Viewing the U.S. public policy and political scene as a chessboard, the prelates of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have downgraded themselves from their historic leadership role as bishops to the subservient position of mere pawns.
Specifically, on birthright citizenship, the bishops willingly allow themselves to be manipulated by leftists pushing secular humanist, globalist ideologies.
The Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an “amicus” brief to the Supreme Court, which will soon rule on President Donald Trump’s executive order to rescind the long-debated precedent of American citizenship by birthright.
Does every birth occurring on U.S. soil mean automatic citizenship, even if the parents trespassed into America as illegal aliens?
Here is the crux of the bishops’ misbegotten argument:
“Birthright citizenship aligns with the Church’s teaching that humans were created as social beings and that political authority is morally bound to affirm and protect the inherent dignity of every human person in the community.”
Of course, the inherent logical flaw here contends that the human dignity of every person can only be ratified by virtue of conferring U.S. citizenship. Given this absurd line of thinking, the United States is then bound to grant American citizenship to every single human on the planet, since they all possess clear human dignity as sons and daughters of the eternal Creator.
Kelsey Reinhardt, president of CatholicVote, correctly deconstructs the actual philosophical danger with this clearly politicized tactic, masked within the language of pastoral teaching:
“That argument does not strengthen the Church’s moral witness—it weakens it. By tying dignity to civil status, the bishops inadvertently echo the logic of the abortion industry: rights exist because the state recognizes them.”
After all, legitimate civil authority is validated by God himself precisely because it intrinsically leads to human flourishing. Societies can only succeed—and only seek the will of God freely—when governed by the rule of law. As such, prudential judgment about identifying the qualifications for citizenship lies with civil authorities who must prioritize the common good of existing citizens before admitting newcomers, especially at a massive scale.
These principles have been taught by the Church for time immemorial and were perhaps best elucidated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica. Aquinas weighed the prerogatives of citizens against any arguments for indiscriminate openness. His Thomistic vision flowed from the timeless maxim that “charity begins at home.”
As such, Aquinas even argued that full citizenship for immigrants should not be granted until the second or third generation. St. Thomas, Doctor of the Church, would surely be branded as some sort of heartless immigration hawk by the bishops today.
But Aquinas understood the crucial role of enlightened patriotism within God’s earthly kingdom. He observed: “Man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after God. Wherefore just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to piety, in the second place, to give worship to one’s parents and one’s country.”
Moreover, looking at the realities of birthright citizenship today, in an era of global travel and trade, the bishops seem to willfully ignore some very unpleasant abuses of America’s generosity.
First, “birth tourism” has exploded. It is simply routine now for expectant mothers who live near the U.S. southern border to legally cross into America as visitors for the express purpose of having a U.S.-born child with full citizenship.
For the wealthy of the world, an entire industry now exists to purchase U.S. holidays that include giving birth.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on Chinese moguls effectively “renting” American women and their wombs to have dozens of U.S.-citizen babies per father. Not only is this kind of chaos awful policy and plainly disordered, but it is also a grave violation of Catholic teaching regarding family life and procreation.
So, clearly the bishops overstepped by inserting the authority of the Church into a partisan legal matter. Honest people and sincere Catholics can disagree on this important issue. But by framing it in such lofty moral terms, these men acted far more like activists than like shepherds of Christ’s flock.
Over time, such actions diminish the authority earned by the Catholic Church over the years as a pillar of American society.
