Health Care in US Detention Centers

The US has built the most extensive immigration detention system globally. Over the last three administrations, several organizations have noted a systemic failure in the provision of health care in detention centers, leading to the torture and death of immigrants. This essay develops the principle of the preferential option for the poor to examine the causes of deficient access to health care and solutions to overcome them. It analyzes the substandard health care in detention centers from the notion of structural violence and systematizes solutions of grassroots immigrant organizations from the idea of solidarity, understood here as a form of friendship with the poor that moves toward relational justice. Its goal is to build bridges between people so that the political will is generated to create policies to improve and enforce health care standards in detention centers and address the unjust foundations of immigration detention.

Promoting the Constants of the Mission with Muslims in Today’s Middle East

One of the most important facts that the Second Vatican Council has revealed is that the point of the Church is not itself, but to go beyond itself, to be a community that preaches, serves, celebrates, and witnesses to the reign of God with due respect to the text and context. During the past century, the Church of the Middle East experienced the absence of an authentic missionary enthusiasm and the lack of a clear and pertinent theology with which it could face the challenge presented to Christianity by Islam. This challenge resides in its special role and mission before the Muslims, which this paper will further discuss and, in doing so, answer the question, How can the Church of the Middle East try to approach the Muslims in a time of violent Islamic fundamentalism and persecutions, in a region where most of the Christians are opting to remain distant or to emigrate?

The Green New Deal, Subsidiarity, and Local Action

A common criticism of the Green New Deal proposal to address climate change is that it would centralize too much power at the level of the federal government. However, the Green New Deal can avoid this by centering local action and decision-making in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity from Catholic social ethics. This principle holds that higher levels of society should not override the initiative of lower levels of society but should instead coordinate and support their work whenever possible. A focus on subsidiarity is already present in the framing of the Green New Deal proposal and provides a sound ethical foundation for its development and implementation.

Catholic Social Teaching and Human Trafficking in War and Natural Disasters

This essay examines Catholic social teaching in the context of human trafficking in South Asia during armed conflict and natural disasters. Using a see-judge-act framework to construct the argument, this paper is focused on finding ways to narrow the gaps in these efforts. The gaps occur horizontally when individual issues become isolated from a larger effort, failing to recognize that many challenges are symptoms of a larger problem. The gaps also occur vertically, with the divide between theory and practice. The Church, including religious and lay actors, can diminish the threat and damage from human trafficking through a comprehensive implementation of Catholic social teaching that has a theological foundation and is conscious of the relevant cultural factors.

Fratelli tutti and the Responsibility to Protect

Fratelli tutti expresses skepticism about the ability of the just-war tradition to provide guidance on the state use of force. It is dismissive of a whole range of rationales for going to war. In rejecting humanitarian “excuses,” Pope Francis puts to question the Church’s support even for armed enforcement of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). In place of abstract moral reasoning, Francis invites contemplation of the suffering of the victims of war. He expands the horizon of analysis from particular acts to consideration of the cascading consequences of war. He invites the military to color their warrior ethic with the kindness of Christ. In practice, his teaching implies increased attention to the ius postbellum and “the responsibility to rebuild” after armed conflict.

Immigration, Reciprocity, and the Modern Economic Tradition

Contemporary economists are silent regarding economic rights because modern economic theory does not adequately account for reciprocity and risk in human relationships. The immigration question in the US serves as our test case for both the reality of reciprocity and risk in the realm of economic rights, and the need for economic analysis that more honestly contends with this reality. We examine reciprocity and risk in immigration through an economic lens and then complement that examination with resources from the Catholic social teaching tradition. We show how Catholic social teaching can enhance economic analysis of immigration and other social phenomena by helping economics make sense of reciprocity and risk in economic relations.