Catholic Church Facilitates Foreign Invasion

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Catholic Money and Tax Dollars Finance Illegal Alien Rally
The event in D.C. is being supported by United for Peace and Justice, a far-left organization which argues that “peace activists” must “join hand-in-hand and march with immigrants to fight for their rights and an end to the militarization of our communities.”
AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | April 30, 2010
A group organizing a May 1 "May Day" rally in favor of "immigrant rights" in Lafayette Park in front of the White House is financially supported by the Catholic Church, Big Business, the federal government, and various Maryland governmental entities.
It is anticipated that the demonstration will take the form of opposition to Arizona's new law that is designed to discourage illegal immigration.
The buses will leave for Lafayette Park from CASA de Maryland centers starting at 12:30, with the rally scheduled to begin at 2 p.m.
So-called "May Day actions" are being planned in dozens of cities around the U.S.
CASA de Maryland, an illegal alien support group, is sponsoring the buses that will take hundreds of protesters to the event in the nation's capital. CASA is considered the biggest promoter and facilitator of illegal aliens in Maryland.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and its Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), which got caught funding the radical group ACORN, are listed on the CASA website as being among its many financial donors and supporters.
Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration, issued a statement April 27 "in solidarity with the Catholic bishops of Arizona" opposing the enactment and implementation of the Arizona law.
Wester said, "The U.S. Catholic bishops stand in solidarity with the bishops of Arizona in opposing this draconian law. We call upon the Administration to review its impact on civil rights and liberties. We renew our call for the Administration and Congress to work in a bipartisan manner to enact comprehensive immigration reform as soon as possible."
The Bishops have made it clear that such "comprehensive" reform must include amnesty for illegal aliens as its central component. Many of these aliens are Catholics from Latin America.
CASA de Maryland's Facebook page denounces the new Arizona immigration law and highlights opposition to the measure by Meghan McCain, daughter of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain.
CASA de Maryland created a major controversy by distributing an eight-page book telling illegal aliens how to avoid law enforcement authorities. The CASA book, Know Your Rights (PDF) tells illegal aliens not to carry "any documents from your country of origin" and that "providing your name" to a police officer "has risks" because "your name can be used to start a deportation process." It flatly says, "Don't provide government officials information about your immigration status."
"Only in America can groups like CASA and their illegal alien criminal clientele use tax dollars to lobby for amnesty and equal rights, all to the detriment of the American people and our way of life," commented Brad Botwin of Help Save Maryland.
Help Save Maryland is a multi-ethnic, grass-roots, non-partisan organization with thousands of members across the state. "We are opposed to the use of tax dollars on programs that attract and sustain illegal aliens to Maryland," Botwin explained.
Under the category of "Government," CASA lists the following entities as financial donors:
• Baltimore City Council
• City of Baltimore Mayor's Office
• City of Takoma Park
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Maryland AIDS Administration
• Maryland Cigarette Restitution Fund
• Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development
• Maryland State Legislature
• Mid-County Regional Services Center-Montgomery County
• Up-County Regional Services Center-Montgomery County
• Montgomery County Council
• Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services
• Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs
• Montgomery County Office of the County Executive
• Montgomery County Public Schools
• Prince George's County Council
• Prince George's County Council Special Appropriations Funds (Councilmember Thomas E. Dernoga)
• Prince George's Department of Housing and Community Development
• Prince George's County Office of the County Executive
• Redevelopment Authority of Prince George's County
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
The event in D.C. is being supported by United for Peace and Justice, a far-left organization which argues that "peace activists" must "join hand-in-hand and march with immigrants to fight for their rights and an end to the militarization of our communities."
The group explains that, "With the recent passage of Arizona's anti-immigrant SB 1070 bill, many immigrants and activists are comparing this to the rebirth of Jim Crow and racial profiling. We have also seen an increase in the militarization of local police forces and of our borders in another racist effort to divide our country."
It's not just the taxpayer-funded entities supporting CASA that have earned Botwin's ire. He drew attention to the financial support given to CASA by the Catholic Church. In addition to the Catholic Bishops and the CCHD, the CASA web site identifies its donors as including the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
The CCHD reports $30,000 in 2007 and $10,000 in 2006 given to CASA for "workers' rights." More recent data is not available.
Other churches and religious organizations supporting CASA include the Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, the Foundry United Methodist Church, and Quaker groups.
In the area of Big Business, foundations, and organizations, financial supporters include the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute, the American Petroleum Institute, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Council of La Raza, the Bank of America Foundation, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, the Bechtel Foundation, and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
In the past, Accuracy in Media has protested support given to CASA from the Philip L. Graham Fund, which is staffed by current and former officials of the Washington Post and includes Donald E. Graham, who also serves as CEO and Chairman of the Board of The Washington Post Company, as a trustee.
The Eugene and Agnes Meyer Foundation, which is named after the former owner and publisher of The Washington Post, is currently listed as a financial sponsor of CASA. The Foundation reports that it provided $405,000 to the group.
The Herb Block Foundation, named after the long-time Washington Post editorial cartoonist, is also a CASA sponsor. This foundation provided funds for one of several controversial "Day Laborer Centers" operated by CASA.
Help Save Maryland reports that Day Laborer Centers are "hiring sites supposedly created to deal with the problems caused by unskilled workers (largely illegal aliens) who congregate on street corners waiting for persons seeking laborers to drive by. In communities like Gaithersburg and Wheaton [Maryland], these informal hiring sites have caused traffic disturbances, and the lack of sanitary facilities has often led to public urination. Other common complaints include public drunkenness and sexual harassment of female pedestrians."
Brad Botwin of Help Save Maryland says, "These same illegal alien day laborers, their families, gang members and others dependent on CASA for support will be a major portion of the crowd on May 1."
He says CASA is usually portrayed by liberal newspapers such as the Washington Post as an "immigrants rights group," while opponents of illegal immigration are typically described as "hate groups and nativists."
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/cathol...l-alien-rally/

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Pat Bucannon on the Catholic Church and illegal immigration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xySkbI4IuRU

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Bishops to the Left of Senate Dems on Immigration

AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | May 2, 2010
In commenting on the "Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform" (REPAIR) proposal offered by Senate Democrats, the top Catholic in the U.S. on immigration issues says that it spends too much money on border enforcement and not enough on bailing out the economies of Mexico and Central America.
Bishop John C. Wester, Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration issued a statement on Friday declaring that the Bishops "have concerns about the increases in enforcement resources contained in the framework" because "the United States has poured billions of dollars into immigration enforcement" and the money "has not only not solved the problem but in some cases led to the abuse of migrants." He suggested more foreign aid was the answer to keeping immigrants in their home countries.
However, Jim Russell, head of Catholics for a Moral Immigration Policy, told AIM that more money, not less, should be spent on border security, and that the Bishops are wrong to oppose Arizona's new immigration law.
Conservative Catholic James Todd of Pewsitter.com, which is "the voice of the Catholic lay faithful," has taken Cardinal Roger Mahony to task for comparing the Arizona law to Nazism. "His comments really served no purpose but to ratchet up the rhetoric," Todd noted. "One wonders if he even read the law. It's only seventeen pages and having read it, there is nothing in it that would justify such an over-the-top slam. I would call it a quite reasonable and commonsense law--and one that I support."
Todd says that he is surprised that conservative Bishops have joined the liberals to express opposition to the law and he cannot understand why they fail to comprehend the desire of the majority of the citizens of Arizona and the U.S. itself to see laws against illegal immigration enforced.
The Washington Post noted that the Senate Democratic proposal or "framework" includes "a slew of new immigration enforcement measures aimed at U.S. borders and workplaces." It added, "The Democrats' shift underscores how, in the struggle between enforcement advocates and legalization backers, the former seem to be gaining, experts said." The Democrats releasing the proposal were Charles Schumer (NY), Harry Reid (NV), Robert Menendez (NJ), Patrick Leahy (VT), Dick Durbin (IL) and Dianne Feinstein (CA).
Of the Bishops, perhaps the most far-left on the immigration issue is Cardinal Mahony, who participated in the "May Day" rally in Los Angeles in support of illegal aliens. It was one of dozens of such rallies across the U.S.
In Washington, D.C., in a rally sponsored by Casa de Maryland, which is financed by the Catholic Church and various governmental entities, demonstrators labeled Arizona as a reincarnation of the Nazi state and comparable to the old South African regime that segregated people in an apartheid system. Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez fired up the crowd before getting himself arrested in a protest at the White House.
One demonstrator was spotted and photographed wearing a communist Che Guevara T-shirt, while members of the Socialist Workers Party and Party for Socialism and Liberation mingled with the crowd, passing out Marxist literature. At a previous March 21 illegal immigration rally, Marxists were selling copies of the Communist Manifesto in Spanish.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. Catholic hierarchy rallies to the cause of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America, Catholic parishioners in Cleveland, Ohio, are protesting a plan by Bishop Richard Lennon to "downsize the diocese" and close 50 churches. The parishioners are calling themselves "Endangered Catholics" and have launched a website to save the ethnic European and black Catholic churches targeted for closure.
The closures are being blamed on financial shortfalls and "changing demographics," meaning that Hispanics have become more important to the church and whites have become less important.
Indeed, Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report has cited evidence that four times as many Catholics are leaving the faith as are joining it but that a surge in Hispanic immigration "has offset the steady decline of white Catholics."
The latest figures show that 40 percent of U.S. Catholics are Hispanic. The same evidence shows that many immigrant workers in the U.S. are "undocumented" and 74 percent of them are Catholic.
It is this demographic, rather than moral or religious concern, that is driving official Catholic concern for immigrants, legal and illegal. In fact, seventy percent of the country's largest Catholic diocese in Los Angeles, run by Cardinal Mahony, are Hispanic.
Rocco Palmo, who covers the politics of the Roman Catholic Church, recently told National Public Radio that Hispanics constitute half of other major archdioceses like New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. "It's been a staggering shift in the life of the American church," he said. This shift explains Catholic support for legalizing illegal immigrants.
In a bow to reality, Lisa Miller points out in Newsweek magazine that the bishops "have a practical stake in fighting the [Arizona] law and supporting federal immigration reform." She writes, "The number of Hispanics in America has grown from about 6 million in 1960 to about 50 million today. Nearly 70 percent of Hispanics in America are Catholic. With whites abandoning Catholicism in droves, a growing, vital American church depends on Hispanic families."
On the Fox News Channel, Father Jonathan Morris denied that official Catholic Church opposition to the bill was about keeping Hispanics in the pews. Morris, a paid network contributor, gave a confusing and contradictory performance, saying that he supported enforcement of immigration laws in general but was opposed to the Arizona law in particular. However, regarding Mahony's incendiary rhetoric, Morris would only say, "I would not use those words."
Those words appear to reflect the heavy presence of Hispanics in the area. The Vatican in early April named Archbishop José Gomez of San Antonio, Texas, as the new Archbishop of Los Angeles, replacing Mahony, who leaves his post next year. The media have noted that the appointment puts Gomez on track to become the first Hispanic Cardinal in America.
Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, in his book, Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders, declared, "Churches pander to illegal aliens, seeking financial windfalls when more church members come across the borders. This is especially true of the Catholic Church, because so many of the Mexicans coming here are Catholic."
Gilchrist and his co-author, Jerome Corsi, wrote a story for Human Events in 2006 accusing Cardinal Mahony of using the immigration issue to "build his base of parishioners." They said that the $200 million used to build his Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which was dedicated in 2001, should have been used "to provide some of the benefits illegals already here are demanding" rather than dumping these costs on taxpayers who bear the brunt of their illegal presence.

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at cliff.kincaid@aim.org
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/bishop...n-immigration/