On Immigration, Intrinsic Evil, and ICE

We are living in dangerous times, and it’s important that we as Christians know how to respond to that.

If you are a Catholic like me, you’ve surely been catechized to know that you must never do evil so that good might come of it. You’re allowed to protect yourself with deadly force if you’re in a life-or-death situation- always with the goal of using the least violence possible, and always only after every peaceful means has been exhausted. But you’re never allowed to directly kill someone or perform other intrinsic evils, because you think you’ll get a good result. That’s forbidden, for many good reasons.  One of them, certainly not the most important,  is that slippery slope. Evil begets evil. If you start doing terrible things because you’re pretty sure good things will come of it, you will find yourself doing more and more terrible things.

If you ask your average Catholic to name an intrinsic evil, they’ll usually say “getting an elective abortion,” and that’s true. But that’s not the only intrinsic evil. John Paul the Second said that mass deportation is intrinsically evil. Torture is also intrinsically evil. Racism is intrinsically evil. Genocide is, of course, intrinsically evil.

The Church teaches that countries have a right to secure their borders and protect their citizens from danger. But human beings also have the right to migrate, and the more prosperous countries have a duty to be hospitable to them as they’re able. Yes, when immigrants get to a new country, they are obliged to honor that country’s laws. But somebody else doing something wrong doesn’t take away their humanity, or our duty to treat them like humans. We can punish them in a proportionate and humane way when they commit crimes, but we can’t commit intrinsic evils.

When human beings are being persecuted, it’s our job to stand up and protect them. Our place, as Christians, is to stand with the marginalized and the oppressed against the powerful.

You must never, ever, do something because you hope it will make a bad person suffer. And you mustn’t rejoice in somebody else’s suffering.

I promise you, if you start out committing or rejoicing in intrinsic evils against somebody you think deserves it, you’ll find yourself committing and rejoicing in a whole slew of intrinsic evils.

Maybe you were just excited to see violent gangsters packed onto a plane and sent to a torturous gulag in El Salvador. It turns out that most of them weren’t gangsters, but all right. Nobody likes violent gangsters. I don’t think I’d be able to bring myself to be sad if a violent gangster suffered.  But the next thing you know, our government is deporting United States citizens even though they have cancer. And then an immigrant is found to be a victim of a homicide in a facility where large numbers of migrants are concentrated together in inhumane conditions (there’s a word for that kind of facility, and you already know what it is). And  Immigration officers are arresting and humiliating a half-naked, elderly United States citizen with severe psoriasis in bitterly old weather. They are detaining little children, using them as bait to catch their parents, and shipping them across the country to inhumane facilities. They are throwing tear gas at bystanders including babies. They are shooting women in the head, through the side passenger window of a car, and then lying that the car was driving towards them. And it’s going to get far worse.

Remember what I wrote back in 2019:

Wherever you see it suggested that some people are worthy of life, prosperity and peace at the expense of others– it doesn’t really matter if what you’re seeing pales in comparison with the atrocities committed at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and the other concentration camps. Because you’re looking at the way the concentration camps started.

If you find yourself saying “they should have followed the law,” despite the fact that this is happening to legal asylum-seekers who are following all the laws as well as to illegal migrants– you should realize that what you’re saying is that it’s okay to violate the rights of some human beings, as long as those human beings are law-breakers. And laws can be changed. A government can keep ramping up what they consider illegal, until everyone of a certain race finds themselves illegal no matter how hard they tried to follow the rules. It has happened before. If we don’t have a certain inviolable baseline of the ways in which it’s all right to treat a criminal– if we’ve convinced ourselves that any indignity is appropriate for a law-breaker– then anything is possible.

And if you find you’re listening only to news sources that tell you everything the president does is okay instead of to news that critiques his administration– no, those news sources aren’t nearly as slick as the Nazi propaganda machine. They are laughably oafish by comparison. Yet, here you are believing them. And they are spreading only the news the president would like for you to hear, and that ought to give you pause.

Genocides don’t happen all at once.

But once we accept the premise that it’s okay to hurt some people for a greater good, we have accepted that it’s okay to hurt some people for a greater good. Exactly how much hurt for how little good can quickly balloon out of the proportions you were willing to accept in the first place, and at that point you can’t stop it.

Don’t be a person who decided to accept some evils for a greater good.

The Lord puts before you life and death.

What kind of Christian are you going to be?

Are you going to be the Deutsche Christen movement’s version of Christianity? Or Corrie Ten Boom and the Ulma family‘s kind?

Saint Maximillian Kolbe when he wrote and preached antisemitism? Or, Saint Maximillian Kolbe when he sacrificed his life for a stranger?

Father Coughlin? Or Mother Cabrini?

The American slave holders who considered themselves very good Christians? Or the Christian abolitionists?

All of those people considered themselves good Christians.

You can participate in grave intrinsic evil, while feeling like a good Christian, if you wish. Or you can stand up against evil.

History will judge you, and so will God.