By Dawn Morais Webster
Special to the Herald
The actions of the new administration in Washington, D.C., are putting the faith of all Christians to the test.
Once again Catholics helped Donald Trump win the highest office in the land. In 2020, Catholics split their votes between Trump and President Joe Biden pretty evenly. In 2024 they swung decisively for Trump by about 15 points.
So how Catholics, in particular, respond to the new administration in the context of the Gospel matters.
Catholics must ask themselves how Trump’s flurry of executive orders fits with what is required of them as people of faith. If Catholics voted for Trump because of their pro-life beliefs, it is time to ask now how pro-life the policies he is rolling out are.
Would Jesus want people of faith to support the mass deportations of desperate migrants who are here picking our fruit and vegetables, milking the cows, stocking the shelves of our supermarkets, cleaning our restaurants, hospitals and care homes, looking after our children and the elderly, doing the work Americans decline to do?
Is it pro-life to threaten children with separation from their parents and to subject law-abiding, hard-working members of our congregations and our communities to detention when they are doing so much to contribute to our economy, provide the services we need and pay a huge amount into our Social Security system (nearly $26 billion in 2022) even though they do not enjoy its benefits?
One farmer tells a reporter we would run out of food in two days if the undocumented workers were rounded up and deported as the Trump administration has promised to do. New border czar Tom Homan is enthusiastically gearing up to implement Trump’s orders, starting with so-called “sanctuary cities” like Los Angeles, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s homily at the prayer service in the National Cathedral on Jan. 21 and her call to the president to exercise mercy as something a loving God would expect is also a call to anyone who embraces the tenets of any of the major religions. We too must examine how strong our faith is, and how faithful we are to the teachings of the faiths we profess.
Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, said in a Jan. 22 statement: “The Catholic Church is committed to defending the sanctity of every human life and the God-given dignity of each person, regardless of nationality or immigration status.
“Church teaching recognizes a country’s right and responsibility to promote public order, safety and security through well-regulated borders and just limits on immigration. However, as shepherds, we cannot abide injustice, and we stress that national self-interest does not justify policies with consequences that are contrary to the moral law.
“The use of sweeping generalizations to denigrate any group, such as describing all undocumented immigrants as ‘criminals’ or ‘invaders,’ to deprive them of protection under the law, is an affront to God, who has created each of us in his own image.”
Pope Francis also reminds us in his 2020 encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” (“On Fraternity and Social Friendship”): “No one will ever openly deny that [migrants] are human beings, yet in practice, by our decisions and the way we treat them, we can show that we consider them less worthy, less important, less human. For Christians, this way of thinking and acting is unacceptable.”
It’s time for all people of faith to ask ourselves if we find what the new administration is trying to do acceptable. How we answer that question and the actions we take or support, implicitly or explicitly, will tell us how faithful we are to our religious beliefs.
Dawn Morais Webster has been a member of the congregation at St. George Church in Waimanalo and Mystical Rose Oratory at Chaminade University of Honolulu. She worships at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church in Kalihi which hosts the Catholic Worker House.
