The Pharisees at the Border: How Liberal Catholics Betrayed the Faith to Preach Open Borders and Endless SNAP

When liberal bishops cry over borders but whisper about butchery, you know the Church of Caesar has replaced the Church of Christ.

Every Fourth of July, Americans celebrate the hard-won right to govern themselves: to form a nation, to defend its borders, and to craft laws for the common good. This year, as fireworks were about to light up the night sky, President Donald Trump signed into law what he called the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” And right on cue, the professional Catholic Left collapsed into hysterics.

You would think Planned Parenthood had been made a federal sacrament. Instead, the bill did the unthinkable: it paused their federal funding for a single year, cut taxpayer money for mutilating children under the euphemism of “gender transitions,” and took a first real stab at border enforcement since the Eisenhower era. Naturally, the USCCB and the editorial pages of America Magazine wailed as if the gates of hell had been opened, when in fact, some of them are merely being closed at the southern border.

This is the kind of hypocrisy that only post-conciliar Catholicism could produce.

Where Were They When Babies Died?

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of the USCCB, denounced Trump’s bill as including “unconscionable cuts” to food assistance and “harmful” immigration provisions. He bemoaned that the ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood was reduced from ten years to one. But let’s pause.

Where was this energy when Democrats pushed the “Women’s Health Protection Act” to codify Roe into federal law? Where were the USCCB tears when Catholic hospitals were forced to cover contraception, “transition” surgeries, and sterilization under Obamacare? Where was America Magazine’s moral outrage when Biden’s HHS redefined sex itself?

It’s not there. Because these bishops and Catholic media elites only weep when Caesar threatens their government subsidies. They’ve learned to live with child murder, gender ideology, and sodomitical unions. But deport an illegal alien? That’s where they draw the line.

The Right to a Border Is Not a Sin

Let’s be clear: a nation has the God-given right to control its borders. This isn’t nativism. It’s Catholic social teaching. Pius XII, John XXIII, and even Thomas Aquinas all affirmed the principle that immigration must serve the common good of the host nation, not just the migrant.

But you won’t hear that from Cardinal McElroy, who called Trump’s deportation policies “morally repugnant.” This is the same McElroy who downplayed abortion as a “preeminent” concern and called for the full inclusion of sexually active homosexuals in parish life. Apparently, the one thing he won’t “accompany” is a border agent doing his job.

Meanwhile, working-class Americans, the very people Democrats abandoned and bishops ignore, are footing the bill for mass migration, collapsing hospitals, and overrun schools. But to raise any objection is, according to America Magazine, to “punish the poor.” Except, of course, when that poor person is an unborn child, a struggling father paying taxes, or a disabled veteran on a hospital waiting list.

The Selective Outrage of the Catholic Left

Let’s talk about what this bill actually did:

• Temporarily defunded Planned Parenthood.

• Began reasserting national sovereignty at the border.

• Expanded school choice provisions (before some were weakened in the final draft).

• Cut funding for chemical castration and genital mutilation in children.

But all the Catholic Left can see is “food insecurity” and “climate change.” America Magazine ran a sob story about rising food pantry lines, as if SNAP benefits were the eighth sacrament. Catholic Charities warned that people might “just go without food,” which, in a country where obesity rates hover around 40%, rings more as a parable than a prophecy.

Yes, families are struggling. Yes, inflation hurts. But the outrage here isn’t about justice, it’s about funding. Catholic Charities receives hundreds of millions in government grants. Their concern is not for the poor, but for their payroll.

Caesar or Christ?

It’s telling that these bishops, nuns, and charity execs have become so comfortable in the halls of power that they forgot what prophecy looks like. When was the last time any of them publicly rebuked Joe Biden for presiding over the most radically pro-abortion administration in American history?

Yet now they claim Trump’s budget bill is a “moral betrayal” because it restores immigration enforcement and slows down the taxpayer gravy train.

The truth is simpler: these “Catholic” voices hate anyone who threatens their seat at the table of empire.

A Final Word

To be clear: this bill is not perfect. It does not go far enough to end abortion funding. It caves on school choice and permits too much compromise on moral essentials. But in a post-Roe, post-Christian America, it is a rare thing indeed: a modest push toward national sanity.

The professional Catholic Left (bishops worried about losing government contracts, media worried about losing their progressive readers, and charities worried about losing federal grants) aren’t outraged because this bill is immoral. They’re outraged because they didn’t write it.

It wasn’t their agenda, their values, or their priorities, and in their world, that’s the real unforgivable sin.