Catholic bishops rebuked for ‘confusion’ on deportations stance by leading lay group

SPECIAL: A leading American Catholic group chastised some of its colleagues for creating “confusion” about the church’s official stance on law enforcement and called for “a more comprehensive conversation on immigration” after U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement opposing mass deportations.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a “special pastoral message on immigration” in which bishops said they felt “compelled now, in this environment, to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.”

In the message, the bishops said unequivocally, “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people,” adding: “We pray for an end to inhumane rhetoric and violence, whether directed against immigrants or law enforcement.”

“We are disturbed when we see a climate of fear and anxiety among our population around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are distressed by the state of current debates and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”

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They also lamented the “arbitrary loss of legal status of some immigrants in the United States” and “we are distressed when we encounter parents who fear detention while taking their children to school and try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”

A day later, conservative advocacy group CatholicVote published a report titled “Immigration Enforcement and Christian Conscience”; “Despite what some Church leaders in America have stated, a faithful Catholic can support the enforcement of strong, humane immigration laws, including through physical barriers, detention, and deportation, without violating the Church’s teaching,” the report said.

The U.S. bishops’ statement invokes the verse “whatever you did for one of these least of my brothers, you did for me,” referring to the plight of immigrants, while CatholicVote’s report notes that “the implications of this passage apply to all people—including the poor, the forgotten, the unemployed, and victims of crime.”

The report argues that although “weak borders and lenient law enforcement are often presented as ‘humane’ and ‘compassionate’ policies demanded by Christian love,” such policies “often come at a terrible human cost—for example, when they enrich and strengthen criminal cartels, they clearly harm Americans and foreigners alike in the process.”

He also argued that they should be deported even in cases that lead to the separation of families, saying, “In this respect, there is no essential difference between imprisonment for other crimes and the deportation of illegal immigrants.”

“When legitimate law enforcement disrupts family life, responsibility lies with the family members who broke the law,” the report states.

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The southern border of the United States is near El Paso, Texas. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)

“Catholics who advocate strong but humane immigration enforcement are sometimes accused of disobeying their bishops or popes or even violating Church teaching,” the report said. “Statements by Church leaders in America and abroad have also added to the confusion, especially when they draw a moral equation between President Trump’s immigration policy and, for example, the pro-abortion platform of the Democratic Party,” he says.

Despite this, the report claims that “to be honest, there is no such thing.” official ‘Catholic position on the practical details of immigration policy.'” Instead, he frames individual Catholics’ attitudes to the enforcement of immigration as “a matter of prudent political decision,” saying that it is “an area of ​​responsibility that belongs to Catholic laymen rather than bishops.”

CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt told Fox News Digital that the group “wants to encourage a more comprehensive discussion on immigration and to give moral standing and freedom of conscience to Catholics and Christians who recognize the need to secure the border and the importance of the rule of law.”

Reinhardt said that “the pastoral accompaniment of bishops and faithful Christians, however necessary, does not exhaust the moral vocabulary of the Church.”

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ICE and several other federal, state and local agencies conducted a week-long immigration enforcement operation in the Houston, Texas area that resulted in the arrest of 646 illegal immigrants. (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

“The responsibility to regulate borders in the name of the common good is not a warning attached to an otherwise humanitarian manifesto; it is an integral part of Catholic doctrine,” Reinhardt said. “This is not a secondary or unimportant issue. As we argue, it is precisely the collapse of the legal order, and not just private prejudice, that has created the conditions in which exploitation thrives, cartels thrive and millions of immigrants are thrust into a shadow world without legal recourse or clear prospects.”

“To put it bluntly, the point is this: A nation cannot honor the dignity of immigrants if it has effectively abandoned the rule of law by which immigrants can be protected,” he said.

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CatholicVote made headlines in 2024 by offering its first political endorsement of President Donald Trump. The group’s founder, Brian Burch, currently serves as the Trump administration’s ambassador to the Vatican.

Fox News Digital reached out to the USCCB for comment but did not immediately receive a response.