At the Hill, Eric LeCompte of JubileeUSA explains why repealing section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank legislation, which required transparency by big oil and other extraction industries of their payments to developing countries, is a truly bad idea. That doesn't mean the Republican-controlled Congress won't do it. It does mean that they are in the pocket of the big oil companies.
From the "oldies but goodies" file, Pope Pius XII's Exsul Familia Nazarethana, issued in 1952. The Church's concern for migrants is not of recent vintage. (h/t to Kirk Kramer.)
From the Australian Broadcasting Corp's "Religion and Ethics" site, Anna Rowlands of the University of Durham on Trump's executive order relating to refugees. She also turns to Pius XII. Professor Rowlands is one of the world's foremost experts on Catholic teaching regarding migrants and it shows in this piece. One of several money quotes:
Trump's executive order risks a collective, or unbalanced corporatist, rather than personalist response; it seems to add barriers to family unity in an immigration system that already struggles with family reunification; and it risks creating a polemic response to security issues which sows further seeds of social division. It does not see the person and so it does not see the multitude either.
And, while not related only to the theme of refugees, I especially liked this observation from Rowlands:
Perhaps partly because for so long now we have internalized a narrative of the slowness, the stuckness and the impotence of the political, we find ourselves surprised, dizzied, winded by a tsunami of competing and colliding political emotions, our own and others. Wherever you stand people are in motion, and the volume of the debate is turned to loud.
