Over the weekend, I saw several media reports of Cardinal Roger Mahony's comments on immigration. Mahony's statement participates in a tendency of today's theology to reduce the virtue of charity to an exclusively humanitarian virtue, subordinating the love of God to the love of man. Here's a quotation that is being reported widely:

As a Christian, there are no prior commitments that can overrule, or trump, this biblical tradition of compassion for the stranger, the alien and the worker.

Compassion toward others is indeed an important "commitment" for Christians, and even though charity is primary among the virtues (Corinthians 13:13), it isn't true that "there are no prior commitments" to "compassion for the stranger." All compassion flows from the love of God. The love of God is primary: it is prior to other commitments and is the end to which the Christian religion aspires.

In saying this, I'm not taking a stand against Mahony's concern for immigrants. I'm saying that he expresses his concern in theologically false terms that make commitment to man the primary commitment of Christianity. In reality, the commitment to God "trumps" compassion for the stranger. The book of Exodus illustrates this fact grahically when it records God's command to Moses: "Make no covenant with the men of those countries lest, when they have committed fornication with their gods, and have adored their idols, some one call thee to eat of the things sacrificed" (Exodus 34:12-16). Was it because "compassion for the alien" is prior to all other commitments that God commanded Moses to destroy the altars of the Cannanites? Faith, hope, and other concerns like justice and temperance, mitigate the love of one's fellow man because love is not blind. As the verses from Exodus and the entire doctrine of Divine Judgment show, love depends on the distinction between what ought to be loved and what ought to be hated.