and it is a very globalist document, all which ideas are antithetical to Biblical Christianity. In my following remarks, I shall take on each of these ideas in order.
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