As the most admired moral leader in the world today, Pope Francis was right to say the action of building walls instead of bridges is not Christian.
He could have gone even further to say that ANY kind of bigotry makes a mockery of the Gospel.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Please share widely!
I have to ask, first, whether xenophobic bigotry is different from or worse than gender bigotry. I understand and appreciate the efforts of the Pope to emphasize the stance of the institutional Catholic church towards efforts to further impoverish the already poor. I appreciate that this Pope does what he can and that change happens slowly. It is, nevertheless, hard for me to hear categorical statements such the one you offer here (“ANY kind of bigotry makes a mockery of the Gospel.”) without asking about the bigotry of the institutional Catholic church towards women.
Sadly, the several Protestant fundamentalist traditions have a long history of xenophobic bigotry. Until sometime around the 1960s, they had an almost equal amount of anti-Catholic bigotry.
My family of origin worshiped in a suburban Washington DC fundamentalist Southern Baptist church. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination, and certainly not the only fundamentalist one. The church I grew up in had no crosses anywhere in the building because the cross was a sign of the hated and dreaded “popery”. The anti-Catholic — and therefore, almost by construction, anti-immigrant — prejudice was palpable and literal. The church I grew up in had no altar (more “popery”) — the focus of attention was a prominent lectern from which the Preacher spoke. Communion (the “Lord’s supper”) happened monthly, was comprised of bits of saltine crackers and Welches grape juice in little half-shot glasses, and was distributed to the congregation.
The Southern Baptist Convention was formed during the 19th century as several older “Baptist” traditions split over issues of slavery. The Southern Baptist Convention was comprised primarily of slave owners, and taught that slavery was approved by “scripture”, that slaves should accept their “place” in this world order, and that white masters should be “gentle” and “kind” to their slaves. Blacks could not be called as preachers, and blacks were seated separately during worship. Not surprisingly, blacks left the denomination in droves.
While the Southern Baptist Convention has, at least superficially, left behind its explicitly racist past (it elected African-American Fred Luter as President for two successive terms in 2012 and 2013), their extreme fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible continues.
There are a great many Catholics and liberal Protestants who enthusiastically agree with you (and me) that any kind of bigotry makes a mockery of the Gospel. Sadly, there are a great many fundamentalist Protestants — and perhaps even some Catholics — who have a VERY different belief.
Many of those would tell YOU, in no uncertain terms if asked, that you are a heretic, an unbeliever, and an emissary of Satan for daring to elevate the words of one man above the “word of God”, and for daring to challenge the obvious and transparent “word of God” as presented in the Bible. They would then cite four or five chosen verses and dismiss you.
I’m not defending this, I’m just reminding you (and BMG) that “Christian” covers a whole lot of ground.