#474: What Would King Say?

      Had he lived, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have turned 90 this past week.  As the nation celebrates his birthday, it is easy to honor King as a champion of civil rights, perhaps even easy to note that in 2019 America risks losing some of the gains he championed. 

But it is much harder for us to actually honor him as our national prophet--as America’s conscience--because that means honoring all the causes he stood for.  And those causes taken together, have not merely lost ground; they have nearly disappeared from our public discourse. 

Let me survey what King called the “three great evils,” and ask two questions: What would King say now?  And: Who in our public life still speaks for King? 

Racial Injustice.  Most celebrations honoring King focus on him as leader of the civil rights movement.  And surely a key message in his mission was that people be judged not “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” By 1968 King had witnessed many gains, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  And since then, African-Americans have continued many gains. 

Still, were King alive today he might well say that too often people continue to be judged by the color of their skin, whether in efforts to suppress black votes, or in cases of police shooting unarmed Blacks, or in the rollback of the Voting Rights Act itself. 

And more recently the challenge of accepting people of color has increasingly focused, not only on the descendants of slaves, but also on immigrants and their children (indeed, our first Black president was the son of an immigrant, not the descendant of slaves).  And while King did not face the same issues over immigration that we face now, it’s easy to know what he might say--in fact he already actually said it:

“We may all have come from different ships, but we're in the same boat now."

Indeed, by the end of his career King would be increasingly clear that the evil of racism was not just a problem for U.S. blacks, but for all those oppressed by others:

“In one sense the civil rights movement in the United States is a special American phenomenon which must be understood in the light of American history and dealt with in terms of the American situation. But on another and more important level, what is happening in the United States today is a relatively small part of a world development.”

Looking around today, King might well say we remain far from fulfilling the goal of racial justice for all.

Inequality.  In later years King spoke more and more about economic inequality.  He often called it “poverty,” since up to 1968 the middle class was still gaining in wages and benefits, so it made sense to focus on those below the poverty line.  But since King’s death, the U.S. has seen nearly 50 years of steadily declining real wages even for the middle class, and we now see a wealth gap worse than any time since the great depression of the 1930s.  So when King spoke of poverty, he said:

“Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.”

This question of a “broader distribution of wealth” has changed since his death, with fewer below the poverty line but more struggling to make ends meet as wealth has been even more concentrated.  This makes King’s view not less, but even more timely.  Today he would surely repeat these words:

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children... God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.”

War. King lost many supporters and became an even more controversial figure when he campaigned against the Vietnam War.  Even other civil rights leaders felt this was not his role.  But they did not realize that, for King, this was the inevitable result of his own growing vision. 

Once he decided that nonviolence was the key to fighting racism, and once he incorporated the theories of Gandhian nonviolence into his own Christian theology, that naturally altered his views on war, as he moved from a “just war” perspective to pacifism.  He called this his “pilgrimage to nonviolence”:

“I felt that while war could never be a positive good, it could serve as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. War, horrible as it is, might be preferable to surrender to a totalitarian system. But now I believe that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons totally rules out the possibility of war ever again achieving a negative good.”

Indeed, King seemed to know that without a concerted anti-war strategy, the threat of mass destruction would spread.  Today’s worries about North Korea, Iran, and the U.S. abandoning the INF treaty all echo King’s warning:

“Nations are not reducing but rather increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The best brains in the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology. The proliferation of nuclear weapons has not been halted…On the contrary, the detonation of an atomic device by the first nonwhite, non-Western, and so-called underdeveloped power, namely the Chinese People’s Republic, opens new vistas of exposure of vast multitudes, the whole of humanity, to insidious terrorization by the ever-present threat of annihilation.”

When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King made his rejection of militarism clear:

“I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation... I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow... I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed.”

I have no doubt that he would say matters now have only become worse.  Since 9/11 the U.S. has engaged in multiple, seemingly endless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere. And unlike the Vietnam era, these wars are not even especially controversial.  In the 1960s a band of public leaders loudly opposed U.S. war policy: King, Robert F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and many others.  In 2019, who are the public leaders opposing our warlike foreign policy? 

Yet our troop deployments and arms sales (not to mention defense pending) far outstrip all other nations.  It is as if Americana have accepted that war is inevitable and peace is impossible. King would disagree:

“World peace through non-violent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Non-violence is a good starting point.”

For Catholics today, King’s views are important for three reasons. 

First, his views on race, economic inequality, and peace fit almost exactly with Catholic Social Teaching of the last 50 years--especially with the teachings of the last four popes.  You can look it up! 

Second, King agrees with the Church that these three issues are linked:

“We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together…you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others…the whole structure of American life must be changed.”

Third, King’s vision of the contemporary world exactly matches the Catholic vision emerging from Vatican Council II (1962-1965).  The Council saw technological progress as the hallmark of modern life, and praised such progress but offered this caution: technological progress confers new power, but the good use of that power requires a matching progress in wisdom and goodness. 

Here is how King saw the same “moral lag”:

“Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this.”

For King, as for Vatican II, this “moral lag” is at the root of what he calls the world’s three great evils:

“This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man’s chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man’s ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war.”

And for King, as for Vatican II, the challenge lies in our moral progress catching up to our technological progress:

“Mankind’s survival is dependent upon man’s ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony”

Based on his own words, then, King’s voice still speaks to our time, much the way Catholic Social Teaching does.  Taken together, they represent our brightest wisdom and our clearest hope--but who will champion of such vision? 

On a day when many seek to fence in King’s legacy to narrow questions of race, we should rededicate ourselves to his broader cause of waging nonviolent combat against racism, inequality, and militarism. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2019

#458: Why Can’t We Make America Idealistic Again?—Part 2

The 2016 election has forced me to reflect on the many ideals that both our major parties—and my own generation--have abandoned. Last time I reflected on Transportation. This time: Education.

My generation, children of the ‘60s, invented the “generation gap” by committing ourselves to fundamental change. We expected that when our turn came, we would change the world.  And we knew “the whole world is watching.” And now our time HAS come, and the whole world IS watching. What do they see?

 Now, so many years later, it seems to me that our generation has lost the capacity for idealism. 

Far from fulfilling our mission to change the world, we have betrayed our mission by failing to even sustain the ideals of our past.  On issue after issue, our baby boomer leadership (in national office since 1992) has discredited new initiatives as “too idealistic”--meaning impossible to achieve--while allowing other nations to pass America by. We now risk leaving our country less idealistic than we found it!

Ironically, this does not mean that idealism is dead. In many fields, our allies in Europe and Asia and Canada and elsewhere have been inspired by our pioneering efforts. As I watch other nations embrace American innovations and build better futures on them, I ask myself over and over, “Why can’t we?”

This post is the second in a series that surveys such issues.  In each case, I reflect on our past embrace of idealistic change. I observe how we have fallen behind our allies as we have quit on that ideal while they have taken our place and sustained such idealism. In each case I ask “Why can’t we?”

This time I look at education.

Perhaps my idealism derives from where I live, since Massachusetts has in many ways been a land of idealism since its founding.

Boston Latin School Then....

 My three children are graduates of the Boston Latin School, the first public school in America, founded in 1635.  It was designed for Boston’s elite, and funded mainly by donations, but was followed in 1644 in Dedham Massachusetts by the first public school supported completely by taxes.  In 1820, Boston English School became the first public high school in America, offering a publicly funded 12^th grade education to all.  And an 1827, a Massachusetts law required that all grades of public school be open to all students free of charge in every town and city in the Commonwealth.  This means that, for nearly 300 years, publicly funded universal education has been the law in Massachusetts.

This ideal soon spread across America, which became the first country in the world to establish universal public education for its people.  And for most of our history as a nation, we have led the world in literacy and the educational attainments of our population.

By the period immediately following World War II, the majority of Americans were achieving a high school education in schools that were free of tuition.  In addition, many others had access to professional training programs (such as the apprentice program in which my father trained during a 39 year career at General Electric).

Of course, over the last 50 years, a high school diploma has been losing its career value, as increasing numbers of Americans have gone to college. 

In most high schools across America, the majority of graduates are now going on to some college study.  Soon the majority of the working age population will have received a college education. College is now the rule, not the exception as it was for my father’s generation.

By now, for many careers, a high school diploma is no longer competitive in the workplace.  This means that, for most Americans, a K-12 education cannot provide the career benefits that it used to.  Yet the United States has not extended publicly funded, tuition-free education beyond high school. 

This means that our world-pioneering ideal of public education, providing free schooling for all, has been frozen in place since 1821!

The result is that the United States is no longer the leader in providing public education for its people.  Instead, our allies are bypassing us by establishing free (or heavily subsidized) higher education.  For more than a generation, this has been happening in Canada, France, Germany, and throughout much of Europe.  The result is that most young people in those countries can acquire a college education without acquiring any debt.

American students, by contrast, face the daunting prospect of assuming levels of debt comparable to the mortgage on a house.  I remember my shock when, as my oldest child entered college, the chief financial officer of her school predicted the day when entering freshmen would sign a 50-year loan to pay for their education!  The very image of an 18-year-old committing to debt that would last past retirement age boggled my mind. To this day, my European friends are horrified to hear of U.S. college costs.

So we should not be surprised, as our allies pass us, that more and more American students are leaving the U.S. to study abroad.  In 2012, 46,500 Americans were enrolled in degree programs in 14 countries. (NOTE: These are NOT “semester abroad” students who return to their U.S. schools; these students are receiving foreign diplomas). 68% of these were in the United Kingdom and Canada, with France and Germany close behind.

Germany has become especially popular because university study there, even for international students, is tuition-free.

Jeffrey Peck, the Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, City University of New York, described the “ideal-gap” between Germany and the U.S.:

"College education in the US is seen as a privilege and expected to cost money and in Germany it is seen as an extension of a free high school education where one expects it to be provided,"

The Germans are not simply altruistic in this regard. The hope is to attract skilled foreign students who will stay in Germany. Sebastian Fohrbeck, of the German Academic Exchange, reports that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

Other US allies are nearly as generous.  Public universities in France, including the Sorbonne, cost approximately $250 per year of study.  Belgian universities cost $960.  Finnish universities cost $1500.  Italian universities cost of $1000, Spanish universities cost $1500.  And Norway, like Germany, is totally free.

Back home, the average cost of public universities for out-of-state students is $23,800 per year.  The average cost of private universities is $31,231 per year. The old idea of "working your way through college" has become a bad joke.

The results of such astronomical fees should not surprise us. Americans have accumulated $1.2 trillion nationwide in college-related debt.  300,000 Waiters and waitresses in  the United States are working to pay off such debt.  30% of such Americans are indebted despite having dropped out of school.  Altogether, 40 million Americans--more than the population of 200 countries--are burdened by college debts.

We’re now looking at an entire generation of Americans who are forced to choose between 3 unhappy options.  First: they may go without college and suffer the competitive disadvantage for the rest of their careers.  Second: they may get a college degree and carry lifelong debt for up to 50 years.  Third: they may go to a foreign country for less costly or even free study--and many of them will remain there, draining away the brainpower of our country.

Do not be surprised if the numbers who choose option #3 keep growing—many after dropping out of an American university due to its cost. (Ironically, the colleges rich enough to guarantee students they will have no debt are largely reserved for the highest-achieving high school students. In other words, we are back to Boston Latin’s model of school for the privileged elite).

.......and now: Boston Latin School today

 So while we were once first in education, first in publicly funded schools, first in educational attainment, first in literacy--now our allies have bypassed us, and we face the challenge of catching up.

Yet in our political life, in our public policy, the idea of “free college” is regarded as an impossible ideal--something it is unrealistic to expect or even campaign for.  We seem to be a people no longer willing to fund what the public needs.  We seem to be a people no longer capable of maintaining our own ideals.

And so, as I observed with transportation, so with education: I look around the world, I observe what our allies have been doing to pursue the very ideals that we originally inspired in them.  In so many countries where education was once a privilege reserved to a tiny elite of the population, our American experiment in public education inspired them to see education as a human right (as the Catholic Church teaches) and to invest in the spread of free education for all. And they have kept that ideal alive as times changed.

So as I observe what they have accomplished, and compare that with our failure to keep our own educational ideals alive, and hear so many fellow Americans proclaim that such a goal is romantic, naive, and unrealistic, I feel compelled to point to our allies’ real-life experience, their success at making the ideal a reality, and I ask the sad question that keeps coming to my mind: “Why Can’t We?”

NEXT time: Employment

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#457: Why Can’t We Make America Idealistic Again?

The 2016 election has forced me to reflect on the many ideals that both our major parties—and my own generation--have abandoned.

Since the end of the Republican and Democratic conventions I have suffered a case of “blog-block” (not unlike writer’s block).

Oh, I’ve posted my share of Facebook comments, but these have been consistently negative critiques of specific points or events.  The depressing spectacle of this election has stymied me.  I feel acutely discouraged by our country’s sad condition but I have struggled to formulate a comprehensive account of those feelings.

Until now.

The low quality of the candidates, the uncivil and uncivilized tenor of their campaigns, and the dysfunction of our electoral system have all bothered me.  But my discouragement was about something deeper.

Two things, really. 

For one thing, this electoral season has clearly failed my personal expectations.  As an American, I expect the opportunity to vote for someone representing my civic concerns and values.  And as a Catholic, I expect to support someone who supports the social vision I get from my faith.  The 2016 campaign is defying me on both counts.

I admit, those expectations are perennial--and they have been perennially frustrated in nearly every presidential election since I reached voting age more than 40 years ago.  But the 2016 campaign has been even more discouraging than previous campaigns.  Not only is it failing my personal expectations, it has also failed the promise of my generation.

In 1992 Bill Clinton became the first baby boomer elected president.  Since then, boomers have been the dominant cohort in presidential elections: Clinton again in ‘96, George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000, Bush again in 2004, Barack Obama in 2008, Obama again Mitt Romney in 2012, and now Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. By 2020, boomers will have occupied the White House for 28 years.

Like me, they all grew up as part of the largest generation in U.S. history--and one of the most idealistic.  Anyone going to high school and college in the 1960s lived through a ferment ranging from Rock and Roll and hippies to moon landings, from civil rights to Vietnam, from feminism to ecology—all amid assassinations and protests and a clash of ideals. 

Amid such chaos, we invented the “generation gap” by committing ourselves to fundamental change. We expected that when our turn came, we would change the world.  And we knew “the whole world is watching.” And now our time HAS come, and the whole world IS watching. What do they see?

Personally I always found a lot of my peers’ idealism naïve and romantic, and I tended to think our real “revolution” was more cultural (or even spiritual) than political. I knew the status quo’s hold on our way of life was powerful, so I did not really expect America to abandon all of its institutions and traditions.  I did not expect our future to break with our past.  But I did expect my generation to reject the nation’s worst traits (for example, its racism, its materialism, its intolerance to non-conformity) while embracing and expanding its key ideals.

Instead, now I am reminded of philosopher Frantz Fanon saying “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.” It feels like our generation DID discover its distinct mission early on, but has not fulfilled it. Now, so many years later, it seems to me that our generation has lost the capacity for idealism. 

Far from fulfilling our mission to change the world, we have betrayed our mission by failing to even sustain the ideals of our past.  On issue after issue, our leadership has discredited new initiatives as “too idealistic”--meaning impossible to achieve--while allowing other nations to pass America by. We now risk leaving our country less idealistic than we found it!

Ironically, this does not mean that idealism is dead. In many fields, our allies in Europe and Asia and Canada and elsewhere have been inspired by our pioneering efforts. As I watch other nations embrace American innovations and build better futures on them, I ask myself over and over, “Why can’t we?”

I am thinking of things that shape the way we live and also our presence in the world.  They shape our economy our daily lives, our culture, and our international relations.  I’m thinking of education, of transportation, of health care, of labor relations, of our military, of inequality, of employment and immigration and peace and poverty.

This post is the first in a series that surveys such issues.  In each case, I reflect on our past embrace of idealistic change. I observe how we have fallen behind our allies as we have quit on that ideal while they have taken our place and sustained such idealism. In each case I ask “Why can’t we?”

Let me begin with transportation.

Just look at our past.  Except for Native Americans and some recent immigrants from Central and South America, who arrived on foot, everyone else got here by sea or by air.  The first European settlers called their destination “the New World” precisely because crossing oceans was without precedent, and required a vision and courage and a willingness to risk that presumed high ideals.  Some, like the Pilgrims, came seeking their own kind of religious liberty.  Others, like the Puritans, arrived simply seeking a better life in a new place.  Ocean travel made that possible, and led to the cluster of major ports along the eastern seaboard that we now call Megalopolis.

200 years later, the Erie Canal opened this new world to expansion away from the sea, and gave birth to an inland nation stretching west as far as the plains and its great rivers.  40 years after that, the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad stretched that nation across 3000 miles from sea to sea. 

And 50 years later, America succeeded where France had failed, completing the Panama Canal that linked those two seas and made global shipping possible on an unprecedented scale.  40 years after that, a Republican president inaugurated the construction of the Interstate Highway System, enabling Americans to cross the country for both personal and commercial reasons with unprecedented speed and ease.

The American love affair with the automobile soon spread to other nations, who constructed their own super highway systems.  The same was true for international jet travel, dating from about 1960.

But at that point, American leadership in transportation ended.  As oil prices and pollution and congested roads marked the beginning of the end of automobiles’ dominance, nations in both Europe and Asia began to develop new technologies and build new infrastructure.  They constructed thousands of miles of brand new rail lines to accommodate futuristic trains that could cruise above 200 miles per hour.  The rail systems they built enabled travelers to reach distant destinations in half the time of driving, while using less energy.  Once again, train travel became the first option for hundreds of millions of travelers in France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Japan, China, Taiwan, etc.

But not in the United States.  We still rely on a system of rails constructed as much as 100 years ago, running trains at laughably low speeds compared to either their past performance (when the rail lines were new) or to the speeds typical among our Allies. 

The failure to keep up with our Allies leaves Americans chronically dependent on automobile travel even for the most impractical of trips.  Currently it is impossible to get from Boston to New York in less than 4 hours of actual travel time—no matter if by car, bus, train or plane.  If we had the high speed rail our allies already possess, the trip would take 2 hours or even less.  The same problem applies to trips between all major American cities. Boston to DC is the same distance as Paris to Marseille; both trips take 7 ½ hours by car. In France the trip by train is 3 hours. We can’t we?

Moreover, our outmoded dependence on cars for intra-city and inter-city travel prevents us from reducing our carbon emissions and leaves us stuck in place as the worlds #1 contributor to climate change, which Pope Francis declares to be the world’s #1 challenge. Our economy, our health, our daily lives, our leisure, and even our connection to each other are all damaged by our failure to retain our leadership in transportation.

When I visit other countries and travel their rails, I am amazed at the vision and idealism they displayed by investing in such technological marvels in order to make them practical everyday realities.  They made their vision real. I feel ashamed that my country is no longer capable of such vision or such idealism.  So when I return home and find myself riding the antiquated systems we still cling to, I cannot help but wish that we could learn from and imitate our allies and once again learn how to make visions real.  And I cannot help but wonder “Why can’t we?”

NEXT time: Education

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#421: Would Jesus Send Them Back?

As tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors flood across our southern border, Americans face a growing moral challenge.  And this challenge touches on both our national character and on  Catholic identity itself. 

When Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick offered temporary shelter to 1000 immigrant youths, he unleashed a firestorm of protest in supposedly “liberal” Massachusetts.  Officials of the towns where Patrick proposed sending children for shelter said that their communities should not be burdened with the responsibility, explaining “we need to take care of our own.”

When Patrick compared the current crisis to the case in World War II, when a ship carrying Jewish families was refused entry to the United States (and those families mostly ended up in NAZI death camps), people howled that the comparison was inappropriate.  Letters to the editor argued that we should “send them back where they belong.” And on Saturday, July 26, thousands cheered a “Stop the Invasion” rally at the Massachusetts State House, chanting “Send them home!  Send them home!”

For many, it seems, these children are simply “illegals,” case closed.  As one rally speaker explained:

Our government sees no difference between law-abiding, freedom-loving, taxpaying citizens and lawbreaking aliens.

All this makes me fear that, as the ghost of nativism rears its ugly head, our national character might be recoiling from generations of social progress.

The fact is that hospitality to migrants in trouble is a longstanding tradition in this country.  I recall my third grade teacher announcing the arrival of Hungarian children in her hometown.  Refugees from the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, they came to the U.S., often unaccompanied, because it was not safe to stay home.

To an 8 year old like me, this announcement contained three life lessons.  First, the world beyond our borders was sometimes dangerous.  Second, our nation is seen to be--and was--a place of safe haven for “refugees” (which was a new word to me!).  Third, Americans by nature sacrifice for those who need our help.

Four decades later, my church work repeated these lessons, when some of my client parishes sponsored summer programs (offering housing, host families, recreation, and health care) for “Chernobyl Children.” These minors were fleeing the unsafe milk, crops, and spaces contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear explosion.  Despite presenting itself as a temporary relief program, “Chernobyl Children” naturally encouraged these young Russian guests to think of America as a desirable permanent home.

Catholic social teaching clearly calls for this kind of “open arms” embrace for refugees.  In fact, our tradition holds that people have a human right to migrate if their current location makes them threatened, endangered, oppressed, or destitute.

This certainly applies to at least some of the minors now flooding into the U.S..  And Catholic leaders are championing their cause. John Allen reports that Pope Francis himself sent a clear message to last week’s crisis summit in Mexico City:

Such a humanitarian emergency demands as the first urgent measure that these minors be protected and duly taken in. [They] cross the border under extreme conditions, in pursuit of a hope that in most cases turns out to be vain. (http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/08/02/immigration-takes-its-place-pro-life-issue-for-catholic-church-leaders/LwwqcL3WlOhyWqMdiWtgqL/story.html)

The pope’s message echoes the consistent position of U.S. bishops, especially those from the areas most affected by border crossings.

Bishop Eusebio L Elizondo of Seattle heads the U.S. Bishops Migration Committee.  In a July 17 letter to members of Congress, he spoke against Republican efforts to roll back the legal protections for migrating children, saying “this vulnerable group is fleeing violence from organized criminal networks.”

This claim was verified by Richard Jones of Catholic Relief Services, who said:

We have seen the homicide rates grow, forced displacement increase and Mexican and Colombian drug cartels battle over who controls the moves through Central America…In El Salvador and Honduras, there are more gang members than police.

David Fiske, president of Marygrove College (a Catholic school in Detroit), issued a statement calling the situation a “classic” refugee crisis typical of “war-torn regions in which unprotected civilians will take extreme measures to reach a safe haven.”

That safe haven is, of course, the United States--yet millions of Americans (including, I fear, American Catholics) reject this historical badge of humanitarian honor in favor of “you don’t belong here” and “send them back.”

How striking is the difference between this attitude and the way Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez spoke of such migrants at a July 20 Mass held to focus attention on the crisis:

We celebrate the immigrant spirit that gives life to our great country and our great city.  As we all know, this land was built by the blood and sacrifice and the vision of missionaries and immigrants from every race of language and every nation.  Today we give thanks for all those men and women who left the places where they were born--to bring their faith and values, their talents and gifts--to create a new life and the new world here in America.  We thank God also for the spirit of our new immigrants--those  joining us every day to be our neighbors and friends and family members.

In addition to praising the migrant spirit itself, Gomez used the occasion to spell out the link between immigration policy--especially the treatment of refugees--and Catholic identity itself:

Pope Francis is right, and in the face of this emergency, our first duty must be to protect these children.  My brothers and sisters, what we are doing for these children as a church--it’s not about politics.  We all know that.  It’s about who we are as Catholics… We don’t do it because we are “social workers” or “nice people.” We do it because we are being faithful to our identity and duty as Catholics.  We do it because Jesus calls us to do it.

As a Catholic, I’m proud of my tradition’s strong and clear message that protecting migrants’ human rights reflects true gospel values.  As an American, I am troubled and even ashamed that so many citizens cannot see beyond the red tape of customs regulations and our newfangled and arbitrary immigration quotas.

Once we acknowledge that migrants in need are exercising their human rights, any talk of them as “illegals” becomes nit-picking.  It is like jailing a poor man for fishing to feed his family, just because he could not afford a fishing license.  The law is there to serve people, and for our common good.  Laws that violate a human right are unjust.  And, as Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote, unjust laws are not really laws at all--they are a form of violence.

For me, this begs two questions.

First, why are so many Americans afraid to embrace our longstanding tradition of humanitarian hospitality?  After all, any talk of who “belongs here” is just ignorant.  If “belongs here” means “was always here,” then nobody belongs here.  Even Native Americans migrated here from Asia, and that was long before Europeans and Africans migrated here, and that was long before Asians and South Americans migrated here.  Originally, all our ancestors “belonged” somewhere else--not here.

But millions of Americans continue to ignore this, or deny this, or just shut their eyes.  They prefer to believe that they have a “right” to be here while others do not--and they hide behind the law to avoid the truth.  What are they afraid of?

Second, I wonder about American Catholics.  Does ours faith impact our attitude?  Do U.S. Catholics know the Church’s position on migration and refugees?  Do we know what our traditional beliefs mean?  Do we know our own Catholic identity? 

Or are there millions of Catholics who, if they were asked “What would Jesus do?” would answer: “Jesus would send them home!”?

Pope Francis has called this response the “globalization of indifference,” and my worry is that too many Catholics believe such indifference is compatible with our faith.  I hope I am wrong.

  © Bernard   F. Swain PhD 2013