Anti-Racism: CTA’s Commitment and Legacy

CTA members protest against anti-Black police violence in Wisconsin (2015)

Dear friends,

We are living through a radical reclamation of the story of the United States, and I believe that Call To Action must play a role.  

Protests in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others are shaping our era by demanding a full reckoning with dominant white American stories of slavery, segregation, gentrification, racist policing, and prisons. Amid the pandemic already disrupting our daily lives, the Black Lives Matter movement asks us to reimagine our collective future with questions like: What would community safety without policing look like? 

As Catholics, we consider these questions through the lens of our faith. We must begin by acknowledging our Church’s complicity with white supremacy. From the slave trade to the sale of old churches for profit in today’s cities, Catholicism has benefitted from the exploitation of Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples. Progressive organizations like Call To Action are not exempt. We must ask ourselves: whose voices does our church-reform movement center? What do people of color experience in the spaces we create, promote, or cultivate? 

In 2004, Call To Action made a governance-level commitment to anti-racism. We established our Anti-Racism Team to hold us accountable to our ideals in every facet of our work. We have often failed in this, but overall, our efforts have had a positive impact on Call To Action and on our movement. The work we've done is incomplete and inadequate, but it has prepared us for this moment in time.

This June, we launched our National Campaign, an ambitious recommitment to our historic work of Church reform. We are revitalizing the Anti-Racism Team to hold us accountable to working on our core strategies of education, lobbying, direct action, and alternatives always through a lens of anti-racism. As local groups and individuals around the country begin enacting the National Campaign’s strategic vision of church reform, we look forward to making space for our members and allies to grow, learn, co-create, and practice anti-racism. We will respond to the signs of the times by deepening our understanding of our own complicity in white supremacy, past and present, and to change our individual and collective behaviors and the very ways we build our strategies and structures. We will work together to model a Church that challenges oppression wherever we find it. 

In this time of historical possibility, I encourage you to direct your resources to organizations like Call To Action that are willing to make explicit, material commitments to anti-racism efforts — and I further ask you to hold us accountable to our anti-racism commitments. To learn more about Call To Action’s anti-racism history and our plans for the future, visit our re-designed cta-usa.org or write to us at cta@cta-usa.org. 

We are persistently, intentionally, and collaboratively building a Church for all people, especially the most oppressed among us. We are always depending on and grateful for your support.

With prayer and solidarity,

Zach Johnson

CTA Executive Director

Appeal insert: Denounce Catholic Alliance with Donald Trump (Download as PDF)