There has much discussion and much more shouting masquerading as discussion these last days over Trump’s proposed Muslim Immigration ban.
So much of the online discussion misses some fundamental points, so I would like to just cover them very briefly here.
ALL rights come from God, not government, not ever.
Error has no rights. Condemned “Each one is free to embrace and profess that religion which, led by the light of reason, he thinks true.”
Islam is a particularly noxious error perhaps even of Satanic origin.
While the common good of the state and the Church may dictate the need of tolerance of error, sometimes the common good dictates otherwise.
So, it is permissible for a State to suppress Islam to some degree.
So Catholics must dispense with the notion that banning Islamic immigration is de facto anti-Christian and somehow violates human rights. It does not. Period.
The right questions are these:
Q: Does the common good of the State and the Church require this action at this time? Good people can disagree on this.
Q: Is there a prudent way, in a secular republic with increasing antagonism toward Christ and his Church and which increasingly ignores its legitimate and long-standing constitutional limitations, to effect such a policy without establishing a precedent of government power over religion in general that will almost certainly be used against the Church?
Q: And as a corollary to the above: Is the risk of Muslim immigration currently greater than the threat posed by a centralized tyrannical secular republic unfettered in its ambitions by constitutional limits?
For my part, I don’t think so. For Americans, the greater threat is clearly our secular-atheist government.
But whatever your opinion, this is where the debate should be.
