Cardinal's Column 1/4/04

Together on the journey: the Church, migrants and refugees

The Christmas season brings us into the mystery of the Incarnation of God’s only begotten Son through a succession of liturgical celebrations. After Advent and Christmas itself, the Church’s calendar notes St. Stephen, the first to be martyred for his belief in Jesus’ divinity; St. John, the beloved disciple who left us the fourth Gospel and the epistles that speak of God as love; the Holy Innocents, infants martyred for a savior they never knew personally. The Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s day is dedicated to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Saints also noted during that week include St. Thomas Becket, martyred because he defended the Church against King Henry II of England, and Pope St. Sylvester, the first pope who wasn’t martyred, because he governed the Church when the Roman Empire changed its laws and permitted Christians to express their faith publicly. New Year’s day is celebrated as the feast of Mary, the Mother of God; and the Christmas season ends with the feast of the Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord.

This column begins with the feast of the Epiphany. The Gospel for the day, from the second chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, tells a story of magi or kings or wise men who set out from an eastern land to worship a king whose birth they had seen noted in the stars. Moving from natural signs in the stars to historical revelation in prophecy, they hear confirmed by the Jewish scribes in Jerusalem what they had seen in the sky in their own country. After worshiping the child Jesus and giving him gifts, they journeyed back to their country, barely escaping the designs of King Herod, who would have killed them along with the infant Jesus. To escape Herod, Jesus and Mary take Jesus to Egypt. All the major characters of the Gospel story are travelers. All are involved in conflicts with rulers. All are foreigners on journeys to lands not their own.

St. Paul calls all disciples of Jesus Christ strangers in any land that is not the kingdom of heaven. Both our own experience and the Gospel for the feast of the Epiphany dispose us to look on migrants and refugees with a sympathy born of faith. National Migration Week is January 4-10, and its theme is “Together on the Journey.”

Chicago has a long history of ethnic and racial diversity. Wave after wave of immigrants found homes here and built the Church and the society. Many of them were Catholic: Irish, German, Polish, Italian, Slovak, Bohemian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, French Canadian, Flemish, Dutch, Luxemburger, Croatian, Slovenian and many other European nationalities shaped the Archdiocese. Many left their homelands because of conflicts with civil authorities in Europe as well as for economic reasons. All eventually found a home here and contributed richly.

In more recent decades, many Catholic newcomers were from Puerto Rico, and many Catholic immigrants have come from Latin America, especially Mexico, and from Asia, especially the Philippines, Vietnam and India. Others have come from Africa, the first generation from that continent to come freely and not as slaves. The Pacific Islands and the Caribbean countries have also given us the gift of their own people. Their celebrations have enriched our liturgical calendar during the Christmas season: the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, and the Simbang Gabi novena of Masses leading up to the feast of Christmas day join religious practices and customs brought here by earlier immigrant families.

The history of immigration to this country has been and is today a story of opportunity and of opposition. We celebrate National Migration Week during Respect Life Month, and rightly so. Respect for human dignity is based in faith, which teaches us to see a human person in every unborn child, in every elderly and ill person, and in every immigrant or refugee.

Who are the immigrants today? Apart from their national origin, they are workers. They prepare food in our restaurants, clean our hotel and hospital rooms, farm our fields and nurture our lawns and gardens, work in our factories, do our laundry and care for our children and old people. Their coming here is evidence of the globalization of labor. More than 13 million immigrants entered the United States between 1991 and 2001. Not all entered legally. Of the roughly 5 million illegal or undocumented workers in the U.S. labor force, one million are employed in manufacturing, 600,000 in construction, 700,000 in restaurants and 1.2 million in agriculture. Government statistics report that 1.5 per cent of immigrants receive welfare; 2.1 per cent of those born here are on welfare.

Some 1.4 million immigrants live in metropolitan Chicago; they make up 18 percent of our region’s population. Among neighborhoods which receive them first are Chicago’s Edgewater community and the suburbs of Mt. Prospect, Arlington Heights and Palatine.

The Church here and throughout the country offers immigrants pastoral care and social services and tries to do so in a manner that respects their human dignity. While the most multiculturally complex dioceses are Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, almost all dioceses provide services, especially religious services, and sponsor programs for newcomers. Besides seeing that the sacraments are available to immigrants, most dioceses have tried to train their own personnel to welcome and care for immigrants and provide English classes and leadership formation for the immigrants themselves. A majority of dioceses address immigrants’ practical needs: housing, employment, health and other medical needs, citizenship training and programs designed to help immigrants adjust to life in this country. Chicago does all this and provides, as well, chaplains for travelers in the airports and for seamen.

Catholic Charities sponsors an immigration/naturalization program along with programs for refugee resettlement. The various ethnic ministry offices of the Archdiocese serve the pastoral needs of immigrants and refugees from Bosnia to Ethiopia to Burma. The Office for Peace and Justice works with community groups addressing the special needs of immigrants. Very many of our parishes offer services in Spanish and Polish and other languages, the first step in welcoming newcomers. Much effort goes into this in the Archdiocese, and it is now so much a part of our Catholic life that we might not step back and notice how much of God’s grace and human good will have gone into these adaptations, of which we can all be proud. In all this, however, it becomes ever clearer that our nation’s immigration policies are inconsistent in themselves and often erratically administered in practice.

A year ago, the U.S. and Mexican bishops issued a joint pastoral letter, calling upon the officials of both governments to reform immigration laws and procedures. The present family visa system needs revision, so that families can stay together. The present employment-based visa system does not adequately protect the dignity of workers. A broad-based amnesty for illegal immigrants, which was part of the political discussion before September 11, needs to be discussed again. People should not live indefinitely in limbo; either we should make their presence here legal or face the economic and social and political disruptions consequent to large- scale deportations.

The Church’s concern for immigrants, however, is not based in economics or politics. Our faith calls the Church a “communion,” a unity of sisters and brothers in Christ. Our faith also helps us to recognize a neighbor in every member of the human family. People are themselves gifts far greater than the magi’s gold, frankincense and myrrh. From this vision of faith comes the moral obligation to respect, accept and welcome others, especially the strangers among us. During National Migration Week, you might visit the website of the U.S. Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services at www.usccb.org/mrs. You can call them at (202) 541-3352, or call any of the Archdiocesan offices mentioned above to become better informed about how you might help in addressing the pastoral needs of immigrants and in protecting their human dignity. In faith, we are “together on the journey.” God bless you.