NOTES BETWEEN PRINTED EDITIONS
A priest of the Archdiocese of Boston is using his parish Nativity display to impart a message castigating U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Reverend Stephen Josoma, the Pastor of Saint Susanna Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, has erected a Nativity scene in front of his church in which figures of the Holy Family have been replaced with a sign which reads: ICE WAS HERE.
Beneath it is a telephone number to call to report ICE activity, presumably to impede federal law enforcement efforts in the area.
A short distance to the left of the Nativity scene is a second sign, which reads: Nuclear Weapons Are Illegal.
Father Josoma—a radical priest known for his left-wing activism and same sex advocacy—has a long history of using Nativity scenes to provoke controversy.
In 2017, he included a gun control message in that year’s Nativity display.
In 2018, he presented Baby Jesus in a cage during the Trump Administration’s first illegal immigration crackdown, and in 2019, all the figures in the display were floating on rising seas in a climate change message.
The theme, common among anti-ICE activists, that the Holy Family were refugees, similar to today’s migrants, and subject to arrest for violating immigration laws, does not comport with the Gospels.
In traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and later into Egypt, Saint Joseph and the Holy Family crossed no international borders, as the Tetrarchies of Judea and Galilee and the Prefecture of Egypt were all part of the Roman Empire.
The Catholic Action League called this year’s Nativity scene “another tawdry act of political grandstanding by a priest who believes that his parish church is his personal soapbox.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comments:
“What we have here is a case of a dissident priest who has a long history of these crackpot publicity stunts. He is politicizing Christmas. He is exploiting the Holy Family and he is using his position as the pastor of a Catholic parish to promote his left-wing political ideology.
Advent is a penitential season which prepares Catholics for the most joyous day in the liturgical year— Christmas—the birth of Our Savior.
Instead of focusing on Jesus Christ, Father Josoma is, as usual, making it about himself and his progressivist politics. It is inappropriate, sacrilegious, divisive and disrespectful.
Moreover, there is nothing in Catholic teaching which obliges Catholics to resist their nation’s immigration laws or to obstruct law enforcement in apprehending those who entered the country illegally.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, while reminding prosperous nations of their duty, to the extent they are able, to welcome foreigners, also states:
Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption.
Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.
No Catholic is obligated to shield those who violate just and longstanding laws, constitutionally enacted by a democratic vote of the Congress, for the protection of the United States.
The recent statement by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on immigration admonishes Catholics to avoid dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.
Father Josoma’s demonization of ICE—suggesting that its agents are so evil that they would even arrest the Son of God—clearly ignores that instruction.
Even in an American church overwhelmingly sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants, Father Josoma remains an outlier.
Ultimately however, responsibility for this priest’s behavior rests with his superiors, which is to say his enablers, in the Archdiocese of Boston.
The spokesman for the Archdiocese, Terence Donilon, ‘declined comment’ when contacted by a reporter for The Boston Globe, having previously told a television reporter that the RCAB ‘was aware of the situation.'”
- J. Doyle was interviewed by WFXT Boston 25, WCVB 5, WHDH 7 News Boston, Fox News Digital, The Boston Globe, WBUR Radio, Newsweek, and the National Catholic Reporter.
Doyle was also quoted on Fox News, WTAG Radio and in the New York Post.
