“People have a right to migrate when there is a need,” the bishop added.
Other speakers at the conference echoed similar concerns about policy and rhetoric.
Father David Hollenbach, a Jesuit priest and research professor at Georgetown University, cited messages in Scripture about welcoming strangers and argued that the United States has a moral obligation to assist migrants and refugees because the country has the capacity to help in a way that poorer countries do not.
“These people are created in the image and likeness of God,” Hollenbach said during a panel discussion.
Another speaker, Sister Sharlet Ann Wagner, executive director of the Newcomer Network at the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., branch of Catholic Charities USA, said during a panel discussion that politicians are “using immigrants as political footballs.”
Although Wagner acknowledged that some local communities have “unanticipated costs” when dealing with the influx of migrants, she said most are of prime working age and desire to work.
“This is an investment that will pay off,” Wagner said.
Although the conference focused mostly on an obligation to assist migrants in coming to the country, some Catholics have expressed a more cautious approach to the influx of people who have entered the country between official ports of entry.
Chad Pecknold, a professor of systematic theology and theological politics at the Catholic University of America, who was not a part of the conference, told CNA that the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas on immigration provide “a sound and reasonable guide for these discussions.”
Referencing Aquinas in the “Summa Theologiae,” Pecknold recalled that the doctor of the Church “teaches that while hospitality should be offered to the wayfarer passing through, political communities must ensure that those ‘entering to remain’ demonstrate a commitment to the customs, language, religion, and mores of their commonweal.”
“Every human being having dignity does not immediately and obviously supersede the sovereignty of nations,” Pecknold added. “Statesmen have a sacred duty to safeguard the political common good of their country, and this will sometimes mean restricting who can legally enter and remain in their countries,” he noted.
(Story continues below)
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