In nine days

PRIDE NIGHT IS JUNE 16

will host the Los Angeles Dodgers Pride Night and honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulggence with a Community Hero

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war. Conservative Catholic activists mark the days as a homophobic advent calendar.

They are the ones who originally pressured the Blue Crew to reciprocate the Sisters’ honor,

a male drag group from a charity group

whose members dress ornately to mock religious zeal, but who also do the good work that nuns do. The Dodgers reinvited the Sisters after a public outcry, leading the conservatives to call for a Pride Night protest and a boycott of the Dodgers.

Change made b/c I just learned that not all sisters identify as male and they are a charity group that dress up as nuns and not as a group./ AJ

The boycott will be about as successful as the San Diego Padres this season. But that didn’t stop Bishops from California to Texas, Wisconsin to Nebraska from lining up to make their move on the team and the Sisters. Typical of this Boo Crew is Robert Barron, bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota, former auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and founder of Word on Fire, a multicultural

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million

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dollar ministry that has made him one of the most prominent Catholic voices in the country.

On a Twitter video posted May 25, he denounced the sisters as an anti-Catholic hate group, ridiculed the Dodgers’ pathetic apology, and said anti-Catholicism was the last acceptable prejudice in America. He then appealed directly to my Spanish friends, arguing that they should be especially offended.

This is your family’s religion, Barron said. Of your

abuela

other

abuelo

of your

family

of your

traditional

.

Meanwhile, Latinos and the

Church church

were used and abused by anti-immigrant forces in California last week and Barron, along with his chattering brother Bishops and the boycotters, has yet to say a word.

I’m talking about the

June 2 Friday

drop

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of 16 Venezuelan and Colombian migrants at the headquarters of the Diocese of Sacramento.

California

Attorney General Att. Gene.

Rob Bonta said the documents the migrants carried showed that their journey on a charter flight from El Paso to New Mexico and then to Sacramento had been arranged by the Florida Division of Emergency Management. That Sunshine State government agency had previously organized similar tours on behalf of Democratic-led cities and states

Republican

Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose budget set aside $12 million for the task last year.

After days of silence, a spokesman for the agency typified the flight, along with another

on this past

Monday, as a voluntary move.

The spokesman, Alecia Collins, also said a contractor “made sure they got to Catholic Charities safely,” a nationwide nonprofit that helps the poor, but which Collins characterized as “used and funded by the federal government.”

DeSantis, who is running for president, has not publicly commented on the matter. But when the Emergency Management Department transported more than 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard

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September, the governor mockingly declared, we’re not a refuge, and that’s for the better [for migrants] to be able to go to a sanctuary jurisdiction.

That is what makes the large-scale dumping of migrants in the Diocese of Sacramento so vile. Florida mocks Catholicism, just as Newsom, who is a frequent DeSantis critic (and vice versa), mocks.

Since the founding of this country, no Christian denomination has centered poor immigrants and refugees quite like Catholicism. the

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church knew her faithful Germans, Irish, Italians, Czechs, Poles, Italians, Latinos

,

and so many more needed a safe place to maintain their devotions and customs as they navigated a new land.

Sanctuary is at the heart of the Catholic faith

,

because it’s all over the Bible, from the Pentateuch to the Psalms, the Gospel to the second letter to the Corinthians, where

Paul

the apostles

Paul

wrote that Christians “are the temple of the living God” and so should act as such towards others. However, this embrace of the poor and meek has long angered non-Catholics, who stereotyped each wave of Catholic migrants as unwashed and ignorant and the

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church as an exploitative entity concerned only with itself.

The DeSantis administration’s Sacramento stunt is nothing more than a cruel joke on the

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Church taking advantage of Catholic goodwill while cleaning

they are

own hands of any responsibility. And this isn’t the first time a Republican governor has pulled something like this:

L

Last year, Texas flew eight Venezuelan men to Sacramento with no money and the Catholic Charities address.

The Book of Proverbs tells believers not to mess with the poor or “the Lord will plead their cause and corrupt the souls of those who have robbed them.” Tell that to the conservative Catholic activists who disapprove of the Dodgers.

These people call Catholics like me apostates because they oppose the

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the church doubles down on culture war issues at the expense of social justice. Since the rise of Donald Trump, they have conveniently overlooked the part of the United States Conference

on off

Website of the Catholic Bishops stating that the teaching of the Church has consistently reinforced our moral obligation to treat the stranger as we would treat Christ Himself.

They roll their eyes at statements like the one Pope Francis released last month

May last month

that Catholics must ensure that “there will always be a community ready to welcome, protect, promote and integrate everyone, without distinction and without excluding anyone.

Conservative Catholic activists have instead doubled down on the anti-immigrant war from the right, arguing that the people queuing at the southern border to enter the United States are not like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and so deserve no refuge. They filled Trump’s

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abinet and defended his policy while still attending mass with a straight face.

Significantly, the three main architects of Florida’s migrant shipping strategy have ties to the

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Church: DeSantis is a cradle Catholic;

,

his chief of staff James Uthmeier teaches religious education at St. Thomas More Co-Cathedral in Tallahassee, and public safety Czar Larry Keefe served as president of a Florida chapter of Catholic Charities.

Meanwhile, Catholics who actually read the Bible have stepped up to help the migrants stranded in Sacramento. The area’s nonprofits provide shelter and food, Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto told

press media

We recognize the humble presence of Jesus, and we hear his call to assist the migrants.

Modest advocacy in times of crisis is what good Catholics do

,

because Jesus said good works are best done out of the limelight. He disliked the world’s Bishop Barrons, describing them in the Gospel of Matthew as “on the corner of the street to be seen by men”.

Christ even had a name for them:

H

hypocrites.