EWTN News reports that Victor Avila, assistant director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) under the Trump administration, has called for greater involvement of churches and faith-based leaders in combating drug abuse and human trafficking. The article presents a panel discussion hosted by the America First Policy Institute’s Hispanic Leadership Coalition in Washington, D.C., where administration officials and allies promoted mass deportation policies, defended family separation as a necessary consequence of law enforcement, and framed the Church’s role as a partner in state-directed social programs. While the article presents itself as a neutral report on faith-based initiatives, a thorough examination from the perspective of integral Catholic faith reveals a deeply troubling synthesis of state coercion, the instrumentalization of religion, the embrace of policies that violate natural and divine law, and the complete absence of the Church’s supernatural mission.
The Church as a Subcontractor of the Secular State
The most fundamental error in this article — and in the policies it promotes — is the reduction of the Church’s role to that of a social service provider partnering with secular government agencies. Avila stated plainly: “We need to get the church involved,” referencing an ONDCP report that “lists faith leaders as important partners and advocates” in promoting “a social norm that is opposed to using drugs and supportive of treatment for addicts.”
This language is revealing. The Church is not spoken of as the divinely instituted ark of salvation, the Mystical Body of Christ, the sole dispenser of the means of grace. She is reduced to a “faith-based partner” — a non-governmental organization with a useful volunteer network and moral credibility that the state can deploy for its own policy objectives. The ONDCP report promises to “ensure access to evidence-based prevention and recovery programs that are faith-based,” effectively making the Church an instrument of federal drug control strategy.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the error that the Church should be subordinate to secular power or reduced to a merely social function. He declared: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority, and that in fulfilling the mission entrusted to it by God — to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness, those who belong to the Kingdom of Christ — it cannot depend on anyone’s will.”
The Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX (1864) condemned the proposition that “the Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free — nor is she endowed with proper and perpetual rights of own, conferred upon her by her Divine Founder; but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church, and the limits within which she may exercise those rights” (Proposition 19). When the ONDCP frames the Church as a “partner” in its drug control strategy, it implicitly asserts the state’s authority to define the Church’s role and direct her activities — a direct contradiction of Catholic ecclesiology.
The Absence of Supernatural Mission
What is most striking in this article — and what constitutes its gravest deficiency — is the complete silence about the supernatural mission of the Church. Nowhere is there any mention of the sacraments, the state of grace, the necessity of conversion, the reality of sin as an offense against God, the existence of Hell, the need for repentance and confession, or the salvific power of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Drug addiction is presented purely as a social problem requiring “evidence-based prevention and recovery programs,” with the Church’s contribution limited to promoting “social norms.” This is the language of secular sociology, not of Catholic theology. The Catholic understanding of addiction recognizes it first and foremost as a moral and spiritual disorder — a manifestation of the concupiscence that afflicts fallen human nature, requiring not merely therapeutic intervention but the grace of God received through the sacraments, prayer, penance, and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907), condemned the modernist error that “revelation was merely man’s self-awareness of his relationship to God” (Proposition 20) and that “the dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (Proposition 22). The reduction of the Church’s role to promoting “social norms” against drug use is precisely this kind of naturalistic reduction — stripping the faith of its supernatural content and reducing it to a form of moralistic therapeutic deism useful for social cohesion.
Mass Deportation, Family Separation, and the Violation of Divine Law
The article devotes substantial attention to defending the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies, including the separation of families. This is where the article’s moral bankruptcy becomes most apparent.
Alfonso Aguilar, AFPI director of Hispanic engagement, defended the administration’s claim that 70% of migrants facing deportation have some form of criminal history, while acknowledging that this includes people who “face charges but have no convictions” and encompasses both felonies and misdemeanors. He specifically cited child pornography and driving while intoxicated as examples of “serious” nonviolent crimes warranting detention and deportation.
Victor Avila, when confronted with the reality of family separation, offered a chillingly bureaucratic justification: “It’s not a good feeling for us as police officers” to separate families, but “if someone in the country unlawfully has children who are citizens, then they have an option for the children to remain in the country or leave with the parent.” He further stated: “One hundred percent of the time, I separated families” during his law enforcement career, alleging a “double standard” in criticism from the political left.
A Brookings Institution report estimated that “more than 100,000 children have been separated from their families as part of deportation proceedings.” The DHS spokesperson offered the Orwellian reassurance that “immigration enforcement does not separate families,” claiming parents are simply asked whether they want to be removed with their children or have them placed with a designated safe person.
From the perspective of Catholic teaching, the deliberate separation of families — particularly the removal of children from their parents as a matter of policy — constitutes a grave violation of the natural law and the divine commandment to honor one’s father and mother. The family is not a creation of the state; it is a divine institution, preceding and superseding all civil authority. Pope Leo XIII, in Arcanum Divinae Sapientiae (1880), taught that “the family is the cradle of civilisation and of the State” and that “the authority of the father is derived from God.”
Moreover, the Catholic Church has consistently taught that while states have a right to regulate immigration, this right is not absolute and must be exercised in accordance with the natural law, the common good, and the dignity of the human person. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992, reflecting traditional teaching) states that “the more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin” (CCC 2241). While this document postdates 1958, the principle it reflects is rooted in the natural law and the Church’s perennial teaching on the universal destination of goods and the duty of charity.
The article’s defense of mass deportation — including the deportation of individuals whose only “crime” is unlawful presence — and its casual acceptance of family separation as an inevitable consequence of law enforcement, stands in stark contrast to the Church’s teaching on the inviolability of the family and the duties of nations toward migrants.
The Instrumentalization of Cardinal Sarah
A particularly cynical moment in the article occurs when Aguilar, identified as a Catholic, quotes Cardinal Robert Sarah’s concerns about mass migration: “The Church cannot cooperate with this new form of slavery that has become mass migration.” Aguilar uses Sarah’s words to lend Catholic credibility to the administration’s hardline immigration policies.
This is a textbook example of the instrumentalization of faithful Catholic voices for political purposes. Cardinal Sarah’s critique of mass migration was rooted in a profound concern for the dignity of migrants, the preservation of cultural identity, and the dangers of demographic displacement. It was never an endorsement of mass deportation, family separation, or the treatment of migrants as mere criminals to be rounded up and expelled.
The article’s use of Sarah’s quote serves to create the illusion of Catholic support for policies that violate Catholic principles — a form of argumentum ad verecundiam that exploits the authority of a faithful cardinal to legitimize what the Church’s own teaching condemns.
The Post-Conciliar Bishops’ Contradictory Posture
The article notes that “the USCCB overwhelmingly backed a November 2025 joint statement to oppose ‘the indiscriminate mass deportation of people’ and unnecessary separation of families,” while also noting that “the U.S. bishops support border security” but “have been at odds with the administration over various immigration enforcement policies.”
This contradictory posture — simultaneously opposing mass deportation while supporting “border security,” opposing family separation while accepting the framework of enforcement that produces it — is characteristic of the post-conciliar bishops’ conference, which has consistently sought a “middle way” between Catholic truth and political expediency. The USCCB’s statements on immigration, like nearly all post-conciliar episcopal documents, are marked by a studied ambiguity that avoids clear moral judgments and refuses to identify specific policies as sinful or to call for specific remedies rooted in Catholic social teaching.
The Syllabus of Errors condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). The post-conciliar bishops’ accommodation to the categories of secular political discourse — “border security,” “comprehensive reform,” “humane enforcement” — rather than speaking plainly in the language of Catholic moral theology, is precisely this kind of reconciliation with modernity that Pius IX condemned.
The Complete Silence on Christ the King
Perhaps the most damning omission in this entire article — and in the policies and attitudes it represents — is the complete absence of any recognition of the kingship of Jesus Christ over individuals, families, and nations. The entire discussion of drug policy, immigration enforcement, border security, and human trafficking proceeds on purely naturalistic and political grounds, as if Christ had never said “All power in heaven and on earth is given to me” (Matthew 28:18) and as if His Church had no authority to teach, govern, and judge in matters affecting the salvation of souls.
Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society, such as due freedom, order, and tranquility, and concord and peace.” The article’s entire framework — treating social problems as matters of state policy to be addressed through government programs and law enforcement, with the Church reduced to a “faith-based partner” — is a direct repudiation of this teaching. It is, in Pius XI’s words, the fruit of “the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors” that “began with the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.”
Conclusion: The Church Does Not Serve Caesar
The article presents a vision of Church-state relations in which the Church is a useful auxiliary to the federal government, providing moral cover and social services for state-directed programs. This is not the Catholic vision. The Church does not exist to serve the policy objectives of any administration, Republican or Democrat. She exists to preach the Gospel, administer the sacraments, and lead souls to eternal salvation. Her social teaching is derived from the natural law and divine revelation, not from the platforms of political parties.
The faithful Catholic response to drug addiction is not partnership with the ONDCP but the preaching of conversion, the administration of confession, and the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The faithful Catholic response to the immigration question is not mass deportation or family separation but the application of Catholic social teaching on the rights of families, the universal destination of goods, and the duties of nations — teaching that no political party in the United States has ever fully embraced.
Until the structures occupying the Vatican recognize the full kingship of Christ over all nations and all aspects of human life, and until they cease accommodating themselves to the categories of secular political discourse, they will continue to produce the kind of moral confusion and theological bankruptcy on display in this article. Rex regum, Dominaentium — King of kings and Lord of lords.
Source:
White House official promotes faith-based drug abuse prevention and recovery programs (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 18.05.2026