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The recent article, “Bishops End Border Visit Calling for Urgent Reunification of Children,” lacks true grit (CNY, July 5).
I read about the pastoral visit to a center where lit up eyes and “smiling faces” and a “room filled with children’s voices” greeted the visitors. This sounds like an assembly at a Chappaqua day care center. After making a trek that would make a Crusader cry, children are softly separated from their parents and thrown into unimaginable pits of fright and despair. The bishops sought “to understand the situation of family separation.” The situation is immoral. This article depicting soothing hands giving succor to the destitute is like one percent milk.
What’s not needed is to portray this ongoing blasphemy against our country’s heritage as something we’re managing as best we can. No, we are not. The separation is a clear issue; there is no ambiguity. What is demanded is a full-throated, angry, constant, howl against this hideous practice and botched reunification.
We’re in the papacy of a pope who has told us the poor are his central focus. Yet what do I find my Church doing: issuing press releases and recording “sober” experiences. In its 2,000 years, many of its members had to show true courage standing up to authority, when that authority violated the will of God. These children need more than what we’ve delivered. I want to hear “a letter to be read at every Mass”; I want to see vigorous leadership to galvanize outraged Catholics like me; I want Wolf Blitzer to report the Catholic Church continues its highly visible attack on child separation. She doesn’t have to take political sides, she simply must preach, forcefully and heroically—Christ’s message of mercy.
We’re on the side of the angels here. Why don’t we show it?
