In the aftermath of last week's letter from Pope Francis to the U.S. Bishops on the increasingly contested subject of immigration policy, could an increasingly divided American Church be finding herself stuck in another dangerous Mater, Si, Magistra, No moment? For those below a certain age, that refers to the negative reception among some American Catholic conservatives to Pope Saint John XXIII's 1961 social encyclical, Mater et Magistra ("Mother and Teacher"). A take-off on the anti-Castro slogan, Cuba, Si, Castro, No, the phrase, Mater, Si, Magistra, No, first appeared in print in William F. Buckley's National Review. In time, the slogan would appeal to others across the ideological spectrum as a way of expressing rejection of other particular Church teachings (e.g., on artificial contraception in the late 1960s).
Many ordinary people perhaps don't pay too much attention to routine papal pronouncements (anymore than many do to news in general). But those who do pay attention could not fail to have noticed this particular papal letter, given its timing and its obvious salience for this particularly problematic political moment in the U.S.
The Pope's pronouncement took the form of a Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the United States. He began by acknowledging that these are "delicate moments" which the Bishops are "living as Pastors of the People of God who walk together in the United States of America." Then follow three introductory paragraphs referencing the Old Testament migrations of the people of Israel, the New Testament migrations of the Holy Family, and Pope Pius XII's Apostolic Constitution on the Care of Migrants, Exsul Famillia (1952), which Francis calls "the 'Magna Carta' of the Church's thinking on immigration."
Finally, in paragraph 4, Francis famously says, "The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality." This indeed gets to the heart of the current problem, according to which migrants, whose presence here is often initially legal (asylum seekers, Temporary Protected Status holders, etc.), are being demagogically described as "illegal" and also assimilated to the cases of those migrants who have committed actual crimes. It is inherent in the concept of illegality, that it is wrong and States are right in responding to it. The problem - or at least a major part of the present problem - is the demagogic use of that concept and the political unwillingness to create a viable system of legality as a functional alternative.
The Letter is clearly directed not just at the Trump Administration's immigration and deportation strategy but also at Vice President J.D. Vance's recent ordo amoris theological forays. "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."
In the end, the Pope not only affirms the U.S. Bishops in their ministry to migrants and refugees, but also addresses "all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will," exhorting them "not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters."
It is generally recognized that Trump won a majority of the Catholic vote in 2024. Presumably, Vance understands the implications of this, better perhaps than some of his American Catholic opponents do. For the latter, the Pope's challenge to Trump and Vance indeed represents bold leadership from the Church in the political order. That said, in a world in which increasingly many people's primary identification is political rather than religious, the contrary prospect of broadly based popular rejection (obviously not for the first time in modern U.S. history) of magisterial teaching, remains a very real threat - with all the ecclesial and social damage which that does.