By John M. Grondelski
“Sanctuary” has returned to the American political vocabulary, especially in the context of cities and states declaring that they will not allow local resources—police or social services—to cooperate with federal authorities in identifying or detaining illegal immigrants.
The contemporary Polish political philosopher Zbigniew Stawrowski argues that part of our modern problem is a kind of philosophical deception: terms have been co-opted by the left, emptied of their original meaning, and replaced with new notions detached from it. We see it in words like “rights,” “justice,” and “marriage.” And we see it with “sanctuary” too.
A “sanctuary” is the most sacred part of a church. It is, by definition, holy. “Sanctuary” refers to the sacred space around the altar, often (at least by tradition) physically separated by a boundary: the altar rail. Gradually, the special reverence granted to the sanctuary extended to the entire church building and, at times, to its surroundings due to their connection with the Church.
An additional idea of “sanctuary” emerged in the Middle Ages as part of a larger issue: the relationship between civil and ecclesiastical powers. It was not just about the question of “the things of God and of Caesar,” because medieval thought would never have imagined that there were things belonging to Caesar that did not first and foremost belong to God. It was a question of who had jurisdiction where.
By the principle of “rendering to Caesar and to God,” the sanctuary offered fugitives from the king’s justice refuge in the house of God. But this protection was not unlimited. As The Catholic Encyclopedia notes regarding the “right of asylum,” in some places after 30 or 40 days, the sanctuary required the fugitive to swear to leave the king’s realm and not return without royal permission.
If he wanted immunity from some of the king’s laws, he had to become subject to none of them. That is: the sanctuary could delay Caesar’s justice by allowing time to resolve matters, not annul it. One could not normally claim “sanctuary” indefinitely against Caesar and yet remain in his realm.
Let us compare that with the contemporary imitation of the term “sanctuary.”
First, it has almost no connection to a sacred place. It is true that some Church leaders have asked federal courts to prevent ICE from making arrests in sacred places, but that is almost a vestige of the term’s origins.
In reality, “sanctuary” has undergone a secularized apotheosis. It is not necessarily connected to any sacred place: what is holy about a Home Depot parking lot or even the entire State of California? Instead, these secular spaces have been sacralized not by something inherent in them, but simply by declaration.
The place is not qualitatively different, only its designation. There is no inherent moral or spiritual meaning in the areas thus designated.
If the sacred derives merely from being labeled as such, if everything can be a “sanctuary,” then in reality nothing is. Even churches now embody what one critic called “transitory sacrality,” often consistent with their “multi-purpose” design. The explicitly sacred is limited in time: “holy” from 10 to 12 for Mass; available at 3 for a concert; and open at 6 for a chicken juggling show. Just move the altar table (mensa) and the adjacent candles (not on it)!
Not even Caesar would necessarily recognize “sanctuary” in its original form. During COVID, the most aggressive states shut down public “events,” and the bishops accompanied those measures with general dispensations from Mass. If a “maverick” bishop—invoking “sanctuary”—had opened his cathedral for public worship, do you think the Detroit police, for example, would have tolerated that “sanctuary”?
Suppose a father fleeing a court order to “affirm” his son’s gender transition took refuge in St. Mary’s in Sacramento. Do you think “gender sanctuary” California would consider him immune?
I don’t think so, in either case. And I dare to bet that the same voices demanding “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants would have no problem denying “sanctuary” in these cases, probably invoking “separation of Church and State” to do so.
The logic of modern “sanctuary” is partisan, not principled. It has less to do with upholding the Church’s moral authority than with exploiting its language to protect certain political agendas.
That explains why the historical immunity of sanctuary was abolished throughout Europe: first by Protestant reformers, then by the secular regimes of the Enlightenment. And it also explains what makes a place a “sanctuary”: not its religious nature, but a political act that attaches the label of “sanctuary” to… a Home Depot parking lot, Dodger Stadium, or the city of Berkeley.
The current redefinition of “sanctuary” is an additional sign of the Church’s marginalization. Contemporary sanctuary advocates want it both ways: preserving an immunity that arose when it was rightly recognized that Church and State were two independent “swords,” while treating the Church (and sacrality) as subjects of Caesar.
The Church fosters this confusion when it employs this “sanctuary” rhetoric. It reaches the height of satire when the “right to sanctuary” for illegal immigrants becomes so urgent that, in the name of those who “fear” being arrested for being undocumented, the Bishop of San Bernardino issues a permanent dispensation from attending a real sanctuary on Sunday mornings.
We must recover a profound respect for the unique status of places of worship. We have at least 1,600 years of precedent for it. But that recovery will not happen as long as others co-opt our terms in unrecognizable ways and the Church itself lends them support.
About the author:
John Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is former vice dean of the School of Theology at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. All opinions expressed here are exclusively his own.