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Compassion, Victim-Blaming and Apologetics: A Reply to Dave Armstrong

Compassion, Victim-Blaming and Apologetics: A Reply to Dave Armstrong

Last updated on: June 30, 2019 at 3:44 am by Mary Pezzulo

Compassion, Victim-Blaming and Apologetics: A Reply to Dave Armstrong 2019-06-30T03:44:57-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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Dave graciously quotes Saint John Paul the Second, speaking in 1995:

“Migration is assuming the features of a social emergency, above all because of the increase in illegal migrants which, despite the current restrictions, it seems impossible to halt. . . . Illegal immigration should be prevented, but it is also essential to combat vigorously the criminal activities which exploit illegal immigrants. . . . Thus it is important to help illegal migrants to complete the necessary administrative papers to obtain a residence permit. Social and charitable institutions can make contact with the authorities in order to seek appropriate, lawful solutions to various cases.”

That was twenty-four years ago, which probably seems like just yesterday to an old codger like Dave. Twenty-four years ago, the Pope recognized that immigration was becoming an emergency and that illegal migration was impossible to halt. He begged charitable institutions work with the authorities to find solutions to help illegal migrants, and he demanded that migrants be helped to obtain residence permits.

Today, that demand from the Holy Father is not being followed. In fact, the current president is doing everything he can to make examples of illegal migrants who try to obtain papers; he’s embracing cruelty to immigrants in general– and yes, he’s doing it in a different way than the previous president did, in a way that seems designed to be as cruel is possible. He is also working as hard as he can to make it more and more difficult for all but the wealthiest and most fortunate immigrants– the people who need it the least– to enter our country, which flies in the face of the Catholic teaching that wealthier nations must help those less fortunate. Further, immigrants who apply for asylum by legal means are being tortured and having their children tortured in front of them for good measure, via the president’s “zero tolerance policy” that is substantially different and less humane than the old practice. No, the democrats are not merciful when it comes to immigration either. Nobody really is. People frequently ask me why I didn’t condemn President Obama’s immigration policies on my blog, but that’s because I started blogging in the middle of 2016. I was against his immigration policies back then, in the quiet days before I became a blogger. But none of this means that what our government does to deter migrants right now isn’t much worse than it’s been.

If the plight of illegal migrants was becoming an emergency twenty-four years ago, it’s a crisis now. If the Pope recognized that what these migrants were doing was illegal but begged mercy for them then, one wonders what he would say now. I see no reason, then, why this situation does not constitute an unjust law that we as Catholics have a duty to break. And we as Catholics can squabble on that point. But I cannot go along with Dave and claim that this quote from last century somehow means that everything is fine with what our country is doing to illegal migrants now. Nor does it support the cruelty of the meme that was the inspiration for this whole stream of consciousness in the first place.

But none of this is why I’m bothering to respond to Dave. He got my dander up with his next paragraph: “Of course, the latest liberal / RINO uproar has to do with the sad photograph of a man and his child, who drowned while trying to illegally cross the border by swimming the river. I’ll leave aside the question of parental negligence: to even attempt such a thing without proper life jackets, etc. Any compassionate human being is saddened by the tragedy.”

I’m not going to leave it aside, Dave: what the hell?

What in the name of all that’s holy and decent?

An economic migrant, a man who tried to cross the border to save his family from their poverty, went to seek asylum at a port of entry, legally, and was turned away, so he tried the illegal route and met with a tragic death for himself and his daughter. He and the child would be alive today, though probably not in this country, if the legal port of entry had taken them in and processed their case. We can certainly bicker about whether his poverty was severe enough to merit the journey and whether he acted rashly trying to cross the river. But you’re faulting the poor man for not bringing a life jacket? Where would he put it? In the luggage compartment of his jet? Do you not understand what an economic migrant is?

Do you taunt hungry people with “you should have packed a lunch?”

If you saw a homeless man freezing to death outdoors under a thin blanket, would you roll down your car window and say “This is your own fault for not dressing warmly?”

Is this what passes for Catholic apologetics these days? Sneering at a drowned man from one of the poorest countries in the world, because he didn’t buy a flotation device?

Dave then bloviates about “bleeding-heart liberals” the day after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A heart that bleeds with compassion is something every Catholic should sport openly, but Dave doesn’t like them. Next, he contemplates which verse from Proverbs would be nicest for insulting his opponents “But at length (floating in my little pool under the hot sun, thinking about this), I concluded that application of verse 5 was the wiser course. ” Somehow he makes himself sound like an A. A. Milne character, but less cuddly.

I assume that Dave was floating in his little pool on some kind of inflatable personal flotation device, which he purchased with his own money because he lives in an economically prosperous country and has been fortunate in many other ways. What I wouldn’t give for a scuba suit and a knitting needle just about now.

Dave moves on to mention that he’s actually not in favor of allowing sick undocumented migrants to die at the border, despite what folks might think from his own flippant words. He does want to deport all the undocumented migrants who are “here now” except for Dreamers, of course. This he calls compassion.

It isn’t my idea of the thing.

Dave then quotes Galatians: “let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of faith,” and I hope he takes his own medicine after he gets out of that pool.

As for me, I would answer Dave with a passage from the book of James: *“*What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

Looking up from your swimming pool and faulting a drowned man for not having a life vest is as bad an apologetic for Catholicism as I have ever heard.

May God have mercy on our country.

If you would like to do anything to help the migrants at the Southern Border, I have complied some suggestions here.

(image via Pixabay)

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