Robert C. Koons makes the case that Trump’s nationalism is consistent with Catholic social doctrine.
“Catholic thought recognizes the responsibility of rich countries to be compassionate toward refugees and toward those without access to sufficient natural resources. And the United States has indeed been generous, accepting 10 million refugees in the last thirty years, and tens of millions of additional legal immigrants. But this responsibility has limits.
Pope John XXIII noted that the duty of the state to admit needy immigrants should be limited “as the good of their own community, rightly considered, permits.”
All sides in the current debate recognize the same principles — that we have obligations to be generous to refugees and others in desperate straits, and that these obligations are limited by leaders’ responsibility to give primary weight to the well-being of their own citizens.