Who Is My Neighbor?

Immigration and the Threat of Papal Subversion

Vice President J. D. Vance’s recent comments on the ordo amoris to help Americans properly reorient their love first toward their families and fellow citizens recently received a strongly-worded response from Pope Francis. Vance is a convert to Catholicism, and while the Pope’s letter was addressed to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the timing of the letter as well as the content and subject of the ordo amoris, makes it clear it was meant for Vance’s eyes and ears.

American political offices have long been dominated by Protestants. There have only been two Catholic Presidents in American history: John F. Kennedy and Joseph Biden. There were many fears when Kennedy was elected that he would be influenced by the Vatican. Biden, who was nominally Catholic (if at all), maintained relations with Pope Francis, who, at least on one occasion, sought to influence the President regarding death row inmates. With Vance as only our second Catholic VP (Biden under Obama was the first), we are once again faced with the uneasy relationship between Washington political elites and the Papacy. 

A Papal Rebuke

In the letter, Pope Francis argued that Catholic Christians ought to have a fundamental disposition of compassion toward immigrants because Israel was a migrant people who fled Egypt, because Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were exiles and refugees in Egypt (fleeing Nazareth), and because Jesus in his incarnation “chose to live the drama of immigration.” With the recent turn in U.S. immigration law toward the mass deportation of illegals, the Pope signaled his displeasure with this development, declaring that this moment is “a decisive moment in history to reaffirm not only our faith in a God who is always close, incarnate, migrant and refugee, but also the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person.”

Pope Francis heavily emphasized the “dignity of the person” and “his or her fundamental rights.” To defend the dignity of all people—regardless of their citizen status—and to protect their universal human rights, the Pope argued, was the essence of the common good: “the true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all—as I have affirmed on numerous occasions—welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable.” In other words, good government is determined by how well it cares for the most vulnerable of the world, for “an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized.”

The Pope made sure to ostensibly respect civil policy that “regulates orderly and legal migration.” Yet he directly attacked VP Vance’s understanding of the ordo amoris. Civil law “cannot … privilege some and sacrifice others,” and Christian love “is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.” Instead, Pope Francis argued, “the true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

In sum, the Holy Father concluded that “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.” This was a direct attack upon and rebuke of not only Vance’s (and many others’) Christian theology but also of current immigration law under the Trump administration.

No Papal Jurisdiction in Protestant America

Patriotic Americans should feel a risible indignation in their chests when they read Pope Francis’s letter to the American Catholic Bishops. Who does the Pope think he is to try to direct U.S. domestic policy from behind the walls of a gated and heavily armed Vatican? Although rarely discussed by modern scholars dogmatically committed to the doctrine of religious pluralism, the founders of America were explicitly anti-Catholic when it came to the Pope’s spiritual and political authority in this country. He was considered to be a foreign potentate, who, because of the Pope’s claim to universal religious and political jurisdiction, was seen as a threat to American sovereignty—if not directly, then at least in the hearts and minds of faithful Catholics who might feel compelled to submit to their spiritual head even if it meant defying civil law or subverting American self-government.

In his 1772 pamphlet The Rights of the Colonists, the fiery and spirited Sam Adams wrote this regarding religious intolerance toward Catholicism:

As neither reason requires, nor religion permits the contrary, every Man living in or out of a state of civil society, has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience … In regard to Religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof, is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced. … The only Sects which he [Locke] thinks ought to be, and which by all wise laws are excluded form such toleration, are those who teach Doctrines subversive of the Civil Government under which they live. The Roman Catholicks or Papists are excluded by reason of such Doctrines as these, “that Princes excommunicated may be deposed, and those they call Hereticks may be destroyed without mercy”; besides their recognizing the Pope in so absolute a manner, in subversion of Government, by introducing as far as possible into the states, under whose protection they enjoy life, liberty and property, that solecism in politicks, Imperium in imperio [an empire within an empire] leading directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war and blood shed.

Adams’ sentiments may seem extreme, but they were commonplace in late eighteenth-century America. American Catholics, as well as many pluralistic Protestants, may argue that Adams’ worries were overblown and never came to fruition: Catholics were accorded religious liberty in America and have been peaceful and patriotic citizens ever since. In many cases, this is true. Yet even so, the universal and absolute claims of the Catholic Church still stand.

The 1302 Papal Bull, Unam Sanctam, issued by Pope Boniface VIII, declared that the “Church is one, holy, catholic, and also apostolic” institution and that “outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins.” The encyclical went on to explain the relationship between the spiritual and temporal spheres:

We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this Church and in its power are two swords; namely, the spiritual and the temporal. … Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: ‘Put up thy sword into thy scabbard’ [Mt 26:52]. Therefore, both are in the power of the Church, namely, the spiritual sword and the material. But indeed, the latter is to be exercised on behalf of the Church; and truly, the former is to be exercised by the Church. The former is of the priest; the latter is by the hand of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. However, one sword ought to be subordinated to the other and temporal authority, subjected to spiritual power. For since the Apostle said: ‘There is no power except from God and the things that are, are ordained of God’ [Rom 13:1-2], but they would not be ordained if one sword were not subordinated to the other and if the inferior one, as it were, were not led upwards by the other.

This doctrine was first established in AD 494 in the letter sent by Pope Gelasius to Emperor Anastasius Augustus. In that letter, the Pope argued that there are “two ways in which the world is chiefly ruled: the hallowed authority of the pontiffs (pontificum) and the royal power.” Gelasius went on to instruct Anastasius, telling him that his political office was only permitted by God and Christ, of whom the Pope was an earthly representative and vessel: “in your devotedness, you bow your head to the leaders of divine affairs, and from them you await the occasion for you salvation, and, in both taking the heavenly sacraments and being suitably disposed to them, you acknowledge that you must be subject to the order of religion, rather than be in control of it.”

Since the temporal power of Princes and Presidents, their constitutions, and their civil and criminal laws are subordinated to the spiritual power of the Catholic Church with the Pope at its head, then spiritual, religious, or ethical teachings by the Church that are universally applicable to all Catholics worldwide, are, in fact, political teachings as well. The implication is that true Catholics who submit to the authoritative teaching of the Vatican must obey the Vicar of Christ, and through him Jesus Christ, before they submit to the civil laws of their own country. If the civil laws of the United States criminalize those who enter illegally and require their deportation, but the teachings of the Church command that believers welcome and aid the illegal immigrant as an act of love and charity for one’s neighbor (and so resist their deportation), then faithful Catholics must subvert and defy U.S. law. As Peter replied to the Jewish Sanhedrin and the high priest, “We must obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29).

My Catholic friends assure me that this won’t happen—neither VP Vance nor the USCCB nor everyday American Catholics will follow Pope Francis’s teaching in this letter and subvert U.S. federal law. While this may be the case for many Catholics who disagree with the Pope’s teaching, we know from the recent revelations of USAID fraud and waste that various Catholic charities were receiving billions of dollars to help funnel illegal migrants to America and then facilitate their illegal residency. The Pope’s letter provides moral and spiritual legitimacy to such activities and thus only encourages further resistance to American sovereignty and the undermining of our immigration law.

Of course, many American Protestants agree with the Pope’s teachings on this issue, and Lutheran charities were also the recipients of USAID’s money laundering scheme to encourage illegal immigration. The major difference, however, is that Protestants do not answer to a foreign spiritual and political head; they must submit directly to Christ as the Lord of their conscience without any human intermediary. According to the Protestant magisterial teaching on the two kingdoms, believers are only part of the Church universal in the spiritual kingdom: they are united in spirit through Christ to all Christians past and present. At the same time, they are part of the local church within their nation’s political realm (cuius regio, eius religio). The local church is under the civil government, which, as an ordinance of God, is under Christ. Thus, for Protestants, if civil law is good and just, then there is no conflict of loyalty between devotion to Christ and national patriotism.

There can, of course, be a conflict between God and country in Protestantism. But the difference is that Protestants answer to Christ directly, not to a foreign head of state. In Protestantism, religious allegiance to Christ is not simultaneously political allegiance to a foreign potentate as it is with Catholicism. This means that Protestants can respond to bad civil law in various ways even while being loyal to their country: they can seek to reform the law, they can elect new political leadership, they can advocate for religious liberty rights (a Protestant doctrine) in court, and so forth. In addition, U.S. law can deal with incalcitrant Protestants in a way that it cannot with Catholics. Since, in the temporal kingdom, Protestant churches are under the authority of the civil government, cases of subversive libel or aiding and abetting illegal activities can be brought against Protestants, and Protestants ought to submit, especially when the laws at hand are good. Devoted Catholics, however, answer ultimately to the Papacy (and through him, to Christ) and so must take their direction from him. U.S. law has less power and authority to deal with defiant Catholics than defiant Protestants because U.S. law has no jurisdiction over the Pope.

The Pope had no jurisdiction in America, neither spiritual nor political. This is because America was founded on the basis of Protestant political theology and Protestant republican constitutionalism. Catholics who later emigrated to America were Protestantized in various ways as part of being assimilated to the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture. Pope Francis’s letter should be rejected by Americans as an attack on American sovereignty, civil law, and the common good.

The Point of the Parable of the Good Samaritan

Both the Pope and many American Protestant leaders invoke the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 as evidence that Jesus would be against borders and the deportation of illegal immigrants today. The love the Samaritan shows to the beaten and bloodied Jew, the Pope argued, was a “love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.” The love of Christ is universal, breaking down all Earthly and temporal walls—whether actual borders between countries or ethnic and psychological barriers between different people groups. While nations may have to enforce boundaries out of necessity, Christians are called to transcend all distinctions and divisions and embrace a universal brotherhood united in Christ.

This interpretation badly misreads Jesus’ teaching, representing an eisegesis that imposes secular, humanitarian doctrines upon the text. The point of the Parable of the Good Samaritan was that the Jews were not properly loving their own, and Jesus called them out for it. Jesus employed an a minore ad maius argument—from the lesser to the greater—in order to embarrass the Jewish leaders. The story Jesus tells unfolds in such a way that the audience was expecting the last man to be a Jewish commoner—a commoner helping a commoner where the Jewish leaders had failed. This would have been embarrassing enough for the Jewish leadership. Yet Jesus inflames their embarrassment, not merely by picking a ‘foreigner’ in the Samaritan, but also a religious idolater (from the point of view of the Jewish religious class). The point was that if a lowly, hated, and idolatrous Samaritan is able to have compassion on a beaten and bereft Jew, then certainly the mighty Priests, Levites, and Lawyers could do the same.

The parable is not primarily about inter-ethnic relations. It is actually intensely ethnocentric: the Jewish leaders were rejecting their own, failing to care for the Jewish people as the Law and their God required. Jesus uses the example of a Samaritan as a way to shame them, not to critique them for failing to love the international immigrant. The answer to the question, ‘Who is my neighbor,’ is not ‘the Samaritan,’ but “the one who showed mercy to him” (Luke 10:37). While it is true that a secondary teaching of the parable is that mercy and compassion is not bounded by blood, ethnicity, or political loyalty (cf. Eph. 2:11-22), to suppose that it teaches a universal fraternity that dissolves natural differences—or worse yet, that intentionally inverts natural loves—is to go beyond the meaning of the text.

Finally, the parable says nothing about proper civil law and the responsibility of governments to provide for the welfare of their citizens. Why was the Samaritan going down from Jerusalem to Jericho at all? The Samaritans, of course, were ethnically Jewish, but who had developed different cultural and religious traditions during the upheavals of the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests and exile. Thus, the conflict between the Jews and Samaritans was an intra-national conflict, not an issue of national independence from Rome or a question of ancient borders. The parable teaches us nothing about the modern situation America finds herself in regards to the overwhelming flood of illegal immigrants and a decrepit ruling class bend on replacing American citizens with a foreign but subservient and loyal underclass.

Conclusion: Delusions of Dignity and Human Rights

The argument of Pope Francis’s letter rests more upon his devotion to human “dignity” and “fundamental rights” than anything taught by Scripture. As such, it reads more like an addendum to the U.N’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights than a meditation upon true Christian theology. The Pope, much like regime evangelicals in America, is more a reflection of twentieth-century liberalism than historic Christian teaching.

The Pope’s assertion that “the human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation,” is meaningless humanitarian jargon. His contention (elsewhere) that the meaning of human dignity is “to emerge from our comfortable isolation and to be changed by our contact with human suffering” is likewise arbitrary (para. 68). The obsession with human dignity, and the infusion of an unlimited but purposely ambiguous moral legitimacy into that word, is a function of a post-Christian, moralistic, and therapeutic civilization—the decline and fall of the West. Jesus was not a refugee, Americans do not live under Papal authority, and the common good does not require American civil government to accept illegal immigrants with open arms because of their ‘dignity’ and ‘rights.’

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Image Credit: Unsplash

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