Bishop Vasa speaks

Documented, undocumented -- our citizenship is in heaven
03/01/2007 Bishop Robert Vasa

It will come as no surprise that the weekend entailed a bit of travel. Friday required me to be in Portland for an afternoon meeting and on Saturday and Sunday I needed to be in Milton-Freewater and Athena and on Monday I needed to be back in Bend. I did not keep a close record of the miles but it appears to be something in excess of 600 miles. Fortunately they were great days for travel. Unfortunately they would also have been great days not to travel. I could not help but be amused upon driving into Milton-Freewater to discover a rather prevalent frog theme. A number of the businesses have positioned anthropomorphic frogs such as a four foot frog dressed as a dentist, an accountant, a reader at the library, some shoppers and even a frog lineman positioned twelve feet up on a power pole. They struck me as both quite clever and delightful. I must admit, however, that I have not yet discerned the connection between Milton-Freewater and frogs. I have a hard time imagining that the local High School mascot is a frog but then again one never knows.

My purpose, of course, in coming to Milton-Freewater and to Athena was to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation. The class at Athena was small, being comprised of four members. There was also one First Communicant. The youngsters were quite well catechized which was a good thing because, since there were only four of them, each one needed to respond to several questions. The First Communicant was likewise given an opportunity to answer a couple of questions about Confession and Holy Eucharist. It was most delightful.

The class at Milton-Freewater was considerably larger and the Church was jammed to overflowing. It has been my experience that when a small community has a rather large Sacramental class it is usually true that a vast majority of that class will be Hispanic. This is certainly the case in Milton-Freewater. In this class of 46 confirmands I estimate that more than 40 were of Hispanic descent. I did not attempt to determine the legality or the illegality of the immigration or worker status of the families connected with these young people but it is something about which I know there is much concern. In terms of the Church we recognize a universal membership. A person baptized Catholic in Mexico is just as much a Catholic as someone baptized in the United States. As St. Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven. As fellow citizens in this one overarching kingdom of God we must be careful that our legitimate concerns about national security and unregulated borders do not cause us to think or act in a way unbefitting this primary citizenship. I suspect that there may be a significant number of Catholic Hispanics within our own diocese who are counted among the 10 - 12 million undocumented residents. That status, which some describe as criminal, deprives them of the tranquility which we enjoy, it deprives them often-times of the opportunity to be with their families for important familial and holiday celebrations, it deprives them oftentimes of access to the sacraments, most notably marriage. While it can be argued that they came here of their own accord and that they have chosen the good with the bad it is more likely true that they sought some good and overlooked the extent to which that good involved a high personal cost. It is important in our necessary discussions of the status of undocumented workers and residents that we not forget that there are still basic human rights which are not conditioned on citizenship. These basic rights and the Christian principles of justice, mercy, compassion and charity must be afforded to everyone who is our neighbor. The one who is our neighbor in Christ, towards whom Christ requires the extension of the hand of help and friendship, is not necessarily a good person, a well person, an honest person, a sober person; he is only a person in need. The one who is our neighbor in Christ, towards whom Christ requires the extension of the hand of help and friendship, is not necessarily properly documented. He is, nonetheless, our neighbor. This does not mean that we abdicate our social and civil responsibilities but it does mean that we seek to fulfill those responsibilities in a way which does not violate our higher responsibilities to human life and dignity.

It would be a terrible thing indeed if the reason for all of the concern about the presence of undocumented residents is tied more to fear that their presence will detrimentally impact upon our standard of living than it is about legitimate fears about national security. It is true that the legalization of the status of 10 to 12 million undocumented residents will have an impact on our society. I am not at all convinced that this impact will be a bad thing in the light of the eternal realities. I wonder, for instance, how many Confirmations I would have had in Milton-Freewater if there had been no undocumented or improperly documented families participating. I do know that the number would have been very scant if those of relatively recent arrival from Mexico had been excluded. It may well be that a vast majority of these young people are affiliated with families who have no immigration or documentation concerns and that would be wonderful. My fear is that a number of them may not be properly documented and that this is having a very detrimental impact on them, on their families and on their practice of the faith.

Earlier in the week I spent a day at the Powell Butte property studying and working on the irrigation system. I have always been a bit fascinated by wheel line irrigation and since there is a wheel line on the property and since it belongs to the diocese the maintenance likewise falls to the diocese, in this case, me. I think I learned a lot. I also got very wet - several times. In the process I decided that there really was no shortage of water-related recreational possibilities for our summer youth camps. I was reminded of the many summer time Sunday water fights which erupted on the family farm at home which generally involved squirt guns, hoses, buckets, balloons and sprinklers. The end result was very much like the end result of my working on the wheel line - very wet, very cool, well contented. The Milton-Freewater frog would have been right at home.


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