No

by Nouri Arif

Created on: October 28, 2007

The concept of a religious institution providing a "safe haven" or sanctuary is old and established. However, the point of such a concept is intended to protect those that are hunted down unjustly for a political ideology or for a religious dogma that runs contrary to the dogma of those that would hunt him down. The idea of sanctuary is not to harbor those that willing break the laws of the state for their personal gain or well being. Any religious institution that wants to dabble in the business of harboring criminals ought to stripped of it's charter by both the state and the Holy See (for lack of a better more encompassing term).

An illegal immigrant has made the choice to violate the laws of the state that he resides in at the time that he seeks sanctuary. There is no political argument. There is no religious conflict. There is only the willful decision that the law does not apply to him. There aren't that many people who find themselves brought into the country against their will who decide, only after they are identified as being illegally in the country, that they require aid from the church in order to stay in the place they were brought to against their will in the first place. The illegal immigrant is here for the purpose of making a better life for himself and his relations and this immigrant has made the choice to violate the law in order to achieve that goal.

Giving carte blanche to the church to protect anyone that comes to them for aid regardless of their criminal status is an extremely dangerous policy. The church may decide that the laws of the state do not apply to either the persons it gives sanctuary to or to the church itself. It establishes the notion that the church can and should interfere with the operation of the government of the most basic and fundamental level. The separation of church and state that is crafted into the Constitution is there for exactly this reason. The church must deal with the laws of God and the state with the laws of man.

If a law is wrong or in some way reprehensible then there is a way to change it by using the system of voting. There are no laws against the clergy casting votes in order to effect change. The aid given to those that break our laws intentionally is a crime in and of it's self for which the church must be made to answer. The choice to obey only the laws that it chooses to obey makes the church and clergy criminals in their own right. There is no rule of law that suggests that the law of God trumps or out ranks the law of the state. The existence of a God is highly suspect in the first place and in the second God, if he exists at all, rarely, if ever, makes his intentions known in no uncertain terms.

The idea that the church should aid and give sanctuary to anyone it sees fit, regardless of their crimes, is patently absurd. The church seeks to create within the nation, a nation of it's own that answers to no one. A dictatorship of it's own concept of a greater being that seeks to undermine the laws of the nation in which it exists while it enjoys the freedoms and protections of the nation whose laws it chooses to disobey. It is an abomination and an affront to law abiding citizens.

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