Religion
Related: About this forumImmigration reform becomes a Catholic ‘pro-life’ cause
Cardinal Sean O'Malley hands out communion wafers through the fence that cuts Ambos Nogales in two. The communion was part of a mass, held in the city during a border tour by seven Catholic bishops.
By John L. Allen Jr. | GLOBE STAFF APRIL 05, 2014
In Catholic parlance, certain terms carry weight far beyond their face value meaning. Calling something a pro-life issue, for instance, means not only that it involves the churchs teaching on the sacredness of human life, but that it merits an investment of blood, sweat, and tears tantamount to the churchs struggles against abortion and birth control.
In that sense of the term, Tuesday, April 1, 2014, may go down as the day immigration reform officially became a pro-life cause for the Catholic church in the United States.
Bishops and other church leaders in America have advocated immigration reform for years, but theyve never been more emphatic or creative about it than on Tuesday, when a delegation of nine American prelates led by Cardinal Sean P. OMalley of Boston traveled to Nogales, Ariz., to celebrate a Mass at the United States/Mexican border, to lay a wreath at the border commemorating the estimated 6,000 people who have died trying to make the crossing, and to stage a news conference urging reform of what they called a broken system.
The liturgy featured an instantly iconic visual of OMalley and Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson distributing communion to outstretched hands from the Mexican side of the border through slats in a 20-foot-high security fence.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/04/05/immigration-reform-becomes-catholic-pro-life-cause/2XHiTpDhrKL8pWqreakpwI/story.html
A delegation of nine American prelates led by Cardinal Sean P. OMalley of Boston (pictured) traveled to Nogales, Ariz., to celebrate a Mass at the United States/Mexican border, to lay a wreath at the border commemorating the estimated 6,000 people who have died trying to make the crossing, and to stage a news conference urging reform of what they called a broken system.
MellowDem
(5,018 posts)often has to do with what is best for the Catholic Church IMHO. Being pro-life on abortion? There will be more Catholics with less abortion (or so hoes the logic). Being pro-immigration reform? Many recent immigrants to the US are Catholic, and legalizing them increases the a Church's power here in the US.
Sometimes their agenda lines up with the progressive agenda, but for very different reasons. But their focus also belies their hypocrisy. The Catholic Church says it's about fighting poverty, but it isn't. If it was, it wouldn't be advocating against contraception. The Catholic Church says it's pro-life while discouraging condom use in places with AIDS. The Catholic Church serves a tyrannical genocidal misogynist made up god. That is their focus.
rug
(82,333 posts)MellowDem
(5,018 posts)and the Catholic Church calling it a pro-life issue, a term it uses to bash pro-choicers, strikes me as mere opportunism to try and rile up their base with the same culture war terminology that has served them so well. In other words, I find it all very insincere.
As the article notes, this is about the Catholic Church helping it's own more and more, with many immigrants being Catholic. And beyond that, this isn't about helping others, it's about pleasing a tyrannical god so he doesn't throw you in a lake of fire, but few ever say that. It's disingenuous.
I think the Catholic Church should be more honest on why it does what it does.
rug
(82,333 posts)The "pro-life" phrase is in the headline, although it is consistent with its teaching of across the board respect for life.
https://www.siena.edu/pages/6655.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_life_ethic
Surely you've seen the numerous criticisms that it has no respect for human life outside the womb. This is one of many things it does that puts the lie to that.
The RCC has done many things that warrant criticism, usually those things that attempt to meld its doctrines to civil law. This is not one of those things.
MellowDem
(5,018 posts)Homosexuals in Uganda being discriminated against and killed based on religious beliefs is a "pro-life" issue, one the Church isn't making a focus. That's because spreading bigotry and misogyny is fundamentally anti-life. So the Catholic Church can never be consistent. Not to mention, they're part of the problem there.
Contraceptives to prevent STDs and stem the tide of poverty by empowering women are both pro-life as well. You can't be consistent when you have to follow a tyrannical genocidal god on the topic of "life".
rug
(82,333 posts)But it is not a doctrinal issue. It's a political fight which, though you may not believe it, is going on. Given its global reach and size, it is likely to be a protracted fight.
The mistake is to treat it as a monolith. That path only leads to uniformed bigotry which is never the path to progress.
MellowDem
(5,018 posts)It's also a political battle elsewhere, but in the forum of religion, it is a doctrinal issue. It's right in the text of the Bible, and it's explicitly part of the doctrine of the church.
That's what makes the church different from the Democratic Party or secular humanists etc., it's a belief system based on "unchanging" principles that can never be wrong. Even the Republican Party will come around on issues once they've been shown to be wrong long enough. And if they don't, they die off as a political party.
Religion, to be consistent, has to double down on wrong. But religion isn't really consistent overall. It can't be if it's to survive. All it can do, is change what it focuses on to seem consistent and avoid the areas it has already been shown to be wrong. That's because any belief system that presumes supernatural knowledge is already predisposed to wrong answers. It's not a rational or reasonable way to think about the world.
okasha
(11,573 posts)in the Rio Grande Valley has consistently opposed the abuse and injustice inherent in US immigration policy. It's good that O'Malley has brought attention to the sector where immigration enforcement is most brutal and to the disgrace of the US' s own Berlin Wall.
rug
(82,333 posts)Dramatic as this was, it didn't look like an outlier.
stanchaz
(50 posts)You do not need to be Christian, or even religious, to understand and appreciate Cardinal O'Malley's message, and his concerns.
As O'Malley said: These immigrants are not different from our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents who left horrific situations because they had the courage, the ambition, the desire to do something for their children, he said.
During the 20 years he worked in Washington in the 1970s and 80s, OMalley said, most of my parishioners were undocumented refugees. To me, theyre not statistics; theyre people, and Ive seen the kinds of sacrifices and the suffering theyve endured.
"We have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters," he quoted Pope Francis. "We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the Levite whom Jesus described in the parable of the good Samaritan."
O'Malley quoted Pope Francis further: "The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people."
"We know the border is lined with unmarked graves," O'Malley said. "They call them illegal aliens. We are here to say they are not forgotten. They are our neighbors. Our brothers. Our sisters.
You cannot love God without loving your neighbor."
Jesus responded to the question: Who is my neighbor? He answered: Your neighbor is the one who treated Me with compassion.
And then he commanded: Go and do likewise.
The face of Christ is to be found in the poor, the illegals, the tired huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of teeming shores, the homeless, the tempest-tossed, and -if you treat your neighbor with compassion and empathy
... within yourself.
calimary
(80,693 posts)Because you can't claim you're "pro-life" if all you care about is meddling up inside a woman's body.
"Pro-life" goes A LOT farther than that. Like outward to cover the health of our entire planet and all the living things on it. THAT'S LIFE TOO.
You better not be a climate crisis denier.
You better not be so cavalier about ignoring science. You better not shrug off those traumatized kids in cages.
You better not be pushing for those sick kids to be deported after they were invited here by doctors BECAUSE of their rare conditions for which the only help was here in America.
You better not be okay with snatching the children of desperate refugees - many of whom may NEVER be reunited as families again.
You better give a damn about active deliberate cruelty as a governmental policy - that's done IN YOUR NAME AND ON YOUR DIME.
You better not be so casual about the reckless wanton epidemic of gun violence.
You better not approve of any schmucks with a chip on their shoulder and spite in their hearts and imaginary stupid-ass nonsensical imagined grievances against their fellow man to be able to get their grubby paws on any hand-held weapons of mass destruction or other massacre machines.
And I could go on and on and on, but that's just what's immediately on the tip of my tongue.