Thanks to Rocco at Whispers for drawing our attention to a pastoral letter from Bishop Edward Slattery of the Tulsa, OK diocese. Here you'll find Rocco's post and a link to the full text of the bishop's strong letter titled, The Suffering Faces of the Poor Are the Suffering Face of Christ.
Illustrating the moral issues involved, the bishop points to the arrival of law enforcement personnel at a diocesan parish before a mid-November weekend Mass. The police, he said, "knew that Hispanic Catholics trust the church and come to Mass, even when they would not otherwise venture out of their homes for fear of deportation. That makes a Catholic church an easy place to ‘round up’ illegals, so arriving before the 5:30 Spanish Mass, they began to ask the members of the faithful for their papers as they came to offer Christ’s sacrifice. Such intolerable excesses may force the church to go underground, but we somehow will find a way to continue offering the Mass and the Sacraments to our people - for their salvation as well as our own!"
P.S. Rocco also has an interesting post on a piece of former archdiocesan property.
All aspects of this post MUST be read: the issue described in Tulsa is an abomination.
ReplyDeleteIn your "p.s."- the post by Rocco about the now former Boston Archdiocesan property is worth the read - describing Boston as the "flaghsip" of US Catholicism and the sale of its palace as a symbol of being humbled.
I want to say more, however, sometimes all the information can be overwhelming to process. But please do not stop passing it on to us.