Pope Francis's Letter to the United States

The Rights of Immigrants and the Ordo Amoris (Again)

Last week, Pope Francis issued a rare letter to the Catholic bishops of the United States addressing the “major crisis” (#4) unfolding in the country as a result of the immigration policies implemented by the administration of President Donald Trump. The letter essentially has two parts: the first outlines the Catholic Church’s teachings on migration and briefly explains why the Trump administration’s policy falls short of these teachings, while the second reflects on the nature of Christian love, “the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception” (#6). The latter is undoubtedly a response to Vice President JD Vance’s recent remarks on the concept of the ordo amoris (order of love), (mis)using the concept to justify the administration’s immigration policy, even though Vance himself goes unnamed in the pope’s letter (as does Trump).

Before diving into the contents, I think it’s important to consider the letter’s aims. Of course, one aim of the letter is to criticize the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The day before President Trump’s inauguration, Francis called plans for “mass deportations” “a disgrace.” I believe the more recent letter is Francis’s first comments on the matter since Trump’s inauguration. In the letter, Francis refers to the “initiation of a program of mass deportations,” but otherwise does not get into the details of recent policy changes.

The letter is not just concerned with challenging Trump’s immigration policies, however, but also Catholic defenses of those policies. The historian and theologian Massimo Faggioli has noted that it is unusual for a pope to engage so directly in a theological dispute with a Catholic politician like Vance. Some had earlier praised Vance for bringing Catholic theology into political discourse, even referring to him, somewhat tongue in cheek, as the “Catechist-in-Chief.” But now the actual catechist-in-chief has weighed in on the matter, offering a correction to Vance and his allies.

Of course, Francis’s letter is addressed to the U.S. bishops and not Trump or Vance. The National Catholic Reporter’s Michael Sean Winters thinks the letter is intended as a criticism of the US bishops, considered as a whole, for their lack of urgency in responding to events. He writes:

It is the lack of national leadership that has been shocking. There have been no press conferences. At the national level, there have not been any "all hands on deck" conference calls to make sure our ministries are equipped to shield migrants from these arbitrary and unjust roundups of migrants. There has been no nationwide second collection to fund the work of the office of migrant and refugee services. There have been no lawsuits to seek an injunction against Trump's unlawful stoppage of monies appropriated by Congress or his abrogation of contracts already signed.

I’ve called on the bishops to be a bit bolder myself, but I’m just not convinced Francis’s purpose was to criticize or call out the bishops. After all, he writes, “I recognize your valuable efforts . . . as you work closely with migrants and refugees,” and even adds, “God will richly reward all that you do for the protection and defense of those who are considered less valuable, less important or less human!” There are no specific criticisms of the bishops in the letter, nor suggestions on what more they could be doing. Perhaps I’m being naive, but I don’t read the letter as critical. Instead, I read it as an exhortation to the bishops to continue to hold fast and continue to proclaim the Gospel. In fact, I find it encouraging that the pope and bishops are (mostly) speaking with one voice and recognizing the need for the Church to mobilize on behalf of “the least of these.”

---

Pope Francis visits the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, 2013

Turning to the content of the letter, while Francis recognizes a country’s right to protect itself from those who have committed serious crimes, either prior to their immigration to a new country or after their arrival, he points out that these cases have to be distinguished from those of people who migrate for reasons of “extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment” (#4). Indeed, at the first White House press briefing of the new administration, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had claimed that all undocumented immigrants are “criminals” simply because they are in the country illegally, a claim not even supported by the letter of U.S. immigration law (for example, overstaying a visa is a civil, rather than criminal, violation). Responding to such claims, Pope Francis adds that Catholics should reject “any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality” (#4). I think it’s also fair to read this remark as suggesting that it’s a violation of justice when migrants leaving their home countries for the reasons mentioned above have little choice but to engage in illegal behavior and are then treated as criminals.

In his comments on the ordo amoris, Francis echoes points already raised by Vance’s critics, particularly that while we do have particular responsibilities to those close to us, the true order of love is expansive rather than restrictive. For example, Francis states: “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception” (#6).

There are a couple of interesting tidbits in Francis’s comments on the ordo amoris. In a reply to my commentary on the topic last week, reader

David

asked for more explanation of how the principle of the preferential option for the poor, an important element of Catholic social teaching, fits with the ordo amoris. Pope Francis obliges in the letter. For one, he is clear that our concern for migrants and refugees is a manifestation of the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable. He states that it is our concern for the “infinite and transcendent dignity” (#3) of all people that leads us to consider the well-being of “especially the poorest and most marginalized” (#5) when crafting immigration policy.

More philosophically, Francis adds, “The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation” (#6). As both Vance’s defenders and opponents have explained, the ordo amoris is based on the idea that we find ourselves bound to particular relationships, sometimes but not always of our choosing, like the bonds of family, community, and country. These relationships are constitutive of our identity as persons and entail particular responsibilities toward those with whom we share these relationships. Here, Francis suggests that our membership in the human family is itself one of these constitutive relationships, and so our responsibility toward those outside our nation arises from that relationship; it’s not just whatever is left over once we have met our obligations toward family and nation. Perhaps more intriguingly, Francis seems to be suggesting that our relationship with the poorest among us is also fundamental to who we are, not just as Christians but as human beings. One might say, then, that the preferential option for the poor is essential to the ordo amoris just as love for one’s own children or patriotism toward one’s country are.

In the following paragraph, Francis writes: “[W]orrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations [i.e., regard for the dignity of all, especially the poorest], easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth” (#7). This line could simply rearticulate what had been said before, that our responsibility for the poor and vulnerable is a constitutive relationship alongside our responsibilities to family, community, and nation. But it also suggests to me that our responsibilities to family and country already include a responsibility to the poor.

This is not a new idea. For example, in his 1981 apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II taught that one of the duties of parents is to instill in their children “a sense of true love, understood as sincere solicitude and disinterested service with regard to others, especially the poorest and those in most need” (#37). Likewise, he teaches that families “can and should devote themselves to manifold social service activities, especially in favor of the poor” (#45). Similarly, Pope Francis writes in the more recent Amoris Laetitia: “[O]pen and caring families find a place for the poor and build friendships with those less fortunate than themselves” (#183). Therefore, our duty to the poor, even the poor elsewhere in the world, is not something we tend to after our responsibilities to our family are met; in fact, one of our familial duties is to instill a spirit of love toward the poor and to act on that spirit as a family.

In his encyclical Pacem in Terris, as I also noted last week, Pope John XXIII points out that, in working towards its goal of promoting the common good, the public authority of a particular nation should strive “not to confine men within the frontiers of their own nations,” that is, to prevent them from coming to the assistance of or collaborating with those from other nations, but rather should promote global solidarity precisely because the common good of one nation “cannot be divorced from the common good of the entire human family” (#98). The bishops of the United States and Mexico appeal to precisely this principle in Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope, their statement on immigration:

The Church recognizes the right of a sovereign state to control its borders in furtherance of the common good. It also recognizes the right of human persons to migrate so that they can realize their God-given rights. These teachings complement each other. While the sovereign state may impose reasonable limits on immigration, the common good is not served when the basic human rights of the individual are violated. In the current condition of the world, in which global poverty and persecution are rampant, the presumption is that persons must migrate in order to support and protect themselves and that nations who are able to receive them should do so whenever possible. (#39)

In other words, the responsibilities of the state towards its citizens and towards migrants should not, in principle, be seen as in conflict; the state’s responsibility for the common good includes a presumption in favor of the right to migrate and therefore a duty to welcome immigrants and refugees.

Pope Francis’s recent letter, then, not only serves as a challenge to the Trump administration and as encouragement for the US bishops, it also links the current discussion of the ordo amoris to the broader riches of the Catholic social tradition.

---

Of Interest…

• I’m excited to announce that the Window Light newsletter was referenced in the New York Times! In one of his regular opinion columns, conservative commentator David French laments the decline of empathy among many conservatives, even among avowed Christians, and his column includes a brief discussion of the debate over the ordo amoris spurred by Vice President Vance’s comments. French references my own commentary on the issue to demonstrate the wide range of responses to the comments. Not surprisingly, the citation has brought a lot of new readers to Window Light, so welcome! And the timing is particularly fortunate, since paid subscriptions (whether monthly or annual) are currently 20% off to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the newsletter.

• Continuing on the topic of the ordo amoris, moral theologian Stephen Pope, an expert on the ethical thought of Thomas Aquinas, has a new commentary on the whole fracas at America. Pope discusses some of the complexities in Aquinas’s thought not captured in Vance’s remarks, but perhaps the most interesting contribution is his discussion of the role of institutions in fulfilling our responsibilities toward the poor, whereas previously the conversation has mostly focused on the loves and responsibilities of the individual.

• This is somewhat old news now, but at her confirmation hearing last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi insisted that she would put an end to the “weaponization” of the Department of Justice against Catholics, a reference to a controversial 2023 FBI memo discussing the potential linkage of “radical-traditionalist” Catholics and extremist violence. As I explained in detail here, the claims surrounding the “weaponization” of the DOJ against Catholics turned out to be bogus, and in fact the memo arose in response to actual cases of violent white nationalists who had begun participating in church communities associated with the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X. That ought to make the task of putting an end to the weaponization of the DOJ pretty easy for Bondi, but she also noted at the hearing that she would consult with President Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel, on whether to investigate the FBI officials responsible for the memo.

• I’m briefly referenced in this article by Aleja Hertzler-McCain for Religious News Service on Catholic universities using their status as religious institutions to counter efforts to organize contingent faculty into labor unions, despite Catholic teaching on the right of workers to unionize. The story focuses on recent efforts to unionize at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but takes a broader look at the theological and legal aspects of the issue. Theologian Meghan Clark is also featured in the article, along with other experts and individuals involved in unionizing efforts.

• At the beginning of February, I had a feature on the great 20th-century theologian Henri de Lubac, SJ, focusing particularly on his book The Mystery of the Supernatural, which I recently reread for the first time since graduate school. As a matter of both time and length, I didn’t delve into the political aspect of de Lubac’s work, particularly his resistance against the Nazi occupation of France and the Nazi-allied Vichy regime which governed the southern half of France from 1940 until the liberation of France in 1944. Luckily, the McGrath Institute for Church Life’s Church Life Journal has recently published an excerpt from Sarah Shortall’s 2021 book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics that focuses precisely on this aspect of de Lubac’s life and work. One of the interesting insights from the excerpt is Shortall’s contrast between 20th-century Thomists, who found a way to accommodate with authoritarian regimes, democracy in the case of Jacques Martain, and even socialism or Marxism in the case of the French Dominican Marie-Dominique Chenu and others (such as the English Dominican Herbert McCabe), and the Jesuits, including not just de Lubac, but also his friends Gaston Fessard and Jean Daniélou, who instead engaged in what Shortall calls a “counter-politics,” a form of theological critique of modern political ideologies. As she explains, “[T]hey [i.e., the Jesuits] used the resources of ecclesiology, eschatology, and theological anthropology to fashion a response to the dominant political questions that exercised their world.” I read Shortall’s book a couple of years ago and was impressed with precisely this aspect of the work of the “new theologians,” that while they were addressing timeless theological questions, they were likewise responding to the spiritual and political crises of their day. Quite naturally, this got me to thinking, which theological questions underpin the spiritual and political crises of our own day, and how is my own work as a theologian contributing to our understanding of those questions? I don’t think that theology’s value is measured entirely by its contemporary relevance, and there’s something to be said for the value of contemplating the Divine Mystery for its own sake, but I also take to heart the insight from liberation theology that if a theologian turns a blind eye to what is going on in the streets, outside the window of their study, they are not really doing Christian theology at all. I’ve been wrestling with this particularly because recently my own theological interests have grown to include not just ethical questions, but more purely theological ones like predestination and God’s action in the world, and my research has focused more on investigating theological figures from the past—I ask myself, are these questions of purely personal interest, or do they speak to something of ongoing value to the Church and the world today? I can only hope that wrestling with this question will itself help me to discern how this research can serve something larger than myself.