Racial Justice and the Catholic Church

Published VI October Anno Domini MMXX

Author: Bryan N. Massingale
Full Title: Racial Justice and the Catholic Church
Tags: #Inbox #books

Highlights

the integration of my experiences as an African American and my Catholic faith. (Location 72)
valuable and essential contribution that the black experience—the experience of creating meaning and possibility in the midst of the crushing ordinariness of American racism—can make to Catholic faith and theology. (Location 74)
the existential concern I expressed above, namely, if my Catholic faith has nothing significant to say about a social evil that impacts my life every day in ways both small and large, hidden and blatant, then I and millions of other Catholics of color are fools and wasting our time. (Location 81)
there is no necessary contradiction between Catholic faith and an effective concern for racial justice and equality—despite the sad counterwitness of its concrete practices and omissions. (Location 84)
second reason (Location 86)
a concern for the integrity and adequacy of the church's agency for justice. (Location 86)
every social challenge facing the United States—education, care for the environment, access to health care, poverty, capital punishment, immigration reform, workers’ rights, HIV/AIDS, criminal justice, right to life, concern for women—is entangled with or aggravated by racial bias against people of color. (Location 87)
This book, then, seeks to explore both the contributions and limitations of Catholic social reflection on racial justice. (Location 93)
develop a Catholic approach to racial justice more adequate to a nation, church, and world of increasing diversity and pluralism; and to demonstrate how a serious reckoning with the African American experience would enable Catholic social ethics to address some of its deficits and lacunae. (Location 95)
three obstacles to overcome: (Location 114)
We don't know what we are talking about—that is, we lack clarity and agreement as to what constitutes “racism” in a so-called “post-racist” (Location 115)
We really don't want to talk about it—that is, most Americans are very reluctant—even unwilling—to address the core reason for racial tensions and inequality in the United States, namely, the fact that a specific racial group benefits from our nation's racial hierarchy. (Location 119)
mean by racial injustice and racism. This is an especially difficult discussion for many (if not most) white Americans who (1) lack any first-hand experience with racial discrimination (except perhaps as perpetrators); (2) thus tend to minimize the occurrence or reality of racial discrimination; (3) lack awareness of how they benefit from the racial harms endured by others; and (4) are loathe to redress a system that benefits them.5 (Location 124)
Rather than promoting division, we are called to a solidarity in healing and struggle. (Location 151)
How can we struggle together against an evil that harms us all, though in different ways? The central message of Catholic Christian faith is this: The wounds of racism are real and deep, but healing is possible. (Location 152)
What Is Racism? (Location 180)
What exactly are believers called to reject and combat? (Location 182)
racism is a culture, that is, part of the range of meanings and values that define a human group. Racism then refers to the underlying “set of meanings and values” attached to skin color, (Location 190)
of interpreting skin color differences that pervades the collective convictions, conventions, and practices of American life. (Location 192)
This understanding of racism as a culture helps to explain its stubborn tenacity. This culture also has interpersonal and systemic effects—not the least of which is the justification of systems of racial privilege and advantage. (Location 193)
“white” refers to the dominant cultural group in our country. (Location 199)
“white” is a fluid category that has come to include over the years ethnic groups from other parts of the world. (Location 200)
the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (1999) defined “white” as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.” The U.S. Census Bureau further explains that “white” encompasses those who wrote on their census forms entries such as “Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, near Easterner, Arab, or Polish.” “White,” then, does not refer to a “race,” but rather to a social group that has access to political, social, economic, or cultural advantages that people of color do not share. (Location 201)
“people of color” and “nonwhites” are collective terms that refer to all other racial and ethnic groups in U.S. society. (Location 205)
While these terms make reference to skin color, they refer much more to social groups that, for the most part, find themselves without easy access to the political, (Location 206)
social, economic, or cultural advantages enjoyed by those designated as white. (Location 207)
“These categories are social-political constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature.”2 In other words, “race” is a term of limited scientific usefulness, at best. (Location 210)
Difficulties also surround the use of the terms “minority” and “minority group” (Location 213)
the term is not consistently employed to mean a “numerical”3 (Location 215)
Any discussion of racial justice today must take account of the seismic shift occurring in the composition of our population. (Location 319)
almost half of the nation's children under the age of five are members of racial minorities. (Location 321)
My biggest fear, as this nation moves into an inevitable browning, or hybridization, is that there will be a very powerful minority, overwhelmingly composed of Euro-Americans, who will see themselves in significant danger as a consequence of the way democracy works: winner-take-all. And they will begin to renege on some of the basic principles that created the United States and made it what it is.20 (Location 361)
“commonsense” (Location 387)
focuses on interpersonal transactions or behaviors, that is, upon individuals (Location 391)
focuses on conscious, deliberate actions, (Location 393)
focuses upon the harm that another experiences because of race-based actions, (Location 394)
than the advantages that may accrue to those doing the harm. (Location 394)
Thus the commonsense understanding discusses racism as personal acts of rudeness, hostility, or discrimination usually but not always directed against persons of color. (Location 397)
we need a fuller and more robust concept of racism than the “commonsense” understanding allows. (Location 413)
racism is a cultural phenomenon, that is, a way of interpreting human color differences that pervades the collective convictions, conventions, and practices of American life. Racism functions as an ethos, as the animating spirit of U.S. society, which lives on despite observable changes and assumes various incarnations in different historical circumstances. (Location 414)
Toward an Understanding of Culture (Location 420)
Clifford Geertz describes culture as “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which [humans] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.”24 (Location 421)
Bernard Lonergan provides the following succinct definition: “A culture is simply the set of meanings and values that inform the way of life of a community.” (Location 423)
Culture thus denotes a system of meanings and values, (Location 425)
expressed in symbolic form, that conveys and expresses a people's understanding of life. Culture is the set of attitudes toward life, beliefs about reality, and assumptions about the universe shared by a human group. (Location 425)
culture provides the meaning of the social. (Location 430)
society is “the way human persons live together in some orderly and predictable (Location 433)
fashion”; culture is “the meaning of that way of life.”28 (Location 434)
culture provides the ideological foundation for social, political, and economic policies. (Location 435)
culture is the spirit that animates social institutions and customs, makes them intelligible, and expresses their meaning and significance. (Location 439)
cultures are shared or group realities. (Location 440)
cultures are learned communal beliefs and values. (Location 442)
cultures are formative, that is, they shape the personal identities of a community's members, (Location 445)
group's set of meanings, values, and beliefs about life are expressed symbolically. That is, culture is carried and expressed through visible markers (Location 451)
My point is quite simple: mastering the external symbols of a culture does not make one a member (Location 464)
of that culture. And attention solely to the external carriers or patterns of a culture gives one a very limited understanding of its adherents. (Location 465)
Culture is not principally a way of acting, but a way of being. Culture comprises totality of the way a group is in the world. The external symbols give meaning, direction, and identity to a people in ways that touch not just the intellect, but most especially the heart. (Location 471)
The “Soul” of African American Culture (Location 477)
This culture is rooted in a common experience that black folk cannot avoid in the United States: the experience of racial prejudice, discrimination, rejection, and hostility—both subtle and overt—based upon the (Location 486)
simple fact of our physical blackness. (Location 488)
If one were to try to capture the “soul” of African American culture in a word, perhaps it would be struggle. (Location 502)
the external manifestations of black culture are symbolic representations of a basic stance toward life: the fundamental and pervasive struggle to be recognized, welcomed, and accepted as a human being. (Location 512)
The “Soul” of White Culture (Location 516)
what does it mean to be “white?” (Location 518)
“Apparently, for most whites, being white means rarely having to think about it.”39 (Location 528)
“White” denotes a frame of reference that is unquestioned. It is unquestioned because it is invisible and unnamed (Location 531)
It is unquestioned and invisible because it is the norm by and against which all other frames of reference (that is, cultures) are measured. (Location 532)
Hence, the “soul” or essence of white culture is a worldview that—when it adverts to itself—sees itself as the measure of what is real, (Location 535)
normative, and/or normal. (Location 536)
a core element of white culture is the presumption of dominance and entitlement, (Location 565)
“The struggle to be recognized and accepted as human in a racist society” versus “the presumption of dominance and measure of normativity”: (Location 568)
This perspective, that is, understanding racism as a cultural set of meanings and values informing a particular way of life, enables us to better grasp how a focus on culture helps us attend to the deeper roots of this social evil. (Location 571)
In the United States (and Western societies in general), racism functions as a culture, that is, a set of shared beliefs and assumptions that undergirds the economic, social, and political disparities experienced by different racial groups. (Location 575)
summary, racism functions as an ethos—as a pervasive symbol system of meaning, identity, and significance—much more than as a set of discrete, consciously motivated acts. (Location 710)
TO WHAT END? THE JUSTIFICATION OF WHITE PRIVILEGE (Location 721)
Recall that for Lonergan, “culture stands to social order as soul to body, for any element of social order will be rejected the moment it is widely judged inappropriate, meaningless, irrelevant, useless, just not worthwhile.”63 (Location 723)
most whites, while endorsing equality of opportunity in the abstract, endorse it far less when equal treatment results in: close or frequent social contact; or involvement of significant numbers of blacks; or blacks being promoted to positions of significant power and decision making.66 (Location 740)
Martin Luther King Jr. in his last major text. (Location 744)
But most whites in America in 1967, including many persons of goodwill, proceed from a premise that equality is a loose expression for improvement. White America is not even psychologically organized to close the gap—essentially it seeks only to make it less painful and less obvious but in most respects to retain it…. The great majority of Americans are suspended between…opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.67 (Location 747)
White privilege, then, is the reason for the ongoing presence of racism and the resistance that efforts to unseat it encounters. (Location 762)
In a racist society, “white” is more than a skin color. It is a social status that gives those designated as white “the ability to enjoy privileges and benefits which flow from it.”71 (Location 769)
The Nature of White Privilege (Location 771)
We are not so accustomed to see how racism results in unfair advantages or benefits for the dominant racial group. (Location 772)
White privilege is the flip-side and inescapable corollary of racial injustice. Racial injustice comes about to preserve and protect white privilege. (Location 774)
These advantages range from greater ease in hailing a taxi and moving into whatever neighborhood they can afford, to easier access to positions of social influence and political power, to the presumption that their race will not work against them when seeking employment and in other social situations. Being racially advantaged might be unwanted or (Location 777)
The Genesis of White Privilege: A Case Study (Location 785)
It has been intentionally constructed over a long period of time. (Location 786)
Here are several key events and movements that illustrate the links between race, economic impoverishment, and economic opportunity (Location 790)
The Supreme Court Decision of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). This decision enshrined the realities of racial segregation, second-class citizenship, and “separate but equal” facilities in our national life. Among the many pernicious effects of this decision was the creation of inferior educational opportunities for African Americans. (Location 800)
The exclusion of Asian Indians from eligibility for U.S. citizenship. In 1923, the U.S. Supreme Court (U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind) ruled that while Asian Indians were indeed “Caucasians” by race, they could not be considered “white.” The result was that many Asian Indians were stripped of their naturalized citizenship. (Location 806)
The exclusion of domestics and agricultural workers from the Social Security Act of 1935. At the height of the Depression this law created a new public policy that established a basic level of economic security for many of the country's workers. However, by excluding domestics and agricultural workers, this act effectively denied Social Security pensions and benefits to 75 percent of black workers.79 (Location 810)
it legally protected white laborers from competition in the job market, creating economic opportunities reserved for whites and further maintaining the existence of a lower paid, exploited labor pool of color. (Location 816)
This, then, is white privilege: the uneven and unfair distribution of power, privilege, land, and material resources favoring white people. (Location 839)
To say it plainly, most Americans are committed to both interpersonal decency and systemic inequality. (Location 847)
Racial equality encounters ongoing resistance because this nation is still committed to maintaining relationships of white cultural, political, and social dominance, that is to say, a culture of “white supremacy.”80 (Location 848)
Racism, at its core, is a set of meanings and values that inform the American way of life. (Location 859)
Chapter Two An Analysis of Catholic Social Teaching on Racism (Location 872)
Perhaps the most remarkable thing to note concerning U.S. Catholic social teaching on racism is how little there is to note. (Location 878)
To say that racial injustice is not a major concern of Catholic social teaching would be an understatement. (Location 888)
the words of the foremost proponent of black theology, James H. Cone, “It is amazing that racism could be so prevalent and violent in American life and yet so absent in white theological discourse.”2 (Location 889)
PROLOGUE: A CONTEXT FOR THIS DISCUSSION (Location 898)
The Browning of the Catholic Church (Location 900)
46 percent of its members are people of color.3 In many dioceses, Hispanics constitute the largest single group of Catholics (Location 902)
So often one hears complaints such as, “Why do we have to sing in Spanish?” “Don't they have their own church?” “Gospel music isn't really Catholic, is it?” Rather than rejoicing in the God-given diversity of the human family, too often Catholics reflect the racial attitudes and divisions of U.S. society. (Location 912)
Pope John Paul's Challenge and Its Reception (Location 922)
As the new millennium approaches, there remains another great challenge facing this community…[and] the whole country: to put an end to every form of racism, a plague which…[is] one of the most persistent and destructive evils of the nation.6 (Location 925)
The Controversy over the Federated Colored Catholics (Location 937)
To anticipate a contrast to be developed later, these white liberals evidence great sympathy for the plight of the victims of social injustice, but little real compassion. (Location 991)
DISCRIMINATION AND THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE (1958)14 (Location 1001)
Upon these foundations the bishops established two principles to govern the behavior and attitudes of Christians in the realms of race relations: (1) the equality of all peoples in the sight of God, rooted in the fact of humanity's common creation, redemption, and eternal destiny; and (2) the obligation to love our fellow human beings. This Christian love, the bishops stated, was not “a matter of emotional likes or dislikes…but a firm purpose to do good to all men…” (189). (Location 1030)
a separate Negro Catholic Church “existed in every major city in the United States”; (Location 1073)
THE NATIONAL RACE CRISIS (1968)20 (Location 1081)
In perhaps its most famous phrase, the black clergy described the Catholic Church as “a white racist institution.” (Location 1121)
…unless the Church, by an immediate, effective and total reversing of its present practices, rejects and denounces all forms of racism within its ranks and institutions and in the (Location 1126)
society of which she is a part, she will become unacceptable in the black community.23 (Location 1127)
it contains an explicit acknowledgment of Catholic culpability in the genesis of the current race crisis. (Location 1144)
this statement takes a much broader view of the problem of racism. (Location 1146)
recognizes that racist attitudes and behaviors “exist, not only in the hearts of men but in the fabric of their institutions” (Location 1147)
it nonetheless did not receive unqualified approval and acceptance. In an editorial entitled “B Plus for Effort,” the National Catholic Reporter called the bishops’ priorities “dubious” in light of the fact that the Urban Task Force was allotted only $28,000—as compared to several hundred thousand for a study of clerical concerns (namely, priestly celibacy) and $2.2 million for the Catholic University of America. (Location 1161)
took a strong external stimulus in the form of several urgent social and ecclesial crises to compel the bishops to act. (Location 1181)
While further research is needed to confirm this hypothesis, my studies thus far lead me to believe that the U.S. bishops act corporately on racism only in response to external pressure from Rome and/or grave crises in church or society. (Location 1181)
BROTHERS AND SISTERS TO US (1979)28 (Location 1185)
Having overcome the problem of de jure, or legally sanctioned, discrimination and segregation, it now had to come to grips with the far more difficult matter of de facto discrimination, in other words, the racism that results from the very operation of social institutions and systems (such as education, finance, and justice) and from the accumulated effects of a history of racial oppression. (Location 1193)
De facto segregation cannot be eradicated simply by passing a law against it; overcoming it requires positive actions and innovative programs. (Location 1195)
1. The persistence of racism despite statutory changes. (Location 1231)
1. The covert existence and subtle nature of contemporary racism. (Location 1234)
1. The link of racism to economic injustice. (Location 1238)
1. The institutional character of racism. (Location 1242)
The structures of our society are subtly racist, for these structures reflect the values which society upholds. They are geared to the success of the majority and the failure of the minority…. Perhaps no single individual is to blame. The sinfulness is often anonymous, but nonetheless real. (Location 1245)
The absence of personal fault for evil does not absolve one of all responsibility. We must resist and undo injustices we have not caused, lest we become bystanders who tacitly endorse evil and so share in guilt for it. (384) (Location 1248)
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1. Ecclesial racism. (Location 1250)
1. Doctrinal bases for the Catholic stance. The bishops based their condemnation of racism on four tenets of Christianity: (1) the commitment to evangelization, which was defined as “bringing consciences, both individual and social, into conformity with the Gospel” (383); (2) the doctrine of creation, which proclaims that all men and women bear the imprint of the Creator and as children of God are brothers and sisters to one another (383, 385); (3) the mystery of the incarnation, which reveals the truth of the dignity of each human being (383); and (4) the teaching of scripture that “all people are accountable to and for each other” (Mt 25:31–41) (385). (Location 1253)
This is the first time the body of bishops forthrightly declared that racism is sinful. (Location 1261)
1. Recommendations for action. (Location 1261)
The bishops saw the need for action on three fronts—the personal, ecclesial, and societal. (Location 1263)
The bishops exhorted individuals not only to reject racial stereotypes, slurs, and jokes, but also to learn how social structures inhibited the economic, educational, and social advance (Location 1264)
Thus Brothers and Sisters to Us is a strongly worded document that forcefully and unequivocally condemns racism in its contemporary manifestations as an evil and a sin. (Location 1273)
Most Catholics (64 percent) had not heard a homily on racism or racial justice in the past three years. That is, it was not preached on even once over the entire three-year cycle of the Sunday lectionary. (Location 1305)
African Americans are less than 3 percent of the total in every category of leadership (that is, less than their proportion of the U.S. Catholic population)…and less than 1 percent in many (for example, priests, sisters, and seminarians). (Location 1308)
Most disturbing, the report notes that “White Catholics over the last twenty-five years exhibit diminished—rather than increased—support for government policies aimed at reducing racial inequality.” (Location 1319)
ANALYSIS OF RECENT STATEMENTS BY INDIVIDUAL BISHOPS (Location 1324)
The bishops’ understanding of racism privileges personal and interpersonal manifestations of racial bias over those that are systemic and structural. (Location 1335)
One has the impression that the basic summons is for Catholics to treat those who are racially different with respect, decency, and civility. This is consistent with the view that racism, being primarily a manifestation of personal prejudice, can be eradicated by practices that foster individual conversion and interpersonal goodwill. (Location 1353)
CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING ON RACISM (Location 1386)
Catholic teaching on race in America has neglected or slighted an essential step in social reflection, namely, listening to the voices of the victims and examining the situation from their perspective. (Location 1404)
it also manifests a subtle but pervasive paternalism. Note the title of the latest collective statement: Brothers and Sisters to Us. This begs the question: Who's the “us”? (Location 1406)
Racism is not merely or primarily a sin of ignorance, but one of advantage and privilege. Privileged groups seldom relinquish their advantages voluntarily because of dialogue and education. (Location 1417)
the church's past efforts have been impeded due to a fundamental misunderstanding of racism. Racism has never been principally about insults, slurs, or exclusion, (Location 1419)
Again, the major shortcoming of the Catholic approach to racial justice is that it is insufficiently attentive—if not blind—to the nexus of race and cultural power and social privilege, and the need to sever this linkage. (Location 1428)
Such strategies do not take account of what theologian Bernard Lonergan calls “the flight from understanding”—the refusal of unwanted insight when such insight would entail changes that are costly, painful, or demanding.50 (Location 1433)
is difficult not to conclude that Catholic engagement with racism is a matter of low institutional commitment, priority, and importance. (Location 1447)
In short, Catholic reflection on racism is not radical enough to do justice to what the bishops themselves call a “radical evil.” (Location 1454)
What makes this a “white” church culture is deeper than the cultural roots of its liturgical music and rubrics. It is the presumption that these—and only these—particular cultural expressions are standard, normative, universal, and thus really “Catholic.” (Location 1484)
Furthermore, it cannot be disputed that the U.S. Catholic Church has acted by omission and commission in ways that decisively allied it with the culture of racial domination and cause it to be identified as “white.” It has done this explicitly (for example, the practice of slaveholding and refusing to admit persons of African descent to positions of church leadership and authority) and implicitly (such as its tacit acceptance of legal segregation and refusal to actively evangelize African Americans).56 Thus the Catholic Church in the United States is a “white” institution, insofar as it promotes, defends, and partakes—however unwittingly—of the culture of dominance. (Location 1486)
What makes it “white” and “racist” is the pervasive belief that European aesthetics, music, theology, and persons—and only these—are standard, normative, universal, and truly “Catholic.” (Location 1493)
How do black Catholics affirm the real experience of God found in a church still practically committed to white racial privilege? How do we sing of the Lord in a foreign land, that is, in a church that seldom affirms our full humanity? What in Catholicism resonates with the heartaches, groans, and cries of black peoples? What resources are available to the Catholic faith community to ground a more adequate and effective engagement with the evil of racism? These are the questions that will occupy—and haunt—us in this work's remaining chapters. (Location 1524)
Chapter Three Toward a More Adequate Catholic Engagement (Location 1529)
The dominant trend of Catholic racial discourse privileges a concern with conscious, deliberate, and intentional acts of racial malice of individuals—what I call the “commonsense” understanding. (Location 1540)
What resources are there that can deal adequately and (Location 1548)
effectively with this deeper understanding of the evil of racism? What is in our possession that can mount an effective counterattack or resist what the U.S. bishops themselves admit is a “radical evil” and a profound distortion of identity at the heart of humanity? (Location 1549)
How do church and society get beyond their cultural captivity to white privilege? What alternative set of meanings and values—what counteridentity—are mediated by Catholic Christian faith and its system of cultural symbols? (Location 1550)
articulating a spirituality of racial resistance (Location 1558)
THE CHALLENGE OF RACIAL RECONCILIATION (Location 1572)
thinking about racial reconciliation is to engage in an adventure of theological pioneering. (Location 1578)
hope to demonstrate that the issue of racial reconciliation is not—or ought not be—peripheral to the interests and concerns of Christian theologians and ethicists. (Location 1596)
What Is “Racial Reconciliation”? (Location 1602)
What would a racially just society look like? (Location 1604)
What would an America free from the stain of racism be like? (Location 1604)
What would be the racial composition of its classrooms, neighborhoods, professional schools, and occupations? (Location 1605)
an adequate account of racial reconciliation needs to provide a positive interpretation and embrace of racial difference and distinctiveness. (Location 1633)
Severe racial imbalances are a cause for concern when they compromise access to social prestige, political power, or cultural influence. In other words, anxiety over proportional representation reflects concern about a racial group's ability to be effective participants in U.S. society and public life. (Location 1650)
What is problematic in American culture is not the presence of racial differences, but the linkage of power and prestige to racial difference. (Location 1653)
racial reconciliation is not concerned with the elimination of racial differences, but rather the elimination of the stigma and privilege associated with race. (Location 1657)
Note that this understanding of racial reconciliation privileges a concern for the systemic and cultural character of racism. It gives less attention to individual and interpersonal transformation. Some might question if such a focus is sufficient; I maintain that it is essential and critical. For until the nexus between race, power, and privilege (Location 1660)
is overcome, relations between racial groups (Location 1662)
cannot but be marked by resentment, suspicion, mistrust, and hostility. (Location 1662)
Mainstream Evangelical Theology of Racial Reconciliation (Location 1663)
the following characteristics mark this literature: (Location 1679)
the belief that racial estrangement, especially between Christians, is evidence of the power of the demonic at work both in the world and in the church. (Location 1688)
With very few exceptions, this literature understands racism as consisting of attitudes of racial hatred and personal actions of culpable omission and/or commission. (Location 1691)
Evangelicals believe that the remedy for racism is personal conversion and deeper adherence to faith in Jesus Christ, for only Christ can break the demonic hold of racism that grips churches and individuals. (Location 1702)
A concrete measure of the authenticity of one's conversion is one's willingness to be an “ambassador of reconciliation” (Location 1706)
these evangelical writers typically do not devote much time or attention to public policy issues relative to race. (Location 1720)
suspicion that systemic social change advances the agenda of theological liberalism provides another explanation for the evangelical bias toward individual and personal approaches to social ills. (Location 1732)
the evangelical perspective on racial reconciliation is inadequate, principally because of its neglect of the structural and institutional dimensions of racism. (Location 1738)
authentic loving relationships can exist even in the midst of a socially unjust situation. (Location 1744)
the existing dominant American ethos, which, I argue, harbors both interpersonal decency and structural inequality when it comes to racism. (Location 1748)
An Alternate Understanding of Racial Reconciliation (Location 1752)
highlight two processes as critical: telling the truth and affirmative redress. (Location 1776)
deep social wounds cannot be healed without an honest examination of the reasons for and causes of the estrangement. (Location 1778)
Affirmative Redress (Location 1822)
I mean healing the psychic wounds, material (Location 1822)
harms, and economic disadvantages inflicted by racial injustice and its resulting social chasms. (Location 1823)
Catholic morality has long recognized the responsibility to repair the harm or injury done to another. (Location 1828)
“Social harm calls for social relief.” (Location 1833)
One reason why affirmative action is such a divisive and uncomfortable topic is precisely because it seeks to address historic wrongs and continuing injustices. (Location 1844)
“The reason we need affirmative action is because we've had so much negative action throughout American history.” (Location 1847)
Affirmative action, then, is a painful, public reminder of how our tragic and embarrassing past still lingers and haunts us in the present. (Location 1850)
Affirmative action has at least a twofold purpose: (1) to compensate for the enduring effects of our history of publicly sponsored racial exclusion and segregation; and (2) to minimize the occurrence of present and future discrimination with the goal of creating a just and inclusive society.54 (Location 1851)
cannot be denied that the weight of historical, social, and cultural precedents requires at times positive action by States…. It is not enough to recognize equality—it has to be created.”55 (Location 1859)
OTHER RESOURCES IN THE FAITH TRADITION (Location 1866)
The most notable fact concerning the Catholic theological contribution to racial reconciliation is its absence.57 (Location 1870)
This faith tradition possesses an understanding of distributive justice that requires that social harms be apportioned in such a way as not to burden those members of the community least able to bear them. It provides a sophisticated understanding of social sin, which recognizes that sin becomes embodied in public life and social institutions. It also advocates an understanding of the Gospel that entails a stance of solidarity with and decisive commitment on behalf of the poor, dispossessed, and socially vulnerable. It is not, then, a lack of resources that prevents a Catholic presence and contribution to this discussion. (Location 1873)
The moral historian John Mahoney has masterfully demonstrated the decisive impact of the discipline of private confession on Catholic moral praxis and reflection.58 He argues that among its effects is a lingering privatized understanding of sin. (Location 1880)
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“Hospitality is a precondition for justice and justice is a precondition for morality. American Catholic ethics can move to justice when it begins showing hospitality to the stories, experiences, and challenges of African Americans.” (Location 1886)
Lament and Compassion (Location 1893)
As stand-alone tactical strategies, truth-telling and affirmative redress fall short of what is required and will often lead their advocates to a sense of futility, cynicism, resignation, and despair. (Location 1902)
We cannot save ourselves solely through rational analysis, study, and planning. (Location 1903)
Lament (Location 1906)
Lament is a profound response to suffering, one that stems from acknowledging its harsh reality and entails “simply being truthful, avoiding denial (which could be so easy) and admitting the pain and horror of the suffering…. We express our pain in lament [by] crying out [which] allows us to grieve.”63 (Location 1910)
Lamentation is a cry of utter anguish and passionate protest at the state of the world and its brokenness. Laments name the pain present, and they forthrightly acknowledge that life and relationships have gone terribly wrong. They are uncivil, strident, harsh, and heart-rending. They are profound interruptions and claims to attention. Laments pierce the crusty calluses of numbness, cynicism, indifference, and denial. (Location 1915)
following characteristics of biblical laments: the complaint or “vexation,” which is the cause for distress, a complaint that often implicates God for this state of affairs; a petition for help and divine intervention; the reasons why such divine assistance is warranted (often through a reminder of God's own promises that seem to be breached); and a statement of resolution and praise. (Location 1919)
Surely Thou too art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing? Ah! Christ of all (Location 1978)
Surely Thou too art not white, O Lord,” in other words, you are not an ally of oppressors and the perpetrators of racial hatred). (Location 1985)
Laments and the Privileged (Location 2007)
For the beneficiaries of white privilege, lament involves the difficult task of acknowledging their individual and communal complicity in past and present (Location 2013)
racial injustices. It entails a hard acknowledgment that one has benefited from another's burden and that one's social advantages have been purchased at a high cost to others. (Location 2014)
Pope John Paul gave the Catholic Church an example of lament over racial injustice, one yet to be appropriated by the U.S. faith community. (Location 2018)
Catholic Christians have shared in and even abetted the racial fears and prejudices of American society through active participation in the evil of black chattel slavery; by permissive silence during the horrors of African American lynchings; (Location 2030)
by a lack of respect for the cultural traditions of this land's Native peoples; by a refusal and/or hesitancy to welcome people of color into the priesthood, religious life, and positions of lay leadership; by confusing the cultural values of white society with the truths of the Gospel in missionary activities; through a hesitant or belated embrace of the movement for civil rights; by hostility or rudeness toward persons of color when they sought membership in our parishes; by ostracizing those who spoke and acted in prophetic ways for racial justice; and by clinging to racial wounds and being closed to sincere requests for forgiveness. (Location 2032)
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Compassion (Location 2052)
Compassion, then, is the response stirred within one's deepest humanity when confronted with human agony or need. (Location 2057)
Compassion arises not through an avoidance of suffering, but from a deeper entering into it. (Location 2064)
We act justly, not because we are intellectually convinced, but because we are passionately moved. Compassion moves the will to justice. (Location 2085)
COMPASSION AND INTENTIONAL CROSS-RACIAL SOLIDARITY (Location 2087)
solidarity as a “firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all. (Location 2091)
The truly free are identified with the humiliated because they know that their being is involved with the degradation of their sisters and brothers. (Location 2101)
Yet racism is precisely a breach of human solidarity, manifested in an indifference to the plight of persons of color. (Location 2110)
CHURCH PRACTICES THAT FACILITATE RACIAL SOLIDARITY (Location 2168)
Conversion (Location 2173)