A lot of discussion of Catholic teaching on migration repeats the USCCB's misunderstanding below: that migration pits the 'nation' against the migant; one 'right' against another.

A thread on how the Church thinks about migration, and what descriptions like this miss.

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A necessary preliminary (and an opportunity to remind everyone to read long documents like the Catechism or the Compendium all the way through) is to recall the first principle of the Church's Social Doctrine is the common good.

See the Compendium here:

Not only does Plato not accept the friend-enemy distinction as foundational to politics, Socrates' response to Polemarchus in The Republic is in part a critique of a theories not dissimilar to Schmitt's own - and those of Schmitt''s contemporary epigones.

Thread:🧵🔽

https://twitter.com/pleonidasp/status/1968506023691567457

In The Republic, Plato uses two different words for 'enemy'. Polemioi (πολέμιος) referred to an opponent in war; echthroi (ἐχθρός) referred to personal enmity: as between protagonists in a tragic drama.

Schmitt himself is explicit he uses enemy in the former sense (COTP III)

Redefining terrorism to include groups which commit none of Straw’s list of widely-understood terrorist offences seems to imply you can advocate for everything Palestine Action did, or even to do everything they did, and if won’t be terrorism - as long as you don’t use their name

https://twitter.com/madoccairns/status/1940783645645852993

And this, in fact, appears to be precisely the situation envisioned by the high court’s judgement on whether to grant PA a delay in prosecution:

Ahead of the expected proscription of Palestine Action - the first time a protest group has been legally redefined as terrorist - I went through the Hansard of the 2000 Act they're being banned under. Turns out MPs were assured the law wouldn't be applied this way. Thread 🧵🔽 Not to be considered a final statement, but useful context for what MPs are being told the Bill will apply to, is the government's consultative document. This is what it says about expanding terrorist offences to include property damage: