“Love God and Jesus, who was crucified for us, from the depth of your heart, and never let the thought of Him leave your mind.”
— St. Clare of Assisi.
This Sunday goes by several names in various places. In the Western tradition, it is knows as Lætare Sunday from the opening words of the Introit, “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem…” The Introit continues: be glad for her, all ye that delight in her: exult and sing for joy with her ,all ye that in sadness mourn for her; that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations. In England, it is known as “Mothering Sunday,” taken from the text of the Epistle: But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. The two terms are actually linked as we think about the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Church, “the mother of us all.” (This Sunday is also Mothers’ Day in the UK.)
This epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians is appropriate for Lent as it reminds us both of the Lenten journey and our own spiritual pilgrimage. The forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Day recall the forty years the Hebrew people spent in the wilderness, traveling from captivity in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. They recall the forty days Our Lord spent fasting, praying and facing temptation in the desert.
The Epistle reminds us that in our spiritual journey, we are being lead from the slavery of sin to the freedom of our heavenly home. By God’s grace, we are moving from a life of self-indulgence and alienation to one of selflessness and communion with God and with others.
While we might associate these struggles particularly with Lent, they are actually with us throughout our entire earthly journey. The wilderness of Lent is to be found deep within our selves, where we continually face the temptations and trials of daily life.
St. Paul reminds us that in the same way that our earthly mother gives us birth, nourishes us and guides us in our younger years, so does the heavenly Jerusalem (the true City of Peace) nurture and lead us in our spiritual lives. Our Lord gave us the Church on earth to minister the grace of the sacramental life, essential to our spiritual sustenance. This is to be found in the local parish, the outpost, as it were, of the universal Church established by Our Lord upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone (Ephesians 2.20).
Here we find both Word and Sacrament to nourish and guide us on our journey. And yet, there are many who neglect this essential gift. The busyness of life, the demands of family, and sometimes just laziness prevent us from participating in our Sunday obligation. Or sometimes we imagine that we don’t really need the grace of the Eucharist, that we find all that we need in our personal life of prayer.
But Scripture is clear on this matter: And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching (Hebrews 10.24-15).
The task of the Church, and more especially our local parish, is to “mother” us, with Word and Sacrament, with discipline and teaching. We cannot complete this journey on our own, beset with the temptations, trials and even the demons that cross our path. Our Lord gave us the Church, the repository of the Sacraments, to aid us in our journey; to make certain, in fact, of our success in that journey. And we neglect so great a gift at our own peril.
During the remaining weeks of Lent, we still have the opportunity to enter into the spirit of this penitential season, to join with our parish family at the altar as well as at the Stations of the Cross. The celebration of Easter will be a hollow celebration unless we, following the example of Our Lord, have entered into the wilderness of Lent. For only when we are truly tested will we come to know the victory Our Lord has won over the “sin that so easily besets us.”
____________________________________________________________________
Below are some thoughts on faux Christian Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, as well as 2 thoughtful articles on the duplicity of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference’s stance on illegal immigration, in contradiction of the Catholic Church’s teachings, and a final article on the importance of mass deportations. Enjoy.
____________________________________________________________________
“* * *
But what is interesting about Talarico’s religion is that when you take a closer look at the positions he holds, one thing becomes clear: This man does not worship Christ. He worships the state. Every solution he proposes has little to do with empowering believers to take on America’s problems and everything to do with putting the government in the position of God.
* * *
People like Talarico profess faith in Christ and the Holy Spirit. But when it comes to solving America’s problems, none of those concepts come into play. When people are hungry, the government should feed them. If someone is sick, the government should control their healthcare. The poor should turn to government for their needs.
Yet, I’ve not seen one clip where Talarico advocates for Christ followers to work together to deal with these issues. Every single solution I’ve heard him present is about government, not the people — or God. His brand of political theology would minimize the role Christ told us to take on while maximizing the state. This vision, drawn to its logical conclusion, would create a society in which we turn to Washington, D.C. instead of our Creator.
Is this not the idolatry the Bible warns of?
Yes, the poor must be helped. The sick must be healed. The hungry must be fed.
But Christ instructed us to fill these needs, not the government. He never told us to outsource our Christian duty to a gaggle of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats in the Capitol.
Folks like James Talarico are working desperately to convince Christ followers to place their trust in the government, not God. They use Christ’s teachings to deceive people into believing that granting ultimate authority and power to the state is what Jesus commanded. Unfortunately, far too many believers are falling for it.”
–Jeff Charles.
__________________________________________________________________
The Bishops and the Border
Immigration advocacy of US Bishops undermines law and order.
BY: S.A. McCarthy, The American Spectator (February 21, 2026).
I worry at times, writing this column, that I may sound like a broken record, harping on immigration issues and the Catholic Church’s teachings on the subject ad nauseum. But America’s Catholic bishops clearly have no such qualms; indeed, it seems as though their excellencies issue some new (often whiny) immigration missive every other week, horrifically misrepresenting the Church’s age-old teachings on matters of national sovereignty, borders, and the moral responsibilities that immigrants and refugees owe to their host nations. Well, last week was one of those weeks.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on Friday published a statement authored by Bishop Brendan Cahill of the Diocese of Victoria in Texas, complaining of President Donald Trump’s plan to increase detention housing capacity for arrested illegal aliens. “These plans are deeply troubling,” the bishop wrote, making veiled references to the mass internment of Japanese nationals during World War II. “The thought of holding thousands of families in massive warehouses should challenge the conscience of every American. Whatever their immigration status, these are human beings created in the image and likeness of God, and this is a moral inflection point for our country,” he continued. “We implore the Administration and Congress to lead with right reason, abandon this misuse of taxpayer funds, and to instead pursue a more just approach to immigration enforcement that truly respects human dignity, the sanctity of families, and religious liberty.”
What might a more just approach be in Cahill’s mind, I wonder? What might be a better use of those taxpayer funds? Perhaps funneling tens of millions of dollars per annum into the USCCB’s coffers (see here, here, and here) while the bishops and their cronies distribute cellphones and pre-loaded debit cards to newly-arrived illegal aliens at the southern border, before shuttling the unvetted arrivals further into the U.S. How many young American women could have been spared rape and brutal murder had the USCCB refused the thirty pieces of silver the previous administration offered?
Mass detention centers of the sort that Cahill is moaning about could be rendered unnecessary if the deportation process were to be streamlined. Holding tens of thousands of foreigners at a time would not be necessary if they were to be quickly processed through the immigration courts, ushered onto planes, and shuttled back to wherever they came from in the first place.
Instead, a veritable army of NGOs has besieged the nation’s Article III courts with lawsuits, which are almost invariably decided by left-wing activists put on the bench by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Injunctions and restraining orders are issued and murderers, rapists, child molesters, human traffickers, wife-beaters, drug dealers, gang members, and fraudsters are kept from being shipped back to their landfills of origin, necessitating further detainment and, thus, the Trump administration’s rapid expansion of detention capacity.
However, those refugees have an obligation, the Church further instructs, to respect the laws and customs of the nation offering refuge and to assimilate.
While I am unaware of any such lawsuit formally joined by the USCCB or its “Catholic” satellite organizations, the bishops have been active participants in the wave of anti-immigration enforcement activism presently afflicting a portion of the nation’s population.
When activist provocateur Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed in Minneapolis last month after striking an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent with her SUV, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis was quick to issue a statement, while the Jesuits’ America magazine published an essay implicitly accusing ICE of racist practices and policies.
When an illegal alien assaulted 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley, attempted to rape her, and bashed her head in with a rock, no bishops issued any statements. When 37-year-old mother-of-five Rachel Morin was raped, beaten to death, and then raped again, no bishops issued any statements. When two illegal alien adult men sexually assaulted and strangled 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray to death — you guessed it, silence from the U.S. bishops.
The Catholic Church has very clear teachings on the subjects of immigration, treatment of refugees, borders, national sovereignty, and cultural heritage and homogeneity. Nations who can afford to, the Church instructs, ought to welcome refugees, those who are fleeing genuine persecution, war, or severe disasters. Climate change, an impoverished economy, or being hunted down by a rival gang do not really qualify as life-threatening humanitarian crises, sorry.
However, those refugees have an obligation, the Church further instructs, to respect the laws and customs of the nation offering refuge and to assimilate, as far as is reasonable.
This commandment has been broken time and time again by those who wantonly trample the first American law that they encounter and continue — whether for months, years, or even decades — to evade law enforcement, unlawfully take jobs and houses that right-wise belong to their American hosts, and even prey upon welfare programs paid for by American taxpayers and meant to support Americans.
The bishops mention none of these responsibilities. Instead, they treat the United States like a free hotel and complain when the government spends millions of dollars providing beds for criminals. Meanwhile, they and their allies denounce just American laws and, in their efforts to prevent the deportation of illegal immigrants, help create the very demand for expanded detention centers they deplore.
When it comes to immigration policy, the U.S. bishops might do well to read Cardinal Robert Sarah’s The Power of Silence.
____________________________________________________________________
The Church’s Misguided Mercy
The USCCB’s push on immigration undermines national stewardship.
BY: S.A. McCarthy, The American Spectator (March 7, 2026).
Surprise, surprise: the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference (USCCB) is at it again, watering down the Catholic Church’s teachings to support its own (highly profitable) immigration agenda. Following Kristi Noem’s ouster as Homeland Security Secretary, the USCCB’s Migration Chairman, Bishop Brendan J. Cahill of the Diocese of Victoria in Texas, announced the bishops will press Noem’s replacement to implement “just immigration policies.” At issue, of course, is the sealing of the U.S. southern border and the mass deportation program promised by President Donald Trump.
“Without commenting on the qualifications of any specific individual, my brother bishops and I remain committed to dialoguing with all leaders in every administration, as well as Congress, in support of just immigration policies that recognize the God-given dignity of all involved,” Cahill said, according to EWTN News (formerly Catholic News Agency). “We will continue to urge an approach to immigration enforcement that is targeted, proportionate, and humane, always respecting each person’s inherent dignity, the sanctity of families, and religious liberty.”
Sounds good, right? But the USCCB and its members have consistently castigated the Trump administration’s efforts to secure an America for Americans. Does the Catholic Church actually teach that nations are to be nothing more than receptacles for the murderers, rapists, child molesters, drug dealers, fraudsters, and opportunists of the third world? Emphatically no.
The policy of the USCCB is not one of “justice,” it is not one of virtue. It is rather a policy of self-service, of robbery, of waste, and of harm.
Paragraph 409 of the Compendium of the Catechism nicely summarizes Catholic teaching on government policy, including immigration policy: “The most complete realization of the common good is found in those political communities which defend and promote the good of their citizens … without forgetting the universal good of the entire human family.”
The first human duty of rulers is to their people. This does not mean that rulers have a moral obligation to brutalize others, but it most certainly does not mean that rulers should allow their own people to suffer for the sake of strangers. Americans have a moral responsibility to offer refuge and aid to those less fortunate, when it’s possible to do so.
They have no obligation to do so at the expense of their own homes, livelihoods, families, safety, security, and nation.
The nation is, in the words of Pope Pius XII, a “sacred inheritance.” Those who care for the nation have been given that responsibility by their ancestors, those who cared for the nation before, who in turn received that stewardship from their own ancestors, and it is up to those who currently care for the nation to preserve and safeguard that inheritance for their own descendants. There is an obligation that each generation owes to the next, stronger and weightier than any obligation owed to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse of far-flung lands.
Mass migration, as the past several decades, and past several years in particular, have demonstrated, is a scourge upon the nation, robbing citizens of the inheritance that their ancestors struggled and strove to preserve for them, and robbing future generations of the nation that their own forefathers built for them. The policy of the USCCB is not one of “justice,” it is not one of virtue. It is rather a policy of self-service, of robbery, of waste, and of harm. The bishops should be ashamed of themselves.
____________________________________________________________________
In Defense of Mass Deportations
Reneging on Trump’s promise is not the midterm winning strategy Republicans are promising.
BY: S.A. McCarthy, The American Spectator (March 13, 2026).
It is difficult to overstate how significantly political discourse has shifted on the right over the past decade. When businessman, real estate mogul, and reality television personality Donald Trump first showed up on the political scene in 2015, his comments on immigration sparked backlash, with even some from within the GOP’s ranks deriding him as racist and xenophobic. In the 1990s, Patrick Buchanan’s warnings against mass migration were largely ignored and sidelined, and now Trump rose like a specter of Buchanan spouting the same immigration alarmism. Yet Republican voters managed, in 2016, to reject the whims of the donor class and not only choose Trump as their presidential nominee, but send him to the White House.
In 2015, Republicans still campaigned on the threat of socialism and the need for small government and big tax breaks. The national debt was a major talking point, as was job creation. Few were willing to address the existential threat that mass immigration, including illegal immigration, posed to the U.S.
Fast forward to 2024, nearly one decade after Trump rode that golden escalator. The Republican National Convention that year was packed with voters waving signs that said, “Mass Deportations Now!” This was not a fringe group of Buchananite holdouts hoping that their theatrics might prompt at least 30 seconds’ discussion of the issues they considered important; this was the bulk of the GOP voter base cheering on one of Trump’s core campaign promises: the mass deportation of illegal aliens from the U.S. interior.
Now, after a little over a year of far too many headlines centered on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and far too few actual deportations effected, GOP leadership is plotting to abandon the mass deportation agenda that largely propelled Trump to a historic victory: a second White House term, flanked by a Republican majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, both the electoral college and the popular vote, all after nearly a decade of being smeared as Adolf Hitler reincarnate. Trump supporters had long been castigated as “fascists” or even “Nazis,” but after Joe Biden took office in 2021, political persecution began, with January 6 protestors and everyday pro-lifers being arrested and imprisoned and prominent Trump allies being blacklisted, censored, and debanked. Yet Trump’s base not only shouldered these burdens, but voters turned out in massive numbers to send “Hitler” back to the White House.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) suggested this week that “a little hiccup” in polling with Hispanic voters on Trump’s “overzealous” immigration enforcement will prompt a “course correction” on the mass deportation front. Uh oh.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative, Political, and Public Affairs James Blair went even further, clarifying in a social media post Tuesday that mass deportations are on their way out. Instead, only “violent” illegal aliens will be targeted for arrest and deportation. The millions upon millions of others who violated American immigration law, took jobs that belong to Americans, took housing that belongs to Americans, and have evaded law enforcement for years — they can stay. According to Axios, Blair has privately advised congressional Republicans to drop “mass deportations” from their campaigning ahead of November’s midterm elections. Oh no.
Citing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insiders, AF Post reported that incoming Homeland Security Secretary and outgoing Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) is expected to “shelve” mass deportations and largely shift DHS’s focus to arresting and deporting violent illegal aliens. Yikes.
A “course correction” that results in nixing the mass deportation program promised by Trump would be disastrous for Trump, the historic coalition he has formed, the Republican Party as a whole, and the American people. First of all, mass deportations were and still remain incredibly popular. In a 2024 CBS News survey, over 60 percent of Americans reported their support for deporting “all undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally.” (Emphasis added.) According to a 2024 Gallup poll, 55 percent of Americans endorsed “deporting all immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home country.” (Emphasis added.) A Scripps News survey that same year found 54 percent supported mass deportations.
But that was nearly two years ago! Public opinion may be fickle, but on an issue of such grave importance as the survival of the nation, it has proven to be somewhat more stalwart.
An October 2025 Harvard-Harris poll found that 56 percent of voters still support “deporting all illegal aliens.” (Emphasis added.) Even the New York Times couldn’t avoid finding 54 percent support for mass deportations in a September-October 2025 survey. Even after a controversial and high-profile ICE operation in Minneapolis, mass deportations remain popular. Last month’s Harvard-Harris poll found that while 75 percent of voters back the arrest and deportation of illegal aliens who have committed crimes within the U.S., a sizable majority (nearly 60 percent) back “deporting all immigrants who are here illegally.” (Emphasis added.)
Reneging on the promise of mass deportations will have catastrophic consequences for the GOP and will be read as betrayal by the American voters who suffered political persecution, legal retaliation, and ostracization for years over their support for Trump’s agenda — not to mention the many women and children who have been raped and murdered by illegal aliens, the American fathers who cannot support their families because illegal aliens are willing to do the same job for a fraction of the pay (often producing only a fraction of the quality), the American families who cannot find a home because all of the apartments have been rented at inflated prices by illegal aliens and all the single-family homes are being bought up by major investment firms who then rent them out at inflated costs to illegal aliens.
American voters went through hell to put Trump back in the White House, almost entirely on the strength of his mass deportation pledge.
American voters went through hell to put Trump back in the White House, almost entirely on the strength of his mass deportation pledge. There were plenty of reasons to vote for Trump in 2024, of course, but millions of American citizens recognized that the country which their forefathers had fought, bled, toiled, sweat, and even given their lives to settle, define, build, expand, preserve, and pass on to future generations was (and still is) being choked to death by mass immigration. An about-face on mass deportations will shatter the historic coalition built by Trump and decimate any chance the Republican Party might still have at retaining the White House in 2028.
Politics aside, allowing millions (estimated tens of millions, actually) of illegal aliens to simply invade the U.S. and then settle down and face no repercussions, no consequences, no deportations will mark the end of America as a nation. At that point, America will become nothing more than a mission statement: If you agree, more or less, with a certain set of ideas or principles, then you can live and work here and make plenty of money to send back to your home country in untaxed remittances. That is not a nation.
A nation is a people who share a flag, a history, a culture, a morality, a religious ethos (if not a strict religion). There are Americans who can trace their presence in the New World back to the Mayflower Pilgrims and the Plymouth Colony, to the Jamestown settlers, to the unsung heroes of the Revolutionary War, to the fathers and sons and brothers who fought in the Civil War. Does their heritage and history mean nothing? If anyone from the third world can violate the first U.S. law they encounter and profit from it, with impunity, then yes, the heritage that Americans spent 250 years building and cultivating and safeguarding is meaningless.
The U.S. Constitution, the nation’s foundational legal document, clarifies that the U.S. is not an international jobs market nor merely a “propositional nation.” The cornerstone of the preamble — “for ourselves and our posterity” — makes abundantly clear that the U.S. is its own nation, its own, who have spent the better part of the past 250 years curating and defending a shared flag, history, culture, morality, and religious ethos, protecting the American homeland to entrust to the care of the next generation of Americans, not to hordes of “new arrivals” who do not share a flag, a history, a culture, a morality, a religious ethos, or even a language with Americans.
Abandoning a policy of mass deportations will not only hurt the GOP politically; it will effectively end the United States of America as a nation. Oh well, 250 years was a good run.
GFK
Patrick Henry arguing the “Parson’s Cause” by George Cooke, circa 1834. Public domain. Original in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society.
Observations From The Fifth Estate 