Why We Have Walls, Gates, Locks on Our Doors, and Passwords

Pope Francis Gives Unwanted Advice

Last week, an ill-informed Jesuit stated that the Vatican is “not a walled city.” The Jesuit priest in question is Father James Martin who happens to be pretty woke and identifies as a gay rights activist. To me, this sounds like a vegan who works in a slaughterhouse. He is weighing in on Pope Francis’s recent demand that the United States allow more illegal immigration or something like that. The Pope has said specifically that walls are not Christian, so I guess that’s why James Martin said the Vatican doesn’t have walls. (It does.)

It reminds me of when Pete Buttigieg said that roads could be racist. I guess walls can be pagan?

Now the actual truth is that the Vatican is the only walled sovereign nation on earth. It’s so small—and enjoys a peculiar status at the United Nations as being almost a country—that they could build massive stone walls around the city. (The United Nations recognizes the sovereignty of Vatican City while at the same time admitting it’s really too small to be an actual country.) The Vatican does have its own flag.

History always comes as a huge surprise to liberals, and this bit of history has been particularly well hidden, but the Vatican built those walls in 846 AD, which makes them even older than Nancy Pelosi.

Back in the 8^th century (that’s the 700s for the historically challenged), the Muslim world was making frightening forays from the Middle East into Europe. They ventured into Europe tentatively at first, invading the Iberian peninsula, mainly Spain, then pushing upward toward France. They also invaded Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey) which at the time was a Christian city. The caliphate armies were defeated, pretty decisively I might add, in the battles of Toulouse, Tours (France), and Constantinople. This is why it took almost 1200 years before you heard the Muslim cries to prayer in Paris.

These were not immigrants, they were invaders and they wanted to take over Europe in order to impose their religion and culture on the local population.

One thing about invading hordes, they’re generally pretty persistent, so even in defeat, these Muslim invaders did not give up. They turned their attention to Italy, and they made some progress in Sicily. Using Sicily as their foothold, they pushed up northward into the boot of Italy and made their riotous way toward Rome.

The Muslim invaders were interested in Rome because it was the world’s most powerful city, filled with a lot of treasure. Invading hordes like treasure. They must have had a treasure map because they went right for the Basilica of St. Paul and Old St. Peter’s Basilica. These churches were some of the oldest churches on earth and they allegedly had some spectacular stashes of gold and silver artifacts. (Remember, the treasures of Solomon’s Temple disappeared when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem… Nobody has found them yet but a lot of people think they might have ended up in Rome.)

At the time, a lot of Rome was protected by walls, which was typical in Medieval cities. The Aurelian Walls around Rome were built in the 3^rd century and reinforced and expanded periodically after that. As the photo above shows, they were some pretty robust walls. But as cities expanded, the inhabitants and businesses spilled out beyond the walls. In fact, one ancient church in Rome named after the Apostle Paul was called “The Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.” When the invaders attacked these churches, the guards—such as they were—could not do much to prevent the attack. In fact, during the attacks on Rome in those days, few Romans or Roman-adjacent people survived if they couldn’t get behind the walls.

The invaders plundered everything outside the wall until an Italian army from the south of Italy marched north and more or less pinned the invaders between the Aurelian walls and the army front lines. Many invaders were killed, but some managed a daring escape by ship. This escape was short lived, since a sudden unexpected storm sank their ship and drowned them as they tried to escape.

Much, but not all, of the stolen loot was recovered. Another battle ensued later on near Naples, and the local population defeated the invaders. Meanwhile, in 846, the Romans expanded the walls to accommodate the growing city.

Walls around cities do exist. You can still see them all over Europe, at least remnants of them. The wall around the Vatican is still intact. Today, we rely on more technologically advanced checkpoints and surveillance systems, but security is still a major political concern for countries and communities. Even ordinary people guard their privacy; we protect our online interests with passwords. We have locks on our doors. We keep our credit cards in special cases to defeat radiofrequency detectors.

Your home belongs to you and likely your family, who is a group of unusual and unlikely characters bound together by blood and marriage. You may also have friends who lack these ties but who are welcome in your home at all times. However, I don’t get to say who you are to allow into your home. I live in a different state, I don’t pay your bills, and who you live with is not my business.

I can’t demand you support your drunken sister-in-law or that you take in the weird neighborhood kid who is always setting fires.

Yet the Pope and other unseemly Europeans frequently dispense advice that our nation, the United States, is to take on indefinite amounts of migrants. Well, we do—and we might continue doing so—but this is not a Papal edict. It’s our business who we let in to this country and whom we choose to keep out.

Does the Pope ever protest Singapore? That’s a wealthy nation that only lets you reside there on a semi-permanent basis if you pump mid-six figures (in U.S. dollars) into their country. No investment, no green card. They could take in migrants from Somalia, but they don’t. Or how about Monaco? They don’t allow any immigrants at all—zero—despite being a very wealthy country. The only way you can get citizenship there is to get permission of the Prince. That’s how Ringo Starr did it. Is the Pope scolding the Prince of Monaco for not allowing Pakistani gangs to roam freely in and out of the casino city?

Or what about Barbados? That’s a small Caribbean island close to South America. I can’t figure out their immigration policy, maybe they don’t even have one. They just generally don’t accept immigrants. I have yet to hear the Pope chastise Barbados for not allowing Mexican drug cartels to move there.

You can’t emigrate to India unless you reside there for 13 years first and in that entire time period you cannot have as much as a parking ticket. Does the Pope challenge India that they ought to take in more Haitians? Countries decide who to let in and who to keep out. Same as families. The Pope can’t demand I open my doors to let the local biker gang into my home. The Pope can’t even demand I let the sweet little old lady who teaches Sunday School at the Methodist Church live in my house. It’s my business.

What this pope fails to realize is that some people have very bad and dangerous intentions. I think the Bible describes three main types of people who enter a foreign country. The first are called “sojourners.” They sojourn or stay for a period of time but they remain tied, at least emotionally, to their homeland. Sojourners might be running from war or famine or some other disaster. They enter a new land and try to live there quietly and at peace with their neighbors. At some point, if and when circumstances permit, sojourners go back home.

Then there are what I would call immigrants or what the Bible calls “strangers in a strange land.” These are people following God’s instructions to settle in a new land. They’re settlers, establishing their own way. They don’t move into cities and take over, they build their own cities. They don’t demand jobs or hand-outs, they start farms and businesses. They practice their own culture, but they don’t inflict it on others. They leave a trail of productivity: schools, roads, businesses, farms.

Then there are invaders, these are the people who enter a city or a country with the goal of looting it, taking prisoners, and maybe burning it down for good measure. They may want to destroy it quickly (the Genghis Khan method) or in excruciating slowness (the Sharia law method).

When you stand at your nation’s borders and look at a swarm of people approaching, you have no idea who they are and what they want. Are they sojourners? Are they strangers come to this strange land? Or are they invaders? From a distance, they can look alike. And most invaders are going to try to fool you by looking like peaceful and pitiful souls you ought to help.

That’s why we have immigration laws and vetting procedures in this country, but even if we didn’t, this is the United States of America and we do not have to do as the Pope commands. Talk about an unelected official usurping power. Yes, I saw the movie Conclave, but the United States population does not elect the Pope—Cardinals do. Francis may be the Pope, but he’s not my President.

Gates, They Have Gates

All of those ancient cities that built walls—Rome included—also built gates. The gates were the ways the city could sift out who was there to visit in a time of trouble, who was there to emigrate, and who was there to steal and destroy.

All this pontificating by Pope Francis would be slightly less infuriating if the Vatican did not have walls itself and was taking in migrants (they aren’t). Today, you can’t get behind the Vatican walls without going through a checkpoint. There are actually military police protecting the place. You can enter a church that technically is on Vatican property and is not behind a wall, but most of the rest of the actual city is walled. It doesn’t allow any old rando to walk in.

True, the Vatican walls have gates, but they check who is entering. Apparently, that privilege of vetting people who want to enter your country only applies to them. We’re supposed to let anybody in any time for any reason.

Popes hold a special position in the Roman Catholic Church, but they have no governmental authority over the United States, much less can they dictate our policies on anything from immigration to electric vehicles to the use of plastic straws. Priests are respected in our country (well, most of them anyway) but they are not here to tell us how to run our country. If a priest wants to make law in America, he needs to run for Congress.

Meanwhile, I hear Pope Francis is in the hospital with some sort of respiratory infection. He is an old man and growing quite infirm. We wish him a speedy and complete recovery. I hate to see anybody be sick. May God bless and keep Pope Francis … out of our business.