Jeff Sessions’s use of a biblical quote to defend the new Trump administration policy of separating children from their parents at the border to detain them in “tent cities” and abandoned Wal-Marts is not going over well with anyone, not even those who believe the Christian Bible should dictate policy.
One of the Catholic church’s most right-leaning conservative leaders, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, appeared on CNN with Chris Cuomo to address Sessions’s attempts to biblically justify these cruel abuses.
‘St. Paul himself, who gave the quote that the attorney general used, he wouldn’t obey Roman law when it said it was mandatory to worship the emperor. I don’t think we should obey a law that goes against what God intends that you would take a baby, a child, from their mom…if they want to take a baby from the arms of his mother and separate the two, that’s wrong. I don’t care where you’re at, what time and what condition, that just goes against … you don’t have to read the Bible for that. That goes against human decency. That goes against human dignity that goes against what’s most sacred in the human person.’
Sessions’s choice of biblical quotes has a long and sordid history of being used to justify human rights abuses.
‘I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.’
That particular verse has been used to justify slavery, apartheid, and the Holocaust.
If you don't know who Cardinal Dolan is, he is one of the Catholic Church's conservative leaders. He's also very close to Pope Francis in hierarchy. Even he is speaking out against what is being done in America against the immigrant children.
Jesus is weeping. https://t.co/YHnxce8tj8
— BLACKSTEM ??? (@BLACKSTEMUSA) June 16, 2018
Dolan has previously been seen as a champion of conservative issues, most notably the opposition to abortion. Pope Francis’s declaration that abortion was a forgivable sin did not go over well with pro-life Catholics, and have preferred Dolan’s view of it as its human rights abuse over the pope’s more forgiving stance.
This is the cover of today’s New York Daily News. Seems to sum it all up. pic.twitter.com/QOpaQEyGYi
— James (@JamesSNYC) June 16, 2018
It’s not likely that Trump’s use of the torture and detainment of children and parents as a bartering chip on immigration policy will serve the GOP well during the midterms. It is, even for many conservatives, a line that should have never been crossed.
Featured image via Getty/Jemal Countess
