Pope Francis gave new meaning to the old term “Catholic guilt” on Wednesday when he said that refusing to aid the multitudes of migrants who are streaming into Europe was a “grave sin.” Refusing to become an open-borders globalist leftist takes its place among pride (well, that one is borderline these days, too), anger, lust, sloth, and the rest.
Will Catholics who fought in earlier ages to preserve the cultural and spiritual heritage of Europe now get sentenced to hell retroactively for not opening their doors to the invaders? About that, the pontiff was mum, but if you don’t favor mass migration into the West now, you’re treading on dangerous ground as far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned.
Reuters reported that Pope Francis on Wednesday “strongly decried the treatment of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to enter Europe.” The pope lamented, "There are those who work systematically and with every means to reject migrants. And this, when done with conscience and responsibility, is a grave sin." The solution to this evil, he said, would be "global governance of migration based on justice, brotherhood and solidarity." Yeah, that would fix everything.
However wrongheaded and ill-considered the pope’s stance on migration may be, one thing you can say about him is that he’s consistent. Back in May, he insisted that “migration is something that makes a country grow,” and he was right: look at how the ranks of criminals, people on welfare, and the homeless have grown since Old Joe Biden, Border Czar Kamala Harris, and their henchmen decided to erase the Southern border.
Pope Francis, however, wasn’t hearing any of that. As if to forestall such talk, he decried historical stereotypes about migrants: “They say that you Irish migrated and brought the whiskey, and that the Italians migrated and brought the mafia. Migrants sometimes suffer a lot. They suffer a lot.” He made it clear that he didn’t like any criticism of open borders: “To close the border and leave them there, that is madness.”
Back in April 2022, the pope claimed that opposition to mass migration was really all about racism: “It is true, refugees are subdivided. There’s first class, second class, skin color, [if] they come from a developed country [or] one that is not developed. We are racists, we are racists. And this is bad.”
Of course. What else could we possibly be but racists? The pope doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility that there might be reasons for opposing mass migration other than racism. He has consistently framed the acceptance of mass migration policies, with no regard for the cultural identity or integrity, much less the security, of the host nation, as a core aspect of the Christian commitment.
In Francis’s 2018 apostolic exhortation “Gaudete et Exsultate” (Rejoice and Exult), he asked rhetorically whether welcoming migrants was “exactly what Jesus demands of us, when he tells us that in welcoming the stranger we welcome him (cf. Mt 25:35)? Saint Benedict did so readily, and though it might have ‘complicated’ the life of his monks, he ordered that all guests who knocked at the monastery door be welcomed ‘like Christ,’ with a gesture of veneration; the poor and pilgrims were to be met with ‘the greatest care and solicitude.’”
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Would the pope have expected the monastery to welcome hordes of military-age men, many of whom committed crimes in their new home, and some of whom vowed to transform the monastery into a mosque? The pope cannot conceive of the possibility that Americans and Europeans might oppose mass migration because they want economic and physical security for themselves and their loved ones, and racism and bigotry have nothing to do with it.
The pope doesn’t even seem able to consider the idea that some deeply committed Christians, including Roman Catholics, might not equate the obligation to welcome the stranger with any movement to weaken a nation, dilute its national character, and manipulate its political scene. Does the pope want what remains of Catholic Europe to die, drowned in a sea of migrants? It sure looks that way.
Now that the pope has made it clear that if we oppose open borders, we have committed a “grave sin,” responsible Roman Catholics should ask the question: is it likewise a “grave sin” to doubt his wisdom in this area and his politicization of the spiritual realm? There’s a question for Roman Catholic theologians to ponder.
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