The Harms of Immigration to Migrants

A piece on the hardships it creates for migrants themselves begins with an admonition.
In a recent interview with a French magazine, Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said it is wrong to use the gospel to defend illegal immigration. The reason many priests, bishops, and cardinals will not say so is because they are “afraid of being frowned upon, of being seen as reactionaries.”

Sarah is not afraid of that. “It is better to help people flourish in their culture than to encourage them to come to a Europe in full decadence,” he said. “It is a false exegesis to use the word of God to promote migration. God never wanted these heartbreaks.”
In Europe, a lot of immigrants are from the Islamic world. I've spent a lot of time listening to Muslims talk about all this, and they are keenly aware of that decadence. It is their most legitimate complaint against the West, the degree to which the decadent parts of our culture corrupt their own.

Of course, some of that bleeds over into areas where they are assigning the name of 'decadence' to things like allowing women to walk around with their hair showing. You'd think there would be a happy middle ground between purdah and public grotesques, but perhaps there is not. Free individuals may choose to do right, which is the blessing of liberty; but they may also choose to do wrong, which is part of the price.

In any case, I'm glad to hear a Cardinal point out that this is a misuse of the gospels.

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