November 25, 2025 // Bishop

Bishop Talks Immigration, Religious Liberty at Notre Dame Law School

Kasia Balsbaugh

Bishop Rhoades spoke to law students and faculty at the University of Notre Dame about current issues of religious liberty in the country, especially pertaining to immigration. The main issues he discussed were infringements on the right to worship as well as the withholding of basic human needs (food, shelter, water).

“We were honored to host Bishop Rhoades because these questions are of such great urgency both to us as a country and to the Catholic Church or people of faith more generally,” said John Meiser, director of the Lindsay and Matt Moroun Religious Liberty Clinic, which hosted the talk on Monday, November 17. “Immigration policy is a morass and a vastly complicated political matter,” Meiser said, “but the human needs of those who enter our country, including their fundamental right to religious exercise, should not be.”

Meiser added: “It is inspiring to hear the bishop remind all of us that, as citizens and lawyers, there is much we can and ought to do to help serve those needs and protect those rights.”

Bishop Rhoades was chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty for the past two years, though his recent election as secretary of the conference means his term as committee chair was shortened.

Bishop Rhoades opened his remarks by mentioning the USCCB’s special message released on November 12, which dealt with “addressing the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States,” Bishop Rhoades said. To put the message’s importance in context, he noted that it has been 12 years since the USCCB released a special message – and in that case, it also involved a religious liberty issue, condemning the federal government’s HHS mandate that required employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception.

This most recent message of the USCCB called for meaningful reform of immigration law and condemned certain human dignity violations toward immigrants while recognizing the country’s need to regulate borders. The special message, as well as the Committee for Religious Liberty’s recent annual reports, points to immigration issues as of top priority of the bishops of the United States.

Some religious liberty issues surround Catholic organizations such as Catholic Charities being targeted for providing humanitarian aid to migrants or other vulnerable groups. Bishop Rhoades said “misinformation and partisan rhetoric” contributed to calls for cutting funding of such organizations.

“Ministry to migrants is not peripheral to the work of the Church,” Bishop Rhoades said. “It’s part of Christian discipleship.” He added that bishops have “tried to advocate with Congress that merely serving vulnerable persons does not constitute harboring.”

One example Bishop Rhoades brought up was the legal battle between the state of Texas and Annunciation House, a network of houses in El Paso that provides shelter to migrants. When the attorney general of Texas demanded to see Annunciation House’s records and accused them of harboring undocumented immigrants, Annunciation House sought a court order, the attorney general countersued, and a legal battle began that is still going on today.

Another concern Bishop Rhoades raised was in regard to the recent difficulty Catholic clergy have had in administering the sacraments to immigrants in some federal detention centers. In some situations, such as at the controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida, these issues have been resolved successfully. However, in at least one instance, an auxiliary bishop of Chicago and other archdiocesan priests were denied entry to a detention center even after following proper protocol.

Meiser gave his take on the situation, saying: “One thing that remains true is that in the prison context we have federal law … that ensures the right to free exercise of your religion, even while you’ve committed a crime and you’re incarcerated. So, it doesn’t make sense to me that when you’re detained at the border that we wouldn’t see fit to give you the same access to this exercise that we do to jails all across the country.”

It is not only detention centers that are affected. With the recent abolishment of nonenforcement areas, some churches, Catholic and otherwise, have resorted to measures such as locking their doors during services. The USCCB filed an amicus brief in one legal case with such a church, referring to “conscience injuries.” A couple dioceses on the West Coast have even gone so far as to dispense the faithful of their Sunday obligation if parishioners fear church attendance increases risk of detention.

Bishop Rhoades pointed to Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, and its promoted “right of the human person to be free from coercion in religious matters.”

Bishop Rhoades said: “This is a right rooted in human dignity that includes the freedom to practice one’s religion privately, publicly, and to share it with others, provided that the just public order is observed. So, the exercise of this right can be limited to protect the common good, including public safety, public peace, and public morality, but these limitations must be justly applied.”

Bishop Rhoades recognized the complexities at play regarding immigration in the country today. He particularly bemoaned the way the issue has become so partisan, noting that this was not the case even just 20 years ago. He also stressed the apolitical stance of the bishops as a whole, clarifying that their concern is with moral, not political, issues, which can vary depending on the country’s administration. The bishop warned Catholics of the dangers of putting politics first.

“There are some that are so taken by the ideology of the left or the right that what the Church says is secondary to their ideology,” Bishop Rhoades said. “That’s very troubling, because I always say, be Catholic first. Be a disciple of Jesus first – before being a Democrat or being a Republican.”