As one Chicagoan to another: Help!
I know you have a lot to do running a church with over a billion faithful, and you are just getting your feet wet in the new job. But I also know that you support the plight of the immigrant.
And right now, in my neighborhood, there are bands of masked ICE gunman rounding up undocumented immigrants.
It happened at a bus stop in River Forest. It happened to roofers in Naperville (roofing is one of the most dangerous jobs and in Chicago mostly done by low paid immigrants).
They even shot and killed a migrant on Grand Avenue in Franklin Park. Frankly, I don’t believe ICE’s version of why they shot the man.
I’ve heard through the Melrose Park grape vine that he had just dropped his kids off at school and that his only outstanding crime was a ticket. Whether or not that is true, a father is dead and his widow is grieving and afraid.
It’s strange asking how you can help us. As if you are some kind of deus ex machina. I guess I’m really asking what you think we should do. And I can imagine your suggestions:
Pray. Yes, of course that. But what else?
Be like the Good Samaritan and aid the foreigner whose world has been rocked and is hurting.
At a more theological level, you might quote a person who many whites in the U.S. once reviled, who then became a national icon after his assassination, and in some Christian nationalist quarters is again reviled. I mean Rev. Martin Luther King.
Growing up in the ’60s in south suburban Dolton, you must remember King moving to Chicago one summer. He marched peacefully (always peacefully) in Marquette Park on the South Side and white gangs threw rocks at him.
You might ask us to remember things he said, such as “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” which doesn’t seem true at the moment.
You would also probably ask us to remember the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice …
Our Christian nationalist cousins, and many others in our country, seem to have forgotten the Beatitudes. And me too. I need to do a better job living them day to day.
Thanks for your attention to this matter. I hope we get to see you in Chicago sometime during your pontificate. And when you visit, let’s grab some deep dish.
Sincerely.
Jack Crowe, a Catholic Oak Parker, is a longtime, if irregular, Wednesday Journal columnist.