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November
21, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 20Oakland,
CA
COMMENTARY
• U.S. immigration policy needs compassion
U.S. immigration policy needs compassion
After reading
about a website commemorating Ellis Island immigrants, I tried to locate
my grandparents. More quickly that I could ever imagine, I was transported
almost a century back in time to share the migration experience with my
long-deceased grandparents.
| I saw the signature of my grandfather, Janos, who migrated from Slovakia
in 1909 onboard the RMS Carpathia. With a little more searching, I found
my grandmother’s signature as well. Anna, his young wife, arrived
three years later on the SS Roon.
Staring in amazement at the images of the passenger manifests where they
had signed, I felt a genuine and immediate connection to a grandfather
I never knew and a grandmother who died when I was young.
Did they miss each other by sailing three years apart? Was she afraid
of the North Atlantic crossing? Did grandpa select a house for her? My
heart ached when I imagined the adversity they faced and the families
they left behind.
I never thought of myself as an immigrant. I can’t even pronounce
the name of the village where my grandparents lived – there are
too many consonants. But only one generation separates me from the challenge
of the passage and the confusion of a new land.
Surely, after so many years, the immigration process has improved. Or
has it?
Astoundingly, things have become worse, not because migrants need to save
enough money for the passage, but because the U.S. immigration system
is failing. That assessment is shared by virtually the entire political
spectrum.
Spouses and children today can be separated for years as they navigate
the modern immigration maze – even though one of the guiding principles
of U.S. immigration policy is family unification.
A spouse or minor child migrating from Mexico or other impacted nations
such as India or the Philippines may have to wait more than seven and
a half years to receive a visa. A parent can miss almost all of a child’s
grade school years.
Even for non-impacted countries, the wait is five years. And an adult
son or daughter must wait more than a decade for a visa.
While there are many reasons for the backlog, one thing is clear: A policy
designed to keep families together is not doing so. Parents and children
are missing large portions of each other’s lives, when it isn’t
necessary.
Like many immigrants, my grandparents were driven by the promise of a
better life. Others were – and still are – escaping war, poverty,
famine, religious intolerance and other forms of tyranny and abuse.
Even with the desire to support one’s family, to improve educationally,
or to escape evil, the decision to leave all you know behind – possibly
forever – isn’t easy.
The Bible is full of admonitions to help the migrant. A recent Sunday
reading was particularly clear: “You shall not molest or oppress
an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.”
(Exodus 22:20) Hence, the Catholic Church has a long tradition of supporting
immigration.
It is also part of our national heritage. In fact, stories about how this
nation was built by immigrants have become almost clichés. And
because they have become so common, the lessons learned are not always
appreciated.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates a shortfall of 10 million low-skilled
wage earners by 2010. A large portion of this gap in the U.S. labor market
will need to be filled by immigrants.
A national effort now under way – Justice for Immigrants —
addresses both our U.S. immigration legacy and the difficulties with the
current system. The campaign is sponsored by the US Catholic Conference
of Bishops, Catholic Charities USA, and many other groups.
The collaborating organizations are urging Congress to reform the system
in a compassionate way that reunites families and opens new avenues to
earned citizenship.
Grassroots efforts to support the campaign are also being organized in
dioceses around the nation, especially where immigrant populations are
large, the need readily apparent, and memories of the immigration experience
are still fresh.
Immigration will be an important story in the coming months leading up
to the mid-term elections in November 2006. Will a new law “oppress
the alien” or treat our new citizens with compassion?
As followers of Jesus we’re called to be on the compassionate side.
And we can call our elected representatives to exhibit equal compassion
and concern as they struggle with what are sure to be some difficult questions,
fears and uncertainties in the coming debate.
For additional information, see: www.justiceforimmigrants.org
(Steve Pehanich is the executive director of Catholic Charities of
California. He supports public policy and other initiatives for the twelve
Catholic Charities agencies. Contact him at spehanich@cacatholic.org.)
Thanksgiving is a religious holiday on two counts
Is Thanksgiving
a religious holiday or a secular celebration of national identity and
traditions like family and football?
I say “yes” to religious holiday on two counts: what is and
what ought to be.
As a harvest festival dating back to 1621 — first, as an occasional
event proclaimed during glad times and sad and, since 1863, an official
event on the nation’s annual calendar—Thanksgiving Day expresses
an ancient desire to thank some higher power for the undeserved blessing
of harvest.
As President Abraham Lincoln said in his October 1863 proclamation of
Thanksgiving Day, it is amazing that, despite the unprecedented ravages
of civil war, Americans enjoyed the “blessings of fruitful fields
and healthful skies.”
Said Lincoln: “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal
hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the
Most High God.”
Even though commerce and entertainment reap a less-than-holy harvest from
Thanksgiving, as they do from Christmas and Easter, the fall event retains
a strong religious core.
Some Christian denominations have special liturgies for Thanksgiving Day.
Others delay observance three days to Thanksgiving Sunday. Many communities
hold interfaith worship events, some incorporating all faiths that are
willing to participate.
Even families that rarely pray together are inclined to say grace at the
Thanksgiving spread, in recognition that “all good gifts around
us are sent from heaven above.”
Even more pertinent is the “yes” of what ought to be.
Thanksgiving Day ranks high as a foolish assertion of hope amid the flood.
In his proclamation, President Lincoln recommended “humble penitence
for our national perverseness and disobedience.” Six weeks later,
standing on the battlefield at Gettysburg, Lincoln prayed “that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Neither
humility nor peace came to the battered nation, and to this day freedom
is under assault by those who want more than their share of the harvest.
But it was important to raise the small sail of hope.
When President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 moved Thanksgiving Day one week
earlier, it was his hope that an extra week of pre-Christmas shopping
would help to do what it actually took a war to do, namely, lift the nation
out of its Depression.
So what if families bicker during Thanksgiving dinner and prefer football
to prayer? Faith isn’t dependent on outcomes. So what if Thanksgiving
Day worship draws but a handful, while “Black Friday,” as
the day after Thanksgiving is known in retailing, fills every mall?
Faith looks beyond numbers for its fulfillment. So what if not every religious
persuasion will bend its knee to pray alongside others? God remains one,
even as the religious remain prideful and divided.
As a religious holiday, Thanksgiving bids us to look beyond our specific
religions. Our nation was intended to be an escape from the sectarian
wars of Europe.
This was to be a land where all could worship freely, where the Lord of
harvest didn’t ask for proof of baptism or circumcision before enabling
earth to yield its increase. All could plow these fields and scatter seed,
not just those deemed worthy by piety’s gatekeepers.
When we are true to our heritage, the promise of America belongs to all
who come, not just those bearing certain national, ethnic or religious
credentials.
Even as we sometimes join other nations in raging furiously over religious
hatreds, our better nature remembers that the giving of thanks is a universal
need, and a nation that enables people to give thanks to their God has
a greater chance of being the just and open society that God clearly desires.
(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest and author of “Just Wondering,
Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” (Morehouse Publishing).
His Web site is www.onajourney.org.)
Is it permissible to call God ‘Mother’?
The
first time I heard someone address a prayer to “Mother God,”
I felt a little startled. My artistic side thought, how creative. My feminine
side rejoiced to think that God really, truly understands me. But the
good-little-girl inside me was nervous about breaking a rule. Would lightning
strike?
The Catholic woman leading the prayer, someone held in high esteem in
our motley group, prayed with such reverence, trust, and love for Mother
God. She seemed so completely at home with this idea. Could it be she
was right in calling God “Mother”?
As I wrote in recent columns, we need many names to describe God. I’m
a big fan of the Trinity. I’m certainly not about to suggest changes
to the official public prayers of the Church—I leave that to the
bishops and liturgists. Unfortunately, space does not permit me to explore
the many so-called “feminine” qualities that may or may not
say something about God. All I’m doing at the moment is asking:
Is God like a good mother?
We all know that Christians typically use masculine imagery for describing
God, who is in essence pure Spirit. (Jesus was a man, but Christ’s
divinity existed as pure spirit before he took on human flesh.) The Bible
does, however, speak of God using maternal images, as Virginia Ramey Mollenkott
shows in her book “The Divine Feminine: The Biblical Imagery of
God as Female” (Crossroad).
In Isaiah, God says, “Can a mother forget her infant, be without
tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never
forget you” (see Isaiah 49:15).
In a prayer of desperation, Moses uses similar womb imagery, asking God,
“Was it I who conceived all this people? Or was it I who gave them
birth. . .?” (Numbers 11:12).
Hosea describes God as a mother bear, attacking those who steal her cubs
(13:8).
Jesus compares himself to a mother hen who longs to gather her chicks
together under her wings (Matt. 23:37).
Catholic saints, theologians, and spiritual writers have sometimes described
God in motherly terms.
St. Augustine observes that just as a mother’s body transforms ordinary
table food—too complex for a baby’s delicate digestive system—into
milk that is tailored to the baby’s needs, so does the Lord convert
Wisdom into “milk” appropriate for our limited understanding.
Another early Church father, Clement of Alexandria, devotes an entire
chapter to this mysterious process of mother’s blood becoming milk,
musing over the various ways this connects to the spiritual world. In
one example, he views Christ as the nourishment that flows from the Father’s
breast, feeding us with the milk of love.
St. John Chrysostom writes of Christ as a mother who does not farm her
babies out to a wet nurse but rather feeds them personally and tenderly.
“As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother,”
wrote the 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich. “To the property
of motherhood belong nature, love, wisdom and knowledge, and this is God.
. . The mother can give her child a suck of milk, but our precious Mother
Jesus can feed us with himself and does…”
St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church, compared Christ’s
sacrifice on the cross to a mother who takes a bitter medicine so her
nursing baby can get well again.
Another Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila, compares quiet, contemplative
prayer to breast feeding because God nourishes the soul without the need
for words.
The awareness of God’s motherly side has grown in recent decades.
In 1978, during his brief pontificate, Pope John Paul I noted that “we
are the objects of undying love on the part of God. . . God is our father;
even more God is our mother.
His successor, Pope John Paul II, wrote that the loving hands of God are
“like those of a mother who accepts, nurtures and takes care of
her child” (“Evangelium Vitae,” no. 39). In “Dives
in Misericordia,” he compares God’s love to a mother who cares
for her children, even if they become “lost sheep” (no. 15).
Although thinking of God as a mother may feel strange or new to many Catholics,
the idea is so basic it can be found in the “Catechism of the Catholic
Church.” While fatherly images highlight certain dimensions of God,
the Catechism teaches that “God’s parental tenderness can
also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s
immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature.” (See no.
239.)
Motherhood, of course, includes a good deal more than birthing and nursing.
And today’s dads often nurture their children in “motherly”
ways. Yet, pondering comparisons between loving mothers and God is a good
way to expand our spiritual lives. Mother Jesus feeds us Eucharist. The
Holy Spirit continually births us into new, transformed life. God longs
for us to draw close in prayer, as close as a baby feeding at the mother’s
breast
(Julie McCarty is a freelance writer from Eagan, Minnesota, with
a master degree in Catholic theology. Her syndicated column, “The
Prayerful Heart,” appears in diocesan newspapers around the country.
Contact her at soulwriting@yahoo.com.)
