Pope Francis is equating the unique salvific events of the Exodus and the incarnation to the “phenomenon of migration” in his most fierce attack thus far on the Trump administration’s deportation of illegal aliens.
The pontiff, who toughened penalties for illegal entrants into the Vatican in December, released a strongly worded letter to the U.S. bishops on Tuesday, urging Catholics “not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering” to migrants.
Francis’s missive — a highly unconventional intrusion by a pope into U.S. politics — flays Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent articulation of the concept of ordo amoris (order of love) by misinterpreting Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke’s gospel.
“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception,” Francis argues. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.”
St. Paul Taught the Ordo Amoris
In a January 30 interview, Vance used the theology of ordo amoris, as defined by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to defend expelling illegal aliens:
I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.
Paul also used the ordo amoris to exhort Christians to “do good to everyone” but “especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). The apostle also warns that someone who does not first “provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8).
Biblical scholars have pointed out that the Good Samaritan is “not a general admonition to good works but rather an answer to the lawyer’s question about self-justification,” since it “makes clear that any attempt at self-justification is doomed to failure because “the standard is too high” and “eternal life cannot be earned.”
But Francis dismisses Vance’s interpretation of the ordo amoris as an “ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth,” by “worrying about personal, community or national identity.”
“We are all called to live in solidarity and fraternity, to build bridges that bring us ever closer together, to avoid walls of ignominy and to learn to give our lives as Jesus Christ gave his for the salvation of all,” the pontiff writes, failing to clarify that only Christ’s death is salvific.
Trump’s Border Czar Mocks Vatican Walls
Catholics supporting Trump’s deportation policies have repeatedly mocked Francis’s rhetoric on building “walls,” pointing to the boundary walls around Vatican City first which were built by Pope Leo IV in the ninth century to protect the papal enclave from Muslim raiders.
The 39-foot-tall Leonine Wall stretches for a little under two miles around Vatican Hill. Pope Paul III and Pope Pius IV later expanded the fortifications in the sixteenth century. Pope Urban VIII modified it further in the 1640s.
In a tweet attacking Francis’s letter, border czar Tom Homan noted that the pope “lives in a walled world to protect himself and actively kicks invaders out if not imprison them first.”
Homan emphasized that he was commenting as a “lifelong Catholic,” elaborating:
He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us. He wants to attack us for securing our border? He’s got a wall around the Vatican, does he not? So he’s got a wall to protect his people and himself, but we can’t have a wall around the United States?
Penalties imposed on illegal entrants into Vatican City were increased in December to EUR25,000 (about $25,000), with prison sentences up to four years. Anyone convicted for entering the Vatican illegally faces a ban from legal entry for up to 15 years.
Francis admits that “One must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival,” acknowledging the need for “a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration.”
However, “the rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”
Skewing Scripture and History for Propaganda
Francis quotes Pope Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution on the Care of Migrants, which portrays the flight of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to Egypt as the model for refugees fleeing persecution.
Jesus “did not live apart from the difficult experience of being expelled from his own land because of an imminent risk to his life, and from the experience of having to take refuge in a society and a culture foreign to his own,” Francis adds.
But biblical scholars point out that the Holy Family did not cross illegally into the borders of another country, and fled to Egypt because it was a part of the Roman empire to which their nation already belonged.
Further, Jesus was not fleeing to a “culture foreign to his own” since Egypt had large colonies of Jews; of its 300,000 people, up to two-fifths were Jews. The Holy Family would have been able to join the community, and Joseph would have been able to find work there.
More importantly, Hosea’s prophecy ties their flight to Egypt to the books of Genesis and Exodus, which tell that the Israelites seek refuge in Egypt when there is a famine, but flee it generations later when the new Pharaoh threatens to exterminate them (cf. Matthew 2:15).
Francis has been accused of misquoting the story of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt to support his pro-migration narrative by conflating genuine refugees with economic migrants, which often contributes to the dehumanizing and lucrative trade of human traffickers.
Critics also pointed out that Francis was selectively citing Pius XII, since the same pope also refused to bless Jews immigrating to Israel after the Holocaust, declaring: “We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem — but we could never sanction it.”
Conversely, the Vatican under Pius XII actively facilitated the illegal immigration of over 80,000 Nazi war criminals to escape justice, as historian Gerald Steinacher records in his book Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice.
Distorting Doctrine to Endorse Illegal Immigration
In a problematic analogy, Francis also used the story of Yahweh’s miraculous deliverance of the Hebrew from slavery in Egypt by parting the waters of the Red Sea “to reaffirm not only our faith in a God who is always close, incarnate, migrant and refugee.”
The pope went further, skewing the incarnation to claim that “the Son of God, in becoming man, also chose to live the drama of immigration.”
However, St. Paul describes the incarnation as “Christ emptying himself, taking the form of a slave by becoming obedient to death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8) — which is the opposite of people who claim to have nothing and immigrate to countries so they can acquire more.
On Tuesday, Francis nominated the anti-Trump Arizona Bishop Edward Weisenburger as the new archbishop of Detroit. In 2018, Weisenburger urged his fellow prelates to consider imposing “canonical penalties,” including excommunication, on Catholics who implement the Trump administration’s hardline deportation policies.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former papal ambassador to the U.S., hit back at Francis noting that the pontiff was falsely seeking “to give a doctrinal basis to the indiscriminate ‘welcoming’ of illegal immigrants, even inappropriately invoking the Magisterium of Pope Pius XII.”
Vigano asked:
Where were Bergoglio and the American Episcopate when Biden supported abortion right up to the moment of birth? Why did they not defend the “infinite dignity” of the innocent and defenseless creatures who are aborted? Why did they remain silent about the criminal trafficking of violated minors, forced into prostitution, fed to the pedophile elite, and sold to the market of organ predation?
In a column for The Stream, Senior Editor John Zmirak asked Trump’s attorney general to
launch a RICO investigation of the U.S. bishops concerning the systemic coverup of clerical sex abuse and the human trafficking of illegal immigrants conducted by church-controlled nonprofits.
The U.S. Catholic church has collected $3 billion in taxpayer funds over 15 years via nonprofits like Catholic Charities, most of it for “serving migrants,” Zmirak wrote, warning that such nonprofits are heavily engaged in smuggling migrants across our borders.
“Perhaps only a Church stripped of assets, denuded of wealth, and exposed as powerless would return to its mission of preaching the Gospel rather than pimping for globalism, abortion-tainted vaccines, and chaotic open borders,” Zmirak concludes.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
The post Pope Francis Skews Scripture and History to Attack Trump’s Deportations of Illegal Aliens appeared first on The Stream.
Subscribe Below To Our Weekly Newsletter of our Latest Videos and Receive a Discount Code For A FREE eBook from our eBook store:
