Samuel Tenenbaum (who led our community’s admirable operation to welcome refugees from Katrina 10 years ago) shared this piece from the NYT with me and others over the weekend:
The Refugee Crisis Isn’t a ‘European Problem’
THOSE of us outside Europe are watching the unbelievable images of the Keleti train station in Budapest, the corpse of a toddler washed up on a Turkish beach, the desperate Syrian families chancing their lives on the night trip to the Greek islands — and we keep being told this is a European problem….
It’s not just the United States that keeps pretending the refugee catastrophe is a European problem. Look at countries that pride themselves on being havens for the homeless. Canada, where I come from? As few as 1,074 Syrians, as of August. Australia? No more than 2,200. Brazil? Fewer than 2,000, as of May….
The brunt of the crisis has fallen on the Turks, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Iraqis and the Lebanese. Funding appeals by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees have failed to meet their targets. The squalor in the refugee camps has become unendurable. Now the refugees have decided, en masse, that if the international community won’t help them, if neither Russia nor the United States is going to force the war to an end, they won’t wait any longer. They are coming our way. And we are surprised?
Blaming the Europeans is an alibi and the rest of our excuses — like the refugees don’t have the right papers — are sickening….
But I didn’t need to read that to bring the problem home, because by the time I saw his email, I had already read this in The State:
SPARTANBURG, SC — A Duncan resident is seeking a court order to stop refugees from resettling in Spartanburg County.
The action comes about a week after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Anne Richard visited Spartanburg to answer questions about the refugee resettlement program. Lauren Martel, a Hilton Head-based attorney, sent Richard a letter demanding a halt to the program in its entirety.
Martel is representing Michelle Wiles, of Duncan, who has “already suffered potential damages as a result of this unilateral premature action,” Martel states in the letter.
Wiles said the refugee program is an unnecessary burden on the Spartanburg County taxpayers and believes the refugees who are resettling in Spartanburg have not been properly vetted.
“People are being brought here and we have no database to know even who they are,” Wiles said. “We’re supposed to just trust that their story checks out.”…
From the terrible moment years ago when Cayce said “no” to the Somali Bantu to this, we have plenty of evidence that whatever it is in people that causes them to turn refugees away, we are afflicted with it here in South Carolina.
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I found this story disturbing–harshing my mellow from the whole Emanuel Nine grace, but I tried to empathize with someone who is so afraid (of what, exactly?) that she will go to the trouble to file a lawsuit?!?
I also found it interesting that a woman from Duncan is represented by a lawyer based in Hilton Head Island–the opposite side of the state. I smell a put-up, just like the “lawyers” who advise the Kentucky clerk….
Afraid, perhaps, of an experience like the one currently being covered up by Sweden’s politically correct anti-defamation laws which through threats of fines and imprisonment has prevented rapes by gangs of unassimilated Somali immigrants totally unmentionable in their “not so free” press:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3257888/posts
Not Bantus, I presume.
Because she at no risk of rapes by gangs of frat boys….
Which reminds me of one my favorite news pictures, of Mayor Bob welcoming the Bantu after Cayce had turned them away:
Mayor Bob got a probably deserved rap for the ill-considered big projects he championed, but you sure could count on him to do the thing that was “kinder than necessary.”
Speaking of which — I am reminded that our governor welcomed the refugees that this lawsuit seeks to turn away.
Which is an improvement upon her reaction earlier to the Central American children — further proof that she has grown in office…
And since I mentioned the governor’s previous, less-than-generous response on the unaccompanied children, I must mention how disappointed I was at Vincent Sheheen’s avoidance of the issue at the time.
In retrospect, it reflects the superficial, inauthentic feel of his whole campaign last year. Rather than getting a little spontaneous moral outrage from him, I got… nothing. Which reflects the artificial, off-the-shelf campaign that caused him to do worse against Nikki Haley than he did the first time around. The real, human Vincent Sheheen I know would have said something. The packaged, careful 2014 campaign Sheheen did not.
Or… maybe he thought I was piling on a bit on the governor at the time, and didn’t want to join in.
But I don’t think that was it.
I just heard from a yoga teacher, fwiw, that early in her term, Governor Nikki came to a Sikh meeting the yoga teacher (an Anglo-American) was at, and impressed everyone with her depth and kindness, etc. etc. Are we seeing the real Nikki now, or what?
Lest we forget, Spartanburg County also spawned Lee Bright.
Tim Kelly — he’s back!
Please reveal how many refugees you will personally house. If the number is zero, you can’t expect someone else to do it.
Yes, I can and I do.
I do not expect anyone to personally put up a stranger, but I do expect our tax dollars to go to help out—and in this case, they aren’t even state tax dollars. The plaintiff simply doesn’t want refugees that her tax dollars aren’t even going to pay for, in her state!
I can’t pay to house a family myself, but I can join with others to help house them.
Exactly!
Doug thinks the way a community works is each individual decides how much he is willing and able to pay, and that’s that. Brrr
We’d get little paid for at that rate.
Which, I guess, is just fine for a lot of people, alas!
No, I think people should do more than talk.
You could donate money to the causes as well. Not just rely on other people’s tax dollars to funderstand your charitable endeavors.
Again, it’s not “other people’s” tax money, it’s ours, and we have an obligation to use it in ways that are right and moral.
and I do donate money, but my money is a drop in the bucket…
If every one of the Middle Eastern refugees came to this country we wouldn’t run out of food or water or clothing or shelter– but there are Americans who would turn them all away to die. I suspect some of those Americans call themselves Christians.
More than just a few, for sure!
And there are no atheists, agnostics, or unbelievers who would turn refugees away without giving it a second thought? Apparently not since you took the time to single out Christians and Kathryn quickly agreed with you.
Anyone can claim to be a Christian just as anyone can claim to be Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, or any other label one wishes to use as a description of who they are.
Um, here’s the logic I agreed with: A large number of self-proclaimed Christians are supporters of Donald Trump and other politicians who espouse xenophobic plans among their principal talking points, as reported in numerous polls. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that more than a few so-called Christians would turn these refugees away. The data on other religions’ and nonreligions’ adherents is not readily available, but other religions do not feature prominent parables like the good Samaritan, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, etc. Atheists and agnostics have no particular command to love their neighbors as themselves.
Absolutely. We should expect more of Christians, even though, since all of them are sinners, they will repeatedly disappoint us.
It’s like… the terrible thing about sex abuse by priests isn’t that the Catholic clergymen are any more likely to be sexual predators than other men. They are not. The terrible thing, in terms of what it says about the Church, is that they are just AS likely (or almost as likely — the data on the general population are scarce) to be pedophiles as are other men.
If even one priest is guilty of such horrors, that’s scandal enough. But if it’s just as common as in the general population, that is truly appalling…
Not that I expect priests to be perfect. But I do expect them not to do things that are so very evil and twisted that they strain the imagination…
Well, I think until recently, priests were trusted a whole lot more than men who were not priests….I mean, maybe a girl should be careful around drunk frat bros, but she oughta feel okay with Father Pat, the thinking went.
Absolutely.
The terrible thing it said about the Roman Church was not that some of its priests were pedophiles, but that until recently it was de facto church policy to cover it up. Yes, I know there was no such policy written in the canon laws or verbally stated, but that’s what happened across the entire church. Not that that keeps us from calling each other unchristian (or worse) these days.
“It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.”
Well, the crime is bad, too….
As for the “cover-up”…
I’ve always suspected — and really have no way of knowing that I’m right, not having studied these cases in depth — that the problem was that this IS a church, not the larger society with its criminal justice system.
‘
The church, especially down on the pastoral level, isn’t geared toward prosecution and punishment. It’s all about forgiveness. You do a bad thing (or in this case a horrific, unimaginably awful thing), and you confess it contritely, you do some sort of penance, and then you’re forgiven. It’s gone; it’s washed away. It’s as though you never did it. And you’re told to go and sin no more.
And most of all, it’s a completely confidential process. There’s no perp walk, arraignment, indictment, trial, conviction or sentencing in open court. It’s kept between the sinner and the confessor.
That’s what the church is set up to do.
Of course, as for the “sin no more” part, anyone who did such a thing is the sort of person likely to do it again, since they are apparently driven by unspeakable compulsion.
All of that said, I think there’s a way that even an institution built around forgiving sins could have more effectively handled such cases.
First, the penance should include, at the very least, that you are expelled from the priesthood. Then, you go to the civil authorities, turn yourself in and take the consequences.
In such cases, the confessional process should include urging the molester to get counseling for a profound psychological problem. Not that I have a lot of hope for the efficacy of treatment…
I don’t think the Church was much inclined to dismiss priests, given the dwindling number of vocations….
I don’t think it’s that simple. I hear of would-be priests who are seen as unsuitable and urged to do something else. I also know of priests — including one who was in a very important position in this diocese — who leave to get married.
The Church isn’t going to throw aside all considerations in order to keep priests, no matter how shorthanded it is…
I sort of smile when I think of that particular priest. His temperament was kind of intense compared to other priests I’ve known.
When David Beasley briefly tried to get the Confederate flag down, an ecumenical group of pastors had a press conference to endorse the effort. The spokesman was Dick Lincoln, Beasley’s pastor. He spoke in very cautious, diplomatic terms about the flag.
Afterward, I was chatting with my own pastor, Leigh Lehocky, and the aforementioned Msgr. Miglarese. Miglarese was dissatisfied with the tentative tone of the presser. “Just take the damn’ thing down,” he said. “Just take it down!”
Not officially it’s not, but surely it’s in their subconscious. Also, the tendency to see things from the perspective of priests, seeing as how that’s 100% of the decision makers.
Another problem is that people get to say they’re “Christian” whether they really are or not.
And there’s no way to control that. I mean, the Roman Catholic Church could probably have separated the sheep from the goats for you once upon a time, at least here in the West, but that blasted Reformation got in the way.. 🙂
Right, because Catholics before the Reformation were all so Christ-like. After all, Jesus sold indulgences, amirite?
I didn’t say the Medieval Church had the moral RIGHT to make such judgments. Only that it had the POWER…
It had the power to determine who was Catholic. Only God can determine who is Christian.
Which is a whole other post I’ve meant to write for years.
I’ve always felt uncomfortable calling myself a “Christian.” It’s like it’s an honorific. Or, it’s like I’m overly confident that I’ve arrived, and am doing all I should do. It’s like I’m inviting people to watch me, and if they do, they’ll see just what a Christian is supposed to be.
I prefer to think of myself as someone striving to be a Christian, with varying success.
So when people say that they are Christian themselves, I’m put off a bit. Of course, I shouldn’t judge them, since it’s not Christian to do that, right? But it always makes me cognizant of a difference between them and me.
This could spin off into a discussion of grace versus works, with the grace people saying that if you accept the unearned grace, you’re a Christian, no matter what you DO. And I agree with them that none of us are capable of really EARNING God’s grace.
But I still shy away from what can seem like a certain smugness in people who are confident that that free gift of grace is theirs and they are set.
I think we should all be more like the “whiskey priest” in Greene’s The Power and the Glory — not that we should disgrace the cloth with our behavior, but that we should emulate his self-concept as a fallen man…
There are several groups in Spartanburg County who have worked together to welcome these refugees. In fact, I think the refugees have already arrived. This was not really a surprise as some believe. Also, Spartanburg already has a large multicultural community. The refugees will have the support they need. The selfish will not prevail.
I am so glad to hear it, but hardly surprised. There are good people everywhere!