Denver Newsroom, Jun 10, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- Two black Catholic priests— one ordained six years, the other 42— shared their thoughts with CNA this week on the sin of racism, and the importance of praying, fasting, and advocating for healing.
Father Josh Johnson, pastor of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in the diocese of Baton Rouge, told CNA he has been encouraging prayer for healing from racism for years.
George Floyd’s death on May 25 at the hands of Minneapolis police spurred protests across the world. Father Johnson said a friend sent him the video of the arrest either the day it happened or the day after.
“I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have done it, but I watched the video,” he said.
Johnson says he didn’t just see a fellow black man as he watched Floyd’s death play out on video— he saw a Christian man, a fellow member of the body of Jesus Christ.
“To watch a human being die, to watch a member of the body of Christ die on camera…He’s saying, ‘I can’t breathe,’ his calling out for his mom…to watch another human being die on camera was traumatizing,” Father Johnson told CNA.
“As a Christian, as a Catholic priest, I can’t watch that happen and not be affected and not grieve, not be sad, not experience anger that I pray was just, and then also just not be reminded of my own experiences, too,” he said.
Johnson’s father was a cop— in fact, he was captain of the Baton Rouge Police Department. Johnson says he has had the opportunity to collaborate with local law enforcement throughout his priesthood.
“However, that does not change the fact that when I’m not wearing my clerics, people in society don’t see me as Father Josh, they see me as another black man,” he said.
Johnson said he, like many people of color, has experienced harassment from law enforcement in the past.
“[George Floyd] could have been me. I can’t not think that way, because I’ve had negative experiences” he said.
“It’s painful. It’s really, really painful to watch that, and it’s even more painful for people to just disregard it, for Catholics to just disregard it and say, ‘Oh yeah, it was bad, but other things are bad too.’ It’s like, no, let’s stop. As disciples of Jesus Christ, let’s just stop, and let’s grieve together that one of our brothers, one of God’s beloved sons, was killed. Can we just please stop and grieve together and not dismiss his life as if it was nothing? This is a life we’re talking about.”
For too long, it seemed to Johnson, most Catholics have been inattentive to racism or overly entrenched in a left-or-right political mindset over the issue.
Johnson told CNA that in addition to talking, writing, and preaching about these topics for years, he has been constantly praying and fasting for an end to racism.
A few weeks before the Minneapolis officers killed George Floyd, Father Johnson had been inviting listeners of his podcast to pray a rosary for racial reconciliation.
“Finally now, this is the very first time in my life…that a number of Catholics have come together and decided, “We’re going to acknowledge that there’s a problem and we’re going to acknowledge that God is inviting us to be part of the solution,” Johnson said.
“If the disciples of Jesus Christ could come together, then we could be used by God to combat this evil that has just brought about so much damage to the body of Christ, and to men and women made in the image of God in the United States of America, for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.”
Any effort to combat racism must start in the heart, with prayer, he said.
“Through our prayers— our intentional prayers— through our fasting, through our listening and learning things that we didn’t know, and through collaborating with each other, to work together, to bring down and to reform and transform these systems that continue to perpetuate division in the body of Christ.”
Johnson said his encouragement toward prayer has garnered positive feedback from people of faith, especially white people, he said, with many realizing “that they could do something— that even though they might not personally have ever said the n-word, or they might not participate in a practice or policy that accommodates white people and alienates black people or brown people, even though they don’t participate in that, that they’re still responsible to pray against racism.”
Johnson stressed the power of penance and fasting as a way to heal the Body of Christ. Throughout the recent revelations of clerical sexual abuse in the US, Johnson says he has been taking on fasts and sacrifices for the healing of those affected.
He also recommended following black Catholic leaders online, such as Sister Josephine Garrett and Deacon Larry Oney, and also encouraged Catholics to consider making pilgrimages to places like the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama.
Above all, prayer is the key, he reiterated.
“I believe that the Lord has created me for this time, for a time such as this,” Johnson said.
“I’m so excited to finally have allies and other disciples of Jesus Christ walking with me to fight this battle, to bring about healing in the body of Christ and restoration, renewal and racial reconciliation in our country.”
“This is one that we cannot ignore”
Father James Boddie, pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church in Jacksonville, Florida, has been a priest for 42 years.
Christ the King is a very diverse community. In addition to many African Americans— like Father Boddie— there are large numbers of Vietnamese people, Hispanics, families from Haiti, from Africa, and many white parishioners as well.
Like Father Johnson, Father Boddie’s first reaction upon seeing the video of George Floyd’s death was horror, and an immediate desire to pray.
“I went immediately into prayer for Mr. George Floyd, for his family and for the police department,” Father Boddie told CNA.
“The actions of a few police officers does not cast a shadow over the entire police department, but those individuals who acted that way was just…it was unimaginable.”
When he entered St. John Vianney Minor Seminary in Miami back in the 1970s, he was the first African-American seminarian from Florida to study there.
Father Boddie remembers the civil rights movement of the 1960s firsthand. In fact, his father was involved in civil rights efforts in the Jacksonville area.
“He worked very hard in the community, addressing those issues [and] working with others…whether it’s for the desegregating schools or issues that affect the African American community, but also issues that affect the community at large, because there’s a lot of issues out there that the only way to really approach it is the entire community coming together,” Boddie said.
“I saw [in] the first mobilization that people were marching, from the old, the young people from various cultures, various backgrounds from very different communities,” he said.
Goal setting is an important part of the process, he said. Government leaders, faith leaders, and other community members should work together to plan out what they want to achieve.
When protests begin to turn violent, a re-focusing on the issues is necessary, Father Boddie said.
“When you started to see the violence and destruction taking place, that’s when I felt that it began to lose focus. Why is that destruction? Why are particular groups destroying people’s property, livelihood?” he said.
“Focus back on what they’re marching for: to address the issue of racism, the issue of injustice, but also do it in peaceful means and involving everyone from the community and not going towards destruction of property, of burning down buildings, because that is contrary to everything,” he said.
He also suggested that Catholics read the US bishops’ 2018 pastoral letter against racism, Open Wide Our Hearts, perhaps even in a group study setting at their parish.
“My hope is that everyone comes together— everyone comes together as one— identifying that, yes, this is a problem. This is one that we cannot ignore,” he said.
Father Johnson and Father Boddie can be heard on the June 8, 2020 episode of the CNA Newsroom podcast.
Kate Olivera contributed to this story.
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It’ll be named a cardinal by F1 in 3,2,1…while the bishop will still be a bishop, but a good one… There are just a few around…
I agree that the St. Michael Prayer should not be forced on people at the end of Mass in a public manner. When I’ve seen this done, it precedes the recessional song and precedes the exit of the clergy, so the prayer is in fact Mass-adjacent and forced upon people in the pews. I also disagree with public praying of the rosary in the nave immediately before or after Mass. Don’t foist your preferred spiritual expressions on others in the nave.
Let the Mass be the Mass. Let people pray in silence before and after Mass.
The practice smacks of superstition, as if we need to add something more to the Mass because Mass isn’t enough.
Why would you say that praying to St. Michael smacks of superstition? What is superstitious about praying to St. Michael?Exorcists are warning that evil is ramping up and that the demonic is increasing all across our country. We need St. Michael now more than ever. And then your comment about praying the Rosary, it sounds like you don’t appreciate the power of the Rosary or how often Our Lady in her apparitions has asked that the Rosary be prayed. As Teresa of Avila once said, “Lord, deliver us from sour-faced saints.”
It’s not an extension of the mass, it’s imploring a saint for help. It’s a short prayer so couldn’t anyone literally hold their breath and then exhale to do their meditation afterwards?
EWTN does it and also begs for laborers; I don’t think it diminishes the mass effect and worship in the least.
So don’t pray them. What could be easier.
Your thought that praying the Rosary and/or the prayer to St. Michael demonstrates a superstitious attempt to add something to the Mass seems to me a kind of spiritual blindness.
Superstition? You need to evaluate your Catholic teaching and knowledge.
When we pray the Rosary before Mass we are meditating on Our Lords life, it prepares us for the celebration of Mass
God bless the good bishop for speaking up in defense of St. Michael’s
prayer. I attend a church where once the Mass is ended and dismissal offered,
the priest and people, myself included, fervently say the prayer. Given the
horrors of contemporary wars, the dishonesty of so many of our institutions,
the tragic loss of innocent lives, the prayer is most appropriate. As Fr.
deSouza wrote in the original column, “evil abounds.” The prayer, which I
well remember as a child, should never have been removed from the liturgy.
The article is unfortunately 1) vague and 2) incorrect in that it states 1) the prayer was used liturgically “until the Vatican II era” and 2) was a “feature of the mass.” As many on here already well know, the so-called Leonine (Leo XIII) prayers were imposed only for low masses (which didn’t even include any procession or singing to be interrupted – to respond to Scott Walker’s comment – and were done by the priest and people, with the priest kneeling on the altar steps, already having ended mass and typically while carrying the sacred vessels in hand. It was a public devotion outside the mass, and included several other prayers, such as the Hail Holy Queen, three Hail Marys, a prayer for the Church, the St. Michael prayer, and ending with three invocations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (therefore ending on a God-centered note). Low masses already ended with the “last gospel” – the first chapter of John, so the issue of “being sent forth” being interrupted makes little sense (yes, I realize the last gospel was suppressed in the revised mass, but still). St. Paul VI suppressed the public Leonine prayers as a required practice in 1964, yes, but it was hardly “banned.” Given the onslaught of evil that is glaringly obviously spreading throughout the world, a quick St. Michael prayer done by the people spontaneously (which is how I usually encounter it) is most welcome. Who could have a problem with that? Snobs? Purists? People who are emotionally allergic to traditional prayers or piety? If the latter, that might be something to take up with a spiritual director.
Yes, everyone is agreed that evil abounds and has been growing all around us for some time. This despite the growth of such devotions as the Rosary and the prayer to St Michael. And there is a Mass said every second of every day somewhere in the world.
How come evil does abound then ?
The evil in the world does not have to become man’s resting place. We are free to develop the alternative, to pray and to act with grace, out of the pit of sin. The Resurrection teaches that. Our first parents, choosing sin instead of paradise, led to us being where we are. The life, death and Resurrection of the Incarnate Word, together with His Church, however, offer us the faith, hope, and love as the alternative to the sinful world.
How do we know that devotional prayer has ‘grown’ over time? The efficacy of prayer relies on the grace of God and the holiness of the prayer.
Imagine the state of evil in the world if there were no Mass and no prayer. I would guess that we hain’t seen nothing yet of the power of evil if we were to stop entreaties to the Power of grace to compensate and to overcome.
Yeah, the St. Michael’s prayer at the end of Mass is the most egregious liturgical abuse today. Give me a break. Clearly the priest has an agenda.
For the priest objecting to the St. Michael prayer, where is his objection to clapping for the cookie ladies and the choir and everyone else at Mass? There are real abuses to be concerned about rather than praying for St. Michael’s guardianship. Get a grip.
the cookie ladies? who said Catholics don’t have a sense of humor; thank you for the chuckle
It reminds me of the lunch ladies 1-8 grades at the Catholic school I attended; good food and they worked for little money but mostly gratitude. We were not allowed to waste food – now food waste is almost a mortal sin in many schools
Fr. Bednar is clearly from the generation of priests who believe Vatican II is the be all and end all of Catholicism. His generation and their fanatical adoption of the “spirit of Vatican II” have literally emptied the pews. The damage done to souls is astronomical. Pray for them; they will have one heck of an accounting to make at their judgment.
The St Michael prayer was written by a holy Pope who warned of Freemasonry seeking to destroy the Church.
The St Michael prayer was cancel-cultured once the Freemasonic destruction of the church was underway 1962-2024.
I read the article in the Wall Street Journal. I did not think it deserved a response.
Now we see these debates over the liturgy.
I was an usher in a Catholic Church in the 1960’s. We agreed if we encountered a serious threat, we would defer to our usher was a police officer.
Fast forward to 2024.
We now live, or die, with gun violence.
St. Micheal is the Patron Saint of Police Officers. The “TOP COP”.
We can use St. Michael and local Police Officers to protect us from gun violence at religious events.
When I was growing up in the 70’s I don’t remember our church being locked, maybe it was at night.
Mr Schmiedeler:
I hope you meant criminal violence in your comment above. A gun is a tool, with no mind or will of its own. It’s a tool that is often unfortunately used for evil and violent acts against mankind, but it’s a tool nonetheless. There is literally is no such thing as gun violence. That terminology is a fabricated lie created by liberals and the mainstream media to distract from the real problem of criminal violence which is stemming from drugs, human trafficking/exploitation,
gangs, (coming across our wide-open southern border) and our increasingly Godless society. If there were such a thing, we’d have to build prisons and for pistols, rifles and shotguns.
I believe that ushers and sacristans should be trained and armed in the event of a violent act by some crazy criminal during Mass, especially if a bishop is present.
Fr.Bednar is a bit suspect.Why should he object to a prayer that has been in the church for so many years.What is his agenda??!! His background should be looked into….
Fr. Bednar comes with a lot of backstory baggage. Currently a retired priest in residence at a parish in Cleveland, he once penned a book lauding Jesuit theologian William Lynch. If I understand correctly, Lynch believed, controverting scholastic and Church teaching on faith and on imagination, that imagination somehow analogically is akin to faith. America has republished a 1943 Lynch article at http://www.americamagazine.org/voices/william-lynch. Commonweal also has an article lauding Lynch. A synopsis of Bednar’s book can be read at http://www.ebay.com/itm/Faith-as-Imagination-The-Contribut-Bednar-Gerald.
Long and short, Fr. Bednar is likely near his life’s end, after a probable lifetime of having seen modernist dreams of his church wafting away as his own lifeblood waned. Then someone offered him the WSJ venue as a means of renewing an aged and infirm man so blood running cold could flow more freely on imagined faith.
Bednar, Lynch, and the ilk of the faith of such fellows speaks against Church practices which arose long before them and VCII. The praying of this prayer will survive long after our day.
Neither Lynch, Bednar nor any progressive modernist can cite evidence against its efficacy on anything other than imaginary grounds.
See the ancient history, beauty, and validity of the St. Michael Prayer at catholiceducation.org/en/culture/the-prayer-to-st-michael.html
The prayer is ***NOT PART OF THE MASS***. ANY PERSON SUBJECTED TO IT against his will AFTER MASS HAS ENDED IN A CATHOLIC CHURCH IS FREE TO VISIT THE REST ROOM, PLUG IN EARPHONES, OR EXIT THE CHURCH, AND GOOD RIDDANCE.
Good and victorious St. Michael the Archangel, as guardian of nations, we thank you for your protection. We praise and thank God for you.