The pope’s letter to U.S. bishops reflects a peculiar prejudice toward Americans.

Pope Francis has issued a lengthy statement to the bishops of the United States, saying that he is following the “major crisis that is taking place in the United States” with the “initiation of mass deportations.”

He writes:

This is not a minor issue: an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized. The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all – as I have affirmed on numerous occasions – welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable. This does not impede the development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration. However, this development cannot come about through the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others. What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.

And the Holy Father frames his criticism directly as a response to Vice President JD Vance:

Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The trueordo amoristhat must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf.Lk10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.

The pope was referring to a statement from Vance made during a television interview and in a subsequent tweet.

In the interview, Vance had contrasted an overlapping series of duties love obliges:

As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way— You love your family, then you love your neighbor, then you love your community, then you love you fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.

Vance did everything that one would want in such a short space to articulate the Christian idea. Jesus condemned those who love only their own. Christian love goes beyond loving your family. Vance ruled out “hate” altogether. The duties of love toward one’s own community do not oblige antisocial behavior or doing evil to anyone. But the Christian grace does not reject natural virtues, either; it builds on them. Epistle of Timothy: “But if any provideth not for his own, and specially his own household, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.” For a further defense of Vance, from a Catholic perspective, see this article by Richard Clements at Word on Fire.

Augustine expressed it clearly in his essays on Christian doctrine:

Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things, and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally.

This is an interesting moment for the pope and the church. Many conservative Catholics will be quick to point out that Pope Francis has repeatedly condemned abortion, or gender ideology. This is true. But the pope never framed such statements as a rebuttal to the Catholic president of the United States, Joe Biden.

My own view is that this reflects a peculiar prejudice of the pope toward Americans. He claims to be following a mass deportation crisis closely, but deportations have not increased that dramatically, partly because the mere promise to enforce our laws has deterred the chaos and disorder we’ve been seeing for years at the border. We have one of the most generous legal immigration and refugee policies in the world. Our enforcement mechanisms compare well, by any humane standard, to those of Europe, Australia, or Turkey. Our immigration system is most inhumane and least loving when it is the least lawful — that is what allows human traffickers to flourish on the other side of the border and exploitative labor and housing practices on our side. Or when it blurs the distinction between legal refugees and economic migrants, ultimately sapping resources from the most needy and diverting it to the most ambitious.