CNA Staff, Jul 6, 2020 / 04:58 pm (CNA).-
Both the Bishop of Spokane and the leader of a Washington state Catholic Charities organization have spoken out about a controversial video in which the charity leader said that he, his organization, and the Catholic Church are racist, and that the Catholic Church is premised on the idea that Jesus Christ was white.
“I am a racist. That’s the hard truth. I am a racist. How could I not be? As a white person living in America, where every institution is geared to advantage people who look like me, it’s seemingly impossible for me to be anything other than a racist,” Rob McCann, CEO of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington, said in a video posted to YouTube June 19.
“My Catholic Church, and my Catholic Charities organization, is racist. How could they not be? Our Catholic faith tradition is built on the premise that a baby, born in a manger, in the Middle East, was a white baby. So how can we be surprised to know that we must still fight against racism,” McCann added in the video.
Jesus Christ was a Jewish man, born to Jewish parents in the Middle East, centuries before contemporary categories of racial identification emerged amid European colonization in various parts of the world. The Catholic Church teaches that the Jewish and Israelite identity of Jesus are central aspects to his role in salvation.
McCann’s video also said that “the Catholic Church in America has its own long, terrible history of owning slaves, staying silent about others who did the same, and being part of the institutionalization of racism.”
The CEO said that Catholic Charities has been “unknowingly part of the institutionalization of racism,” because its board and staff is primarily composed of white people, while those it serves are “disproportionately people of color.”
The video garnered national attention after its release. McCann is also vice chair of Catholic Charities USA, the umbrella organization for Catholic Charities organizations in dioceses across the country.
On July 5, McCann posted a set of “clarifications” on the website of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington.
In his clarifications, McCann wrote that in his video, “instead of engaging in a discussion about race, I spoke in a way that some heard as a critical rant against the Church. For that, I am deeply and truly sorry.”
He noted that by identifying himself as a racist, he meant: “I realize that due to my upbringing and my membership in the majority race in this country, I certainly have areas of both known and unknown bias in my heart that I need to work on, and that in my lifetime I have struggled with those biases in ways that are so subtle I may not have fully realized them.”
“As an individual with white privilege, I certainly have had moments where I could and should have done more to be actively anti-racist. I am not saying that all white people are racists or that all Catholics are racist. I am acknowledging that I need to deeply evaluate my own sin in this area every single day and that I hope others will do the same.”
On his charge that the Catholic Church and Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington are racist organizations, “what I intended to convey is that my experience of my own flawed faith life and my experience inside human organizations, lead me to know that there are areas of both known and unknown bias, as well as areas of historical mis-steps that should be acknowledged in order to be a positive force for change.”
McCann’s clarifications also addressed his charge that Catholicism is premised on the notion that Jesus Christ was white.
“My description of our Catholic faith tradition being built on the premise that a baby born in a manger in the Middle East was a white baby has also caused pain, and here I must admit I misspoke and was wrong to say it that way,” McCann wrote.
McCann said that after the video’s released, his pastor had reminded him “that in other parts of the world, and in some places in the U.S., artistic and pictorial representations of Jesus are in the images and likenesses of the local culture. Jesus, and the entire Holy Family, are consistently, artistically, beautifully represented as members of every race and culture around the globe where there are Catholic churches,” he wrote.
The letter came after a meeting between McCann and Spokane’s Bishop Thomas Daly.
In a July 5 statement, Daly said of that meeting that “our conversation was candid and frank – and hopefully productive.”
In response to the controversy, in the Diocese of Spokane “the Annual Catholic Charities Christmas Collection will either be replaced by or taken in conjunction with the Black and Indian Missions Collection,” Daly said, adding that Catholic Charities will be asked “to sponsor a series of speakers, approved by me, to address the subject of Church and Race.”
The organization will also “address the issue of abortion and its detrimental effects on the Black community. In places such as New York City, more Black babies are aborted each day than are born. As Catholics, we believe in the sanctity of life from conception to natural death,” the bishop added.
While McCann’s “letter answers some of my concerns, others remain. His support of the Black Lives Matter organization (BLM), albeit now modified, puzzles me. BLM is in conflict with Church teaching regarding marriage, family and the sanctity of life. Moreover, it is disturbing that BLM has not vocally condemned the recent violence that has torn apart so many cities. Its silence has not gone unheard. One need not stand with BLM to stand for Black lives. I will address this and other issues with Dr. McCann in future meetings,” Daly said.
The phrase “Black Lives Matter” has become the rallying cry for a broad social movement. But there are also specific organizations which take the slogan into their name, the largest and best-funded of which is the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation aims to “foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking,” the group’s website says.
Some Black Catholic Leaders in recent weeks have told CNA they support the Black Lives Matter social movement, even while they do not support the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation or other particular groups.
In his statement of clarification, McCann wrote that “Our support of the important non-violent racial justice advocacy elements of Black Lives Matter is specifically support for human dignity, which has a clear connection with Catholic Social Teaching. To be clear, we support the concept of Black Lives Matter, but that does not mean we support any elements of that movement that promote violence or violate Church teachings.”
“We affirm the life and dignity of every human person from conception to natural death. We stand firmly against abortion, poverty, violence, and the death penalty. Racial justice and equality are values inherent to life and dignity, and Catholic Charities is not only dedicated to upholding those values, we stand willing to work in strength and in peace to see those values realized in our world.”
McCann was appointed executive director of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington in 2005, after serving as the organization’s associate director, and as an employee of Catholic Relief Services. He has a doctorate in the field of “leadership studies” from Gonzaga University.
In 2006, he told The Fig Tree newspaper that his understaning of the “the core values of the Catholic tradition, values shared by most other traditions—Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish and other faiths, as well as other Christian,” namely “respect, compassion, collaboration and justice,” animate his approach to Catholic charity.
Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington is a distinct entity from the Diocese of Spokane. Bishop Daly sits on the board, but is not the chairperson. In 2018, the latest year for which date is available, the organization ran a budget deficit of $614,836.
Daly concluded his letter with prayer “that Jesus Christ, the Divine Physician, will heal any divisions that yet might persist among us.”
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How about in Los Angeles where a couple days ago an ex-boyfriend shot and killed his ex-girlfriend in cold blood in a driveway right in front of her three year-old daughter? He doesn’t deserve the death penalty for snuffing out that woman’s life and scarring that little girl forever besides depriving her of her mother? Get real. Executing murderers shows respect for life: for the lives of innocent victims snuffed out by the criminals. Not to execute such murderers is to disrespect life.
From an Old Testament and Pauline perspective, the death penalty is admissible. But ´in the light of the Gospel´, it is not.
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/08/02/180802a.html
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2018/08/02/180802b.html
See my two comments toward the bottom of https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/10/07/three-questions-for-catholic-opponents-of-capital-punishment/ – due to other preoccupations, it will take much more time to respond to the points raised in that article.
Update on this: the perp killed himself while being chased by police in Texas. Saved our society the trouble of a trial and executing him. He should have just offed himself before killing his ex girlfriend. Oh, he was a member of MS-13 gang too. Nope, some people forfeit their right to life.
[“The government is us, in the end. And we’re responsible,” he said of the executions.]
Infallibility is not given to bishops for judgments of particulars and on this point he is wrong. (As he is wrong on capital punishment.)
Agree.
Somewhere in his earlier and voluminous writings, the theologian von Balthasar observed that the death penalty is partly an expression of belief in eternity. That things don’t end here. That no one is extinguished. To see with lesser eyes is to settle for a flat universe with no redemption or salvation beyond history and the curvature of the earth.
Without pretending to parse “inadmissible” or how this teaching applies to particular cases, are we challenged with a much broader QUESTION? Here, a quote and a speculation:
FIRST, as a condition of membership, states of the secularist European Union do not permit the death penalty. Reading Pope St. John Paul II in this context, we find that “such cases [the need for the death penalty] are very rare, if not practically non-existent” (Gospel of Life, 1995, n. 56); AND that this teaching segues into and prefaces the next: “If such great care must be taken to respect every life, even that of criminals and unjust aggressors, [THEN] the commandment “You shall not kill” has absolute [!] value when it refers to the innocent person [italics]. And all the more so in the case of weak and defenseless human beings….” (n. 57). And yet, abortion is legal and more-or-less routine across all of the secularist European Union and beyond…
SECOND, where current history records the past “Age of Faith,” will future history give us the “Age of Oblique Evangelization?”
Features might be: (a) now “inadmissible” capital punishment, partly to reform—from within—secularist contradictions (the above nn. 56 and 57, together), (b) the Abu Dhabi Declaration’s “pluralism of religions” and human “fraternity” to co-exist with Islam as a (an equivalent?) syncretic artifact of natural religion, (c) “synodality,” even the “binding synodal path” of centripetal Germania, to euphemize the anti-apostolic “tyranny of relativism,” (d) the “provisional” China Accord to avoid a disinterred 12th-century Investiture Crisis, (e) inconclusive “dialog” with president-elect Biden (his cafeteria-Catholic “congruence” with the perennial Eucharistic Church) to muffle any evolving Pact with the World, and (f) in curial reform, speculated eclipse of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by a more “accompanying” Secretariat of State.
How can the Church still evangelize—from within?—a world which has forgotten, despises and no longer even comprehends the proposed (not imposed) language and vocabulary of the Faith? Can evangelization be done obliquely?
You argument dismantles itself by attempting to set the revelation of the Evangelists in opposition to the revelation of St. Paul the Apostle.
No.
Am too tied up and do not have time on my hands to present my viewpoint in detail (hoping to do so sometime in the future).
But for now, sufficeth to say: St. Paul in Rom. 13 is looking at and speaking about governing authorities of the world who, with all their shortcomings, can only impart imperfect / partial justice. And neither the Old Testament nor St. Paul are wrong in their perspective.
But those perspectives do not mean that they are the be-all and end-all of all perspectives.
Perfect justice and mercy as perceived from the lens of the Gospel and which the Gospel points to can only be found in the Authority who Governs from the Cross.
(Segue to 1 Cor. 13)
Move over, Saints Paul, Augustine, Thomas, Augustine, Alphonse Liguori, Robert Bellarmine, etc. and every pope at least through Pius XII (and probably Benedict XVI) – JN and Francis are here to set the record straight.
Very droll.
Presuming we will be alive for a bit, we can always wait for the next Popes after Francis to see if they or an ecumenical council revoke or affirm the revision to CCC 2267.
Of course, if we are going to talk about the ´St. Gallen mafia´ and how Francis has decked the cards for the next conclave, perhaps we should also have a discussion about the magisterium of the SSPX or the magisterium of the folks at https://novusordowatch.org/ who get to certify the false popes.
It is unpersuasive for bishops to appeal to the opinions of the pontiff who orchestrated idolatry, and who bases “his fiats” on the assumption that he and his like-minded cohort are morally advanced as compared to the millions of people who disagree with him, and the millions-upon-millions who preceded him, including popes and apostles.
2nd try…
It is unpersuasive for bishops to appeal to the opinions of the pontiff who orchestrated idolatry, and who bases “his fiats” on the assumption that he and his like-minded cohort are morally advanced as compared to the millions of people who disagree with him, and the millions-upon-millions who preceded him, including popes and apostles.
We have another bishop who misrepresents the history of Church teaching on capital punishment. As he must know the truth, we can assume it is deliberate. Protection of society was never the main justification for the death penalty, as Edward Feser and others have documented amply. Furthermore, any bishop who speaks about whether modern prisons are sufficient to secure the population from the threat posed by murderers is offering a personal opinion (and not a well-informed one at that). Besides, the top guy at the Vatican also has told us that life sentences are impermissible.
The death penalty opinion of the idolator-pontiff is devoid of any reason other than his high opinion of himself.
Here is the statement published ob behalf of the idolator-pontiff, by the Congregation for the Faith, inserting his personal opnion in no. 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 (in brackets I add letters to mark the main points – these leters in brackets are not in the original text):
The death penalty
2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.
[A] Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. [B] In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. [C] Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.
[D] Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.
Point A is an arrogant claim to enlightenment by the authors, and at best a foolishly presumptuous (and at worst an intentionally malicious) strawman asserted against any and all who don’t cotton to their flimsy opnion.
Point B seems on its face to be a statement devoid of any meaning, but may be a leftist dog-whistle blown to send a signal to those seeking sanction from the co-traveller now presiding in Rome. (Perhaps reading the pontiff’s associated letter to Bishops about his opnion may shed some light?)
Point C ventures the pontiff’s sweeping opinion that murderers can simply be effectively imprisoned everywhere on earth, which proposal from the pontiff we know to be “disingenuous” coming from his lips, since he has already condemned life sentences for murder.
Which empty premambles bring us to Point D, where the idolator-pontiff references no one but his idolatrous self, and regurgitates his flimsy strawman propped up in Point A, and shows no conviction, since he cannot call what he opposes immoral, because he is prevented from making any statement on morality, as he is bereft of moral authority, and enjoys nothing more than juridical authority, having been elected by sociopath-party run by Danneels and McCarrick.
Either the Catholic Church was wrong for two thousand years for upholding the licitness of Capital Punishment, after a fair trial and when necessary to safeguard society, or Francis is wrong now for stating it is always wrong regardless of circumstances. The former is impossible, as the Church is infallible and cannot err on such a subject for such a long period of time. The latter is possible, as Popes can and do err when Papal Infallibility is not applicable. Especially with Pope Francis’s record on being wrong on so many other issues (just war, private property, communion for those living in adultery, Idolatry, etc).