January 9, 2005

Migration

  
   

The Tsunami
Father Augustine wrote about effects of the Tsunami in India.
“Merry Christmas. Hope everyone is fine there.
I received the devastating news about my town in India. The earthquake and the tidal waves claimed almost 25,000 people in my place alone. Most of them were children who could not run away. In some places the entire village has gone. When I was in Chennai I used to frequent a fishermen vilage which is completely destroyed. I know many of those people who perished from this little village which was just on the shore. Water came
into the very place where I was teaching this summer. They still are digging more and more bodies from the beach. Please pray for them. It has not been a happy season so far.”
We are taking a special collection for Tsunami relief at mass this weekend. We’ll accept donations suring the week ahead.

At College?
At St. Brigid’s we like to stay in touch through
e-mail “letters from home.”
Once a person has an e-mail address at school (or if he/she uses a personal address), please let us know what it is so we can include them when we write.
Here's a handy college link so you can send this info online.

e-mail Father Ralph:



Past Columns:
December 26: A Blessed Christmas
December 19: Here comes everybody!
December 12: The Journey Continues
December 5: Visions of Sugarplums

Columns from 2004

Columns from 2003
Columns from 2002

Columns from 2001

           
 

Quick -- what are the three principles of Catholic teaching on immigration? Hmmm...the answer doesn’t quickly spring to mind, does it? But we just finished “National Migration Week” (bet you didn’t know that). It began last Sunday with Isaiah saying, “ Raise your eyes and look about; they all gather and come to you: your sons come from afar, and your daughters in the arms of their nurses.” And the week ends by our facing the “migration” of our own Father Dillon who soon leaves us for the land of Mastic Beach.

It’s no surprise that we live in a land (and parish) of immigrants. Just look across the pews and see that people have indeed come from every land and nation. What joins us together is our common faith. There is unity in our diversity, through Jesus.

But it is a surprise to some, that Catholic Social Teaching has some principles about human migration. Here are the three:

First Principle: People have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families.
Second Principle: A country has the right to regulate its borders and to control immigration.
Third Principle: A country must regulate its borders with justice and mercy.
(An online guide to the Catholic teaching on immigration can be found here. www.usccb.org/mrs/uidparkitpdf.shtml)

I’d like to add a few more principles based on life at St. Brigid’s.
(1) Celebrate your own heritage by remembering what it was like for you (or your ancestors) to arrive for the first time in our parish. What was the welcome like? Was there any welcome?

(2) Welcome fellow immigrants whatever way you can. We’re all migrating toward heaven, right? So we’re fellow travelers. How do you personally make this a more welcoming parish?

Let’s pray for all those who find themselves in foreign lands -- our folks in Iraq or those displaced by the Tsunami, and those who have come to our land because they flee war or oppression.

 


    
           

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