“Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.” — Pope Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge (March 14, 1937)
“Their conflict is not one of ideologies, for Communism and Naziism are both destructive of human freedom.” — Abp. Fulton Sheen, Philosophies at War (1943)
There are many aspects to the violent, ugly, and shameful actions that have taken place in Charlottesville, Virginia, these past few days but I focus here on just a couple of them, seeking to make a couple of connections to ongoing troubles in the Church.
First, at risk of being misunderstood or misrepresented, I am a bit bemused at the flood of statements, remarks, exhortations, demands, tweets, posts, and declarations that certain groups must—must!—renounce, condemn, and otherwise harshly decry the words and deeds of the white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and related haters. It’s as if we GenXers and the Millennials nipping at our heels have never, in all of our many years in public schools and in various public settings, really heard or learned that racism is an evil, as it surely is. But, in fact, if there are any evils that approach the status of objective certainty in the eyes of the ordinary, younger American today, they are surely racism, sexism, and homophobia (and perhaps Islamophobia as well).
A couple of nights ago, as matters turned deadly in Charlottesville, I saw that a well-known Catholic commentator was excoriating “conservatives” and “Trump supporters” and other apparently dubious deplorables for failing to step up and offer endless condemnations. Silence or even a low level of social media shouting was taken, it appears, as a tacit admission of support of said racists. It was a ploy both clever and crude: “Do this, or I’ll have to conclude that you aren’t upholding my lacking, emotive, and ideological assumptions!”
Some study of history, both American and otherwise, as well as nearly thirty years of following politics closely has taught me a handful of near certain things. One of them is that the Left, from its extreme fringes to even its more moderate and mainstream forms, will use anything and everything to smear, deride, shame, and even destroy those deemed politically conservative and orthodox Christian. (I don’t have time, unfortunately, to explain why I’ve never believed Donald Trump is conservative. Another time.) For such folks, many of them quite active in Charlottesville, history exists to be re-written or destroyed, reason is ignored or attacked, and order—social, political, religious, etc.—is to be broken and discarded.
Those considered enemies by the Left are called “bigots” and “racists” and worse, and they told to shut up, grovel, and bow to the angry hordes—whether in the streets or on social media. David Harsanyi sums it well over at The Federalist:
The left doesn’t take responsibility for the violence on its fringes, for the murder of five cops in Dallas, or the assassination attempt on Republican leadership, or the serial vandalism, or the mobs of free-speech antagonists on campuses, or the rioters at WTO, or those who desire to massacre social conservatives in Washington, because it’s inconvenient to the left’s preferred narrative. They don’t see these people as their responsibility. But you, my conservative voter, do you condemn in the harshest terms those Nazis in Charlottesville that you spawned by supporting tax cuts and judicial restraint and Donald Trump? And even then, condemnation is not enough. You may not mention anyone else or any other factor or you risk being smeared as a Nazi-apologist.
Put another way, the Left always seeks to claim and re-name the moral high ground—and has been doing so since the French Revolution (although dated in some ways, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s Leftism, published in 1974, is very instructive regarding the Left’s history, foundations, and tactics). And while not all on the Left are overtly communist or Marxist, they share in the general belief that agitation and the undermining of social order are not just helpful, but necessary, in remaking America. “Communism,” as Fulton Sheen observed eight decades ago, “believes that the only way it can establish itself is by inciting revolution, class struggle, and violence.” Naziism, in both its 20th century and 21st century forms, also relies on similar actions, but often seek to appeal to a perverted form of religion in doing so, while focusing on race rather than class. (Of course, “identity politics” are just another form of racism, and one used very effectively by the Left.)
Violence, hatred, and disorder are essential to both; they are not so much directly opposed to one another as they are demented twins separated at birth, pursuing forms of atheism that cut the bonds between God and man, moral law and social order, objective truth and human nature. Thus, Sheen also said: “There are two kinds of ‘atheism’: the atheism of the right, which professes to love God and ignores neighbor; and the atheism of the left, which professes to love neighbor and ignores God.” The two were responsible, in the past century, for the deaths of tens of millions; the two are now, in various forms and under many (and often misleading) names, battling and brawling on American soil. Both ideologies are diabolical and both rely heavily on youth who are unmoored, unrooted, historically illiterate, philosophically clueless, angry, preening, and morally confused.
The incoherence of the Leftist mobs can be seen in the now escalating destruction of statues and the demand that others be destroyed. Personally, I think each community (as locally as possible) should decide, after coherent and careful discussion and debate, what should be done with particular statues. But, of course, the morally superior among us have taken it upon themselves to make final judgments. Democracy? Who cares! Rational discussion? Hell, no! Respect for fellow citizens? Never! For these philistines, it’s very simple: they have judged these monuments to be racist, bigoted, and hateful, and so they must be destroyed. Those who object must be shamed and silenced. Period.
None of this should be surprising. The Left has worked with maniacal focus for decades to remake country, culture, and creed in the shape of an equality that is incoherent and a freedom that is inhuman. Yes, of course the neo-Nazis, racists, and white supremacists should be denounced and exposed for what they are and what they do. But they have not been the ones dominating the political classes, the media, the halls of higher education, and other key positions of power these past several decades. They are not the ones preaching and promoting the supposed joys and freedoms of the sexual revolution, abortion on demand, homosexuality, transgenderism, serial monogamy, cohabitation, and a hundred other sins and evils.
In short, the Left has proven countless times it has no right to be taken seriously as the voice of moral goodness and social order. Quite the contrary. And yet there are those, even within the Church, who are happy to play the same hypocritical—and, alas, destructive—game of deflection, distraction, and obfuscation. And so, for example, Fr. James Martin, S.J, posted a ten-part tweet recently addressed to “Christian White Supremacists”, stating the following (I’ve combined the tweets into one statement here):
Your Savior told you never to “lord” power over anyone, and that you must be the “servants” of all. (Mt 20: 25-27) Jesus also selected a group of nonwhite disciples, after growing up with his nonwhite family in the Middle East (Lk 2:51; Mt. 10: 1-4). And when Jesus encountered people from other regions (like Samaria, and Tyre and Sidon) or other religions (like the Roman centurion) …he always treated them with dignity, and offered them both welcome and healing (Jn 4:1-42; Mt 15:21-28; Mt 8: 5-13). The notion that Jesus would want his followers to exclude people because they’re different from us or that he wants us to see anyone, or any group, as “less than” is completely against his life and his teachings. So how can you call yourself “supreme” over anyone, or any race, or any group, and still consider yourself a Christian? Placing yourself over nonwhites also means that you’re placing yourself “first,” and do you remember Jesus’s teaching about that? “The first shall be last” (Mt 20:16). So your greatest danger is not nonwhites living in your state. It’s the state of your soul.
The problem is not in what Fr. Martin says; in fact, I agree completely with his remarks as they stand. Again, we have been deeply and consistently catechized about the evils of racism. But why is racism wrong? Why do we rightly recognize that all men are equal in some objective and substantive way? The Catechism sums it up nicely, stating: “Created in the image of the one God and equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature and the same origin. Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude: all therefore enjoy an equal dignity” (par 1934).
In other words, racism is evil because it is contrary to our origins, our nature, and our end. And social justice (a term misused often for many things contrary to social order and authentic justice), the Catechism emphasizes, “can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. The person represents the ultimate end of society, which is ordered to him…” (par 1929; emphasis added). Secular ideologies and philosophies are not capable of providing an objective basis for the equal dignity of all men. The protester who screams “Racist!” while also bowing to the creed of abortion, homosexuality, and other ills is intellectually incoherent and morally absurd.
Yet Fr. Martin, who warns racists of the real danger to their eternal souls, has not and apparently will not utter warnings about the grave dangers (spiritual, surely, but also physical, emotional, and psychological) of homosexual acts and relationships. As Dr. Eduardo Echeverria observed in his CWR review of Fr. Martin’s best-selling book Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity:
[O]ne would think that in a book about human sexuality, an author writing from a Catholic perspective would identify the specific sexual struggles of the moral life in Christ as the sixth commandment bears upon them, and the corresponding sexual sins against chastity. But no, they receive no attention; they do not figure in this book at all.
The matters of race and sex are more closely related than might initially appear. One way of putting it is that just as racism is sinful because it goes contrary to man’s divine origin and end, homosexual acts are sinful because they are contrary to man’s nature; they are disordered and contrary to God’s law. “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered,” says the Catechism, “when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes” (par 2351). And in a passage that Fr. Martin says should be changed, the Catechism states:
Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (par. 2357)
To boldly denounce racism while tacitly accepting or even encouraging the aims and activities of the “LGBT community” (another convenient political construct) is to oh-so-bravely toe the dominant line and tactic of the Leftist agenda. It is hypocritical; it is disingenuous; it places lives and souls in grave danger. It is unfitting for any Catholic, whether a priest or a layman.
“There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just,” the Church says in her divine wisdom, “The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to ‘the slavery of sin.'” (CCC, 1733). Which is worse: being a slave to another person or being a slave to sin? Stating the obvious truth about racism is a good thing; stating the inconvenient truth about man, sexuality, and our eternal end is also good. It is also imperative. And very unpopular. But touting social justice without proclaiming moral truth makes you no better than the political ideologues who lie, distort, bully, shame, and mock.
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You paint with a broad brush, Carl, assuming, of course, I’m seeing your point correctly (or is it “points”?). The vented spleen, the vitriol, the barely concealed sneer is unbecoming of a Catholic. Your tendency toward claiming a moral equivalency between Nazis/fascists and those on the left opposing them, even the left in “its more moderate and mainstream forms” undermines the one or two salient points in your screed. Dorothy Day, Blessed Archbishop Romero, Gustavo Gutierrez, Cesar Chavez, worker-priests, among many others like them and inspired by them would, I assume, identify with the left end of the political spectrum, at the very least among ,as you call it, its more moderate and mainstream forms, and all, I think you would agree, good people, good Catholics, and undeserving of your derision.
In a painfully obvious rhetorical tactic, you set up Father Martin as a straw man and attempt to use him as an avatar for all that you find wrong with the “left”, particularly the “hypocritical” Catholic left. Yes, many, perhaps most, on the left would support those things of which you accuse them—abortion, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, etc.—but many do not support these things, especially those of us who are motivated by the Catholic social justice tradition. We can, one can, be both opposed to the sin you describe and defensive of human dignity, equality, the rights of workers, compassion and aid to the poor—all of which, by the way, are anathema to Nazism and fascism. A reasonable, well-formed Catholic would not disagree with any of your citations from the Catechism, but you seem determined to reduce the motivation of the “maniacal Leftist mobs” to freedom to debauch. You are either being disingenuous, or you, yourself, are ignorant of history, particularly the history of the Left, in which you intimate some expertise. I have, on many occasions, been one among those “incoherent Leftist mobs,” and found among them many individuals motivated by a sense of social justice, by a need to defend the defenseless, the poor, and the oppressed. I found among them the elderly who had lived through Nazism/fascism and knew of what they were fighting. I found among them parents with children who wanted their kids to grow up in a better world than the one proffered by the skinheads and cowardly KKK antagonists on the other side of the line of riot police. And, yes, of course, I found among them hot-headed youth driven by little more than a certainty of what they were opposed to, even if they were uncertain of what they wanted in its place. You unfairly, unjustly, paint all of us opposed to that particular manifestation of evil demonstrated in Charlottesville with the same brush. As to Harsanyi’s baseless claim that the left doesn’t take responsibility for the violence on its fringes, I can assure you that those of us who are serious about resisting injustice never welcome the so-called “Black Bloc” and anarchists who, through their actions, undermine our efforts. In fairness, though, I have not cataloged the number or degree of denunciations of their tactics by the non-violent left. I can only speak to my experience.
Since Francis has become our Pope, a certain “holier than the Pope” stance seems especially in vogue among some. I suppose this has always been, and will always be, to one degree or another, but there is a Christian, a Catholic way to express a difference of opinion, and, Carl, your missive was not it.
I confess to being suspicious of those in a position of leadership who appear reluctant to state their position on the ideology put on display by the so-called “alt-right.” But, it’s a leap to assert that those calling for our leaders to make plain their position assume that those same leaders are bigoted if they fail to make that position clear. Some may make this assumption, but it is, again, unfair to claim that all on the left expect that anyone should grovel or “bow to the angry hordes.” The comic book language does not help your cause, and beyond a cherry-picked anecdote or two, where is your evidence for this claim? I cannot claim to speak for “the Left,” but as a member of that side of the political spectrum, I can speak for myself and suggest that you’re mistaken in your claims, and that your analysis is weak. In many cases, these “philistines” making the decisions to remove the monuments to oppression in their communities are duly elected officials who, I would guess, did discuss, rationally, the issue before coming to a decision. Your claims to know otherwise are untenable.
Who is your audience, by the way? To whom are you evangelizing? Who, if any, do you hope to win to the faith? In all sincerity, from one who usually admires your work, where in your diatribe is the good, the true (aside from you direct quotes from the Catechism), or the beautiful? The self-righteousness is unbecoming, and the pride is dangerous.
I am not an author, and do not claim any theological expertise, but I believe I know my faith, and I, respectfully, suggest that your use of hyperbole and over-generalization only serves to mischaracterize the Church, tradition, and the magisterium.
With respect,
Heath Prince
Virtually everything you said was wrong headed. Particularly your allegations that Carl has merely vented his spleen, etc etc. were wrong. His points were all well taken. We have seen the left unwilling to even acknowledge that the Antifa protesters were anything other than peaceful and heroic figures, even as the video of MANY of their protests shows them attacking people and dressing and acting like Nazis. The fact is, they show up at EVERY march and you people NEVER expunge them from your midst. The fact is they are at EVERY university, and they alway deny people the right to speak, they attack people, etc. So despite your holier than thou protestations, you have a problem and you have people that are at every one of your protests that engage in violence. They carry communist flags, belong to communist organizations, and they are obviously welcome and seem to be used as your brownshirts. Now, you may claim you are peaceful and well intentioned, but if so your would have expelled these jokers long ago, and there is no sign that you are even trying to do so. So, your comments about the article are cynical at best.As for Father James Martin, he is a hypocrite because he has not condemned the Antifa beatings, violence and intimidation tactics for lo these many months. And, he pretends that this tiny march of disgusting Nazis was a threat to the nation ,and that there is some big “Christian White Supremacist” movement, when there is not. It is all quite bizarre.
“In many cases, these “philistines” making the decisions to remove the monuments to oppression in their communities are duly elected officials who, I would guess, did discuss, rationally, the issue before coming to a decision.” – Well, that’s a stretch. If they actually deliberated, it was likely under threats of intimidation, boycotts, violence, bankruptcy etc. Even debates were probably impossible with unruly leftist mobs shouting down, occupying the chambers. And yes, as we have seen, when the desired decision wasn’t reached or wasn’t reached quickly enough they do not flinch, but take matters into their own hands. They are the left today, if that offends you, too bad.
Just as several Chicago aldermen did in the spring of 1988 in the matter of “Mirth & Girth,” the infamous painting depicting late Mayor Harold Washington in women’s underwear, “created” by a School of the Art Institute student.
And now there are a couple of Chicago aldermen calling for the removal of the monument to Italo Balbo from Grant Park, as well as renaming Balbo Drive downtown “Kennelly Drive” (in “honor” to the 2-term Chicago Mayor whom then-Cook County Clerk Richard J. Daley beat in the Democrat primary election in February of 1955, ushering in 21 years of “Da Mare” at Chicago’s helm).
Brief Summary: “Not all of us Lefties are entirely Evil claims Prince of the Church”
But the “leftists” reserve the right to proclaim that everyone to their political right is evil, without exception.
Agreed.
If you and those with whom you have affiliated were merely “… motivated by the Catholic social justice tradition,” then you ought now, and in the past, use your own personally acquired resources and the freely obtained resources of others whom you can persuade of your presumed ‘righteousness’ to accomplish your goals.
However, do not pretend that you or those you have affiliated with are, or were, morally superior to others by abusing them in their liberty through an exaltation of the state or other depositories of power.
At bottom, your own warped concupiscence for a sense of moral superiority over others merely has encouraged warped and corrupt persons to become entrenched within governmental functions so that they could constitute yet a further caste of hypocritical oligarchs who, in reality, care nothing about true human dignity, much less Catholic social teaching and all it implies.
Prince’s reply is over the top hyperbole. Fr. Martin is no straw man. He refuses to answer on Catholic morality of two millennia and instead, as with his most recent tweet, is looking again for the praises of men.
Prince needs to read the books mentioned in this column and then comment. A misunderstanding of history and a refusal to see how the Left has dismantled and subsequently scuttled institutions and natural law itself is poor reason to post such a lengthy, bankrupt response.
You expect readers to agree that Cesar Chavez and Gustavo Gutierrez were good people? Chavez was a fraud as was his UFW. Chavez called immigration authorities to turn in Illegal immigrants, so labor would not be available. He paid “protestors” for the famous grape boycott , a tactic he learned from Saul Alinsky. He ended his days in the thrall of the very bizarre Charles Dederich and his Synanon compound , from whence he learned the tortuous tactics he took back to his own La Paz and persecuted the last of his loyal followers. And need anyone be reminded that Gutierrez is a founder of liberation theology, a Marxist infestation of Christianity? The arrogance of such men astounds– they pretend their concern for the poor as though the Church had never preached care for the poor? Perhaps they never read Rerum Novarum, written in 1891, long before the “liberationists” used the poor as their shield to corrupt the teachings of the Church with Marxism. Recent attempts in Rome to soften the disgust around Gutierrez does not change the pernicious character of liberation theology and its peril to souls.
Was not Mit brennender Sorge Pius xi?
It sure was. And so were “Non abbiamo bisogno,” on the evils of Fascism, and “Divini Redemptoris,” on the evils of atheistic Communism.
Yes, but much of it was written by Pacelli, soon to become Pius XII
Yet again, an essay written as if the author were speaking to a close circle of friends in his home – the language and rhetoric being quite unrefined; how effective this is, one can’t say. Nevertheless, as a Brit, there are certain observations I think I can make about this racial problem in the USA. The first of these, is that the average American has a certain racial stance deeply embedded in their subconscious mind. Having lived and studied for a spell, in the USA, I can say that I was appalled at the thinly veiled segregationist stance even in the Roman Church, in the USA, under the guise of inculturation. I have seen where a member of a so-called ‘African Parish’ would never deign to go to Mass at a Parish where the population is mostly white. That Sacred Music is actually ascribed race and colour in the USA is just sinful. I have seen white folks be utterly uneasy in an “African American” Parish, and so actively avoid this experience (after all what we learn from the African American people?). Meanwhile, no one acknowledges that they have racial tendencies; that the Roman Church in the USA actively encourages this deformity of human civilisation: segregation on account of race, culture, and class – all under the guise of ‘unity in diversity’. I have worked with Bishops and other clerics who would, like their political leaders, prefer to send a Vietnamese priest to a Parish where their are many people of Vietnamese decent. Meanwhile, is this true ‘inculturation’? True inculturation, as Benedict XVI put it, results is UNITY, a coming together of all peoples, offering the beauty of their own selves (culture, etc.) to be added to the rich repertory of the Church’s own Culture; standing SIDE BY SIDE. This is so different to what I experienced in the USA, in the Church. However, even in society, one can see this segregationist stance clearly in ‘white neighbourhoods’ ‘African American neighbourhoods’, ‘Latino neighbourhoods’, etc. In fine, my question is this: what has the Church, represented in Her Clerics, in the US of A actively done to eradicate racism? How have the ‘differences’ of peoples been used to bring ALL together – has the concept of ‘inculturation’ been used incorrectly?
Have you ever bothered to meditate on the irrationality and implicit injustice in regard to making judgements about others based on the fallacy of hasty generalization?
Hmmm. I prefer being unrefined to condescending. Your condemnation of the Church in the States is both sweeping and vague. This isn’t to deny there are problems, even serious problems, in certain places. Of course there is (unlike, England, which apparently has it all figured out). However, I attend a Byzantine (Ukrainian) Catholic church in western Oregon that has more Hispanics than Ukrainians, as well as Asians, etc. No one worries about race. Part of that, I think, is that the NW tends to have far less issues than the South; but it’s also because we are Catholics first.
A quick note: to insinuate that the existence of ethnic neighborhoods is a clear sign of racism and a “segregationist stance” is sloppy or worse. Migrants from various countries often settled together in America for many reasons (support, common language, shared ethnic culture, etc). Let’s also not forget that racism in the States was not just about African Americans; the Progressives of the late 1800s/early 1900s, who were mostly Northern, liberal Protestants influenced by Prussian thought and culture went out of their way to put down and even eradicate (via eugenics and other means) immigrants from Eastern Slavic countries.
Finally, this: “That Sacred Music is actually ascribed race and colour in the USA is just sinful.” What, exactly, does that mean? Are you referring to notes about the origins of songs (i.e., “Negro spiritual”)? If so, you are being ridiculous.
That is just my experience of the Roman Church in the US of A….. Meanwhile, accross the pond, there are problems, to be sure. However, in the US of A, in my experience, the correlation between ‘naturally’ segregated neighbourhoods, and the ‘Ethnic’ Churches was too glaring for me. Meanwhile, people are wondering why racism is such a hot issue. My questions remain unanswered (even amid all the reactionary comments). It is this, has inculturation been used incorrectly?
Racism remains a “hot issue” for many reasons, to be sure, but one of the most significant over the past 50 years or so is the Left’s use of race as a political tool. Con artists such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have used it for decades to create divisions and incite rancor and even violence. The rise of “multiculturalism” and “identity politics” have taken it even further.
Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.
My questions remain unanswered (even amid all the reactionary comments). It is this, has inculturation been used incorrectly?
You began your original post with a condescending, even sneering, swipe, then made a bunch of broad-brushed and dubious assertions–and now complain about the “reactionary comments”? Passive-aggressive much?
My experiences of Churches in Europe is that there was no way to speak of “ethnic” issues, seeing that most of the churches were empty almost all of the time.
Regarding the clarification of race and music. I have heard folks refer to music composed by African American Catholics as “Black Music”, meanwhile, that of JS Bach right down to Marty Haugen as “White Music”….. it is this to which I am referring. Indeed, music has a certain cultural context. However, beauty has no colour or origin, but God. It is in this I find the aforementioned disturbing, to be sure.
Two points:
1) It’s common parlance in the US, even among the enlightened secularists, to refer to “black music” and “white music”. Is that racist? I don’t think so. But I am unrefined, so what do I know? (However, I know the British music press uses the terms constantly as well, so….)
2) Marty Haugen music is bad music. Period.
How do these comments answer my question? Because the uses those dreadful terms, does it automatically make it right? Meanwhile, I still haven’t had my question about the implementation of inculturation answered. You seem to be dancing around the issue.
Correction to the above:
“Because the Press uses those dreadful terms…..”
Thanks.
Musical styles and forms that developed in a culture of idol worship and or overly sensual liberality, be it hundreds of years ago in villages far away, or yesterday in cities of USA and Europe – have no place in Catholic liturgy. (though of course, they are there)
“the Roman Church, in the USA,”
“Roman Church?” Presumably you mean the Catholic Church in the USA. Since you did not use that term I shall now emulate the left-wingers you admire so much: “How dare you! You’re racist! You shouldn’t be allowed to speak or post your hateful rhetoric and everything you do or say is evil evil evil because you are just wrong because I say you are and if there is a picture or a statue of you anywhere it should be destroyed and if anyone ever attacks you physically it is your fault.”
Now I will await your preening self-satisfied protests.
See? Not much fun when the shoe is on the other foot.
I find your commens slightly amusing. If you go into British neighborhoods, there are Pakistani places, Muslim neighborhoods etc etc. Your silly assertion that everyone is America is racist is about as goofy as it gets. Yes, perhaps a bishop will send a Vietnamese priest to a parish that has many Vietnamese parishioners. For their benefit. Nobody in the US feels uncomfortable going to a “black parish” probably because there are very few of them. Most blacks are Protestant. Certainly people Your presumptions are all rather silly. I watch a lot of European television now that the internet is here. You Europeans, for whatever reason, rarely see what is really going on here. Your stories about the US make me laugh because they are so heavily slanted and biased and structured solely to make Europeans feel good about themselves.
I lived in Europe for two years. I heard things said by Spanish, French and English that would make an American blush.
While we might discuss the “subconscious” racism of Americans, we definitely can discuss the very outspoken racism of Europeans.
Exactly. The French are among the most racist people I ever met… until I met a lot of Asians, who make the so-called American racism sound as innocuous as opinions of ice cream flavors.
I’ve no idea in which US dioceses you made such observations, but permit me to share with you the “segregation” in my diocese. My own parish is the cathedral. We have two Spanish masses per weekend and one Haitian mass. At these masses the people enjoy the music of their culture. These masses were instituted At their request– Hispanic and Haitian parishioners are always welcomed and encouraged to attend the English masses, but they prefer mass in their own language.– that is, they are not segregated, rather they are content. Conversely, I have often attended the Haitian mass which is the last mass on Sunday. Invariably I am welcomed and feel at home– it is MASS. A few miles away we have St. Ignatius Kim, a Korean Parish. They raised th funds to build their church and have mass and celebrations in Korean. They do not feel “segregated” instead, they feel free and welcomed to build a parish that honors their heritage. We have a similar parish built by our Vietnamese brothers and sisters. None of us feel segregated. The only “segregation” and marginalization is for those who prefer the Extraordinary form, they are relegated to a parish of some distance from the city and at 2pm. I believe you are mistaken about racism in the Catholic Church in the US, perhaps you have confused pride in cultural traditions with “segregation.”
A well written article, but some of the comments make me despair that rational conversations are any longer even possible.
“Truth? You can’t handle the truth!”. Words of irascible Marine Sage Colonel Nathan R Jessup. Today it’s politically correct to jump aboard the bandwagon of denunciation. Of anything resembling supremacy. There’s the catch. The Left advocates supremacy of moral judgment. During the melee a toppled Confederate soldier statue was kicked, spit upon. As outrageously politically incorrect Pres Trump frequently is he frequently makes a valid point. The statues represent a people and culture, beaten, chastised, and changed. To humiliate and insult polarizes. That’s the legacy of the hypocritical supremacist Left. They’ll oppress your rights [how can anyone not cite the Dem Obama Admin’s oppression and outright imposition upon religion in Am] as quickly as you can bat an eye. Example. Hypocrisy can earn you a Pulitzer in Am. Journalist Eugene Robinson excels at defending Dem oppression of Roman Catholicism. “It never occurred to me to evaluate the Grammy Awards show on theological rectitude, but apparently we’re supposed to be outraged at the over-the-top ‘exorcism’ Minaj performed Sunday night. The hip-hop diva, who writhed and cavorted amid a riot of religious iconography, is accused of anti-Catholic bigotry — and seen as an enemy combatant in an escalating ‘war on religion’ being waged by ‘secular elites,’ which seems to be used as a synonym for ‘Democrats.’ Seriously? Are we really going to pretend that Christianity is somehow under siege?” (E Robinson Wash Post Feb 15, 2012). No one has a monopoly on hypocrisy. Everyone seems to have a monopoly on self righteousness.
This is a superb essay, Carl.
We are locked today in a relentless Right/Left paradigm that doesn’t let us come up for air. No, of course, we don’t support the “white nationalists” of whatever description. And we certainly don’t support the Leftist agitators, of whatever description.
Reason? Neither side wants to (or can) recognize the reality that we all have lost due to the deconstruction of Catholic Christendom.
I can’t wait for the USCCB to jump on this. They never let a band wagon go by without jumping on it.
They’ve been purging statues destroying tradition for 50 years…
As a white, Catholic, Republication who lived in South Alabama in the 1960s, I can say from experience that Charlottesville, though tragic, pales in comparison to the systemized racism of the past. It is the introduction of the radical left of the political spectrum that underlies most of the violence today. The racist yahoos that were a notable part of the past are a rare breed today and exercise almost no political power and even less respect. A failure to recognize real problems almost certainly assures that there will be no solutions.