The Marian Route of the National Eucharist Pilgrimage passes through Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. / Credit: EWTN News
CNA Staff, Jun 28, 2024 / 18:10 pm (CNA).
Bells chimed in the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, this week, marking the entrance of Jesus in the Eucharist into the southeastern corner of the state.
The light of the overcast evening was fading as pilgrims gathered for a Holy Hour of Eucharistic adoration on Tuesday at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, a parish community founded 126 years ago by Polish and Lithuanian immigrants.
The small city, just on the edge of Lake Michigan, welcomed the Eucharist for a Holy Hour and procession as part of the northeastern route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage.
A pilgrim knelt on the concrete sidewalk as a priest with a humeral veil wrapped around his shoulders retrieved the Eucharist from the small, makeshift altar that turned the pilgrimage van into an intimate chapel.
The van has carried Jesus across the United States in a monstrance since the Marian Route of the pilgrimage began in May in northern Minnesota.
The humeral veil, an embroidered cloak that clasps at the chest, allows the priest to hold the monstrance with veiled hands, not touching the sacred vessel that carries his Lord, so that it is not the hands of the priest that rise in blessing over the people but Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.
A deacon swung the golden censer, incense mixing with the gentle chant that hovered in the air over the entrance of St. Peter’s. A golden crucifix marked the beginning of the short procession into the Church, first passing by an image of Divine Mercy, Christ’s hand on his heart with red and silver light shining out, then entering the expectant church.
The following day, the pilgrims gathered for an early Mass at St. Peter’s in the morning and then processed almost four miles, stopping at parish churches along the way.
The procession trailed along the sidewalks of Kenosha. A young girl was pulled in a wagon by her mother as her siblings trekked ahead.
“The number of different ways I’ve seen people come and pour out their love for God — that’s the part where I get so emotional,” event organizer Margaret Rhody of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee told “EWTN News Nightly” correspondent Owen Jensen, who reported on the Kenosha part of the pilgrimage.
The hum of prayer and song and the trill of ringing bells resonated as the processors passed through neighborhood streets, by front lawns, and along crosswalks.
“It’s been such a blessing,” said Matthew Heidenreich, a young “perpetual pilgrim” who has been on the pilgrimage since it started.
“I get to watch revival happening in front of me,” he said. “It’s filled me with so much hope just to see the way that people are responding to the pilgrims and responding to Jesus Christ.”
“The Eucharist is the body and blood of Jesus Christ,” he said. “People who come to church can be receiving him — to feed your soul.”
When asked what it meant to her, an older woman who attended the procession said it gave her “great pleasure and peace.”
The golden monstrance was the only sun on the gray morning, a sunburst of gold pursued by those pilgrims who gave up their Wednesday morning to walk with the Lord through their city.
When asked what it meant for him to be a part of the procession, a middle-aged man explained that it was about expressing his faith with his community.
“I think it means being a part of a community, being part of a family, exercising my faith, trying to show not just myself but my family as well that this is something that’s important,” he said.
“Bishops along the routes have just uttered surprise at how many people have come out for processions, for Masses, for confession, for adoration, but also service to the poor,” Bishop Donald Hying of Madison told “EWTN News Nightly” in reference to the pilgrimages across the nation.
Hying told “EWTN News Nightly” that for anyone who struggles with the Real Presence — the belief that the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ — he suggests going back to John chapter 6, the Eucharistic discourse.
“He makes this extraordinary promise that those who eat of his flesh and drink his blood will live forever,” Hying said. “So, the Eucharist for us is this great antidote to eternal death.”
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CNA Staff, Sep 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Long a champion of immigrants, particularly those fleeing war-torn countries and impoverished regions, Pope Francis last month delivered some of the clearest words in his papacy yet in support of migrants — and in rebuke of those who turn away from them.
“It must be said clearly: There are those who work systematically and with every means possible to repel migrants,” the pope said during a weekly Angelus address. “And this, when done with awareness and responsibility, is a grave sin.”
“In the time of satellites and drones, there are migrant men, women, and children that no one must see,” the pope said. “They hide them. Only God sees them and hears their cry. This is a cruelty of our civilization.”
The pope has regularly spoken out in favor of immigrants. In June he called on the faithful to “unite in prayer for all those who have had to leave their land in search of dignified living conditions.” The Holy Father has called the protection of migrants a “moral imperative.” He has argued that migrants “[must] be received” and dealt with humanely.
Migrants aboard an inflatable vessel in the Mediterranean Sea approach the guided-missile destroyer USS Carney in 2013. Carney provided food and water to the migrants aboard the vessel before coordinating with a nearby merchant vessel to take them to safety. Credit: Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Catholic Church has long been an advocate and protector of immigrants. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) notes on its website that “a rich body of Church teaching, including papal encyclicals, bishops’ statements, and pastoral letters, has consistently reinforced our moral obligation to treat the stranger as we would treat Christ himself.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that prosperous nations “are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.”
Popes throughout the years, meanwhile, have expressed sentiments on immigration similar to Francis’. Pope Pius XII in 1952, for instance, described the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt as “the archetype of every refugee family.”
The Church, Pius XII said, “has been especially careful to provide all possible spiritual care for pilgrims, aliens, exiles, and migrants of every kind.”
Meanwhile, “devout associations” throughout the centuries have spearheaded “innumerable hospices and hospitals” in part for immigrants, Pius XII said.
Implications and applications of Church teaching
Chad Pecknold, an associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America, noted that the catechism “teaches that nations have the right to borders and self-definition, so there is no sense in which Catholic teaching supports the progressive goal of ‘open borders.’”
“There is a ‘duty of care’ which is owed to those fleeing from danger,” he told CNA, “but citizenship is not owed to anyone who can make it across a national border, and illegal entry or asylum cannot be taken as a debt of citizenship.”
Paul Hunker, an immigration attorney who previously served as chief counsel of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Dallas, agreed.
“States have to have responsibility for their own communities, they have to look out for them,” he told CNA. “So immigration can be regulated so as to not harm the common good.”
Still, Hunker noted, Catholic advocates are not wrong in responding to immigration crises — like the ongoing irregular influx through the U.S. southern border — with aid and assistance.
Paul Hunker, an immigration attorney and former chief counsel of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Dallas, says Catholic advocates are not wrong in responding to immigration crises — like the ongoing irregular influx through the U.S. southern border — with aid and assistance. Credit: Photo courtesy of Paul Hunker
Many Catholic organizations offer shelter, food, and legal assistance to men, women, and children who cross into the country illegally; such groups have been overwhelmed in recent years with the crush of arriving migrants at the country’s southern border.
“It’s the responsibility of the federal government to take care of the border,” he said. “When the government has created a crisis at the U.S. border, Catholic dioceses are going to want to help people.”
“I completely support what the Catholic organizations are doing in Mexico and the United States to assist people who are there,” Hunker said. “The people responding are not responsible for these crises.”
Latest crisis and legal challenge
Not everyone feels similarly. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation of multiple Catholic nonprofits that serve illegal immigrants in the state. Paxton alleges that through the services it provides to migrants, El Paso-based Annunciation House has been facilitating illegal immigration and human trafficking.
A lawyer for the group called the allegations “utter nonsense,” though attorney Jerome Wesevich acknowledged that the nonprofit “serves undocumented persons as an expression of the Catholic faith and Jesus’ command to love one another, no exceptions.”
There are considerable numbers of Church teachings that underscore the need for a charitable response to immigrants. In his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII argued that man “has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own state,” and further that “when there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there.”
In the encyclical Caritas in Veritate, meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 acknowledged that migration poses “dramatic challenges” for nations but that migrants “cannot be considered as a commodity or a mere workforce.”
“Every migrant is a human person who, as such, possesses fundamental, inalienable rights that must be respected by everyone and in every circumstance,” the late pope wrote.
Edward Feser, a professor of philosophy at Pasadena City College in California, noted that the Church “teaches that nations should be welcoming to immigrants, that they should be sensitive to the hardships that lead them to emigrate, that they ought not to scapegoat them for domestic problems, and so on.”
Catholic teaching does not advocate an ‘open borders’ policy
Yet Catholic teaching does not advocate an “open borders” policy, Feser said. He emphasized that the catechism says countries should accept immigrants “to the extent they are able,” and further that countries “may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions.”
There “is nothing per se in conflict with Catholic teaching when citizens and politicians call on the federal government to enforce its immigration laws,” Feser said. “On the contrary, the catechism backs them up on this.”
In addition, it is “perfectly legitimate,” Feser argued, for governments to consider both economic and cultural concerns when setting immigration policy. It is also “legitimate to deport those who enter a country illegally,” he said.
Still, he acknowledged, a country can issue exceptions to valid immigration laws when the moral situation demands it.
“Of course, there can be individual cases where a nation should forgo its right to deport those who enter it illegally, and cases where the manner in which deportations occur is associated with moral hazards, such as when doing so would break up families or return an immigrant to dangerous conditions back in his home country,” he said.
“Governments should take account of this when formulating and enforcing policy,” he said.
The tension between responding charitably to immigrants and ensuring a secure border was perhaps put most succinctly in 1986 by the late Father Theodore Hesburgh, who served as chairman of the U.S. Select Commission for Immigration and Refugee Policy that was created by the U.S. Congress in the early 1980s.
“It is not enough to sympathize with the aspirations and plight of illegal aliens. We must also consider the consequences of not controlling our borders,” said the late Father Theodore Hesburgh, who served as chairman of the U.S. Select Commission for Immigration and Refugee Policy that was created by the U.S. Congress in the early 1980s. Credit: Photo courtesy of University of Notre Dame
Writing several years after the commission, Hesburgh explained: “It is not enough to sympathize with the aspirations and plight of illegal aliens. We must also consider the consequences of not controlling our borders.”
“What about the aspirations of Americans who must compete for jobs and whose wages and work standards are depressed by the presence of large numbers of illegal aliens?” the legendary late president of the University of Notre Dame reflected. “What about aliens who are victimized by unscrupulous employers and who die in the desert at the hands of smugglers?”
“The nation needn’t wait until we are faced with a choice between immigration chaos and closing the borders,” Hesburgh stated nearly 40 years ago.
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