America’s Bishops Should Heed Church on Sovereignty

President-elect Donald J. Trump is to be inaugurated Monday and his mass deportation program is slated to begin Tuesday. While a number of Catholic bishops have spoken out against Trump’s deportation plans (I’ve covered the subject for The American Spectator here, here, and here), the Catholic Church has actually long supported the right of nations to defend their sovereignty, their borders, and their national culture and identity.

The Church and the Sovereignty of Nations

In what would surely be characterized as a nationalist hate screed if published today, Pope Leo XII wrote in 1885, “Nations have their own distinct character and genius, bestowed upon them by divine Providence, and it is the duty of the state to ensure that these unique identities are respected and fostered in the development of society.”

In 1937, Pope Pius XI wrote that the Catholic Church “never places limits to the rights of individuals or nations to develop according to their ethnic characteristics.” The Pontiff’s encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, written in German instead of the usual Latin, was intended as a warning against the ascendant Nazi regime which was about to ignite the Second World War. Thus, Pope Pius XI cautioned, “However, it [the Church] strongly condemns any exclusion or superiority that leads to division and discord.”

It is worth noting that even in the midst of Germany’s descent into the violent ideology of neopagan Nazism, the Pontiff upheld the nation’s right to value and preserve its ethnic heritage.

Two years later, Pope Pius XII continued his predecessor’s work, strongly condemning racially-motivated violence and ethnic cleansing while firmly supporting a nation’s right to protect its ethnic and cultural heritage. In Summi Pontificatus, he wrote, “In the unity of the human family, races, and peoples have their own characteristics which they may and must guard, preserve, and develop, yet always in harmony and in the service of the common good.”

Pope Pius XII continued, “Nations and races … are manifestations of the divine plan, as they contribute to the richness of human life and culture. Each particular community, whether large or small, is destined by nature to form a harmonious part of the whole human family, under the fatherhood of God.”

Considered by some to be a more progressive Pontiff due to his instigating the Second Vatican Council, which brought about sweeping reforms and changes in the Church in the tumultuous 1960s, Pope St. John XXIII wrote in 1963’s Pacem in Terris, “Men from different ethnic origins and cultural backgrounds have the right to their own way of life, to live according to their own traditions, and to develop in accordance with their own genius.”

Pope John XXIII’s successor, Pope St. Paul VI, also wrote in 1967 that “no people should be deprived of the right to preserve and develop its cultural and ethnic traditions.”

The Catholic Church’s teachings on national sovereignty, culture, and identity are perennial and immutable, and the declarations of popes on the subject did not end with Pope St. Paul VI. In 1987, Pope St. John Paul II told nations, “Your cultures, traditions, and ethnic identities are gifts that contribute to the richness of human society. The Church respects your heritage and recognizes the importance of preserving your unique identities.”

He continued, in his 2001 address for the World Day of Peace, “Every culture, as every people and every nation, has its own unique identity and contributes to the common heritage of humanity.” Pope St. John Paul II added, “The recognition of this uniqueness is an essential element of peace and mutual respect among the human family.”

His successor, the late Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, “Human communities, when they respect their own identities and traditions, can offer a richer contribution to the common good. This requires recognizing the particularities of each nation, ethnicity, and group.”

Long before any of these popes wrote their letters and encyclicals, the intellectual and theological giants of the Church clarified and defined the Church’s stance on national sovereignty, culture, and identity. St. Augustine wrote in The City of God on a nation’s right to protect itself from war and invasion and St. Thomas Aquinas clarified that love must be extended to one’s neighbors and countrymen before those of other nations.

Support the President

As Trump prepares to take office again, America’s Catholic bishops would do well to recognize that the incoming President intends to preserve and protect the national sovereignty, culture, and identity of these United States. His deportation program is not a means of demeaning, degrading, or dehumanizing immigrants but of ensuring that America’s laws are respected, her people protected, and her national and cultural identity, which Pope Pius XII said ought to be treated as a “sacred inheritance,” preserved.

The bishops may also want to examine the effects that mass immigration — and especially illegal immigration — has had on the nation. American women have been raped and murdered, hundreds of thousands of children have been sex trafficked across the border, and hundreds of American lives have been ended — and hundreds of thousands more ruined — by the diabolical drug trade the border crisis has permitted. It may also be prudent for the bishops to reflect on their own role in the immigration invasion now eroding the nation’s security and cultural heritage and ask whether they truly do value human dignity and the teachings of the Church or just their swollen pocket books.

READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy:

US Bishops Denounce Trump’s Immigration Plans

The Devil in D.C.

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