EXCLUSIVE: Catholic bishops chided for sowing ‘confusion’ on deportations stance

By Fox News · Fox News

EXCLUSIVE: After the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement opposing mass deportations, a prominent American Catholic group chided some of their colleagues for sowing "confusion" about the church’s official stance on law enforcement and called for a "more complete conversation on immigration ." On Wednesday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a "special pastoral message on immigration" in which the bishops said they felt "compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity." In the message, the bishops stated unequivocally, "We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people," adding, "We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. " "We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care." US CATHOLIC BISHOPS VOTE TO OFFICIALLY PROHIBIT GENDER TRANSITION TREATMENT AT CATHOLIC HOSPITALS They also lamented that "some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status," and noted, "we are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones." A day later, conservative advocacy group CatholicVote issued a report titled, "Immigration Enforcement and the Christian Conscience," in which it said, "despite what some Church leaders in America have indicated, a faithful Catholic can support strong and humane immigration law enforcement — by means such as physical barriers, detention and deportation — without violating the teaching of the Church." While the U.S. bishops’ statement invokes the scripture verse "whatever you did for on…