Catholic Replies

Q. Catholic friends of mine are supporters of Black Lives Matter. I agree that we are to practice racial justice, but is backing this organization the best way to do that? — T.L.H., via e-mail.
A. When you look at the actions and web site of Black Lives Matter (BLM), the answer is a resounding no. If they were truly interested in preserving black lives, they would be standing in front of Planned Parenthood abortion chambers, protesting the killing of 20 million black babies by abortion since 1973. They would be denouncing the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, a white supremacist and racist who said that “birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race” and that “we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
Why aren’t they doing this? Because, says black conservative Lt. Col. Allen West, “the white progressive socialist masters who fund, resource, and enable Black Lives Matter don’t give a darn about the lives of black children.” He said that “I am tired of our nation cowering, appeasing, acquiescing, and surrendering to this absurd organization calling itself Black Lives Matter. There is nothing true or sincere about this ideologically aligned progressive, socialist, cultural, Marxist organization.”
According to David Horowitz, son of Communist parents and radical leftist in the sixties and seventies before the murder of a friend by the Black Panther Party caused him to repudiate his former comrades, “Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 by three self-styled ‘Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries’ who selected as their movement icon convicted cop-killer and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur.”
Shakur fled to Communist Cuba after her homicide conviction and, following the death of Fidel Castro in 2016, BLM leaders mourned the passing of “El Comandante” and said that “we are particularly grateful to Fidel for holding Mama Assata Shakur, who continues to inspire us.”
According to its website, “Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to state-sanctioned violence and anti-black racism.” However, its statements of belief include uplifting “black trans folk, especially black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence,” dismantling “the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another,” and fostering “a queer-affirming network . . . with the intention of freeing ourselves from . . . the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).”
Those last two statements, says Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, on his Twitter account, “are contrary to Faith…#1 opposing the nuclear family (where is dad?) and #2 opposing God’s plan for sex as a union of male & female. This agenda is dangerous.”
You wouldn’t know that from all the Catholic bishops endorsing BLM, even when one of its activists, Shaun King, has called for destroying “all murals and stained-glass windows of white Jesus, and His European mother, and their white friends.” He has said that “the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been.”
King is apparently unaware that images of Jesus have usually reflected the country in which they were produced. For example, a black Jesus has always been depicted in Ethiopia. And those familiar with Our Lady of Guadalupe know that she appeared to St. Juan Diego in Mexico City in 1531 in the guise of an Aztec maiden.
The biggest lie perpetrated by BLM and its advocates is that the United States is systematically racist. Are there racists in this country, both black and white? Certainly. But is the entire country racist? Not even close. A systematically racist nation would never have twice elected a black man president. Nor would there be so many prominent, and wealthy, black people in government, industry, education, entertainment, sports, etc. For excellent rebuttals of this malicious canard, see the videos and writings of such blacks as Ben Carson, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Wilfred Reilly, Carol Swain, Candace Owen, Jason Hill, Coleman Hughes, and Robert Woodson.
Woodson, a prominent civil rights activist in the sixties, founded the Woodson Center to address the problems of urban blacks, not through hatred and violence, but by reducing crime and violence, restoring families, creating economic enterprise and employment areas, and revitalizing low-income communities. He has also founded the 1776 Unites Campaign to “uphold our country’s authentic founding virtues and values and challenge those who assert America is forever defined by its past failures, such as slavery.”
1776 Unites is an antidote to the phony 1619 Project that The New York Times is trying to put in schools across the land and that thoroughly distorts the history of our country, dating its founding not to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but to the arrival of slaves here in 1619. Woodson calls the 1619 agenda “moral and spiritual poison.”
Another big lie is that all the founders of this nation were evil and that their statues should be torn down and their memory erased from the history books. If BLM prevails, this nation will look like the country George Orwell wrote about in his novel 1984:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified. Every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every day has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Were the Founders and subsequent leaders of America perfect? Of course not. They were sinners with flaws, just like the rest of us. But they created a nation where all were to be treated equally and where all would have the same opportunity to thrive. Was slavery a blot on our history? Yes. But so is abortion today, with the slaughter of more than 60 million unborn babies since 1973, but do you hear the leaders of BLM calling for an end to abortion?
Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. So what good does it do to erase the bad parts of American history? Can’t we learn from them and correct the mistakes of the past? Tearing down statues and defacing monuments have become so mindless that the destroyers are even tearing down the statue of the president who abolished slavery, and the statues of those abolitionists who fought to end slavery!
They slander St. Junipero Serra, the Spanish Franciscan missionary who founded nine Catholic missions in what is now California. To those who falsely accuse him of genocide against the indigenous peoples, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco said that “St. Serra made heroic sacrifices to protect the indigenous people of California from their Spanish conquerors, especially the soldiers. Even with his infirmed leg which caused him such pain, he walked all the way to Mexico City to obtain special faculties of governance from the Viceroy of Spain in order to discipline the military who were abusing the Indians. And then he walked back to California.”
BLM is less about preventing racism and more about destroying the moral and religious principles that undergird our civilization. Their promotion of Marxism is really about the destruction of religion, which Karl Marx called “the opiate of the people.” And exiled Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that “within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force.”
If they were really about uplifting the black population, wouldn’t BLM be fighting against black-on-black murders in our large cities? Or giving black parents the choice of better schools for their children? Or returning black fathers to their crucial role in the family? Instead, BLM calls for dismantling our justice system, defunding the police, releasing dangerous criminals from prison, and ending all restrictions on immigrants crossing our borders.
How can one rationally discuss anything with a group that heaps hatred and vitriol on all police — whites and blacks — shouting at them taunts like, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon!” and, “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now!”
Instead of wreaking havoc on blacks and whites alike, Black Lives Matter ought to follow the advice of Martin Luther King, who said that “in the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”