Devout Catholics Support Mass Deportations | The American Spectator

America’s Catholic bishops may incessantly complain about President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, but American Catholics actually support such measures as mass deportations. EWTN News and RealClear Opinion Research published a poll late last week which found that a majority (54 percent) of American Catholics favor mass deportations, including 27.5 percent (the largest share recorded in the poll) who “strongly favor” the policy, while only 30 percent oppose it and less than 17 percent expressed indifference. Support for the “detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants on a broad scale” increased to 60 percent among white Catholics and opposition fell to 26 percent.

In fact, mass deportations were more popular among American Catholics than Trump himself was. While 54 percent of Catholics endorsed mass deportations, Trump’s support among Catholics only stood at 52 percent, while 37 percent held an unfavorable view of the president — up almost 10 points compared to opposition to mass deportations.

White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers responded to the survey results noting that the president “won in a landslide victory with historic support from patriotic Catholics across the country because he promised to fight for people of faith, and he has delivered in record time.”

“Patriotic” is the key word, as evinced by the poll results. Support for mass deportations increased (to 58 percent) among Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week but fell to only 50 percent among those who attend Mass less frequently. In other words, the more often a Catholic attends Mass, listens to Sacred Scripture, and receives the Sacraments, the more likely he is to support enforcing his nation’s laws and protecting his fellow Americans. There are two chief reasons for this.

First, progressives distort Christian virtue to promote their agendas among Christian demographics. Charity, of course, would demand that a relatively prosperous nation such as the United States (at least temporarily) welcome and care for those in need, perhaps those fleeing war or religious persecution in their home countries, but this charity is not the only virtue that must be considered.

Prudence would also dictate that the U.S. ensure that those being given refuge are not a threat to the nation’s people, that taking them in does not overburden the nation’s people, that the “refugees” are who they say that they are, and that the wars or persecutions they are fleeing are legitimate threats. Justice would further demand that those being offered refuge respect the nation’s laws and customs, make an effort to assimilate, and express gratitude for their adoptive homeland.

By isolating “charity” from the other virtues, however, progressives argue that welcoming a never-ending stream of foreign hordes from Third World non-Christian countries is some kind of moral obligation for the Christian. Without prudence to temper that charity, rapists and murderers are allowed in, seeking asylum from threats like rival gangs or climate change. Without justice to balance the scales, foreign rapists and murderers are spared the death penalty or even treated as some kind of victim in need of rehabilitation, because to do otherwise would be uncharitable or racist. Without the regular faith formation that comes with regular Mass attendance, it is far easier for self-identifying Catholics to fall prey to this virtue-isolation tactic.

This leads us to the second reason that Mass-going Catholics are more likely to support mass deportations: Not only do devout Catholics learn of the relationship between the virtues — rather than merely being bombarded with emotionally-predatory propaganda about charity, charity, charity, and only charity, or at leas the progressive perversion of it — but Mass-going Catholics also learn more about the virtues themselves. For example, the virtue of patriotism.

No, patriotism is not one of the seven cardinal virtues, and it’s not likely to be featured in any vacation Bible school songs, but it is a virtue under the auspices of justice. In its simplest form, the virtue of justice demands giving to one what he is due. Piety is a sub-virtue under justice, which demands giving to God the honor that he is due, as well as honoring one’s parents and family in accord with their stations. Under piety is patriotism, honoring one’s country.

St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, noted that one’s homeland provides both existence and governance, as do both God and parents, and is therefore deserving of one’s devotion. In his 1890 encyclical Sapientiae Christianae, Pope Leo XIII classified patriotism as an obligation under natural law, while Pope St. Pius X even argued that the Catholic Church could not oppose patriotism without contradicting its own divine foundation. Others, such as Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Father John Hardon, and Father Louis Bouyer, have similarly emphasized that patriotism is not only compatible with but even ordered by Catholic virtue, in accord with both justice and charity.

The fact that such a majority of Catholics support President Trump’s plans for mass deportations may come as a shock to the country’s bishops, who have castigated such policies as cruel and inhumane, never quite addressing the Catholic Church’s age-old teachings on subjects such as national sovereignty, national security, the magistrate’s obligation to his people, and the countless pronouncements on preserving one’s ethnic and cultural heritage. Rarely do the bishops speak of the horrific rapes and murders committed by illegal aliens, such as the slayings of Laken Riley or Rachel Morin, and not once (to my knowledge) have they addressed the hundreds of thousands of migrant children who have gone missing, many trafficked, prostituted, raped, and some likely killed. It may have escaped the attention of their excellencies that mass migration has severely depressed American wages, diluted the American job market, and spurred a nationwide housing crisis.

While the bishops get teary-eyed over foreign lawbreakers who “live in fear” of the consequences of their actions, they may want to spare a thought or two for the hundreds of thousands of young American Catholics who will never be able to own a home in which to raise their American Catholic families, or the American Catholic women who actually do live in fear because their neighborhoods have been turned into ethnic enclaves flooded with drugs and the constant threat of rape, or the nearly half-a-million children who have been broken beyond repair by child-rapists because the American bishops and their “charitable” organizations did all that they could to bring as many foreigners into the country as possible (and pocket fat checks for doing so) with little regard for who these people were or where they ended up. It just happens that over 300,000 children ended up in a living hell. That fact alone should haunt their excellencies and dog what conscience they have left.

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