Maybe it’s going too far to apply the term to the clergy. Nagging you on your religious obligations is, after all, their job.
That being said, though, Pope Francis’ hectorings of the Christian flock increasingly have an annoying God-botherer quality to them. Perhaps because the Pontifex Maximus has taken to mixing public policy pronouncements into his spiritual pontifications. Climate change, for example. And immigration.
Not to presume to tell the Holy Father his business, but aren’t there matters closer to home, so to speak, that might rate a higher priority regarding papal attention?
Go into any big Catholic Church of a Sunday nowadays and your footsteps echo amid the row upon row of empty pews. It’s fortunate for Christianity these days that the two-thirds-empty churches are still churches at all. Not a few have gone the route into oblivion of the venerable Hagia Sophia, Church of the Holy Wisdom, one of the earliest major Christian edifices, erected in the year 532. Now it’s strictly a stop for Istanbul tour groups to check out amid the teeming nearby mosques.
And so we see as part of a growing trend that the Capernaum Church in Germany is now the Al-Nour Islamic Center. And St. Ignatius in Amsterdam is now the Fatih Camii Mosque. (Those triumphalist words mean, incidentally, “The Conqueror’s Mosque.”)
Christianity across Europe is a vanishing curiosity, its grand, magnificent churches now drawing more gawking tourists than genuflecting worshippers.
In contrast, the world’s fastest growing faith is all but issuing big Styrofoam No 1. fingers for gloating adherents to wave like Crimson Tide fans.
Francis, meanwhile, frets about climate change, with apparently no sense of irony regarding the Church’s staunch resistance to artificial birth control and the effect of burgeoning populations on the world’s demand for electricity and carbon fuels.
The poorest places on Earth are also the fastest multiplying.
* Pakistan’s population of 196.7 million is now 61 per cent that of the United States, although Pakistan is only 8 percent of the United States in square miles. Pakistan’s per capita GDP: $1,571 vs., for example, Norway’s $75.513.
* Bangladesh’s population of 166.2 million is now 51 percent of that of the United States, although Bangladesh is only 1.5 percent of the United States in square miles. Bangladesh’s per capita GDP is $1,480 vs., for example, Canada’s $45,677.
* Ethiopia’s population of 104.3 million is now about one-third that of the United States although Ethiopia is only 11 percent of the United States in square miles. Ethiopia’s per capita GDP: $595 vs. United States’ $59,391.
In his denunciations of economic “exclusion” and calls for “redistribution of economic benefits,” Francis has tripped alarms on the rightward end of the political spectrum. Isn’t this a topic he might better leave to the politicians, say Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren?
It can be said in response, of course, that the Pope’s indictments of capitalist hustlers are mild stuff compared to the what-for Jesus gave ’em, upending as he did the money-changers’ tables in the Temple, and saying as he did that a camel has a better chance of passing through the eye of a needle than a rich man of entering the kingdom of God.
What’s more, as Bernie Sanders fans like to point out, the early Christians were socialists if not, pretty much, outright commies – at least according to the scriptures. (Acts 4:32 says the first Christians held property in common. 4:35 adds that they distributed wealth “unto every man according to his needs.”)
So the Pope’s advocacy of what Uncle Bernie’s followers call “economic justice” doesn’t seem inconsistent with Christian roots. But in championing the world’s “tempest-tossed,” Francis’ politics does present practical difficulties. It sweeps in under its charitable aegis tsunamis of immigrants – Middle Eastern and North African Muslims pouring into Europe, low-educated Latinos pouring into the United States. And there’s an off-putting trend among not a few of these immigrants to demand that their new country accommodate itself to them, rather than accommodating themselves to their new country.
For all the uplifting Ellis Island success stories, immigration, unchecked, manifests itself today in the occasional jihadic eruption, not exactly a rare event. Of 549 terrorism arrests since 9/11, 402 – 73 percent – were foreign-born, according to a recent joint report by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security.
Nor can other criminal-gang activity be walled off from discussions of immigration – for example,. MS-13. Mara Salvatrucha. (Roughly translated: “Gang of Fire Ants” – now reckoned to number in the tens of thousands in scores of U.S. and Canadian cities.)
Commenting on the immigration issue, Francis recently provoked a ruckus by suggesting that Joseph and Mary were biblical refugees snubbed by the people of Bethlehem, who, said the Pontiff, closed their homes and hearts to them. (See Mark Steyn’s piece, “Virtue-Signaling While Rome Burns,” SteynOnline.)
With all due respect to the Holy Father’s authority and expertise in this subject area, doesn’t his version of biblical events run contrary to that of the Gospel According to St. Luke?
By all means correct me if I’m wrong. But doesn’t Luke say that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem, hometown of Joseph’s family, not as refugees but as bullied peons ordered to register for a tax census decreed by Augustus Caesar, one of history’s early big-government guys?
Doesn’t Luke say there was no place for Joseph and Mary to stay because, simply, the inn was full – not because of Bethlehem’s hard-hearted, Know-Nothing, xenophobic, right-wing, GOP-like bigotry toward refugee immigrants?
Perhaps the Holy Father owes Bethlehem an apology.
In Francis’ defense, you could say he was only trying to make the case for charity. Charity is, after all, a fundamental virtue stressed by all of the great faiths. “Share your bread with the hungry and your home with the poor,” says Isaiah, or words to that effect.
The e-publication Catholic Stand interjects the point that the non-biblical proverb, “Charity begins at home,” doesn’t mean it ends there. And true enough.
But charity that neglects to tend to matters at home is less likely to be in a position to help out with matters elsewhere. Which is to say that the virtue of charity has practical considerations. Leaving borders open to influxes of unsifted multitudes lets in low skilled immigrants who then compete for dwindling unskilled jobs in an atmosphere of increasing social turmoil. That’s hardly a charitable arrangement for the millions of American citizens who find themselves left outside of the workforce, not even counted among the officially unemployed. (Fully 37 percent of working-age Americans are thus sidelined, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics “Labor Participation Rate.”)
Meanwhile, the influx of unskilled immigration also erodes wages at the bottom of the job hierarchy, undermining especially African Americans. And it puts strains on school, social services and law enforcement budgets, again with a disparate impact on economically precarious minority neighborhoods.
The Democrat Party gets new voters for its rolls. The Republican Party’s corporate puppeteers (along with the liberal predators of Silicon Valley) get cut-rate labor favorable to bottom lines. Which is to say, some benefit, some don’t. Among the latter, besides African Americans, are perhaps what used to be called “white trash” – today’s deplorables, irredeemables and bitter yahoos clinging to their guns and bibles.
In short, Emma Lazarus’ sappy poem is not the first and last word on the subject. Francis’ secular obiter dicta aside, there are practical matters to be weighed in the balance. Not only economics but the topic of crime forces its attention upon us.
A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in 2011 noted 351,000 “criminal aliens” in America’s state and federal prisons. (Yes, that’s the term the GAO used, “criminal aliens.”) The GAO survey cited 2.8 million offenses committed by these criminal aliens. (Okay, okay, “criminal undocumenteds,” if you absolutely insist).
And no, not all “undocumenteds” are criminals, and nobody’s saying they are. But they are in violation of the law if they lack documentation – even if the dog ate their papers along with their homework. Hardly all of the “undocumenteds” are gangsters, true. But hardly all are valedictorians and altar boys, either. (See Latin Kings, Latin Counts, Nortemos, Nuestro Famiilia, Los Solidos, Raza Unita, et alii.)
As that GAO report indicated, offenses committed by “criminal aliens” in the survey included: 213,000 assaults, 94,000 weapons violations, 70,000 sex offenses, 43,000 robberies and 25,000 homicides. And that’s not even to get into the hundreds of thousands of narcotics offenses.
Meanwhile, the Crime Prevention Research Center, headed by a board of PhD academics, reports that illegal aliens in Arizona are 142 percent more likely to be convicted of crime than citizens and are 45 percent more likely to be convicted of serious offenses.
These reports do not precisely identify the neighborhoods where such crime mostly occurs. But a wild guess is that far more illegal alien transgressions are likely to occur in, say, Trenton than in Princeton; far more in, say, Newark than in Saddle River. A further wild guess is that far more “criminal alien offenses” plague neighborhoods with heavy Democratic registrations than ones with heavy Republican registrations.
The studiously ignored reality is that crime also has followed the immigrant influx into Europe, with Italy no exception. Research by Italy’s biggest business organization, Confcommercio-Impreso Per l’Italia, reported finding that a rise in immigration in any given geographic area brings with it a predictable and significant rise in crime. With such a report, Confcommercio is, in a sense, biting the hand that feeds its membership.
Being a source of cheap labor, immigration is widely defended by liberal and libertarian dogma alike as a fundamentally pro-business force.
This Italian report also didn’t say specifically which neighborhoods in Italy bear the brunt of criminal alien lawlessness. But, again, a wild guess is that such crime is more troubling to folks outside the Citta del Vaticano’s walls than to those within their isolated, heavily guarded, solicitously cosseted confines.
