Archbishop Gomez: ‘intensive’ community service, not deportation, appropriate for illegals
Jefferson City, Oct 8, 2008 / 03:10 am (CNA).- José H. Gomez, Archbishop of San Antonio and the senior Hispanic member of the United States’ Catholic hierarchy, spoke at a rally at the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City on Saturday, calling for a moratorium on deportations, federal work site raids, and new anti-immigration legislation until after the upcoming elections. He suggested that instead of deportations, which he said break up families, illegal immigrants should be subject to “intensive, long-term community service.”
Saying he believed immigration to be “the great civil rights test of our generation,” he discussed his own status as an American citizen who grew up as an immigrant born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico.
“I’ve always had family and friends on both sides of the border. So I have many conflicting emotions about the way this debate has played out in recent years,” he explained.
Turning to early Christian history, he described how the notorious Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, who returned to paganism after a Christian upbringing, thought the uniquely Christian benevolence toward strangers weakened the power of his preferred religion.
“To be a Christian was to practice hospitality to the stranger,” he said, quoting several Scriptural verses and Church Fathers.
He especially focused upon Christ’s words in Matthew 25: “For I was a stranger and you welcomed me … As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”
Thus, Archbishop Gomez explained, Catholic interest in immigration is not a recent development but “part of our religious identity as Catholics, as Christians.”
Immigration Dispute Bad for American’s souls
Speaking as a pastor, the archbishop said the immigration dispute is “bad for the souls of Americans.” [More].