Comment: The Holy Family were NOT refugees! They went to Bethlehem to pay taxes!
Answer: Sure, the trip to Bethlehem was to pay taxes. But the trip to Egypt was as a refugee family fleeing a violent persecution that threatened to kill their son, as it had already killed all the male children under the age of 5.
The Holy Family were ABSOLUTELY refugees before the second chapter of Matthew's Gospel ended.
Comment: No, they were NOT refugees! They didn't cross a national border! It's like fleeing Illinois for Texas! That's not a refugee move!
Answer: While it is true the refugees remained in the Roman Empire, it is not at all like the move from Illinois to Texas. The Roman provinces held different legal statuses depending on their relationship with Rome. We aren't used to this kind of thought, but it was commonplace in the Roman Empire.
For instance, we have only two levels of citizenship: you are or you aren't. In the Roman Empire, it wasn't so simple. There were all kinds of different rights and degrees of citizenship, governing even whom you could marry. These rights and degrees of citizenship were often bound to specific geographic regions, so you had "citizen's right X" if you lived in one city or region, but you lost it if you moved to another (Ius migrationis).
Judea was a client state, with Herod as its Roman-chosen ruler. Rome's relationship to the Judean province was a client-state relationship, rather like the relationship between the US and Cuba after the Spanish-American war, when the US ambassador held more power in Cuba than the Cuban president did.
As the ruler of a client-state province, Herod had a relatively free hand to slaughter whom he liked. And he had already demonstrated a serious malevolent intent to slaughter the Holy Family's child. We know this because he had slaughtered every child that even looked like his target (note: I am publishing this on Childermas, the Feast of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents).
Egypt, on the other hand, was considered the personal property of the Emperor. The Holy Family fled the Judean client state to enter the personal property of the Emperor, i.e., Egypt, where Augustus was considered pharaoh. By this flight, they were thus placing themselves under the personal protection of Augustus. That is, they were refugees in EVERY modern sense of the word.
Again, Egypt was the personal property of the pharaoh, i.e., the personal property of Emperor Augustus. Judea wasn't.
By moving from Judea to Egypt, they removed themselves from the authority of a man trying to kill their child and placed themselves under the personal protection of the Roman Emperor. That's a refugee move.
Conclusion: Yes, the Holy Family were refugees. And, yes, if Egypt were ruled by Trump, Mary and Joseph would likely be denied entry, perhaps they would even be sent back to suffer the execution of their child, God.
6 comments:
And yet the fact remains that the Holy Family did not seek to illegally enter another nation state for financial reasons, nor to bring a false, pernicious religion to that nation, so the fact that they sought refuge in Egypt from Herod's tyranny provides no support to those who claim, contrary to the Faith, that nations have no right to regulate migration into their territories.
The United States was founded as an open borders country.
Since it is not an enumerated power, the federal government has no Constitutional right to restrict immigration.
Thanks for playing!
Open border country was established before welfare, so cut that and see if the mobs thin out. But that won't happen. Just sayin'
Steve Kellmeyer: How do you "provide for the general welfare" of citizens, but have no borders?
Just answer one questions: Why don't you leave your keys in your house door? Indeed, why do you even have a door? If you have a right to your property, the U.S. has a right to control its property that cannot be violated without citizen permission. It hasn't been given.
There is no such thing as a nation without borders.
"The United States was founded as an open borders country."
The United States was also founded as a nation of slave-owning anti-Catholic treaty-breakers. Thankfully the U.S. got better.
But you are, of course, mind-bogglingly wrong about the U.S. government having no power to regulate entry into the country and the process of citizenship. This power is among the inherent sovereign powers that the U.S. has had since 1776, which it has by virtue of being an independent, sovereign nation -- the Constitution doesn't grant the U.S. that power because it is antecedent to the drafting of the Constitution. Indeed, without inherent sovereign powers the U.S. would have no right to draft a constitution for itself. Further, the Constitution obviously sets the federal government, not the individual states, over international relations -- that power is plenary, even if it is not exercised. When the U.S. was in its infancy, the federal government did not at first exercise its authority, but it soon found that immigration regulation was necessary. Since 1789 every attempt by the states to interfere with the federal government's sovereign power over immigration has been struck down whenever that interference has been brought before the Supreme Court.
But not only is open borders ideology contrary to constitutional law and jurisprudence, far more importantly -- and you'd see this if you would just put down your copy of the Democrat Party platform for a second -- it violates the teachings of the Catholic Faith and sound reason, which uphold the State's right to regulate trade, immigration, and citizenship:
From the latest Catechism:
2241 The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.
Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.
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So we see here not merely the Christian duty of charity toward foreigners and immigrants, but also the Christian State's right and obligation to regulate immigration and citizenship. The same right is discussed by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2105.htm#article3
"Thirdly, when any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship. With regard to these a certain order was observed. For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations, as the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 1). The reason for this was that if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they settled down in its midst, many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might attempt something hurtful to the people."
Finally, I feel an obligation to remind you that the Holy Family did not flee from wicked Herod so that they could provide a too-clever rhetorical weapon for 21st century American addicts to politics. It's proximate to blasphemy and sacrilege to reduce the sublime mysteries of Our Lord's Incarnation and His peregrinations on this earth to a meally-mouth poltical talking point as you have done here.
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