Immigrants are in the spaces between the details

By Alfred P. Doblin

There’s an expression: God is in the details. My understanding is it originally meant that attention to the small things was important. I don’t disagree. But applied to people, God is in the spaces between the details.

The details are facts, inanimate things. People are not facts, statistics, or inanimate.

This week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met in Baltimore for their Fall Plenary Assembly. During their assembly, they issued what is called a “Special Message.” It is not usual – the last time they issued one was in 2013 – and the message can only be issued during plenary assemblies. This week’s message was indeed special. It addressed the bishops’ concern over the United States’ current immigration policy.

To issue such a statement, two-thirds of the body had to approve it. If you think Congress can be difficult, sit in a room of Catholic bishops. I have, and it’s not always pretty. Consensus comes hard.

Yet, this “Special Message” passed with 216 “yes” votes, five “no” votes, and 3 abstentions. That is, in of itself, remarkable.

And “remarkable” seems a limited word to describe our present time. Supposedly, our nation is drifting to the hard right, with more people espousing the need for America to become a Christian nation. There is nothing Christian about treating people like chattel.

The bishops wrote:

“We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”

The bishops do not dismiss the need for borders, and the enforcement of law, but they question its current application. A focus solely on removing everyone without legal status in broad, often, militaristic strokes, ignores the fact that the law must be applied to individual people, who regardless of legal status, have human status.

God is in the spaces between the details because that is where the people are – between the spaces of legal statutes and executive orders.

It isn’t easy. Yet, that is what we should be called to remember – by bishops, by religious and community leaders, and, most importantly, by our own consciences.

When I was young, the Catholic Church was at the forefront of the social justice movement. It lost its way because of the institutional rot that focused on protecting itself over protecting the marginalized people between the details. God was never in the institutional Roman Curia. God was outside the marble and defined dogma.

God is still out there.

In Washington, many prominent Catholics are controlling the levers of power. But they talk about immigrants like someone cascading down a gold-plated escalator talked about immigrants. They dehumanize them. I don’t know what Catholic Church they attend, but people cannot dehumanize another human being. Our humanity is not subject to any law. What we do, how we act – that is subject to the rules of law. But the intrinsic value of the human person cannot be diminished by another person.

That is the Catholic message, like or not.

This newfound backbone of the USCCB may be braced by Pope Leo XIV, the first American pontiff. But I don’t think it’s that simplistic – I think the bishops understand this is a moral moment. We can enforce the laws of man without spitting in the face of God. Drug dealers, members of violent cartels – no one wants them loose on the streets. It is a false argument to say that people who demand dignity for all people are advocating for that.

I wasn’t born yesterday. The bishops’ statement isn’t going to change the thinking in Washington. No one will so much as blink.

But that doesn’t make it right or acceptable. Most of us trace our roots to immigrants. The nation has never easily welcomed the huddled masses despite what is written on the Statue of Liberty. Our forebearers came here because the light of freedom burned bright against the darkness.

Liberty’s torch was the beacon from a lighthouse that guided millions of people to safe harbor. Somehow, over the years, we allowed someone to put a dimmer switch on her torch. It burns still, but not so brightly.

If American bishops want to reclaim their moral pulpit, this Special Message is a good start. It will not be universally embraced. It will, in fact, be dismissed as nothing but words by many of the powerful Catholics who wear their Christianity like a baseball cap. But that does not matter. It needs to be said.

God is in the spaces between the details. He is with the marginalized. And if believing that we, as a country, can do better when it comes to finding a humane resolution to immigration while upholding the rule of law, makes us marginalized, as well, then we are not alone.

God is in the spaces between the details.

Until next time, Alfred with a P