A week after President Trump was inaugurated for his second term, he attended a service at the Episcopalian Diocese of Washington along with Vice President Vance, and their respective families.
Among the preachers at the ceremony was Epicopalian Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.
Budde abused her position as a Bishop and as a preacher in a public setting watched by millions by injecting politics into her sermon during a religious service with President Trump.
The bishop urged President Trump to be merciful towards gay, lesbian, and transgender children, and illegal aliens.
The casual mention of transgender children as if they were a naturally occurring phenomenon was outrageous.
Because in reality these impressionable minds who lack the maturity or life experience to make such a life-altering decision are are victims of coercion and brainwashing by sinister forces.
But instead of protecting innocent children from this barbarity, the bishop, who is supposed to stand for moral values, was normalizing it and siding with evil.
There was also outrage over the open border advocacy by the bishop.
A week later, the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s Refugee & Immigration Services Program uploaded a video that guides foreign nationals in the country illegally on how to dodge U.S. immigration law and thwart authorities conducting lawful investigations at their workplaces.
The Catholic Charities USA's website offers services such as Citizenship Application, DACA Application, DACA Renewal, Deportation Defense for Green Card Holders, Deportation Defense for Non-Lawful Permanent Residents, etc.
Another Catholic organization, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) criticized President Trump's executive orders relating to immigration and capital punishment, claiming it would harm “the most vulnerable among us" and issued a statement that “Human Dignity is Not Dependent on a Person's Citizenship or Immigration Status.”
What makes this outrageous is that the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, Catholic Charities, USA and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops receive millions in federal funding via grants.
We now have another instance of religious leaders standing with lawbreakers.
Pope Leo XIV recently appointed Auxiliary Bishop Michael Pham as Bishop of the San Diego, California diocese.
Pham is a refugee from who fled with his family following persecution from the North Vietnamese communists in 1975 at the age of eight. He survived several days at sea on an empty rice cargo barge with no food or water. Pham and his family eventually reached a refugee camp in Malaysia where they waited for seven months, until they were sponsored by an American family in Minnesota.
Pham's stance on immigration is probably the reason behind his appointment by Pope Leo XIV.
Pope Leo himself appears to be an open borders advocate.
Bishop Pham, along with auxiliary bishops Ramon Bejarano and Felipe Pulido, dispatched a letter to faithful in the Diocese of San Diego suggesting they visit federal court buildings next week “to stand in solidarity” with immigrants making court appearances.
The following are key excerpts from the letter:
On the morning of June 20th, which is International Refugee Day, a group of priests and faith leaders are planning to visit the federal court building to stand in solidarity with migrants who are making their court appearances. We know that migrants and refugees find themselves in the difficult predicament of being called to appear, which is what the government asks of them, and then being given orders for expedited removal from our country.
This group of priests and faith leaders will simply be present during this process as it has been experienced that the presence of faith leaders makes a difference in how migrants are treated. Unfortunately, it will most likely not change the outcome.
The Church leaders also plan to hold a press conference afterward to send the message “that people of faith stand with immigrants and refugees."
So what does one make of this?
The religious leaders and their respective organizations are attempting to paint this issue as that of humane compassion.
This can be understood in a letter from the late Pope Francis to U.S. bishops.
Francis wrote that "the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness."
The Episcopal Church also is in favor of open borders and has a long history of involvement with immigrant and refugee populations, particularly through its ministry, Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM).
However, the Church did make an exception and ended its nearly 40-year refugee resettlement partnership with the U.S. government after refusing a Trump administration request to help resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa. The church cited its commitment to racial justice as a reason, i.e., because other refugee resettlement programs were frozen.
What these religious leaders need to comprehend is that a country is a finite entity, just like a house or a premise of a church or the Vatican City itself, surrounded as it is by walls and boundaries.
These may read like elementary civics lessons, but needs to be stated.
A country is run by tax funds paid by citizens.
These funds are dedicated to build and maintain infrastructure and resources and to fund facilities for citizens.
For instance, the pavement space is meant for citizens, so is the local park or bridge etc, if these places are inundated with individuals who have entered the country illegally, the citizen suffers.
A hospital and its emergency ward, a government school, a government library or soup kitchen is meant for citizens, if they are inundated with illegal aliens, the citizens suffer.
If those who enter the country illegally are of criminal proclivity and commit murders, rapes, thefts etc, once again the citizen suffers.
If the illegal alien agrees to work for less than minimum wages and no benefits, once again the citizen loses employment opportunities.
In all of the above cases, the citizens who suffer are always from the working class. When illegal aliens were bussed by GOP governors to affluent neighborhoods, they were given a perfunctory welcome and eventually rejected. They found their way to working class neighborhoods.
The goal behind this mass exodus is to change the demographics, change the culture and most importantly change the voting behavior and some day AOC ends up in the White House.
Religious organizations are supposed to stand for what is morally right. It is expected that they will encourage their followers to follow the law which are based on morality. If these organizations begin to encourage lawlessness with respect to immigration, they lose the right to preach morality in other matters.
These organizations can also be accused of dual standards.
The Vatican City where Pope Leo resides is surrounded by imposing walls. The Vatican City is restricted only to citizens and only invitees are allowed to stay overnight. There were also reports of the Vatican cracking down on illegal entries. Tickets to the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel typically range from €40 to €45, while guided tours can range from €50 to €110.
The Episcopalian Diocese of Washington is no different, the Church House is open from Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is closed on Saturday and Sunday. They have tours, but each tour costs $20 for adults.
To sum it up they have rules, and boundaries, and charge people for tours, but they want the nation to have no rules and to allow anyone to enter and no punishment for violators of the law.
It is shocking and disappointing how religious institutions have been compromised by sinister forces and hence have departed from their core values.
It is most troubling that these organizations receive funds from tax paying citizens and willingly promote ideas and stand with individuals who harm citizens.
The Trump administration must look into either reforming or defunding these organizations.
Image: Nehrams2020 via Wikipedia // CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed
