CNA Staff, Sep 22, 2020 / 12:00 am (CNA).-
A Black Catholic leader said Friday that the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is the wrong organization to lead an important movement against racism in the U.S., because, he said, it asserts a relativistic agenda that will cause harm to Black families.
“While it is important to affirm the truth that black lives matter, unfortunately, the Black Lives Matter organization (BLM) itself is ill-equipped to lead,” Louis Brown wrote in an essay published Friday in First Things.
“Black lives do matter—the phrase is correct that all God’s people deserve love, dignity, truth, and freedom. Our brothers and sisters who peacefully protest for justice with signs of ‘black lives matter’ march justly. However, there is a difference between asserting ‘black lives matter’ and the BLM organization itself, which is seriously flawed.”
Brown, executive director of the Christ Medicus Foundation, is an attorney who worked for the Democratic National Committee, before his pro-life views led him to leave the position. Brown has worked for both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, and in a senior position in the civil rights office of the federal department of Health and Human Services.
The phrase “#BlackLivesMatter” began to trend online following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, and a movement grew amid protests and riots in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after a young black man, Michael Brown, was shot in an altercation with a police officer.
“Black Lives Matter” has become the rallying cry for a broad social movement. But there are also specific organizations which take the name “Black Lives Matter.” The largest and best-funded of those groups is the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which has a network of local chapters around the U.S. and in other countries.
Brown said that organization “asserts a worldview of moral relativism that recognizes no objective truth, ‘disrupts’ the natural family, and undermines the natural law foundation of civil rights. Its agenda divides people in an arbitrary manner that will, ironically, lead to greater strife especially for black families.”
“By advocating for gender ideology, BLM rejects the basic truths of human dignity in the natural law. Gender ideology replaces the scientific and biological reality of maleness and femaleness with the false belief that one’s sex can be changed. However, as both Pope Francis and the African Cardinal Robert Sarah have asserted, gender ideology is a false construct with no basis in scientific reality. Gender ideology is destructive because it rejects the truths of male and female existence. There can be no dignity or freedom without truth,” he added.
The website of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation recently altered a page outlining controversial beliefs of the organization on the family and sexuality.
As recently as Sept. 17, the organization’s “about” page said the group was a “a queer‐affirming network” that works toward “freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual,” to “dismantle cisgender privilege,” and to ‘disrupt’ the ‘nuclear family.’
New text on the group’s website reaffirms its positions on gender ideology, saying that “Black liberation movements in this country have created room, space, and leadership mostly for Black heterosexual, cisgender men — leaving women, queer and transgender people, and others either out of the movement or in the background to move the work forward with little or no recognition.”
Brown is not the only Black Catholic leader to criticize the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, and distinguish it from important calls for racial justice.
“It’s time to state honestly what BLM really stands for – destroying the traditional Family AND what it actually does – destroying property including religious building and objects!” tweeted Cardinal Wilfred Napier of Durban, South Africa, who himself is Black, on Aug. 28, in reference to the organization. Napier was a part of the Church in South Africa’s struggle against apartheid.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, a Black Catholic deacon of the Diocese of Portland, Oregon, author, and co-host of EWTN’s Morning Glory radio show told Catholic World Report in August that, like Brown, he draws a distinction between a movement and an organization.
“When you put those three words together—black lives matter—as a social movement, it’s a statement of truth, which is a good thing.”
“But the term ‘black lives matter’ has been conflated with the national organization, Black Lives Matter. In a lot of people’s minds, when you say ‘black lives matter,’ people automatically think of the national organization,” he lamented.
Noting that the organization’s values “raise some red flags” for him, he mentioned especially that the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation does not address the importance of fatherhood.
“Look at all that, plus the violence that is being perpetrated, the rioting, the looting, the tearing down statues, all of these things,” the deacon said. “No Catholic in good conscience can have anything to do with a group like that. Period.”
Brown’s essay said that the U.S. needs to address “racial discrimination and unjust inequality,” but called for a Christian approach to those issues.
He pointed to “police misconduct and racial discrimination in our criminal justice system, and to the disproportionate suffering that COVID-19 has wrought in many communities of color.”
“As a black man, I am pained to learn of police officers killing unarmed black people.”
“As an attorney who has also worked as a staffer in Congress and the executive branch, I have seen that the majority of law enforcement officials are good people seeking to protect and serve,” Brown wrote, but “racial discrimination in the criminal justice system continues in the form of racial profiling, police misconduct, and discriminatory criminal sentencing.”
Pointing to healthcare inequality, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, Brown noted that “Even once this health crisis ends, many African American communities will still not have the medical care they deserve. Historical patterns of racial exclusion have exacerbated negative health care outcomes. Ensuring that the vulnerable have access to proper medical care is necessary to restoring a culture of life.”
Brown’s essay came as polling shows declining support for the Black Lives Matter movement, and after the destruction of police stations and other public buildings amid protests in some cities, and the shooting of two Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies Sept. 12.
On that date, a gunman approached a parked police car near the light rail station in Compton, California, opening fire with a pistol at the two police officers inside. Both survived despite multiple gunshot wounds, and the shooter fled on foot.
The officers, a 31-year-old mother and a 24-year-old male, had been on the job less than a year, Sheriff Alex Villanueva said after the shooting.
The incident garnered additional attention because of a protest that took place later that evening outside St. Francis Medical Center, where the officers had been transported for surgery.
A video posted by a local journalist on the scene shows several men shouting at a group of police officers outside the hospital, and one can be heard shouting “I hope they [expletive] die.”
Police arrested two people in connection to the protest, including the journalist who filmed the scene; the journalist was released later that night with a citation for obstructing a police officer.
Protestors blocked the path of the ambulance carrying officers to the hospital, and the LA County Sheriff’s office said via Twitter: “DO NOT BLOCK EMERGENCY ENTRIES & EXITS TO THE HOSPITAL. People’s lives are at stake when ambulances can’t get through,”
News reports have not confirmed whether the protest at the hospital was an officially organized event convened by Black Lives Matter.
Protestors identifying themselves as being affiliated with Black Lives Matter have staged protests at police precincts across the country in recent months, with mobs destroying police precincts in Minneapolis and Portland in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in May.
Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, a local affiliate of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, did not respond to CNA’s request for comment.
Pentecostal minister Eugene Rivers, director of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies, told CNA he considers it “a moral disgrace that the BLM organization did not condemn the shooting of the police officers in Compton, California. Under no circumstances could the moral and political failure to speak up be justified.”
Rivers, who is Black, called the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation “a scam that exploits the suffering of Black people to promote gender ideology.”
The minister said the organization “is peddling morally, tactically, and intrinsically stupid ideas,” reminiscent of “the Black Panther Party, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and Revolutionary Action Movement and others who laid out an assortment of dystopian visions for the Black community and the country in general.”
Rivers said the group has “repudiate[d] Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy,” replacing it with “irrational ideas that have so quickly led to violence in its name rather than maintaining the non-violent high ground MLK staked out from his Christian perspective.”
Leaders of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles have said their efforts are more than a movement for racial justice, but are a “spiritual movement,” which have incorporated spiritual rituals into protests, drawing from animistic religions by calling forth deceased ancestors and pouring out libations for them.
Brown wrote last week that an authentic movement for racial justice needs to be rooted in love, and, ultimately, in Christ.
“Racial injustice is part of the culture of death. To build a culture of life in America, we need a revival of God’s love and a new era of civil rights,” he wrote.
“True justice is based on the foundational principle of civil rights: each person’s God-given natural rights as embodied in the natural law. Thanks to the natural law, abolitionists knew slavery was wrong even though civil law said it was right, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew segregation was wrong even though the voting majority in many states likely supported it.”
“A new era of authentic love and justice is needed and will begin with a Christian revival of love for God and neighbor. This love is the only force powerful enough to bring lasting healing.”
“The Christian faithful must rededicate themselves to love through spiritual and corporal works of mercy that serve communities of color and the vulnerable. We must give the best of the Church, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to those on the peripheries.”
“God calls us to do justice in bringing about the Kingdom of God and building up the culture of life,” Brown concluded.
“Agendas opposed to human dignity strengthen the culture of death, and can never lead us toward justice. As Christians, we must charge ahead in the love of Christ to lead a revival of God’s love and bring about a new era of Christian humanism in America.”
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Why is it necessary to “welcome” those among the euphamistic label of migrants, who happen to be refugees from prisons?
Which people are fleeing prisons?
It’s all part of the progressive doublespeak that has dominated our discourse. It is both profoundly dishonest and deeply manipulative. A recent article I read said that 7 out of 10 of the 500,000 illegals arrested in the first months of Trump’s presidency have serious criminal records and histories of violence. That challenges the leftist narrative that illegals are “honest” and “hardworking.” Cupich should be supporting the rule of law and the safety of American citizens, but his ideological commitments prevent him from seeing the issue clearly.
It sounds like they’re arresting the right people then. Good for ICE.
I hope the other folks can be integrated through work visa or residency permits, etc.
Athanasius: I wholeheartedly agree. What are we doing as a Church encouraging people to come to the USA whose first act on US soil is to break the law? What message are we sending them about our expectations as a culture? It is wrong because we are causing others to commit acts that violate US law. Oh, and by the way, I am wholeheartedly in favor of LEGAL immigration. But we shouldn’t be importing people as if they are the equivalent of cars, lumber or computer chips. That act is disgusting in my book.
Athanasius: I wholeheartedly agree. What are we doing as a Church encouraging people to come to the USA whose first act on US soil is to break the law? What message are we sending them about our expectations as a culture? It is wrong because we are causing others to commit acts that violate US law. Oh, and by the way, I am wholeheartedly in favor of LEGAL immigration. But we shouldn’t be importing people as if they are the equivalent of cars, lumber or computer chips. That act is disgusting in my book..
“Americans should remember that we all come from immigrant families”.
Huh?
My family came legally.
But your family were still immigrants Miss Cleo?
Cupich is a refugee…from sanity!
Inner city-Chicago is crime-ridden and the areas where the immigrants are being located pretty much guarantee that the younger people will end up in street gangs, on drugs, or murdered.
I certainly agree that we need to welcome immigrants who intend to become American citizens–these people are a blessing to our country!. But we also have every right to turn away those who make it obvious that they intend to break our laws and live a life of violent crime. I lived in Northern Illinois most of my life and often had to drive into Chicago–the poor areas are very dangerous and very sad.
Perhaps Cardinal Cupich could mobilize more Catholics and others to help clean up the ghettos, vote for leaders that will work to stop the crimes (especially drugs) that are killing the young and old, imprison the gang leaders, and establish good schools in these areas–and THEN welcome the immigrants into the Windy City.
Let’s put it this way: Cupich has no ‘skin in the game.’ He has no wife to be raped by criminals who enter our country illegally. He has no daughters or sons to overdose on Fentanyl imported here by drug cartels from Central and South America along with their partners in crime the Chinese Communists. He doesnt own a business where criminal gangs enter and steal his inventory at will. It’s easy to pretend to be virtuously heroic when you have nothing personally at stake.
Happy journey. Our pilgrimage on Planet Earth is short and sweet. Renowned American and European theologians declare heaven to be our final and permanent destination. For our temporary purification we are to be toiling and earning our bread with the sweat of our brow as we journey through the Americas, Africa, so on and so forth.
What is it about Chicago? Chicago Cardinal Cupich, Chicagoan Pope Leo XIV have not distinguished themselves as doctrinal traditionalists. Although they’ve got to stand for something. Advocacy for illegal migration is wildly popular with the radical left and liberal Catholics providing the Cardinal and Pope a convenient cause célèbre.
Another Chicagoan by association, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who compares Trump’s immigration policy with Nazism, perceives himself a beleaguered freedom fighter. The three by predilection and the wiles of the gods form a conspicuous Chicago triumvirate for illegal migrant justice.
As a segue to What is it about Chicago?, we still suffer the Bernadin Alinsky affect.
What is it about Chicago? Chicago Cardinal Cupich, Chicagoan Pope Leo XIV have not distinguished themselves as doctrinal traditionalists. Although they’ve got to stand for something. Advocacy for illegal migration is wildly popular with the radical left and liberal Catholics providing the Cardinal and Pope a convenient cause célèbre.
Another, Chicagoan by association, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who compares Trump’s immigration policy with Nazism, perceives himself a beleaguered freedom fighter. The three by predilection and the wiles of the gods form a conspicuous Chicago triumvirate for illegal migrant justice.