Call To Action calls on white Catholics: dismantle white supremacy in the Church and in the world
Image: Carlos Gonzalez, Star Tribune via AP
Our Affirmation: Black Lives Matter
As Catholics, we raise our voices to call for deep respect for life.
The recent execution of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department is a violation of human rights and yet another indictment of the systemic racism plaguing so-called “peace-keeping” forces across the United States, from ICE to the US military to local police departments. White supremacy is a sinful assault on the dignity of people of color, and this is a story we have heard too many times.
We affirm unapologetically, with conviction and without condition: Black lives matter.
Black people are facing white supremacist violence, and white political and religious leaders are doing too little to respond. From Breonna Taylor to Ahmaud Arbery, from Aiyana Stanley-Jones to Tamir Rice, Black people are being murdered because of white supremacy. White supremacy is evident when our President calls for violence against protestors, and it is evident in our nation’s economic, legal, and cultural systems that do not value Black lives. Those who have been killed, as well as those who are treated as disposable by our economy and society, are made in God’s image and likeness. They are known and loved by God.
We are grateful for the work of leaders in the Movement for Black Lives, and we support their important demands and thoughtful policy recommendations. The work of Black activists and organizers upholds the dignity of all, especially the most marginalized.
Our Call: White Catholics Must Speak Out
At this moment, each person has an important contribution to make. Our Church, society, and economy must ensure that each person has the ability to live and contribute to our interdependent community of shared life. But for too long, white Catholics, like white people more broadly, have stood idly by in the face of racist violence, offering unhelpful platitudes or quiet calls for racial reconciliation.
White silence is violence. Today, we say “no more.”
No more tepid statements from bishops that plaster over racist violence, saying “all human life is sacred” while refusing to say “Black lives matter.” We agree with Catholic writer and activist Olga Segura: “these words are an utter disappointment.”
No more silence, and no more avoidance. We must promote hard conversations about racism in Catholic sanctuaries, parish halls, and conferences. This includes our own Call To Action spaces.
No more assertions of colorblindness. White Catholics must acknowledge the racism in our institutions without expressing defensiveness or crying “‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14). As Catholics, we are called to build peace by working for justice. We must cease our calls for reconciliation and cooperation until we have put in the work to ensure concrete reparations.
Our Time: White Catholics Must Repent, Change Course, and Act
Now more than ever, we must follow the call of leaders like Dr. Oluwatomisin Oredein, who has called on Christians to do sound theology attentive to white supremacy by no longer depending on whitewashed notions of reconciliation and forgiveness. We must speak out and act against what Fr. Bryan Massingale rightly calls “a pathetic, anemic, Catholic response.”
It is time for white Catholics to do more and do better.
It is time for us to call for an abolitionist response that defunds police and carceral repression and funds antiracist, community-based alternatives to punitive “justice”.
It is time for us to join in partnership with our ecumenical neighbors like the United Church of Christ, who have called Christians to “uproot white supremacy in all of its forms.” We join their demand: “Whiteness must no longer be our god.”
It is time for the Catholic Church in the United States, from laypeople to bishops, to commit political and economic resources to racial reparations and bold action for racial justice. This does not only mean speaking out in statements or on social media. It means transforming society and building a mass movement for change.
It is time for the Catholic Church in the United States to divest from its current misguided political commitments and refocus our political campaigns on dismantling systemic racism.
It is time for Catholic bishops, clergy, and lay leaders to live our faith by following the lead and demands of Black organizers, paying reparations for past and present harms and supporting the Black freedom movement, politically and economically.
We must act, and we must act today. Every level of the church must engage in this work for Biblical liberation and the justice modeled by Jesus, and we must begin without delay.
