Posted on 04/06/2009 12:24:20 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
From Senator Chris Romer: I understand there are passionate arguments for and against this bill but I think the article below by the Archbishop of Denver highlights a key point: this is about the future of children who are here through no fault of their own. Its important that we remember this human element and the 400 kids estimated to be annually effected by SB09-170. Allowing them reasonable access to higher education makes sense for these students and for Colorado.
Tuition Equity: A Just Means To Help Build Colorado’s Future by Archbishop Charles J. ChaputImmigration is one of those issues guaranteed to create hot feelings no matter how you argue it. On the one hand, we’re a nation founded by immigrants. Historically, we depended on immigrants to grow. Nearly all of us have family lines that started in some other country. Openness to immigrants is part of our national identity.
But it’s also true, as Irish, Italian and other Catholic Americans know very well, that dislike of immigrants also belongs to our history. We welcome immigrant labor because we need it. We often don’t welcome the human complications that come along with the people who do the work. This resentment of newcomers gets worse during economic hard times, and it’s made worse by today’s understandable concerns for domestic security.
Good people can disagree on the details of immigration policy-in other words, how best to balance justice for immigrant workers with our public safety and the solvency of our institutions. But we can’t ignore the “human complications” of undocumented labor without brutalizing ourselves and our whole system. Here’s an example: Hundreds of thousands of young adults have grown up in the United States with no memory of any other country. They’re indistinguishable from their peers who were born here. They have no other country to “go back” to. But they’re not American citizens. They didn’t choose their circumstances. They didn’t decide to migrate here; their parents did. They shouldn’t be penalized for a problem they didn’t create.
Federal law mandates free public education K-12 for all young people in the United States regardless of their immigration status. But in recent years, state-level efforts have been made across the country to bar undocumented young adults from the benefits of in-state tuition breaks for higher education.
This is bad public policy for several reasons. Young people who pursue a college degree tend to produce more, become better leaders, enrich our economy through the development of their talents, and depend far less often on social assistance. On the other hand, those who don’t complete high school are more than 25 percent likelier to need public aid such as food stamps, welfare, or subsidized lunches for their children than individuals who complete at least some college. States with a large percentage of college-educated residents have greater productivity. They’re also are much more likely to attract new industries.
Ten other states, mostly in the west, have now passed “tuition equity” bills that allow qualified undocumented young people to access in- state tuition rates for college. The early research suggests exactly what we might expect: i.e., that the resources “lost” in providing in- state tuition are recovered from reduced crime rates and dependence on social assistance. Unfortunately, Colorado is just one of three states, along with Arizona and Georgia, that explicitly bars in-state tuition for resident, undocumented students. As a matter of justice and common sense, this needs to change.
State Senators Paula Sandoval, Abel Tapia and Chris Romer, along with supportive colleagues in the Colorado General Assembly, are trying to fix this problem with Senate Bill (SB) 170. They deserve our gratitude, and more importantly, our active support, because SB 170 is legislation we need.
SB 170, if enacted, will require that any individual receiving in- state tuition must have attended a Colorado public or private high school for three years. The person must also have graduated from a Colorado public or private high school or obtained a Colorado general equivalency diploma (GED). But students who meet these significant and verifiable standards, and qualify for in-state tuition, will not be required to verify lawful presence in the United States. This last factor is crucial for those many young people who have grown up in the United States, know no other home, but don’t have American citizenship.
Politics is not the only, nor even the most important, way that Christians live their faith publicly. Most of the really vital things in life have nothing to do with politics. But politics does involve the use of power in the pursuit of justice, and that has moral and human consequences. In Colorado’s short annual legislative session, certain issues really do matter. Senate Bill 170 is one of them. Please consider the young people who will help build Colorado’s future if this bill succeeds. Senate Bill 170 needs and deserves our support.
This from last month's Austin American Statesman. BTW, they did eliminate the freshman summer class coincidently right before the bill went up for Senate vote.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/03/05//0305topten.html
With all due respect, abortion, same sex marriage, and stem cell research are all non-negotiable articles of faith.
Taking the earnings American citizens to provide higher education for the children of criminal invaders in the name of charity is not on the same plane.
“Catholics serve America best by serving God first. We Catholics honor our nation best by living our Catholic faith honestly and vigorously, and without apology through our actions, our words, our prayers and our votes. What ever political party we may belong to we are Catholics and citizens of heaven first.”
That’s all fine, good and as we say in Greek, etsi preppi (as it should be). But Archbishop Chaput is a particularly glaring example of the sort of showboating politician whose big mouth stains the spirituality of The Church. Among Orthodox involved in the reunion discussions, Chaput and his performances are cited as being among the reasons why its likely that we’ve seen just about all the progress towards reunion there will be in our lifetimes.
Indeed.
I agree with you 100%. My point is that the choice of some hierarchs to engage in political issues in a political and public manner is inappropriate, spiritually distorting and has had and will continue to have undesired consequences for the Latin Church.
So true but the scare tactics worked.
I have a problem with this line of reasoning which is repeated endlessly when discussing divorce or the welfare system.
In reality, minor children are an extension of their custodial parents. Any financial support, legal rights, etc, granted to children are really given to the parents- who use them further themselves. It is dismaying that government permits parents to hide behind their children like this.
Sometimes they exercise that right and end up looking foolish, just like you do in most of your posts.
“Sometimes they exercise that right and end up looking foolish, just like you do in most of your posts.”
Here’s the difference, sport. When a character like Chaput shoots his mouth off and looks to other hierarchs like a political fool or an idiot, certainly like someone who thoroughly misunderstands his proper role, his behavior impacts on reunion discussions. No matter how foolish I look, it doesn’t have that effect, no matter who, or at what level, might be reading what I write or asking for and getting my opinion.
We as Catholics, including Church leaders like Archbishop Chaput, as citizens, can never afford to abdicate our shared civic life to a political or economic elite. A nation's political life, like Christianity itself, is meant for everyone, and everyone has a duty to contribute to it. A democracy depends on the active involvement of all its citizens, not just lobbyists, experts, think tanks and the mass media. For Catholics, politics -- the pursuit of justice and the common good in the public square -- is part of the history of salvation. No one is a minor actor in that drama. Each person is important.
Further, United States was never intended to be a "secular" country in the radical modern sense. Nearly all the Founders were either Christian or at least religion-friendly. And all of our public institutions and all of our ideas about the human person are based in a religiously shaped vocabulary. So if we cut God, the Church, and Church leaders out of our public life, we also cut the foundation out from under our national ideals.
The government is not God. Only God is God, and the state and constitution are subordinate and accountable to God for its treatment of human persons, all of whom were created by God. The very premise of our way of government is that our rights come directly from God, not the government and that the government is only there to secure and protect those rights, not to ration, apportion, or define those. It certainly has no business saying who can and cannot participate based upon vocation or affiliation.
Catholics at all levels, both individually and collectively, have a duty to study and grow in our faith, guided by the teaching of the Church. It also means that we have a duty to be politically engaged. Lets not forget that politics is the exercise of power, and the use of power always has moral content and human consequences. And, in the end, I trust moral issues to the Church, not professional politicians or secular institutions.
If The Church is successful in teaching the people, that will result in metanoia which will manifest itself, among other places, in how people vote. Having The Church, in the person of hierarchs, take public stands on political issues, as I have said before, cheapens the message and distorts Christianity.
“And, in the end, I trust moral issues to the Church, not professional politicians or secular institutions.”
I agree 100%, even while rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Thus I am at a loss as to what some few but loud Latin Rite hierarchs are doing becoming involved in a sort of political street theater, fulminating at politicians when they should be flminating, in a functioning but as yet non-existent synod, at their own brother bishops for their failure to properly catechise the laity or form the lower clergy and so many monastics.
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. (emphases mine)
For some reason, the parts I've highlighted never seem to be remembered by those who cite "Catholic social teaching" to excuse illegal immigration.
I am at a loss as to why you would hope to quiet any voice or advocacy in the public debate. Archbishop, by virtue of his US citizenship, and the weight of his office has as much right to engage in the political dialog and any other conservative or liberal voice.
I don't always agree with Archbishop Chaput or any other religious leader for that matter, but I am tired of Catholics being told to keep quiet about our religious and moral views in the big public debates that involve all of us as a society. Democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square -- peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation. I may not always agree with what the Archbishop says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it.
Look with your heart and conscience, not your attorney, for the meaning of the Catholic Catecism:
1778 Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law:
Conscience is a law of the mind; yet [Christians] would not grant that it is nothing more; I mean that it was not a dictate, nor conveyed the notion of responsibility, of duty, of a threat and a promise. . . . [Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.
Psalm 70:8 - Do not hold against us the sins of the fathers; may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need.
So, you’re saying that your conscience tells you that the Catechism doesn’t mean what it says? I don’t understand.
If illegal aliens are entitled to in-state tuition for reasons of conscience, why aren’t residents of other states also entitled?
I agree with you that the bishops have a right and a duty to speak their minds.
My conscience requires that I apply a different standard to children than to their parents who may have broken laws of man and not laws of God. How, other than conscience and the application of natural law, do you reconcile apparent conflicts in any theological or legal work?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.