USCCB Distorts Church Teachings To Cajole Catholics Into Voting For Open Borders

There is nothing Christian about facilitating the erosion of national identity.

This past February, President Biden referred to the tsunami of current migrants as “newcomers.” A euphemism that normalizes illegal migration, it was a cue for Catholic voters. The word was the brainchild of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). It appeared in the 2024 USCCB document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility.”

The Gospel mandate to “welcome the stranger” requires Catholics to care for and stand with newcomers, authorized and unauthorized, including unaccompanied immigrant children, refugees and asylum-seekers, those unnecessarily detained, and victims of human trafficking.

Under the heading “Global Solidarity,” the USCCB conflates immigration with migration. The first is a legal process, in effect a contract between arrivals and the state. In current context, the latter term refers to illegal entry by the brute force of overwhelming numbers. Moralistic disdain for distinction between “authorized and unauthorized” entry is the core of open borders dogma.

In August, Pope Francis used the bully pulpit of St. Peter’s Square to pressure nations of the West to keep their borders open, no matter the consequence to their native populations. He presented prudent immigration restriction as a moral crime and dismissed legality. The USCCB reported:

“It needs to be said clearly: There are those who systematically work by all means to drive away migrants, and this, when done knowingly and deliberately, is a grave sin,” he said during his general audience Aug. 28.

Without irony — and short on historical sense — the USCCB continued:

Reflecting on the seas and deserts migrants many cross to reach their destinations, Pope Francis noted the biblical significance of such areas as “places of suffering, of fear, of despair, but at the same time they are places of passage to liberation, to redemption, to attaining freedom and the fulfillment of God’s promises.”

The USCCB removes the “biblical significance of sanctuary” from its cultural context in the ancient Near East in order to dress it in modern politics. James K. Hoffmeier, a leading Egyptologist and scholar of biblical archeology, lays the groundwork for understanding the tension between biblical emphasis on hospitality to sojourners and dual emphasis on requiring submission to the law of the land. As he explains, the concept of sanctuary was instituted to ameliorate the consequences of lex talionis, the law of retaliation practiced by most ancient societies.

Sanctuary in ancient Israel designated certain locations scattered about where someone who had unintentionally killed another — what we might call involuntary manslaughter — could be protected from arbitrary retaliation. A defendant could flee to a specific sanctuary and “state his case before the elders of that city” (Josh. 20:4). The purpose was to ensure a fair trial. It protected an offender from culturally admissible vigilante justice.

This idea of sanctuary, entrenched in Old Testament law, was rooted in a particular hour of history. It was devoid of modern sentimentality. Any sanctuary seeker judged guilty of malicious, deliberate murder would be expelled from the temporary haven and duly punished. By contrast, our own so-called sanctuary cities and states are wild cards that can shelter whatever ideological agenda is on the table, from illegal migration to abortion and transgender surgery.

In sum, biblical sanctuary represented a refinement of established law. Today’s sanctuary protocols, by contrast, are a partisan end-run around established law. They offer avoidance techniques that serve the utopian One-World fantasy that captivates progressive elites.

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