For Shame, for Shame, Notre Dame

And double shame for the bishops who met in Baltimore this week. When will you free us from the scourge of bad university presidents and wolfish bishops, Lord?

First Notre Dame

Is there anything shameful the administration at Notre Dame won't do? They gave Barack Obama, the most pro-abortion, divisive, bigoted president in history (Am I exaggerating?) an honorary law degree and the privilege of being their 2009 commencement speaker. Obama's entourage met a crowd of protesters including a friend of mine who was arrested and had to spend the next year traveling back and forth from Texas to deal with the draconian tactics used against those arrested some of whom weren't even on campus. President John Jenkins, the baby-faced villain of that debacle is gone, but Notre Dame continues on its pathetic and anti-Catholic trajectory.

The Sycamore Trust has challenged Notre Dame to stop being a purveyor of pornography by adding filters to their internet service so students can't access the tsunami of filth online. Common sense for a Catholic University, wouldn't you think? Not at Notre Dame. Despite petitions from students, Fr. Jenkins refused to stop the porn access and Fr. Robert Dowd, his replacement, doubled down on that decision. So access to porn continues threatening students with porn's fruit -- lust, violence, and soul-killing mortal sin.

The head of Sycamore, Bill Dempsey, attempted to engage Fr. Dowd to no avail. Like many villains, the university simply goes mute. Read Sycamore's report here and then I urge you to read and sign the Open Letter. And please, if you have college age children, strike Notre Dame off your list of college possibilities unless you think putting your children into a moral cesspool is the best way to keep them spiritually clean. If you are yourself an alumnus of the school, please write to Fr. Dowd expressing your concern.

On to the Bishops

The bishops met in Baltimore this week and their main order of business was attacking the Trump administration over immigration, although they never used his name. They released a rare "special message" with high-falutin' mumbo jumbo about their love for immigrants (oh... and for the country). How much concern do they have for the young women raped by the coyotes or the hundreds of thousands of children who've disappeared without a trace? How many women and minors were brought her illegally to be trafficked to sickos around the country? 

Most of the bishop voted for the message with only five nays and three abstentions. I wish I could tell you who the eight who declined their support were, but the vote was anonymous. So much for clarity and transparency. And now the bishops are releasing videos about how heartsick they are over the deportations. Their crocodile tears would fill a lake.

Excuse my cynicism, but the open border fiasco has funneled, not millions, but billions of dollars into the bishops' coffers. Some of that money went for legal services and advice on how to avoid ICE and rake in all the goodies Uncle Sam has to offer. Church affiliated immigration helpers arranged to move illegals into neighborhoods all over the country often grabbing them at the border after their illegal entry (illegal, as in a crime) and moving them as fast as possible to make sure they can hide out and dig in.

These same bishops often have locked doors and gates on their chanceries and homes. They have no-trespassing signs in their chancery and parish parking lots. They aren't "welcoming any strangers" at their own dinner tables but hire an army of bureaucrats to enable and perpetuate the invasion.

When I worked at a crisis pregnancy center we helped everyone who came, legal or illegal. We didn't check their immigration status. But I remember counseling one young women who entered the country illegally. She was raped by a coyote, got pregnant and planned to abort her baby. She left our center still planning to abort. If she did, that dead baby's blood is on the hands of our bishops. She should have stayed home with her mother!

Catholic Vote published a report, Immigration Enforcement and the Christian Conscience, available here. It begins:

By returning Donald Trump to the White House, the American people sent a clear message: the disaster at our southern border, and its shockwave effects throughout the nation, cannot continue.

Under the leadership of President Biden and Vice President Harris, illegal immigration had skyrocketed beyond all precedent. Their catch-and-release policies resulted in roughly 11 million nationwide encounters during fiscal years 2021-2024, 7.8 million of those at the southern border. Those numbers do not include approximately 2 million known “gotaways” who evaded capture during this period.

A 2023 House Judiciary report found “virtually no enforcement of our immigration laws,” with “more than 99 percent of illegal aliens staying inside the United States after being released by the Biden Administration.”

As the election approached, public opinion turned decisively against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – with bipartisan acknowledgment of the southern border crisis and broad support for much stronger immigration enforcement.

Poll respondents rated immigration as a top concern, and said – unsurprisingly – they trusted Trump over Harris to handle it.

What matters most, of course, is not the popular will but the will of God – as expressed in the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, CatholicVote’s Catholic Accountability Project published its five-part Bad Samaritans report, showing how Biden and Harris’s hemorrhaging southern border was appalling from the standpoint of both faith and reason.

With Trump’s second term, there is a new question facing the Church in America: What does Catholic teaching tell us about immigration law enforcement, especially on the controversial issue of large-scale deportations?

Catholics who advocate strong but humane immigration enforcement are sometimes accused of disobeying their bishops or the pope, and even violating Church teaching.

Properly speaking, there is no such thing as an official “Catholic position” on the practical details of immigration policy.

Despite what some Church leaders in America have indicated, a faithful Catholic can support strong and humane immigration law enforcement – by means such as physical barriers, detention, and deportation – without violating the teaching of the Church.

Obviously, most of the bishops don't believe this. Without naming Trump in their sanctimonious message, they've condemned him and the administration for taking strong legal steps to stop the invasion and return lawbreakers to their countries of origin. Their bureaucracies not only enable the invasion, but help illegals to avoid capture and deportation. They have vilified law enforcement and some have even joined protests. One bishop, San Bernardino's Alberto Rojas, even told illegals it's A-okay to skip Mass if you're worried about apprehension at Church. Frankly I'm more worried about the illegals who are terrorists. 

Catholic Vote goes on to describe some of the horrendous results of what the bishops enable:

By 2024, human smuggling had become a multibillion-dollar business – a larger source of revenue for the cartels than drug smuggling, with this revenue fueling their international agenda of violence, exploitation, and corruption.

In fact, the cartels made much of this profit through activities they conducted openly and with direct cooperation from American border security officials under the direction of the Biden administration.

In May 2021, journalist Todd Bensman witnessed the cartels systematically ferrying illegal immigrants into Texas, before openly handing them off to cooperative US border agents. Bensman is now a senior advisor to “border czar” Tom Homan.

The resulting exploitation was appalling. For instance, there has been a practice of some illegal immigrants cooperating with human smugglers to rent their own children to other immigrants, allowing them to pose as a family for easier entrance into the catch-and-release system of non-enforcement. Some of these parents could not locate their children after the fraud was complete.

Likewise, there is the notorious sexual exploitation of illegal immigrants by those who smuggle them into the US, and other dangers that led a UN agency to name America’s southern border as the world’s deadliest land route for migrants in a 2023 report.

So what's the truth about a Catholic's obligation with regard to immigration. Many bad actors are misstating Church teaching and vilifying those who support the president's efforts to get control over a situation turning our country into chaos:

...there is a fog of misunderstanding around immigration and law enforcement within the Catholic Church.

The truth is that faithful Catholics can certainly disagree with the anti-enforcement position – even if some bishops happen to share the policy preferences of these activists. Such disagreement is not a dissent from Church teaching.

In fact, recent popes have emphasized that the Catholic Church has no “official position” on the practical details of issues like immigration policy.

Rather, our faith teaches a set of broad moral principles about immigration, and their application in public life is a matter of practical judgment for laypersons.

Nothing in this report supports an act of disobedience toward the pope or the bishops according to canon law. As the Code of Canon Law states in canon 212, we fully intend to “follow with Christian obedience those things which the sacred pastors, inasmuch as they represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or establish as rulers of the Church.”

The same canon says the lay faithful, according to their own knowledge and competence, “have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful.”

First, the Church teaches that every state’s most basic duty is to seek the good of its own citizens.

That last point is one the bishops seem to have forgotten. They are the best friends (or fellow travelers) of the globalists with their desire for one world government and one-world religion. Once again, my cynicism says, "Follow the money." Just like the bishops enable intrinsic evils by their "charitable" grants through CCHD (Catholic Campaign for Human Development), CRS (Catholic Relief Services), and Catholic Charities to groups that support abortion, contraception, sodomy, and liberalism; their immigration policy appears to be highly motivated by the billions they receive for helping illegals defy and avoid the law. They have become enablers of the drug cartels who make billions smuggling aliens into the U.S. as well as flooding the country with drugs and trafficking women and children. Their cooperation with evil is massive and shameful.

Read the report. Let's be honest. Many of the bishops are liberal Democrats who voted for Clinton, Obama, and Biden. They'll never tell you that, but their actions betray them. Pray for the bishops with your eyes wide open. Like Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but verify." And once you find your trust is unwarranted, put on the armor of Christ and fight -- even the bishops. Obey them when they teach the faith; expose them when they preach dissent. And pray the St. Michael prayer that he might defend us in battle. We need all the help we can get.