Meanwhile, the shrine is taking shape. Our Latino community is doing this and then that to the Guadalupe shine beside our little parish church. Mind you, that’s as all the immigration drama continues, while they fear being deported.
There are lots of ill-thought out comments these days. I should like to remind some people of some things.
- By far, the vast majority of kids come over the border illegally without their parents. Don’t blame the parents when you don’t know the story. The parents could well have been killed, beheaded, even in front of the kids.
- Those kids often come with adults, not because they want to, but because they were kidnapped by MS 13, Calle 18, or what-have-you, you know, after the parents were killed. It’s just easier for gang members to gain illegal entry when kids are in tow.
- It’s not that the kids are “caged” so much as being put into protective custody (really nice protective custody as far as that goes). ICE wants to know, rightly, whether the parents are really parents or if they are, instead, gang members who still have the blood of the parents on their hands.
- It’s not right to leave kids in the hands of kidnappers who will be happy to rape, dismember and murder these little ones – perhaps after prostituting them – just as soon as they are let out so as to appear for their court date. Sure, the kidnapper might be the older brother of the kids he is with, but, if he’s a gang member, well, really, you ought to know that these gangs also kill their own families to show that they are loyal no matter what to the gang.
Anecdote in my parish far North of the border, in Western North Carolina:
The police called me up to take an emergency trip to the hospital emergency room to translate for them. They had two Latino children in the ER. They had chased a van which then had a roll over in the ditch at high speed. The two kids inside were taken to the hospital by the police while the adults fled, abandoning the kids. Even though the police figured out that the adults were not the parents of the kids, they let the kids go. Where? I don’t know. Why? I don’t know. Is that the best policy? No.
Meanwhile, flowers are arranged for Jesus’ good mom. Why? Because she knows, she understands. She knew all the boys in Bethlehem had been slaughtered because of her own Son. She knows what it is to be in exile in an enemy country for years. She knows the violence of torture and death up close. She knows. That’s why. Doubt that? Look into her eyes:
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
We as a society want fast, easy, one-size-fits-all McAnswers, and there’s no such thing! It takes time, effort, money, and good will to help our brothers and sisters one by one. So, we start – one by one, with whatever we have, whereever we are. Begin with the Rosary…
Yes! that is the loving way. When a fellow Catholic starts talking about a government solution or say something like “the Church should do” such and such, I remind them of what Jesus told His disciples; “Feed them (do it) yourselves.”
I also remind them that “we ARE the Church.”
Am I wrong?