Still Running Off at the Keyboard

Minutemen border group now has begun targeting Catholics

The people who call themselves the Minutemen claim to be a cross between a law enforcement auxiliary and a giant neighborhood watch program that patrols the border to stop illegal immigration.

If so, there goes the neighborhood.

Members of the San Diego unit recently picketed a suburban church northeast of San Diego and held up an effigy of a priest depicted as the devil. According to one Catholic civil rights organization, the Minutemen used bullhorns to hurl invective at parishioners and taunted Hispanic children who were on their way to make their First Communion, telling them their parents were in the country illegally. Things got really crass when some of the border-watchers made references to the Catholic Church's sex-abuse scandal.

A posting on the group's Web site questioned why, "with all the pediphelia (sic) problems going on in the church," the clergy would promote a situation where you "have 50 loitering men watching little children playing on the playground each morning."

What got the Minutemen's sheets in a twist? The Rev. Edward "Bud" Kaicher, pastor of the parish, tried to help workers find employment by allowing the church to serve as a day laborer pickup site. This put Kaicher and the Catholic Church in the cross hairs of the civilian patrol movement, elements of which have morphed from being anti-illegal immigrant to anti-immigrant and just plain anti-Hispanic. And now, anti-Catholic?

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