By CHRISTOPHER MANION
America’s bishops have been struggling to regain their balance ever since the lockdowns began. Financial ruin faced our schools, parishes, even entire dioceses. Catholics everywhere were starving for the sacraments. Recently, a brave few prelates dared to shed the onerous handcuffs imposed by their Blue State governors. Without the government’s permission, they announced that Catholics could return to Mass. They were surprised at the alacrity with which the authorities backed off.
Many among the laity had been insisting for months that the ban on public Masses was a violation of our religious freedom, but most bishops had proven unwilling to challenge the quarantines. Democrats were undoubtedly pleased at how little resistance their burdensome diktats had provoked, not only from religious leaders but from a public intimidated by an unprecedented campaign of fear.
Restrictions were slowly easing when George Floyd died a grisly death at the hand of a Minneapolis policeman on the 28th of May. Suddenly, our body of bishops, long anesthetized by the lockdowns, came back to life and embraced Floyd’s death as the inspiration for a renewed campaign against racism.
There had been other murders that might well have qualified as a catalyst for their campaign. In December, an Arab al-Qaeda terrorist named Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani assassinated Airman Mohammed Sameh Haitham, Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson, and Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters in Pensacola. No bishop raised the cry of “racism” — in fact, most media reports didn’t even bother to mention the names of the victims.
Last month, Kelvin Edwards, who is black, savagely attacked a middle-aged white couple, Kevin Craft and his wife Leanne, in Nashville, Tenn. Edwards was apparently attempting to dismember them with a machete. The incident received brief media attention, but when we asked Nashville Bishop J. Mark Spalding whether this was a racist incident, our repeated requests received no reply.
During the riots that followed Floyd’s death, two black law enforcement officers, David Dorn of St. Louis and David Patrick Underwood of Oakland, were killed by unknown assailants. In her Capitol Hill testimony following her brother’s death, Underwood’s sister Angela Underwood-Jacobs said, “I’m wondering where is the, where is the outrage for a fallen officer that also happens to be African American?”
In all of these cases, no one marched, no one cried “racism,” although many, like David Underwood’s sister, wondered, “Where’s the outrage?”
For our bishops, the answer to her pertinent question is simple: “It depends.”
Ideology And Reality In The Inner City
The USCCB’s focus on racism has been consistent over the years. In 1979, their pastoral letter on the subject declared that “most” whites are racists, that nobody else can be, and that most of us who are racists don’t even know it because it is such a “subtle” sin. The rest of the document is a muddle of pseudo-Marxist class struggle palaver, which goes far to explain why the bishops have never had a pastoral letter on the thousands of murders of blacks committed every year by blacks.
Three years ago, our bishops reacted to a confrontation in Charlottesville by condemning hatred and calling for unity and prayer. “The abhorrent acts of hatred on display in Charlottesville are an attack on the unity of our nation and therefore summon us all to fervent prayer and peaceful action,” they wrote. “The bishops stand with all who are oppressed by evil ideology.”
Immediately the flaks from the USCCB’s lobbying office sent them a strong corrective: “It sounds like you’re agreeing with Trump. That will get you nowhere.” So the next day the USCCB issued a new statement that added a condemnation of “racism, white supremacy, and neo-Nazism.”
Gone was the condemnation of “evil ideology.” It’s not hard to see why. When is the last time they criticized pro-abortion Catholic politicians? When is the last time they criticized the Democrat politicians who have ruled, and ruined, major cities throughout the country where most of those black-on-black murders are committed year after year?
Economist Walter Williams considers those politicians to be the cause of the real plight of his fellow blacks.
“Democratic-controlled cities have the poorest-quality public education despite their large, and growing, school budgets,” he writes. Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia have betrayed the black community for decades. And the combination of “violent crime and poor education is not the only problem for Democratic-controlled cities,” he continues. “Because of high crime, poor schools, and a less pleasant environment, cities are losing their economic base and their most productive people in droves.”
We await patiently for the USCCB’s pastoral on recovering the inner city from the damage done by pro-abortion Democrats. Or even the plight of fatherless children in those communities. While we wait, we might share the sentiment of Angela Underwood-Jacobs: “I’m wondering where is the, where is the outrage” from our shepherds for the disasters that have been wrought on these communities that “also happen to be African American?”
By the way, these persecuted communities also comprise the millions of black children who are targeted by abortion mills in inner cities. Why haven’t the bishops issued a pastoral letter on that monumental racist crime?
Don’t expect them to any time soon. At their annual meeting last November two-thirds of our shepherds voted to affirm that abortion was the “preeminent” political issue facing Catholics in the coming election. The USCCB bureaucracy immediately reversed that decision with regard to its programs, but today we can affirm that the minority of bishops has prevailed in practice: Abortion is not the “preeminent” political issue for Catholics, racism is.
Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are free to trumpet their Catholic faith without any resistance from the hierarchy. Since May 28, the USCCB, its PR “news” service, and its leadership have been all racism, all the time.
Lies Exposed,
But Hey, So What?
Last week we reported on a local Washington archbishop who was shocked, shocked! to discover that the Knights of Columbus had invited the president and his wife to the Shrine of St. John Paul II. The occasion provided an opportunity to honor the great saint as a champion of religious freedom, and to commemorate that freedom with the signing of a presidential executive order on the subject at the White House the same day. The local prelate was indignant that he had been blindsided by this “reprehensible” visit, and proceeded to attack President Trump, as well as the Knights.
Not so fast. Thanks to a report from the Catholic News Agency, we find from White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere that “Archbishop Gregory received an invitation to the President’s event at the St. John Paul II Shrine the week prior to the President’s visit. He declined due to other commitments.”
Following the archbishop’s attack, Deere told The Washington Post that: “It’s shameful for anyone to call themselves a person of faith yet question the President’s own deeply held faith or motives for going to mark an important milestone for Catholics.”
“President Trump’s visit gave comfort and hope to Catholics in this country and all over the world that this President is a man of God who will always protect the sanctity of life and promote religious freedom,” he added.
At a local event a few days after his attack on the president, the archbishop did not apologize for his misleading statement. Instead, he said that the widespread outrage it spawned was “reminiscent of the criticisms that people gave to Catholic priests and nuns they saw marching during the civil rights period.”
There you go. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re all racists.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress