The Most Reverend Bishop John C. Wester gave a lecture entitled "Immigration and Inclusivity," in which he calls for just treatment of immigrants and a sweeping reform of our countries current, broken system of immigration. The lecture was given January 27, 2008 at St. Catherine of Sienna Newman Center.

The following paragraphs cover only the first several minutes of the lecture. The full text can be downloaded here, and an entire video recording of the lecture can be viewed here, courtesy of the Intermountain Catholic newspaper.

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I would like to thank Father Peter Rogers, OP, for the invitation to participate in this year’s Aquinas Lecture. It is a welcome opportunity to be able to speak to you all today: members of the Newman Center, faculty and staff of the University of Utah, parishioners and guests.

Some time ago, I had the pleasure of joining the Dominican Friars for evening prayer and supper, an evening I still remember with great joy. The prayer was quite effective, with more than enough grace to spill over to the dining table! The Dominicans are not only good preachers but they are also good cooks! I will be back soon, I am sure! That evening, we briefly touched on this lecture and decided that immigration would be a relevant and compelling topic for my talk. And so, I wish to spend the next half hour or so on the topic of immigration and inclusion, looking through the lens of our Catholic perspective. At the end of the lecture, I welcome questions and comments. If the questions get too tough for me, then we will just stick with comments and call it a day!

In speaking about immigrants or people on the move, I am reminded of a little anecdote regarding a grammar school Christmas pageant. This story
involved a little first grader who was selected to play the part of the innkeeper in his school’s Christmas play. He practiced day and night, although he only had two short lines, “There’s no room in the inn. Go away!” (repeat) His parents
were very patient and he was the best-prepared actor ever! The night of the performance, Joseph and Mary knocked on the door and his moment came. “There’s no room in the inn,” he shouted, “but why don’t you come in anyway and we’ll have milk and graham crackers!” Well, it brought the house down!

There was a wonderful instinct in that little guy. A marvelous sense of hospitality, compassion and warmth all rolled into one loving embrace. I believe that we human beings come by that naturally. We are social creatures and we are by nature interested in each other and even caring of each other. But what happens to that instinct? Where does it go as we mature? Where do the fences come from? All of a sudden, we hear, “not in my backyard” or “I was here first” or “welcome to such and such a place, now go home” or “certain people need not apply.”

A friend of mine recently summed it up well. She said that, as a country, we do not open our arms to strangers as widely as we used to. Whatever the reason, the mood in our country has changed and yet, I believe one could make the case that we are more prosperous, more powerful, more gifted now than ever before in our history. Do Emma Lazarus’ words, engraved on the base of the stature of liberty, ring true today? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...”

During the next few minutes, I would challenge you and me to be present to our inner attitudes toward the stranger in our midst. I mean to speak about the national debate taking place in our country currently, but I also believe that we must examine our own hearts if we wish to convert others’.

There is no doubt in my mind that immigration is one of the most important social issues facing our country today. It affects not only a few States along the border or our big cities—it impacts virtually every community in our nation. This is much different from twenty or thirty years ago. Since that time, our nation has experienced an unprecedented wave of immigration. How we handle immigration now will determine the future of our country—and the type of country we are—for the twenty-first century.


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The full text can be downloaded here.