The New Yorker:

The dispute involves Catholic precepts on immigration and charity—which the Church has administered for decades through U.S.A.I.D.

By Paul Elie

Since Inauguration Day, as President Trump has sought to break the federal government, Christian leaders—tangling with Trump and, particularly, with his Vice-President, J. D. Vance—have wound up in a public dustup over the nature of charity. The dispute was brought into view on the Tuesday after the Inauguration, when, during a prayer service at the National Cathedral, Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., asked Trump to “have mercy” on people made fearful by policies he had vowed to enact: the mass deportation of migrants and the curtailing of legal protections for gay and trans people. The bishop’s challenge was a rare thing—a direct personal appeal to a figure whose office generally shields him from such attention. On immigration, her plea reflected something like a consensus position. Christian leaders, including Pope Francis and the National Council of Churches, which represents the views of more than three dozen Protestant and Orthodox groups, have denounced Trump’s rhetoric and policy proposals on immigration since he launched his first Presidential campaign, nearly a decade ago.

In January, following Trump’s reëelection, two Catholic archbishops, Cardinals Blase Cupich, of Chicago, and Joseph Tobin, of Newark, both of whom are close to the Pope, spoke out emphatically in support of immigrants—Cupich during a Mass in Mexico City, Tobin during an interfaith service in Newark. Cardinal Robert McElroy, of San Diego, whom the Pope has appointed to be the new archbishop of Washington, D.C., drew particular attention when he noted the need to balance a nation’s control of its borders with respect for “the dignity of every human person,” and said that “indiscriminate massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.” He added, “We’ll have to see what emerges in the Administration.”

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