Anti-Church bitterness clouds immigration thinking

Here is an article about the Pope's appeal for kindness to all immigrants, which then veers into the controversy about the overall subject of immigration in the USA:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20catholics.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1208625441-MO0jtUlymEz/gTy8JdqfbQ

snip

Even as he was flying to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of protecting immigrant families, not dividing them.

He raised the issue again in a meeting on Wednesday with President Bush, and later that day spoke in Spanish to the church’s “many immigrant children.” And when he ends his visit to New York on Sunday, he will be sent off by a throng of the faithful, showing off the ethnic diversity of American Catholicism.

The choreography underscores the importance to the church here of its growing diversity — especially its increasing Hispanic membership.

Of the nation’s 65 million Roman Catholics, 18 million are Latino, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and they account for more than two-thirds of the new Catholics in the country since 1960.

snip

His comments drew a rebuke from Representative Tom Tancredo, a Republican from Colorado who has been a leading opponent of illegal immigration.

Accusing the pope of “faith-based marketing,” Mr. Tancredo said Benedict’s comments welcoming immigrants “may have less to do with spreading the Gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the Church.” Mr. Tancredo, a former Catholic who now attends an evangelical Christian church, said it was not in the pope’s “job description to engage in American politics.”

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What a sad and bitter man Mr. Tancredo seems to be! I think he needs some prayers and education, or maybe a chill pill. But he personally is the problem of his loved ones and his community.

I do want to help, as part of my series on clarity of thought, others to avoid the pitfall he is in of using erroneous logic. He assumes, as many hostile to the Church do, that the Church's interest in immigrants is sudden and cynical. Any facts of history that an intelligent five year old could understand would demonstrate this is incorrect.

In fact, Catholics have been keenly interested in native and Hispanic evangelizing from the start. Is that not a favorite topic of Church haters? That the Spanish came to the Americas in the 15-1600's and forcefully converted the Indians, imposing a Spanish Christian culture? And did not Mary appear in Indian garb to a humble Indian Christian, Juan Diego, as sign of her solidarity with that ethnic group?

Now, when descendants of these same people who the Church has ministered to (at great criticism by anti-Church shrews) for hundreds of years now arrive in the USA, we are accused of caring about them only to fill our pews.

Shame on such disgraceful bitter thinking.

You may argue about specific laws and policies, but to accuse the Church of suddenly discovering immigrant caring when many Christians evangelized (and lost their lives doing so) to this very population in their native lands for hundreds of years is instigating and hate speech.