Sunday, August 14, 2011

Ecumenical Effort Seeks to Undermine Public Order and Violate the Law

Edit:  This particular agenda being pursued "ecumenically" by Catholic and Methodist church leaders has nothing to do with charity itself, and everything to do with "social justice" a codeword for cultural Marxism.
A society has a right to protect itself from the things that threaten it and it's widely demonstrable that illegal immigration is a threat to social order.  Why is it that various church leaders are bent on attacking the social order even against the basic tenets of their respective denominations and the best interests of the co-coreligionists who reside here legally?

Here's what the Catechism of the Catholic Church actually says:

2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.6

Never mind that though, those are just guidelines, after all. These church leaders claim that the law attacks charity, but there's nothing to that theological virtue which allows you to ignore the demonstrably negative impact of illegal immigration to the public good and violate the laws of the land.  To be sure, Catholic Bishops in Russia or Mexico would not likely dare to meddle with the internal security there.  Here is the story:

 CULLMAN, Ala. — On a sofa in the hallway of his office here, Mitchell Williams, the pastor of First United Methodist Church, announced that he was going to break the law. He is not the only church leader making such a declaration these days.

Since June, when Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican, signed an immigration enforcement law called the toughest in the country by critics and supporters alike, the opposition has been vocal and unceasing, ranging from civil rights groups to the U.S. Justice Department. This month, church groups joined that list.
An Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop, all based in Alabama, sued on the basis that the new statute violated their right to free exercise of religion, arguing that it would “make it a crime to follow God’s command to be Good Samaritans.”


Alabama law criminalizes charity, bishops’ suit says | | The Bulletin

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