What is Catholic teaching about “deportation”? Maybe not what some higher-ups think.

At Catholic Vote there is an article (seemingly assembled from tweets/x) which you should look at about Catholic teaching on “deportation”.

PROBLEM: Official Church documents on faith and morals have perennially been written in LATIN.  That fact is not the PROBLEM to which I referred.  The PROBLEM is that, at least in these USA, not many of our clergy – particularly in the upper ranks – can read Latin.   This is one reason why the fear and repress sacred liturgical worship in Latin: bishops don’t want to see not to know what is going on, which is a problem that is driven into their heads by the structure of the Novus Ordo, because the Novus Ordo tends to be celebrant animated rather than rubric driven.  I digress.

So we can rightly ask, What Does The Church Really Teach about “deportation”.

Here is an idea or two for our bishops to mull over before making sweeping statements in which the word “deportation” might appear.

The smooth text from Catholic Vote (my emphases and comments)

In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday, Catholic priest Father Peter Totleben, O.P., explained the Catholic Church’s nuanced teaching on “deportation.”

The definition of the “deportation” explicitly opposed in certain Catholic texts “does not apply to deportation in the colloquial sense that Americans use the term,” Father Totleben wrote.

The Dominican friar wrote that when recent Church documents use the Latin word “deportatio” – usually translated to English as “deportation” – they are not referring to simply repatriating migrants to their country of origin.

He specifically named the 1965 pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes and Pope St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis splendor [GS 27 HERE – notice in that paragraph there is a kind of hierarchy of evils perpetrated against human dignity starting with murder of the innocent and suicide which come before the issues stressed by the “seamless garment” crowd.  VS quotes GS 27.   But VS isn’t very popular right now in some circles.]

“According to the dictionary (and its references to Roman Law), ‘deportatio’ is displacing people from their native land,” the priest explained. “So, in condemning ‘deportatio,’ the Magisterium is thinking of things like the displacement of the Jews, or various displacements that occurred in Europe right after World War II, or things like ethnic cleansing.” [Armenians… Tutsi….  Ethnic cleansing is a serious matter.  One could suggest, however, that a pogrom is being carried out within the Church against certain undesirable elements.]

“This should be obvious,” the Dominican stressed. “The Church teaches both that people have a right to migrate both for asylum and economic reasons.”

However, he emphasized that the Church also teaches “that the welcoming country has the right to regulate immigration for economic and cultural reasons,” which “obviously entails a right to repatriate.”

“And it should be pretty clear that if border authorities apprehend someone in the very act of illegally crossing the border, they are allowed to send the person back across the border, they don’t necessarily have to give him residency,” Father Totelben continued, summarizing the common 21st-century American definition of “deportation.”

The priest added it should “be clear that ‘sending a person back to his home country who has no legal right to be in the present country’ and ‘exiling a person from his native land’ are two different species of moral action.”

“Also, notice how no Church authority when speaking out in favor of immigrants has ever said that no immigrant may ever be sent back to his home country, because it is intrinsically evil to do this,” Father Totelben highlighted.

“As always, you have to find out what the people who formulated the Church teaching meant by a term,” the priest wrote. “You can’t apply your own definitions to Church teaching.”  [So you have to read… be able to read the LATIN.]

Moreover, he cautioned that not all deportation policies are justified by Church teachings: “Just because deportations, understood as repatriations, are not intrinsically immoral does not mean that a particular plan for mass deportations meets the demands of justice or prudence.” [A balanced explanation.]

To resolve that question,” he wrote, “you would have to weigh a variety of factors” including “the evil of family breakup, the potential injustice of any procedures used to effect the deportation,” as well as “the effect on the economy.”

“And the weighing of these goods and evils are matters that Catholics can in good faith disagree on, and still be good Catholics who are following Catholic social teaching,” he wrote.

Contingent moral problems often have different solutions about which we can disagree.

Fr. Z kudos to Father Peter Totleben, O.P.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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11 Comments

  1. FRLBJ says:

    Interesting name of the Dominican father, ‘Totleben’ which literally means ‘death- life’. It sounds like he should be called Father von Totleben.

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  3. Dad of Six says:

    Good read Father. The usual suspects are beating their breasts about Orange Man Bad.

  4. Patrick-K says:

    “The Church teaches both that people have a right to migrate both for asylum and economic reasons.” Does it? Even if you admit that richer countries have some obligation to help poorer ones (after presumably having solved every problem in their own country), does that give people a right to impose on them? A rich man has a (moral, not legal) obligation to assist those in need (truly in NEED, not in desire of an iPhone). But that doesn’t give the poor man any rights, especially not any legal rights to the rich man’s property. It may well be that what is truly best for the poor countries is to help them improve their situation there, which is what missionaries have traditionally done, rather than risk importing the problems they are attempting to escape.

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  6. EAW says:

    Please correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t men who are to be ordained canonically required to be well versed in Latin?

  7. Josephus Corvus says:

    I find it amazing that for all of these bishop – including the Conference – that are so quick to whine about deporting illegal alien (NOT legal immigrant or legal asylum seekers), have never bothered to comment on a very well known statement that also applies. That statement? “Thou shalt not steal.” If these guys would address both sides, maybe they could at least get a hearing for their thoughts. Why not also address the fact that if you are taking benefits that you are not entitled to and violating another country’s laws is a sin too.

  8. TonyO says:

    Patrick-K notes that Fr. Totleben says “The Church teaches both that people have a right to migrate both for asylum and economic reasons.”

    And he asks: Does it?

    I think that the correct idea that underlies what Fr. Totleben is saying here might be slightly nuanced to say people usually have a right to seek to leave their home country, both for asylum and economic reasons. The possible end-choices for countries to land upon after departing have a range of rights and obligations that make it far more complex than simply “they do” or “they don’t” have any obligations toward the migrant. In general, they have a duty to be well-wishing toward the migrant, but that (rightly) might or might not convert into a policy of reception of the migrant, depending on a whole host of factors.

    And even with regard to “seeking to leave”, it isn’t an absolute right. A person who is a criminal in prison in his native land might wish to migrate elsewhere, but has no definitive right to have his home country release him for it. And there could be other constraints, e.g. if a person went to medical school paid for by the state on the agreement that he would provide them medical services for 6 years has an obligation not to leave before fulfilling that agreement. And even apart from legal constraints, a person might have a moral duty to stay and take care of his aged mother until she dies before leaving, not necessarily a duty imposed or regulated by the state, but a duty nonetheless.

    To resolve that question,” he wrote, “you would have to weigh a variety of factors” including “the evil of family breakup…”

    Yes, but note that as used by Biden and the Democrats in the last decade, the “evil of family breakup” where minors are separated from their parents can be easily and justly avoided by simply deporting the kids with the parents. If it was moral for the parents to impose on the child the decision which forces the child to emigrate from his home country to go to the US, it is just as moral for the parents to impose upon the child the determination to leave the US and return to their home country. If the parents (legitimately) want to keep the family together, and the US is justly (with respect to all other aspects of the issue) deporting the parents, the parents should simply carry out their parental role of deciding to keep the family together by taking the kid(s) with them. Because it is will be a very rare case for which the child’s TRUE best interest is to live apart from his family, it will be equally rare that the “breakup of a family” from deporting parents will rear its head in a serious difficulty.

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  10. NoahNehm says:

    Hypothetical question: imagine a situation in which a hostile ruling class disenfranchises their citizens through a program of mass migration that makes the people a minority in their own country. Could that be considered a type of deportatio, per Roman law?

  11. Kathleen10 says:

    Every nation has a right to be sovereign and restrict access. One notices a big wall around the Vatican. In fact they just increased the fines and penalties if you try to cross it without permission to significant amounts and a threat of jail.
    America suffers because of open borders, crime, drain on services, women and children trafficked, raped, murdered. We have a right to end it and remove anyone who illegally crossed our borders, as every nation has. They broke our laws and have no right to be here. The church is out of step with many, many Americans. When the Vatican takes down their wall we will see they mean it, open borders for everyone, but that only makes them sincere, it doesn’t change what others nations have or want, sovereignty. As long as the Vatican wall is up they have no credibility. Walls for me and not for thee, so personally I don’t want to hear at all from the church on this regard.
    The USCCB is also way out of step. They helped bring people here that had no right to be here, regardless of how Americans feel about it, regardless of the suffering that has resulted. They should be embarrassed to benefit as they have from the trafficking of children and women that has resulted due to their efforts, the crime, the suffering, the rapes and murders. We are missing 300,000 children that were brought here. Where are they. Many think they are sex trafficked, God help them. The USCCB should care about them and stop embarrassing themselves.

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