The subject of immigration tends to bring out the worst in the people who respond to our stories on line. The level of xenophobic vitriol is truly breathtaking — and scary, revealing a dark undercurrent that seems ready to boil to the surface.
So when we ran an editorial this week supporting an immigration reform bill that would allow judges during deportation hearings to consider the impact on citizen children, I was ready for the worst.
After all, a story on a vigil scheduled for next week at St. Anthony of Padua R.C. Church generated quite a lot of hateful responses.
The editorial elicited its share of ugly comments, as well — but this comment from someone identifying him/herself as Koleary sums up the more humane sentiments and gives me hope:
I think Catholics all need to ask ourselves. Who would we have been in the story of the nativity? Would we have been the innkeeper who turned Mary away?
I think this pretty succinctly sums up the question we all should be asking — even those of us, like myself, who are not Catholic or even Christian. This is a question of humane treatment of our fellow human beings. Shouldn’t we treat them as we’d wish ourselves to be treated?
Hank Kalet 