Cory v. Feser | A Pleasant War Of Words

Please note: excerpts rarely do justice to the intelligent exchanges of partners in discussions. Take the time to review the essays.

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How to Reason Prudentially about Immigration: A Reply to Feser

Dr. Therese Cory

https://philosophy.nd.edu/people/faculty/therese-cory/

Source: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2025/04/97623/

Although Feser is right to emphasize the need for prudence, he relies on an essentially relativistic notion of prudence—one in which objective moral principles only get us so far, and the rest of the work is done by prudential judgment in a personal realm of mere “difference of opinion,” shielded from objective moral scrutiny.

Feser’s Relativistic Portrayal of Prudence

There is a puzzling disconnect between the beginning and end of Feser’s essay. Titled “A Catholic Defense of Enforcing Immigration Laws,” it opens by taking the position that “the administration’s restrictive immigration policy” is “on much stronger ground” vis-à-vis Catholic social teaching than the alternative that he presents as “virtually open borders.” He then identifies relevant principles from Church documents for the administration’s defenders to embrace: First, that the government ought to regulate immigration; second, that in doing so, it should consider immigrants’ potential impact on the well-being of its citizens, including with respect to employment, overall development, and cultural heritage.

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A Catholic Defense of Enforcing Immigration Laws

Dr. Edward Feser

Source: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2025/03/97452/

The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to enforce U.S. immigration laws have been controversial, not least in Catholic circles. On one hand, Vice President J. D. Vance has defended the administration’s restrictive immigration policy by appealing to the theological notion of the ordo amoris (or order of charity), according to which our strongest obligations are to those closest to us, such as our fellow citizens. But others note that the Church’s Catechism teaches that a prosperous nation is obliged “to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin” (2241). In a February letter to the American Catholic bishops, Pope Francis indicated his “disagreement” with the administration, and appeared to criticize the vice president for an “ideological” distortion of the ordo amoris (while refraining from mentioning Vance by name).  

Yet while progressive Catholics conclude that Vance and other Catholic defenders of administration policy are flatly at odds with Church teaching on immigration, I will argue that that is not the case. In fact, the progressives rely on simplistic platitudes and selective quotations from authoritative documents. But when the entirety of the Church’s teaching is taken into account, it is clear that—within certain clearly defined boundaries—there can be reasonable disagreement about the contours of immigration policy among faithful Catholics. Indeed, it is clear that Vice President Vance is not only well within those boundaries, but is in fact on much stronger ground than those who advocate a virtually “open borders” position in the name of Catholicism.