First it was guns. Now, immigration. Members of the Catholic Church have been hitting hard at Congress this week on matters of national policy.
The latest is Jesuit Father Sean Carroll who told members of Congress on Wednesday that U.S. immigration policy violates basic Christian biblical teachings — namely, that it separates families, Raw Story reported.
Jesuits are a religious order of the Catholic Church.
“With each passing day, we as a country continue to separate family members, through our immigration laws and our detention and deportation practices, contrary to the rhetoric of family values that permeates our political discourse,” he said, at a congressional hearing headed by progressive Rep. Raul Grijalva from Arizona, Raw Story reported.
Father Carroll said that 5,100 children are now in foster care, separated from caretakers who have been detained or deported by federal authorities.
“This reality falls far short of what Scripture teaches regarding care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger,” he said. “Our current policies essentially leave many children as orphans, wives and husbands as widows and widowers, and the stranger deported across the border, away from their family members who need them so deeply.”
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His statements come just after Bishop Stephen Blair, with a Catholic Church in California, pushed U.S. senators to tighten gun policy. Banning guns would build a “culture of life” versus a culture of violence, he wrote, as reported by Catholic News Agency.
“Sadly, gun violence is too common a reality,” he wrote. Supporting S. 649, the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013, would be a “positive step in the right direction,” he added, “by promoting policies that reduce gun violence and save people’s lives in homes and communities throughout our nation.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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