Washington D.C., Aug 23, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic bishops from around the country recently condemned the white nationalism at rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia.
But what might be lesser known is that the Church has spoken out against racism through the centuries, and still calls for conversion from it.
“If we want a different kind of country in the future, we need to start today with a conversion in our own hearts, and an insistence on the same in others,” Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said after the Charlottesville rallies.
White nationalists had held a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. from Aug. 11-12, to protest the city’s planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
White supremacists from various extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis participated in torch-lit rallies on Friday night and a daytime rally on Saturday, chanting racist messages like “Jew will not replace us,” and “blood and soil,” a historically white supremacist slogan used by the Nazi Party in the days of Hitler.
A diverse coalition of counter-protesters, from religious leaders to members of “Black Lives Matter” to the anarchist group Antifa, formed around the white supremacist rally.
Violence broke out between the rally and the counter-protest, culminating with a 20 year-old man from Ohio driving a car into the counter-protest killing one woman and injuring 19. The man was eventually charged with second-degree murder.
In the wake of the racist rally, Catholic bishops spoke out against violence but also specifically condemned racism, including a joint statement by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Fla., chair of the bishops’ domestic justice and human development committee, condemning “the evil of racism, white supremacy and neo-nazism.”
From the earliest days of the Church, Christian teaching has opposed the promotion of one person above another because of their genetic or ethnic background.
In his letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul wrote that “through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus (3:26-28).”
As the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace explained in its 1988 document on racism, “The Church and Racism: Towards a More Fraternal Society,” early in the history of the Church, distinctions were made between people on basis of religion, not race.
That began to change with the discovery of the “New World,” the letter said, as nations colonizing the Americas tried to “justify” the killing and enslavement of indigenous peoples with a “racist theory.”
Pope Eugene IV issued a papal bull in 1435, Sicut Dudum, condemning the enslavement of African Christians in the Canary Islands, a year after his bull Creator Omnium threatened excommunication for those enslaving Christians. Thirty years later, in Regimini Gregis, Pope Sixtus IV excommunicated those aiding in the transport of Christian slaves from Africa.
Dominican Priest Bartolome de las Casas initially helped start the slave trade in the Spanish colonies to relieve the mistreatment of the Indians there in the 1500s, but later decried what he called the “spine-chilling barbarity” directed at indigenous persons by Spanish Conquistadors in his 1542 letter “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.” He actively worked to stop the slave trade that he once helped.
Pope Paul III, in his 1535 encyclical Sublimus Dei, issued a strong condemnation of theories that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were sub-human. He said that any argument that the natives were “created for our service” and were “incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith” was the work of “the enemy of the human race, who opposes all good needs in order to bring men to destruction.”
He added that “we consider” that “the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it.”
In 1839, Pope Gregory XVI condemned the slave trade once again and forbade Christians from partaking in it. He wrote that “we warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favor to those who give themselves up to these practices, or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labor.”
However, more sophisticated racist ideologies were hatched beginning in the 18th century, the 1988 Vatican letter explained. These theories tried to base racial superiority in science. Yet as white nationalism and other racist ideologies became the source of political and moral disagreement in societies throughout the world, the Popes and the Vatican continued to condemn racial discrimination and racist ideologies.
In the 1937 encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, Pope Pius XI condemned the Nazi government and its “so-called myth of race and blood.”
“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 wrote.
He also called out the creation of a state that defines itself “within the narrow limits of a single race,” and said that only “superficial minds” could fall into believing such concepts.
His successor Pius XII, in his 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus, decried these racial ideologies as one of the “errors which derive from the poisoned source of religious and moral agnosticism.”
“The first of these pernicious errors, widespread today, is the forgetfulness of that law of human solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all men, to whatever people they belong, and by the redeeming Sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ on the Altar of the Cross to His Heavenly Father on behalf of sinful mankind,” he said.
Later popes, from Bl. Pope Paul VI to St. Pope John Paul II to the current Pope Francis, have all decried racial discrimination, especially discrimination against one’s fellow countrymen.
The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace document of 1988 stated that “racism and racist acts must be condemned.”
“Respect for every person and every race is respect for basic rights, dignity and fundamental equality,” the document stated. It clarified that this respect for all races “does not mean erasing cultural differences,” but that “it is important to educate to a positive appreciation of the complementary diversity of peoples.”
The document also pointed to the anti-Semitism that led to the horrors of the Holocaust, and the necessity for a moral call from the Church against racism even in areas with laws against racial discrimination.
The U.S. Bishops have issued statements against the racism found in many areas of American society, both overt and structural remnants from the era of slavery and of Jim Crow and segregation.
In their 1979 document “Brothers and Sisters to Us,” the bishops decried racism not only as the sin “that says some human beings are inherently superior and others essentially inferior because of race,” but as a sin that denies “the truth of the dignity of each human being revealed by the mystery of the Incarnation.”
Individual bishops and groups of bishops have also written periodically in response to events motivated by racism or revealing the deep racial wounds still within our society. In response to the events last weekend, Bishops around the country – including the U.S. Bishops’ conference as a group – decried the use of Nazi and racist symbolism.
“Racism is a poison of the soul,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput, of Philadelphia in response to the rally. “It’s the ugly, original sin of our country, an illness that has never fully healed.”
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The Diocese of Chicago has the temerity to dismiss this man who is operating with the best interests of children in mind, while leaving in place the false messiah, Fr. Pfleger, whose Masses are an abomination, who spreads race hate, and who has been accused of smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol and sexually abusing multiple underage males?
Somebody should have a nice big beautiful millstone sent to diocesan offices as a gentle reminder.
PARENTS,STAND AND FIGHT THESE TYRANTS AND DONT GIVE UP….
The cruelty and stupidity of the people running Catholic institutions are on display daily. A principal is fired for lifting the mask mandate at his school after the state order was overturned in Court and, apparently, two days before the archdiocese did the same thing. How many dissenters from Church teaching has Fr. Marren employed at Queen of Martyrs? But a man refuses to impose the medically worthless and psychologically damaging mask rule and is given the boot by this dictator who surely had the support of the epicene tyrant who rules over Chicago Catholics in the manner of Justin Trudeau. Finally, let all the nitwits who show up here and elsewhere declaiming on the moral obligation to wear masks refute the John Hopkins study that proved conclusively that these humiliating face covers do nothing to protect people from Covid or anything else.
It would appear that once more, the cowards of the hierarchy win. They cant seem to bend low enough to accommodate the ruling class of leftists who are killing the church in slow degrees. And an effective school principal is told to hit the road. All that seems to matter is that you say yes to following orders. It would appear he would have to recant his very sensible decision position publicly. Isnt that what they do in dictatorial re-education camps?
Cupich, behind all this, of course, is mean and petty, not what one would hope for in any Catholic, let alone a Cardinal.
The Church has changed since I was in school; they wanted conformity but they respected people who could think on their feet. Is Common Core coming to a Catholic school near you?
Unlock the world and let the oxygen flow, and relevant learning return in earnest!
“The inmates are running the asylum.” -Rush Limbaugh
👏👏👏👏👏👏
No one should be surprised by this happening in the Archdiocese of Chicago, the pastors in place are tied at the hip to Cardinal Cupich who has consistently been dictatorial. Having lived in the area 30+ years, you can see those priests who have “belittled” themselves and given up their rights to the Cardinal and no longer see those who have pushed back against him, they are suspended or removed. Some like Fr. Phleger can get away with anything simply because the Cardinal agrees with his thinking and approves. This is not about pastoral leadership this is about an agenda to change the Catholic Church and Archdiocese into what He wants it to be not what God intended for it.
Of course Jacob Mathius warrants dismissal. As a principal of a Catholic school he sets an example. Unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten the story of the Good Samaritan where the question is posed “Who is my neighbour?” And the answer is “anyone you are in a position to help.” Masks and other anti-covid measures are for the benefit not of self but of one’s neighbours. It boggles the mind that self-centered people, such that are currently rampant in Ottawa, are given any credence at all.
Please, M. Peringer, must we focus on your straw men? You lead me to suspect you have no argument.
But the issue before us isn’t the generosity of truck drivers in Canada. It’s the efficacy of masking, combined with the magnitude of the threat to high schoolers posed by COVID.
And the fact is, masking’s ability to prevent the spread of COVID is negligible. In fact, young children, because of their shallow lung capacity, are actually harmed by masking since it reduces their ability to absorb sufficient oxygen.
And COVID’s threat to high schoolers is, at most, minimal.
We may certainly disagree in good faith, M. Peringer, but your attempt to characterize those whose views differ from yours as morally inferior seems desperate and, frankly, a little pathetic.
Are you a doctor?
By all means, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, stick to your discredited talking points. Trying to reason with the willfully blind is a futile exercise.
Masks used by most people are useless in preventing a virus from entering or exiting the human mouth or nose; nothing more than theater at best, A study recently released by Johns Hopkins is more than adequate to dissuade anyone who thinks otherwise.
I have heard this smug argument too many times and regard it as trash. Helping your neighbor does not include jumping every time the govt says to do so, especially when their mandates fly in the face of SCIENCE. I recall the Chinese dragging women out for abortions when they violated the one child per family rule. The reason? To help ones neighbors of course by tamping down the consequences of a “too large” population. Were they supposed to cooperate too? With the vaccine, people are also asked to put their own bodies on the line. Many of us have done so with some trepidation, but this was a calculated risk. With the low transmissibility of covid among children, masking is a red-herring, an absurd intrusion into children’s lives , if not an obscene exercise in govt overreach. “Helping my neighbor” is now entering year 3 of my life and I, like many others, have reached my limit. I am not the slave of the government, nor of the visibly frightened Cardinals.
Raymond, we know only N95 masks work if they are properly fitted. I’m in the agricultural processing business and every employee goes through 1 to 2 masks per day. However, the majority of masks used are cloth and they are WoRTHLESS! OSHA has known for 2 years they don’t stop transmission of the virus. It is posted on the boxes. So your comments are truly without merit.m
Cupich’s Chicago isn’t much different than Capone’s.
Once again Cupich, the Godfather or the Church Mafia (or perhaps Fairy Godmother?) bullies and cancels a Church employee for daring to speak truth.