The condition of migrants is a pro-life issue, Fr. Pavone.

n Twit­ter, Fr. Frank Pavone—who, to my knowl­edge, has nei­ther repent­ed nor been dis­ci­plined for putting a dead fetus on an altar and film­ing a pro­pa­gan­da video for Don­ald Trump—wrote this: “There is an immi­gra­tion cri­sis, the 1st immi­grant is the unborn child. There is a #Cri­sis at the bor­der of the womb. They are not being detained or deport­ed, they’re being #dis­mem­bered. We’re not going to be able to wel­come an immi­grant when we can’t wel­come our own chil­dren.”

No, excuse me. This is exact­ly why peo­ple say that those who are pro-life care only about the unborn, not about the born. Exhib­it 1 is the odi­ous Frank “Cough­lin” Pavone, who here pits the unborn child against the migrant child. Unless we stop abor­tion first, then the migrant child can go hang.

But what hap­pened to “save them both”? That’s what we con­stant­ly hear from the Old Pro Life folks. Some­one objects, “Hey, what about when the moth­er’s life is in dan­ger?” and the pro-lif­er replies, “Save them both!”

So tell me, Fr. Pavone: Why can’t we “save them both” in this case too? Why can’t I advo­cate for both the unborn and the migrant?

Because you see, Fr. Pavone, all that peo­ple like you are inter­est­ed in is try­ing to por­tray those who defend the migrants as hyp­ocrites. Why do they care about the migrants, but not the unborn? I hear it all the time. But no, I’m not going to let you get away with it: I defend both. You will find plen­ty of arti­cles on this blog about the evil of abor­tion. No, sir: Why do you defend the unborn but not the migrants? Why do you use the unborn as a weapon against the migrants? That’s the ques­tion that mat­ters. Until you dis­cov­er con­sis­ten­cy, I don’t want to hear any talk from you about hypocrisy.

Because the con­di­tion of migrants is a pro-life issue; and I know this because Pope St. John Paul II says so in Evan­geli­um Vitae. It’s in §8. JP2 has been dis­cussing Cain’s mur­der of Abel as the orig­i­nal sin against the right to life. Specif­i­cal­ly, he men­tions Cain’s retort to God, “Am I my broth­er’s keep­er?” The pope says that human beings still ask that ques­tion, even today. With it, he says, we “try to jus­ti­fy and dis­guise the most atro­cious crimes against human beings.” With it, we “refuse to accept the respon­si­bil­i­ty which every per­son has towards oth­ers.” And the pope con­tin­ues:

Symp­toms of this trend include the lack of sol­i­dar­i­ty towards soci­ety’s weak­est members—such as the elder­ly, the infirm, immi­grants, children—and the indif­fer­ence fre­quent­ly found in rela­tions between the world’s peo­ples even when basic val­ues such as sur­vival, free­dom and peace are involved.

Injus­tice toward immi­grants (or refugees, or migrants) is a symp­tom of what John Paul II calls (also in EV) the “cul­ture of death.” He defines that, in §12, as “a cul­ture which denies sol­i­dar­i­ty.”

Thus in his denial of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the migrant, Fr. Pavone makes him­self part of the cul­ture of death. He stains the Catholic priest­hood with this non­sense.