“A few elected officials on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures are pushing legislation to stop any aid to, or government partnership with, churches and agencies like our own Catholic Charities, and are waging slanderous attacks against us for assisting newcomers, including refugees and asylum seekers,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York wrote in an article for the Jesuit journal America.
“The Catholic Church is not a faction of the Republican Party, and Democrats are not the only ones who sometimes view the defense of religious freedom as a pothole instead of a stop sign,” he added.
“We have a moral duty to welcome, clothe, feed and respect newcomers, no matter how they got here,” he continued. “And here in the United States, the government can’t punish us for that belief.”