Stop Understanding, Start Feeling

As I sat down to write this blog post, about our upcoming protest on December 7th in Newark over the for-profit immigration detention contract, I was tempted to lead with statistics about the percentage of foreign born residents in Essex County. Then I remembered a quote from a book on racial justice by Father Bryan Massingale. "We act justly not because we are intellectually convinced, but because we are passionately moved. Compassion moves the will to justice."

As a movement and as individual activists, there is a tendency toward providing facts, data and statistics that support just immigration policy. There is the belief that if only we could effectively combat the tremendous body of misinformation we would prevail. The problem is that one of the primary tactics of the campaign against immigration reform is an attempt to dehumanize an entire group of people.

However, it becomes obvious, that what is fueling the anti-immigrant movement is anything but rational. The statistics are simply a justification for a deep seated fear of people who are in some way different. It is a deep seated fear that these new people will upset the social order.

I am often asked why I am an advocate for immigration reform. After all, being an advocate for social change of any kind does not win a person any popularity contests, particularly not in New Jersey’s suburbs. I can only describe it as a conversion after encounters with people who were suffering under the injustice of our immigration system. These were moments where, as Catholic and a Christian, I recognized the face of Jesus in the suffering of the people before me and I felt their pain in a deep and profound way. At these times I was able to see that it was merely by luck of my birth and circumstances that I was spared their suffering.

Perhaps that is why I am transfixed by this video. I do not understand the words that Frank uses to describe the plight of immigrants in detention or the injustice of the system that imprisons them for-profit… I feel them.



We need to stop pinning our hopes for change to an intellectual exercise where we ascribe economic value to the lives of people who are immigrants. By doing so, we only contribute to their dehumanization. We need to talk about immigrants as people with innate value as human beings. We need to elevate their lives and their stories, flawed and imperfect though they may be.

Until we have the courage to stridently proclaim, not that some are deserving because they can contribute, but that all are entitled to the basic necessities of life because they are human, we will not prevail.

I hope you will watch Frank’s video as I have, over and over, and share it with your friends. I believe with all my heart and I feel in my soul that the very passion and the power of the emotion that he expresses is our path forward as a movement.

We must stop trying to understand and open our hearts. We must start feeling the pain of our brothers and sisters who are immigrants. Our compassion for their suffering is what will motivate us to act in solidarity for justice.

If you can, please join us in Newark on December 7th, beginning at 4:00 pm in Military Park and later at 7:00 pm at the Essex County Freeholders meeting. If not please sign the petition to revoke the ICE contract in Newark and start putting people before profit.

New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

New Mexico just became the third state to abolish the death penalty through the legislature. New Jersey of course was the first and just last month Montana voted to abolish the death penalty as well. The momentum is building!

STATEMENT BY NEW JERSEYANS FOR ALTERNATIVES TO THE DEATH PENALTY ON NEW MEXICO’S REPEAL OF ITS DEATH PENALTY


Chatham, New Jersey – New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NJADP) congratulates New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and the New Mexico State Legislature for their leadership in repealing capital punishment. We welcome New Mexico’s company as it joins New Jersey and 13 other states that have abandoned the outdated and extreme practice of execution.

The strong bipartisan vote in the New Mexico Legislature comes amidst a growing chorus of concern about the death penalty across the country. New Mexico’s decision to end capital punishment brings to 15 the number of states that no longer carry out executions. Other states have put executions on hold or enacted studies. With executions and death sentences on decline since 2000 in every region of the nation, and with public opinion moving away from support for capital punishment, it is clear that America is rethinking the death penalty.

Opposing Evil AND Doing Good

Like many other Catholics, this election has been causing me a great deal of angst. The battle in the pews over single issues is at a fever pitch in my parish.

I was able to find some comfort in the this joint statement I just recieved from the USCCB offices of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities and the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. I think I will let the statement speak for itself.

Joint Statement by
Cardinal Justin Rigali
Chairman, Committee on Pro-Life Activities
and
Bishop William Murphy
Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

October 21, 2008

In Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (2007), the Catholic bishops of the United States urged Catholic voters to form their consciences in accord with the Church’s moral teaching. We emphasized that: “Both opposing evil and doing good are essential obligations” (No. 24). Unfortunately, there seem to be efforts and voter education materials designed to persuade Catholics that they need only choose one approach: either opposing evil or doing good. This is not an authentically Catholic approach.

Some argue that we should not focus on policies that provide help for pregnant women, but just focus on the essential task of establishing legal protections for children in the womb. Others argue that providing life-affirming support for pregnant women should be our only focus and this should take the place of efforts to establish legal protections for unborn children. We want to be clear that neither argument is consistent with Catholic teaching. Our faith requires us to oppose abortion on demand and to provide help to mothers facing challenging pregnancies.

In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision knocked down laws against abortion in all 50 states, fabricating a constitutional “right” to abortion that continues to haunt and divide our society. Within two days of that decision, the Catholic bishops rejected it as “bad morality, bad medicine and bad public policy.” We called for a comprehensive response: exploring “every legal possibility” for challenging the Court’s tragic error and restoring legal safeguards for the right to life of the unborn child; helping to pass laws to “restrict the practice of abortion as much as possible” in the meantime; and educating society to the need to safeguard the child and support “more humane and morally acceptable solutions” for women facing problems during pregnancy.

Recently, some have called on the Church to abandon most of this effort. They say we should accept Roe as a permanent fixture of constitutional law, stop trying to restore recognition for the unborn child’s human rights, and confine our public advocacy to efforts to “reduce abortions” through improved economic and social support for women and families.

The Catholic community is second to no one in providing and advocating for support for women and families facing problems during pregnancy. Catholic hospitals, charitable institutions, and thousands of pregnancy aid centers, provide life-saving care and compassionate alternatives to the violence of abortion. We have advocated for universal health care coverage, generous family leave policies, increases in the minimum wage, humane welfare policies for women who are pregnant or caring for young children, expanded funding for WIC and other nutrition programs, and a federal children’s health insurance program that includes coverage for unborn children and their mothers. Because some women still feel pressured by economic hardship and lack of support to resort to abortion, our task in this regard is far from over.

These efforts, however, are not an adequate or complete response to the injustice of Roe v. Wade for several important reasons. First, the Court’s decision in Roe denied an entire class of innocent human beings the most fundamental human right, the right to life. In fact, the act of killing these fellow human beings was transformed from a crime into a “right,” turning the structure of human rights on its head. Roe v. Wade is a clear case of an “intrinsically unjust law” we are morally obliged to oppose (see Evangelium vitae, nos. 71-73). Reversing it is not a mere political tactic, but a moral imperative for Catholics and others who respect human life.

Second, the many challenges to the Court’s error since 1973 have borne fruit, leading to significant modifications of Roe. Most recently in its ruling on partial-birth abortion, the Court upheld a ban on an abortion procedure for the first time in 35 years, and acknowledged that abortion takes a human life and does serious harm to women.
Third, Roe itself enormously increased the annual number of abortions in our society. The law is a teacher, and Roe taught many women, physicians and others that abortion is an acceptable answer to a wide range of problems. By the same token, even the limited pro-life laws allowed by the Court since Roe have been shown to reduce abortions substantially, leading to a steady decline in the abortion rate since 1980. Bans on public funding, laws requiring informed consent for women and parental involvement for minors, and other modest and widely supported laws have saved millions of lives. Laws made possible by reversing Roe would save many more. On the other hand, this progress could be lost through a key pro-abortion proposal, the “Freedom of Choice Act,” which supporters say would knock down hundreds of current pro-life laws and forbid any public program to “discriminate” against abortion in providing services to women.
Providing support for pregnant women so they choose to have their babies is a necessary but not sufficient response to abortion. Similarly, reversal of Roe is a necessary but not sufficient condition for restoring an order of justice in our society’s treatment of defenseless human life. This act by itself would not automatically grant legal protection to the unborn. It would remove an enormous obstacle to such protection, so the people of the United States and their elected representatives in every state could engage in a genuine discussion of how to save unborn children and their mothers from the tragedy of abortion. Both approaches to opposing abortion are essential. By protecting the child’s life to the maximum degree possible, improving life-affirming support for pregnant women, and changing the attitudes and prejudices imposed on many women to make them see abortion as an acceptable or necessary solution, we will truly help build a culture of life.
In light of a wide range of attempts to interpret Church teaching or imply that outside materials represent the teaching of the Church, we wish to affirm that Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship is the teaching that has been approved by the body of bishops of the United States. As we explained in that statement, “We encourage Catholics to seek those resources that are authorized by their own bishops, their state Catholic conferences, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.”