The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to enforce U.S. immigration laws have been controversial, not least in Catholic circles. On one hand, Vice President J. D. Vance has defended the administration’s restrictive immigration policy by appealing to the theological notion of the ordo amoris (or order of charity), according to which our strongest obligations are to those closest to us, such as our fellow citizens. But others note that the Church’s Catechism teaches that a prosperous nation is obliged “to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin” (2241). In a February letter to the American Catholic bishops, Pope Francis indicated his “disagreement” with the administration, and appeared to criticize the vice president for an “ideological” distortion of the ordo amoris (while refraining from mentioning Vance by name).
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Yet while progressive Catholics conclude that Vance and other Catholic defenders of administration policy are flatly at odds with Church teaching on immigration, I will argue that that is not the case. In fact, the progressives rely on simplistic platitudes and selective quotations from authoritative documents. But when the entirety of the Church’s teaching is taken into account, it is clear that—within certain clearly defined boundaries—there can be reasonable disagreement about the contours of immigration policy among faithful Catholics. Indeed, it is clear that Vice President Vance is not only well within those boundaries, but is in fact on much stronger ground than those who advocate a virtually “open borders” position in the name of Catholicism.
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