This is what you'd expect from +Seitz. The Pillar interviewed him about the immigration problem.
Your Excellency, many Catholics who support Trump’s mass deportation policies say those policies are a matter of justice: If people are in this country illegally, justice demands that they be removed. But in your pastoral message, you say, ‘It is an injustice to make families, children, and the vulnerable pay the price of our inaction’ on immigration reform. These are two very different understandings of justice. How should we think about that?
Well there has to be some proportionality to our response to a particular case in which a law has been in some way violated. We recognize that in our everyday life. If we’re driving and the police officer pulls us over because we were going over the speed limit, we’d say, “Oh, well, that’s unfortunate we were caught,” and we’ll pay the fine, I suppose.
But if the police officer were to say, “You were going five miles over the speed limit and I’m going to throw you into jail,” we would say, “That’s just not right.” We’d even recognize within that law about speeding that there are situations in which the violation of that law should not be considered an offense. If, for instance, we’re driving someone who is bleeding to the hospital, we would, within certain reason hopefully, go above the speed limit. Now, speed limits are a reasonable law and going too fast can be dangerous, but we recognize proportionality based upon the circumstances. ...
Illegal presence here, which is almost always accompanied by drawing at least one form of welfare OR, in many instances, criminal activity (not to mention hijacking a job and housing from US citizens) is simply not the equivalent of a speeding ticket.
+Seitz drew that comparison specifically to minimize illegal immigration and to throw a halo around the perps. It is not hard to be empathetic with those caught in a "speed violation."
Seitz's mendacity continues.
... it seems like sometimes there really is a bloodthirst today in general,
and that’s certainly the case with people that have only done exactly
what you or I or any of us would’ve done in similar circumstances. If we
found ourselves in a situation where our family was threatened and
perhaps a family member had been killed, we would do whatever we needed
to do in order to protect our family, including crossing an
international boundary, if that’s what was necessary....
We have yet to encounter anyone who opposes illegal immigration AND is "bloodthirsty." Seitz's rhetoric here is a standard Leftist tactic right out of Alinsky's Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy."
The US has an extremely generous "refugee" immigrant position. Of course, that "refugee" cannot merely cross the border; he/she must show up at an INS-patrolled entry, fill out the forms, and be interviewed. The INS determines whether that individual is telling the truth; if so, they are admitted BUT with a date-certain to 'refresh' their status.
Most often, the immigrant 1) is NOT a refugee; 2) NOT entering through an INS checkpoint; and 3) never bothers to 'check back in' on schedule.
Not content with throwing mud at people who oppose illegal immigration, +Seitz advises the interviewer that he and Christ are on the same page.
....but it’s a time in which people would do well to read the Gospel more
and reflect upon it, and then listen to the teaching of the Church,
which has developed over 2,000 years in fidelity to the Gospel to help
us see how our particular actions relate to the Gospel or do not.
The
Church is here to teach, and the magisterium is here to teach, and it’s
not always going to reflect the view of society in general. Jesus’
teaching was rejected by the majority, perhaps, of the people in his
time....
Yes, well....that's because those people were looking for a CIVIL leader, not a Head of a Church. Here, +Seitz reverses the field, implying that Church teaching should be mimicked by CIVIL law. We can all agree that civil law should follow natural law, but Seitz papers over the critical distinction between 'natural law' and Church teachings.
More to the point, +Seitz "forgot" to mention that St. John Paul II was emphatic: countries are allowed to set and enforce laws about immigration. Period. Full Stop. And he cannot point to that verse from Scripture in which Jesus says "Let them all in!!" That's because there IS no such verse.
There's more of his prattling at the link, if you care to read it.
We don't.
