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Tim Mannello
Williamsport
The estimated number of children who would be separated from their parents if the Trump Administration successfully carries out a mass deportation of 12 million illegal immigrants is between 3 million and 5 million children. To paraphrase an old saying: The suffering of many children is just a number; the suffering of one child is heartbreaking.
Think of one innocent little child you know. Your child. Your grandchild. A relative's or friend's child. Say her name out loud. Close your eyes and imagine her being forcibly torn from her Mom and Dad and siblings… forever. Forced family separation is unimaginably cruel. Yet, during this season when people typically focus on love and togetherness, many seem more concerned with holiday meals than with President-elect Donald Trump's promised mass deportations.
We Catholics should know better. Both the American Catholic bishops and Pope Francis have condemned mass deportation as unjust practices that violate the inherent sanctity of a human person and the Christian law of love. They advocate for compassionate immigration policies that uphold family unity and respect for the individual person. Psychologists consider the separation of children from their parents to be child abuse. And we are silent.
Recall the words of Nobel Poet Laureate Elie Wiesel: "The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference." Do we want to face a kind yet just God as one who, together with an entire detached nation, watches the plight of displaced, frightened children as their young lives unfold shattered before our very eyes and say… nothing?
Christian Nationalists call America a Christian nation. Would that we acted like one. But those Christians, who supported Trump's mass deportation policies by voting for him, forget that "Jesus loves the people they hate." Their support for "mass deportations" which is another name for "family separations" reminds me of G. K. Chesterton's profound observation: "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting;' it has been found difficult and not tried."
Republican politicians defer more to a leader they deem divinely favored than they do to God. Call your Christian Congressman and tell him Jesus simply does not get it. Please remember the words of Jesus in Luke 17:1-2 as translated in "The Message: the Bible in Contemporary Language:" "Better to wear a concrete vest and swim with the fishes than give even one of these dear little ones a hard time!"