In Mexico, gangs assassinate Catholic cardinal-archbishops. They assassinate presidential candidates. They assassinate mayors, civic leaders, journalists, and of course, they massacre demonstrating students – often by the dozens. They routinely gang-rape women who are heading north to the border – after charging them thousands of dollars for promising to get them there.

Some of these assassins, rapists, and other career criminals work for drug kingpins, but some also work clandestinely with the corruptos – the deadly merry-go-round of wealthy politicians, businessmen, military officers, and other powerbrokers that have plagued and pillaged the country and kept it poor for almost a century.

As Europeans have recently learned to their profound regret, when an immigrant enters a country, he brings his culture with him. That goes for the victims of corruption as well as its perpetrators. When I translate as a volunteer for law enforcement here in the Shenandoah Valley, the uneasy deputy tells me, “get their hands out of their pockets!” I have to explain that they are not reaching for a gun – they’re reaching for bribe money because all of their lives they have had to pay off every man in uniform that they’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. When they send money to their family back home in Mexico, their family must pay off the police chief, the mayor, and the gang leader in order to survive. That is their culture, whether they are here or there.

Meanwhile, by the time they reach the border coming north, the victims and their victimizers are indistinguishable to the layman’s eye.

Physical Gold & Silver in your IRA. Get the Facts.

Nonetheless, our Catholic bishops want us to welcome them, harbor them, get paid by the federal government to house and to feed them and to give the criminals among them “sanctuary” from our lawful immigration authorities if necessary.

And God forbid that they tell them, “Thou shalt not steal!”

Instead, Catholic bishops and their Mexican counterparts tell the immigrants that they are victims of nativism, xenophobia, bigotry, and other sinful prejudices which, they allege, motivate Americans who oppose granting amnesty to illegal aliens.

That is certainly what Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez tells them. He is the point man among American bishops for open borders, mass immigration, and amnesty. Born in Monterrey, Mexico, he has never publicly disagreed with the views of the Mexican government and, alas, of his fellow Mexican bishops, when they condemn the United States. He does not defend Americans against their slanders, even though he knows that the leftist Masonic unigovernment of Mexico has always blamed the United States for its own rapacious exploitation of its people.

Taking a page from Lord Peter Bauer, the swaggering Junta tyrants always blame the United States: “Our poverty is your fault!”

In recent days, three Catholic priests have been murdered in Mexico. I have written Archbishop Gomez requesting that he provide any public comment he might have made regarding these horrific crimes and their possible causes; so far I have had no response. I have also asked Archbishop Gomez a simple question: are faithful Catholics bound by Church law to embrace your opinions regarding amnesty for illegal aliens with the same “religious submission of mind” that we are to embrace and follow the church’s moral teachings on sex and marriage?” (Viz. Can. 753)

In simple terms, “Is opposition to amnesty a sin?”

He has not answered that question, either.

Today, according to the Pew Trust, 30 million Americans identify themselves as “ex-Catholics.” I have asked officials of the bishops’ conference in Washington whether they have ever inquired into the reasons why so many of the faithful have left the pews. Unfortunately, the answer is “no.”

Maybe this has something to do with it: in the past fifty years, America’s Catholic bishops have attenuated their teaching on the tough moral questions that are most relevant – and unpopular – in the age of a secular culture and the sexual revolution that thrives within it. When he was president of the bishops’ conference, New York’s Cardinal Dolan actually admitted that our bishops – including himself – had “laryngitis” regarding those moral issues. For fifty years!

But that doesn’t mean that they’ve had nothing to say – quite the contrary. In recent years the bishops’ massive bureaucracy in Washington has manufactured a constant barrage of documents supporting Obamacare, action on global warming, increased federal welfare spending, higher taxes, a hike in the minimum wage, reduced use of carbon fuels, and a host of other “Social Justice” issues that harmonize surprisingly well with the agenda of the Democratic Party.

In a possibly unrelated vein, during those same years, the bishops have received an increasing amount of taxpayer funding from Congress for their NGOs, support now reaching well over a billion dollars a year.

In light of recent events in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and Charlotte, our bishops have also condemned “racism” – although, in their view, only whites can be racists, and most of us are, whether we know it or not.

Yet they simply can’t figure out why thirty million sheep have fled the flock.

Catholic bishops have indeed been outspoken regarding the objective evil of abortion. However, while they blithely accuse most whites of racism, they are much more reserved when it comes to supporters of “abortion rights.”

In the current political climate, two prominent Catholics, Vice-President Joe Biden, and vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine, share the radical pro-abortion views of President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Yet the bishops are remarkably reluctant to offend Biden, Kaine, and Clinton by mentioning their names alongside their forceful condemnation of the murder of children in the womb.

Alas, the facts seem to go the other way. In May, Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, conferred on Mr. Biden what was once Notre Dame’s highest honor; and in August Mr. Kaine’s Catholic pastor in Richmond, Virginia, Rev. James Arsenault, called for a standing ovation – during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – to honor Kaine’s selection by Mrs. Clinton. (Father Arsenault did not respond to a request for comment).

The law of the Church, referred to as “Canon Law,” requires that such public scandal as participation in murder or abortion requires a public response on the part of the Church (viz. Canon 915). Apparently, that law is ignored by Catholic bishops as much as the law of the land, once known as the Constitution, is defiantly flouted by the folks in Washington.

So here’s the bottom line: supporting amnesty for illegal aliens is a prime mandate for Catholics: oppose it and your Bishop might well attack you publicly and personally. But support universal, taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, and you need have no fear: as far as our bishops are concerned, you’re anonymous.

They do have “laryngitis,” indeed.

The Best of Christopher Manion