What is holy about encouraging people to break just laws?
For decades, the U.S. Catholic bishops have operated like open-borders activists, hectoring Republican politicians for not supporting illegal immigration. Before the sexual abuse scandal erupted in the Church, the bishops were insufferable on this subject. After the scandal, some of them toned down their moralizing in recognition that they had lost any credibility as experts on “justice.” But now they’re back to the cocky clericalism of the 1980s, squandering their authority on a prudential political matter clearly beyond it. They routinely portray support for illegal immigration as “Catholic teaching.” But it isn’t. The Church has never officially taught that it is “unjust” for a country’s leaders to enforce immigration laws.
