“It’s Lent, so we’re supposed to think about these things,” Father Rutten said, “and especially, racism can be one of those things we’re unconscious of, so it’s just a nice time to reflect on it and say, ‘What difference can we make?’"
My mother was determined that I would not grow up to be a racist. Given that I was born in 1950s Pittsburgh, that was a rather remarkable goal. Life along the three rivers was characterized by a marked de facto segregation, and there seemed to have been a high tolerance for racial slurs and humor, but that was never the case in our home.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the nation's movement for racial reckoning, the Catholic Health Association of the United States announced an initiative to confront racism in the provision of health care.
Opening a prayer service held in penance for the sin of racism and to promote racial justice, Archbishop Bernard Hebda said the faithful lament together the stark reality of racism in the world.
To be “woke” is now a thing. Over the past few years the media have employed this awkward grammatical construction — a simple past tense of the verb “to wake,” but used as an adjective — to describe being aware of one’s own biases, intending on overcoming them and advocating for societal change. Racism is a timely example: Someone who is woke admits his racial biases (they may even be unconscious) and aspires to be part of the solution.
The police-involved death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, an African American, amplified cries for racial justice and moved Father Michael Joncas to take action.
Catholics must educate themselves on the Church’s teaching on racism and nurture the passion to respond to racism — both personal and structural — with the same vigor that they respond to other attacks against the sanctity of life, such as abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia, Bishop Shelton Fabre said during a Sept. 9 webinar organized by the Minnesota Catholic Conference.
Father Augustus Tolton, who in 1886 became the first identified Black priest ordained for the United States, challenged the status quo to bring about social change.
In a class within an anti-racism course at the University of Notre Dame, Washington Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory spoke in a teleconference call to students, faculty and alumni about the moral imperative of opposing racism.
The conversation that took place in the parking lot of St. Peter Claver is one that is playing out within the Catholic Church across the country. From Catholic Twitter to bishops’ statements, parish bulletins to dinner conversations, Catholics are trying to make sense of Black Lives Matter and what a faithful response looks like.
