I’m sure all the Protestant clergy in South and central America that are converting Catholics to Protestantism are just doing it for their own good. Likewise, all the Catholic clergy in the Americas supporting exploitive regimes against the Church’s dreaded atheist socialists. They should all stay home and do what you are doing.

i offered by experience as a presbyterian because sanctuary is an issue that is close to my heart, both personally and academically. and because i wanted to add my perspective to the discussion that was taking place. it was not my intention to offend you, and if i did, i am sorry.

i never argued that people couldn’t do good things without a church. i know that terrible things have been done (and are being done) in the name of religion. i do think, however, that the sanctuary movement (which is by no means an exclusively catholic undertaking [it was started by a quaker]) is a truly remarkable contemporary example of people putting their money where their mouth is by making sacrifices to help others in dire need, and that dismissing it as a ploy for members, money, or future clergy is cynical and unfair.

Which are these?

Just stay where you are and keep your hands where we can see them. Someone will be by shortly to, um, “ask you a few questions”.

I know that a lot of good people do a lot of good work. That has nothing to do with a church’s political decisions.

And a lot of people manage to do good without any help from a church. A church is not special. Religion doesn’t confer special status.

I’m sure all the Protestant clergy in South and central America that are converting Catholics to Protestantism are just doing it for their own good. Likewise, all the Catholic clergy in the Americas supporting exploitive regimes against the Church’s dreaded atheist socialists. They should all stay home and do what you are doing.

The church has a sanctuary program because immigrants are Catholic and they need bodies in the pews, money in the basket, and new priests. They mostly have moral concerns too, but if the immigrants were Jewish it’d be a different story.

wow, this is why my church has been participating in the sanctuary movement since 1982? all this is news to me; we’re presbyterians, and we’ve worked with refugees of several religions, and some who are not religious at all.

we are happy when people choose to join our congregation, but there has never been any pressure by anyone for people to be “bodies in the pews” (sanctuary seekers who lived with families from our church only attended services if they chose to.) our church has long been struggling financially, but we never expected to collect money from people who literally fled for their lives with nothing but the clothes on their backs. individual members of our congregation and the church as whole have contributed time and money to the sanctuary movement. and as far as priests? presbyterians don’t have them.

i’m not sure where you got this information. among my close friends at church are people who have shared their homes with other families, raised people’s children, and given their hearts and souls to this work. i can’t speak for every single church involved with sanctuary work, but i do know about mine, and i wish that you wouldn’t make these kind of generalizations.

In fact, I happen to know that in places where illegal immigrants cannot get drivers licenses, they tend to drive without them. Very carefully.

Yeah. As we all know, that stuff about loving aliens as your own (for you were once cast out blah blah blah) isn’t all over the OT and NT.

OH WAIT THAT’S RIGHT

OneMan said,
May 28, 2008 at 18:17

Yay! Problem solved! We just needed to make our economy more like theirs!

Kind of like how the drug problem in Afghanistan is being solved

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90840970&ft=1&f=1001

Just make bread more expensive than smack, and all the farmers will start to grow wheat. What could possibly go wrong.

Well, if she came from Ontario through Detroit, she’d have to cross Lake Michigan to get to Minnesota. If she was on foot. Walking/swimming a straight line.

I-94 would probably be easier.

Who is bashing on the generic church goer?

We’re talking about these idiots who use the church to justify whatever cockamamie scheme pops into their frightened, moronic heads.

And the rest of you:

Stop cherry picking quotes out of the bible to make it seem like Jesus was a hippie. We all know if he came back right now he’d be the chairman of KBR. (At least that’s what Pastor Parsley told me, so I’m goin’ to heaven and you’re not! Nyah!!)

Yay! Problem solved! We just needed to make our economy more like theirs!

It’s so simple!

This effin’ commie was advising his other Catholic commie brethren that it was their duty to take care of the unfortunate and invisible in the community. It specifically mentioned undocumented workers, too!

Can you believe the gall, the temerity of this hippie? What’s next? Soup kitchens?

I think the Catholic Church should get back to what it does best: Crusades and Fondling Altar Boys. Only then will the full glory of the church be revealed.

Beautiful.

Awesome! Now we can all be tracked like sex predators!

I just wanted to see that again. And I wonder if it is mick hick dicks that pick vics to fix.

Right on brother! These administrations, the country as a whole has responded to fear of foreigners with plans that require the destruction of neighboring countries and cultures, generating floods of impoverished desperate people who are willing to die in their attempt to get across the border, requiring budgets with Mars-shot dimensions that end up serving primarily the bonkerites within and their gun fetishes. Sadly those of us who have sense have lost and lost and lost with each renewed call for more border security. The true answer is in comparison dirt cheap: a citizen registration office.

I think I’ll remember being lectured by some dick, as is frequently the case around churches.