May 31, 2019

Be Our Guest / Stephen Bussell

Reader: Immigration problem is not as important or morally urgent as abortion problem

In a recent “Be Our Guest” column “Learning from an immigration culture” in the May 17 issue of The Criterion, the author says that helping migrants, immigrants, and children is just as important as opposing abortion. Her compassion for those who struggle is admirable. Still, she seems to labor under the impression that all life issues are equally important, which is decidedly not the case.

As the Church teaches, abortion is an “intrinsically evil” act that can never be morally justified. For voters, it has been described as a “non-negotiable” issue, meaning that, under ordinary circumstances, Catholics may not vote for “pro-choice” politicians.

The immigration problem is not as important or morally urgent as the abortion problem because it does not involve the act of murdering innocent human beings. Indeed, immigration or refugee policies can be good, evil, or even good and evil, depending on the wisdom of the policy makers.

As we know, the abortion procedure is so grisly that none of the major television networks will show pictures of the end result. The daily hardships of immigrants and refugees, though significant, does not really compare to the savage brutality that the “extracted fetus” must endure.

In the last 40 years, almost 2 billion babies worldwide have been slaughtered in their mother’s womb, while tens of thousands of immigrants and refugees have lost their lives. Doesn’t the disparity between these two statistics tell us which issue calls for the most urgent response?

To be sure, the policy decisions that affect the immigrant’s quality of life do matter greatly, but the moral decisions that determine who will live or die matters even more. It is on the moral and spiritual battlefield that souls are saved or lost. On policy issues, no one goes to hell for supporting an orderly immigration process.

Perhaps it is time for the Church’s social justice warriors to step back and reconsider their moral priorities.
 

(Stephen Bussell is a member of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis.) †

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