By Robert Royal
In his speech to the U.S. bishops during their annual meeting in Baltimore last week, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States, maintained—almost to the point of obsession—that Vatican Council II must be considered the guide for the present and future of the Church. And the Council, he made clear, as it has been interpreted recently by Pope Francis. (“Pope Leo is also convinced of this”). It was a bold, though dubious, claim, given the well-documented ability of theologians to disagree. Even the most progressive among them might find reasons to question any attempt to “control the narrative”. In fact, the cardinal went further, entering even more difficult territory—Rome must have approved all this in advance—by stating that “we now inhabit the world that the Council foresaw.” It is revealing—we will return to it—that Pierre felt the need to insist so strongly before the U.S. bishops, which implies that he knows they are not so much in agreement.
Now, many committed Catholics today tend to pay too much attention to passing statements from the Pope or the curia. (Mea culpa…) And, sadly, sometimes “cancel” others just like social media maniacs. However, the most important thing happening on the surface of the Earth any day may not be a big political or ecclesiastical matter, but a priest helping someone to die reconciled with God and family. Or perhaps a humble and unknown person entering the path of becoming the human being that God wanted us to be, someone who will really make a difference in the world, that is, a saint.
Even so, lesser truths also matter because truth is one of the divine names. As any impartial observer could tell the cardinal, no one in the 1960s—and least of all the bishops gathered in Rome—had a clear idea of the world we currently “inhabit.” It does no good to the real achievements of the conciliar Fathers back then, nor to our confused Church today, to make claims that probably none of them would have made. It’s not just a matter of our brave new world of smartphones, Internet, and AI, though those are significant and threatening enough already. We live amid unprecedented confusions about the value of human life and the nature of human societies, above the ancient problems of sin and unbelief.
In the 1960s, to give one crucial example, Paul Ehrlich published a hugely influential book, The Population Bomb, which predicted with total certainty:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, hundreds of millions will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.
This never happened, of course, but many (including even some in the Church) who believed they were “following the Science” urged the adoption of radical programs to reduce the birth rate (contraception seemed good for multiple reasons at the time) and, supposedly, to protect the planet… from people.
We still hear echoes of all that, even now, in debates about whether it’s moral to have children given the human impact on the Earth. And Paul Ehrlich, to the astonishment of many, has continued to be invited in recent years as an “expert” to conferences of bodies like the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
Today, by contrast—unexpected for anyone in the Council’s time—all the developed countries of the world are on the edge of a demographic cliff. People, particularly in the West, are not having enough children to replace themselves. And the various systems that depend on a sufficient number of workers—Social Security, most notably—face uncertain futures. This is, by the way, one of the factors driving the opening of borders to mass immigration, which may or may not help, depending on whether the immigrants contribute to their new homeland or add to the welfare rolls—and social disruption—as is happening with mass Muslim immigration in the UK, France, Germany, and elsewhere.
A cynic might also argue that perhaps the U.S. bishops hope that immigration, especially from predominantly Christian Latin America, will refill the pews.
Beyond all this, however, it’s worth noting that Cardinal Pierre felt the need to push Vatican II, Francis-style, before our bishops. The U.S. bishops, with some isolated exceptions, remain, for the most part, heirs of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. And while one wishes for more evangelizing energy from them, as a group they are basically committed to holding the line on life, marriage, family, and religious liberty issues. This cannot be said of all episcopal conferences, including notably the Italian and German ones.
Meanwhile, Pope Leo—at least so far—seems to have taken his cues from figures like Cardinal Cupich of Chicago, who represents a clear minority among the U.S. hierarchy. The Pope has even spoken of “problems” among the American bishops.
And he’s right, though perhaps not in the sense he means. Poor Bishop Strickland, for example, the removed bishop of Tyler, Texas, stood up during a session last week and pointed out that Fr. James Martin S.J. had recently received into the Church and given Communion to a prominent male New York media figure “married” to another man. He rightly called on the bishops to respond, as nearly two dozen did publicly when Cardinal Cupich tried to give a lifetime achievement award to pro-abortion and “gay marriage” promoter Senator Dick Durbin because he was “good” on immigration. And they responded—by ignoring him.
Several good things came out of the Baltimore meeting. Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City was elected president. As our friend Phil Lawler has documented, several news outlets have called him a “conservative culture warrior”, something he should wear as a badge of honor, because he is firmly pro-life, as is Archbishop Sample of Portland, elected to head the Religious Liberty Committee.
Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville was elected vice president. Flores is basically a solid guy—at least that’s what one hears—though he was placed in the difficult position of being the U.S. point man for synodality. He has also expressed some odd views on immigration, saying in 2017 that detaining illegals was “formal cooperation with an intrinsic evil,” like taking someone to an abortion clinic.
This is simply false. Abortion is a malum in se, an intrinsic evil. Enforcing immigration law is not, and, on the contrary, when done well, it is a social good. Of course there are cases of abuses by ICE agents or others, and they must be addressed. And there is too much hostile language about illegals today. But none of that discredits border law enforcement, any more than occasional police brutality means that policing as such is wrong. One hopes Bishop Flores was just speaking in an emotional moment.
In fact, our U.S. hierarchy needs a richer moral language on immigration. You may like or not what the current administration is trying to do. Even so, what is happening is not just a matter of respecting “human dignity” or considering support for immigration part of the culture of life. As I have said publicly for years, the United States has some moral responsibility toward the people it has allowed into the country, especially if they have lived here peacefully for years. Recent illegals, it seems to me, especially the considerable criminal element, are something entirely different.
What must be done with these different categories of people must be resolved by democratic means. Taking sides in advance in that discussion, with only superficial concessions about a country’s right to control its borders, is not something our bishops or our U.S.-born Pope should be doing. There are several competing moral dimensions. The Catholic Church, with its sophisticated modern social doctrine, should be sensitive to all of them. Nothing else is likely to work.
And besides, this is really the world we live in now, not one supposedly foreseen 60 years ago.
About the author
Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century, Columbus and the Crisis of the West y A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.