Let’s stipulate up front that Bannon’s being Bannon here, stirring up controversy for controversy’s sake. He wants to peel off conservatives from the USCCB on immigration with easy talking points rather than getting into a policy debate, and hopefully gain some attention for punching above his class (at the moment, anyway). And on the latter point, he’s correct — the issue has to do with national sovereignty and security rather than directly on doctrine, which are areas for prudential judgment.

His accusation about motivation doesn’t exactly gibe up with the facts, though. The best historical data for Catholic demographics comes from Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which has tracked the Catholic population in surveys for more than 50 years. The number of Catholics has grown substantially in that arc, from 48.5 million in 1965 to 74.2 million in 2016. The number of foreign-born Catholics has plateaued over the last 12 years at 15 million, so whatever the issues of getting butts in pews may be, “unlimited immigration” isn’t solving them.

In fact, the bigger problem is a lack of participation from existing Catholics. In the same 12-year period, the number of former Catholics went up from 19 million to 30 million, a dramatic increase. At the same time, the number of baptisms fell from 929,545 to 670,481. That’s why the USCCB launched its Rediscover program in 2013 — to “re-evangelize” backsliding Catholics into regular Mass attendance, and to shore up enthusiasm among current regular or semi-regular attendees.

The USCCB has taken a more liberal stand on immigration, to be sure, but it’s not an open-borders policy per se. They put a high value on legalizing the immigrants already in the US for humanitarian purposes and retaining the family-based “chain migration” policies in order to keep the basic “church” unit intact, both of which do come from Catholic doctrinal positions, not from a “butts in seats” motivation. Matthew 25:35-36 would certainly be one basis for that doctrinal position, with Jesus’ direct admonition to welcome the stranger as a means of serving Him. That, however, does not necessarily mean that we can’t set up rational systems of welcome for strangers while taking the primary role of government — protecting its citizens — seriously at the same time.

Those policies are certainly open to debate on a prudential-judgment basis, but only when one debates the policies and the doctrine rather than assume the motivations behind both. Conservatives who have regularly been accused of racism for their prioritization of national security and rational management of immigration should certainly appreciate that point.

Addendum: Our friend and former colleague Larry O’Connor made a great point about Catholic bishops calculating political positions for maximum attendance: