{"id":54535,"date":"2025-11-15T14:33:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T14:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/54535\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T14:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T14:33:14","slug":"commentary-can-opposing-trumps-deportation-machine-help-catholic-church-regain-its-moral-mojo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/54535\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary: Can opposing Trump’s deportation machine help Catholic Church regain its moral mojo?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When millions of European immigrants came to the United States in the 19th century only to be scorned by mainstream society, it was the Catholic Church that embraced them, taught that keeping the customs of one\u2019s native lands<\/a> was not bad and created systems of mutual aid and education for the newcomers that didn\u2019t rely on the government. <\/p>\n

The 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, an Irish American Catholic<\/a>, showed that the U.S. was ready to expand its definition of who could become president. Labor organizers like Cesar Chavez<\/a>, Dorothy Day<\/a> and Mother Jones pushed for the dignity of workers while frequently citing the woke words of Jesus \u2014 the Sermon of the Mount and the Beatitudes among the wokest \u2014 as the fuel for their spiritual fire.<\/p>\n

Catholicism is the faith I was baptized in, the one I embraced as a teen and that\u2019s the bedrock for my moral code of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. My work desk covered with statues and devotional cards of Jesus, Mary and the saints is a physical testament to this. <\/p>\n

But I\u2019m also one of the 72% of U.S. Catholics that a Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year<\/a>. found don\u2019t attend weekly Mass, which we\u2019re obligated to do. <\/p>\n

I stopped going early on in my adulthood because the Church became something I didn\u2019t recognize.<\/p>\n

The bishops and cardinals who preached we should follow Jesus\u2019 admonition we should tend to the least among us presided over a child sex abuse scandal in the 1990s and 2000s that cost parishioners billions of dollars in legal settlements<\/a> and their ethical high ground. The obsession that too many of those same church leaders had over abortion<\/a> and homosexuality<\/a> \u2014 which Christ never talked about \u2014 over social justice matters during the Obama administration left me disappointed. Their continual condemnation of pro-choice Catholic Democratic politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden for taking Communion<\/a> while staying silent about Donald Trump\u2019s constant violations of the Ten Commandments was rank hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

The Pew Research Center found 55% of my fellow faithful voted for Trump<\/a>. Key Catholics have blessed Trump\u2019s uglier tendencies: A majority of them rules over our revanchist Supreme Court while the president\u2019s team features a vice president who\u2019s a convert<\/a> and a rogue\u2019s gallery of influential insiders that bear surnames from previous generations of Catholic diasporas \u2014 Kennedy<\/a>, Rubio<\/a>, Bovino<\/a>, Homan<\/a> among the worst of the worst.<\/p>\n

Yet I remain a Catholic because you shouldn\u2019t turn your back so easily on institutions that formed you and you don\u2019t cede your identity to heretics. The election of Pope Leo XIV<\/a>, the first American to head the Holy See, to succeed Pope Francis stirred in me the sense that things might change for the better as our country worsens. <\/p>\n

Now, without naming him, the U.S. Catholic hierarchy has rebuked Trump on his signature issue and one close to my heart in a way that shows my hope hasn\u2019t been in vain.<\/p>\n

\"Clergy <\/p>\n

Clergy attend the 2021 Fall General Assembly meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, Md.<\/p>\n

(Julio Cortez\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n

This week the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a so-called \u201cspecial message\u201d<\/a> to blast Trump\u2019s deportation Leviathan, decrying its \u201cvilification of immigrants\u201d \u201cthe, indiscriminate mass deportation of people\u201d and how hundreds of thousands of residents have \u201carbitrarily lost their legal status.\u201d Citing passages from across the Bible \u2014 the Gospel, the Old Testament, the Letters of Paul \u2014 to argue for the human worth of the undocumented and the holy mandate that we must care about them, it was the first time since 2013 that American bishops collectively authored such a statement.<\/p>\n

Even as a majority of U.S. Catholics have gone MAGA, support for the special message was overwhelming: 216 bishops voted in favor, 5 against, and there were 3 abstentions. Their missive even concluded with a shout-out to Our Lady of Guadalupe<\/a>, the brown, pregnant apparition of the Virgin Mary who\u2019s the patroness of the Americas for Catholics. <\/p>\n

Talk about someone who would get deported if la migra saw Her on the street.<\/p>\n

The cruelty this administration has shown throughout its deportation campaign \u2014 families torn apart as easily as the Constitution; U.S. citizens detained<\/a>; wanton federal violence that a federal judge in Chicago described as \u201cshock[ing] the conscience\u201d<\/a> \u2014 has become one of the most pressing moral issues of our times. The call by Catholic bishops to oppose this wrong is important \u2014 so like a voice crying in the wilderness, the church must set an example for the rest of the country to follow.<\/p>\n

This example already is being set in parishes across Southern California.<\/p>\n

Priests and deacons have marched at rallies and prayed for those detained and deported from Orange County to downtown L.A. and beyond. Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights has let local activists stage know-your-rights workshops<\/a> since Trump won last November. While L.A archbishop Jos\u00e9 H. Gomez and Diocese of Orange bishop Kevin Vann, the two most senior Catholic prelates in the region<\/a>, have spoken out forcefully against immigration raids, some of their local brother bishops have pushed harder. <\/p>\n

Diocese of San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas has allowed Catholics who are afraid of la migra<\/a> to skip Mass since July after immigration agents detained migrants on church property, arguing \u201csuch fear constitutes a grave inconvenience\u201d for his flock. In San Diego, Bishop Michael Pham \u2014 who\u2019s been in his seat for only four months \u2014 helped launch a program encouraging religious leaders to accompany migrants to immigration court to bear witness to the injustices inside and has participated himself.<\/p>\n

Expect to hear gnashing of the teeth from the conservative side of church pews about how everyone should respect the rule of law and to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar\u2019s as if there ever was a Pope Donald. Already, Trump border czar Tom Homan has cried that the bishops are<\/a> \u201cwrong\u201d for issuing their pro-immigrant letter and suggested they focus on \u201cfixing the Catholic Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Homan\u2019s dismissal and that of his fellow travelers doesn\u2019t make the bishop\u2019s admonition against Trump\u2019s policies any more prophetic. The president\u2019s immigration dictates are out of Herod \u2014 no less an authority than Pope Leo described them in October as \u201cinhuman,\u201d told a delegation of American bishops that \u201cthe church cannot remain silent\u201d on those outrages and stated in a separate speech that such abuse was \u201cnot the legitimate exercise of national sovereignty, but rather grave crimes committed or tolerated by the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Catholic Church never will be as progressive as some want it to be. Even as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released its message, the group elected as its next president Diocese of Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, whose public politics have so far mostly aligned with those of his deep-red state<\/a>. But on the issue of dignity for immigrants during the Trump era, U.S. bishops have been on the right side of history \u2014 and God. They criticized Trump\u2019s Muslim ban and his move to separate undocumented parents from their children during his first administration and have kept a watch on his attempt to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows some people who came to this country as children to legally remain in the U.S.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re about to enter the Christmas season, a holiday based on the story of a poor family seeking shelter in an era when their kind was rejected by the powers that be and ultimately had to flee home. It\u2019s the story of the United States as well, one too many Americans have forsaken and that Trump wants all of us to forget. <\/p>\n

May Catholics remind their fellow Americans anew of how powerful and righteous standing up for the stranger is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When millions of European immigrants came to the United States in the 19th century only to be scorned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[29669,27481,7363,34119,29670,34116,34115,34114,48,52,51,47,50,49,34118,32735,6283,34117,1519,2281,435],"class_list":["post-54535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bishop","tag-catholic-church","tag-country","tag-dignity","tag-diocese","tag-european-immigrant","tag-jesus","tag-key-catholics","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-migrant","tag-pope-leo-xiv","tag-president","tag-special-message","tag-trump","tag-u-s","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}