TRH on Racism No. 4: Racism and Original Sin

by Tim Kirchoff

Some time before the publication of the USCCB's new pastoral letter on racism, I noticed that several bishops—including Cardinal Cupich and Archbishop Chaput, who are hardly on the same side of the political spectrum—had referred to racism as America’s “original sin.” I hoped that the letter could provide some insight into what precisely they meant by it. I was a little surprised when I got through the entire letter without that term even appearing, though I found it very briefly referenced in some of the supplemental materials.

I was not the only one to experience disappointment in reading the bishops' letter. I've noticed several criticisms of it, particularly as people have had more time to read and process it. The biggest criticisms I’ve seen are aimed at the failure to adequately address the Church’s role in perpetrating and perpetuating racism, and the absence of any discussion whatsoever of the term “white privilege.” Gratitude that the bishops are addressing racism collectively for the first time in a while has been replaced with disappointment in how little they managed to actually say. My disappointment was easier to get over, not least because the term I wanted to see explored is more obscure.

Regardless, I was still a bit puzzled by the proposition that racism is America’s original sin when a homily on a certain Holy Day of Obligation reminded me that Mary, under the title of the Immaculate Conception, is the official patroness of the United States. Almost immediately, the ideas began to react in my head like baking soda and vinegar in a grade school science project.¹

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception proclaims that Mary was miraculously conceived without original sin, and with the help of God’s grace remained free from sin for her entire earthly life. Being free from sin was not something Mary accomplished on her own: it was God who rescued her from the consequences of humanity’s fallen condition. In doing so, God showed us what he hopes to accomplish in all of us, but we make a mistake when we assume that this work has already been completed in us. Original sin is something we inherited from our first parents, and we have to accept that we still have to deal with its consequences, even after baptism.

Similar things can be said of racism. We have inherited our country's racial difficulties from previous generations. We still have to deal with the consequences of their misdeeds today: in the economic circumstances of minorities, in laws that unfairly (if sometimes indirectly or unconsciously) target minorities, and in cultural narratives and tropes that carry with them racist undertones. For Americans today, racism is as inescapable as original sin, and we should not assume that, as a society, we have overcome centuries of persecution in a few decades, all through our own efforts. Even if we were to say that either the emancipation of slaves or the Civil Rights movement represent a sort of baptism, and even if we were to set aside racism against other ethnic groups, we would still have to deal with concupiscence, a tendency to fall back into sin.

In the end, I have come to understand the connection of the theological concept of original sin to modern institutional racism as an analogy.² It's a framework for thinking about these issues in ways that keep us from seeking simple solutions. It is not just that racism has played some part in the American story from the very beginning and continues to affect us, but that we must not act as if its consequences can be overcome by human effort alone. I should not say that I have genuinely overcome racism, and I should not say that our society has genuinely overcome racism, any more than I can say we have overcome original sin.

My interpretation of the proposition that racism is America's original sin is, in many ways, disposable. But for me, remembering that Mary was immaculately conceived reminded me that I am not, and helped me think about what the bishops actually wrote about racism being a sin in more fruitful ways.

"Open Wide Our Hearts" is not the first time racism has been called a sin, even by the USCCB, but the simple act of putting racism in the category of "sin," if we carry that proposition to its conclusion, might help lay necessary groundwork for expanding the conversation on race beyond those who are or who strive to be woke.



As the moderator of a Facebook discussion group, I've seen accusations of racism derail or outright end more than one conversation. No matter how the accusation of racism is intended, the person being accused receives it as being somewhere between an ad hominem argument and outright profanity. Many generally well-meaning people don't know how to receive or process the suggestion that their arguments or perspectives betray some form of racism without perceiving all the deeply negative connotations of that term. This is a significant obstacle to anything resembling a national conversation on race- or even just one within the Catholic Church in America.

In thinking of and analyzing racism as a sin as the bishops do, we are in a certain sense liberated from the shame-inducing connotations associated with the label: we can think of racism as we think of avarice, gluttony, lust, or pride (if we understand pride as thinking of oneself as having greater worth or dignity than others, then racism is a form of pride). We can use terms like temptation, concupiscence, culpability, scrupulosity, and vincible or invincible ignorance in the context of race conversations.

In accepting original sin as an analogy for thinking about racism in the context of American society, and even more so treating racism as a sin in itself, we can adapt familiar Catholic paradigms to help us understand and lessen the deleterious effects of racism in our society.

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1 I find this analogy fitting because, compared to some other people I could name, my thoughts on this subject are probably about on the level of a grade school project.^↩

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2 As it turns out, the term seems to have been popularized by a book published some time ago. I haven't read the book, and don't know to what degree my understanding lines up with the author's, or either Cupich or Chaput's understanding of the term. This is just the way of thinking about the term that I find most interesting and useful.^↩

TRH on Racism No. 3: Encounter in the Parish

by Laura Flanagan

The number of the issues of the parish and our racial sin is legion, so I’ll likely ask more questions than provide concrete suggestions. However, I hope to set the framework for what our parishes are dealing with.

On the whole, this astute observation from Brad Klingele is what worries me about the relative lack of diversity in race and economic status we often find in our parishes (and by extension, our parish schools):

We cannot hope to help our children to stay Catholic when they are cut off from the people with whom Jesus is closest. It is very clear that our Lord is most present in the protagonists of history: ‘When I was naked, you clothed me’ (cf. Mt 25:36). If Jesus is closest to those in need, and our only connection with people occurs across the ocean of a soup kitchen pot, we are not close to Jesus. We cannot find our Lord when we are absent from him, and he is with the poor.

As racism is a related but not equivalent injustice, since systemic racism has damaged economic mobility, I’ll amend that to say the Lord is with the marginalized, per Dan’s CST analysis.

Our parishes can and should be places where we are forced into encounter. And all too often, we do not truly encounter one another. We are not made to reckon with ourselves in relation to the “other.”

When I sat in my parish’s perpetual adoration chapel a few Fridays ago, I was struck by wording in one of their suggested prayers for adorers: “I give thanks… for the privilege of visiting you in this sacrament, here in this place.” As Dan noted, “privilege” is a word closely associated with racism, as well as other socioeconomic injustices.

If an unknown black man were to enter the adoration chapel here, would I assume he was here to pray with our Lord? Or would I sit uncomfortably, wondering what his intent was? I’m really sad to say that I would not fully trust myself. The latter thought might at least cross my mind. The privilege of visiting Christ in the sacrament might not be denied by my bias, but someone else’s prayer should not be colored by any self-consciousness, created by my sinfulness and prejudice. He or she deserves the privilege of visiting Christ in the sacrament and to feel fully known and loved while there.

So where do we begin to cross the ocean of racial divide between parish communities? The easiest question and solution that came up again and again for me is representation. As always, representation is only a beginning to a solution, but it is a beginning for which I see some action steps.

​Since Catholics tend to err towards too much respect for the clergy, perhaps we can let that bias work in our favor a little. What would happen if we saw more priests of color? How would parishioners feel if their leadership really brought home to them that the priests of color we are seeing now are here because we're a "missionary territory”? These clerics are doing us a great service; they are venturing far outside their comfort zones and far from home, while offering us the exact same access to the Person of Christ as the priests who grew up in America. We owe it to them to do at least a little of the same.

How do we get a more diverse ministerial priesthood?

Wealthy parishes, practically entirely white suburban parishes like mine, often proudly support vocations from our own parishes. (In truth, we are always very proud and happy to take credit, regardless of whether we personally know the seminarian or did anything to support him).

The next step for us is to coordinate ways to support vocations from the heart of the diocese, where Jesus dwells with the poor and marginalized. Black Catholic children, Latino Catholic children, children of St. Louis’ Bosnian refugee community - they should know, explicitly and clearly, that if God is calling them to be a priest, their local Church will make that possible.

We’re not doing super well. Right now, our fancy youth vocations retreat happens during the school day, in the suburbs. If you attend public school in the predominantly-black St. Louis City? Or really, public school anywhere? If your Catholic grade school in the City doesn’t have the funds to bus the 6th grade there?

Fall into any of these categories, and you will not be able to attend. I would not blame these children for hearing, “This prayer and discernment experience is not for you,” or perhaps even, “The priesthood is not for you.” I’m sure this is not intentional by the organizers. Maybe they just have never considered that anyone interested in the priesthood might come from outside our wealthy, primarily white, suburban Catholic grade schools.

Not only must the privileged consider such vocations a possibility, we should form those youth to consider it a real possibility as well.

While drafting this piece, I got curious and searched out some data.

• In 1984, when “What We Have Seen and Heard” was published, there were 10 black bishops.
• Now there are 9 active and 6 retired. Hardly much in the way of increased representation. There are 456 active and retired Catholic bishops in the US, by the way. 
• Black representation in the American episcopate is at ~3.5%. Meanwhile, 4-4.5% of Catholics in America are black. The clergy is not representative of the Church, but that’s not awful. There is certainly still work to be done. However, 16% of America is black. The Church is not representative of the country.
• Where, if not the Church, are our black brothers and sisters?

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• Native Americans are 3.5% of Catholics. They have their representatives among the saints; where are their bishops?
• In 2000, according to the Association of Native Religious and Clergy, there were two Native bishops, twenty-eight Native priests, eight Native brothers, sixty-seven Native women religious, fifty-one Native deacons, and two Native seminarians. More recent data than that I did not find.
• Where, if not your parish, are our Native brothers and sisters?

If we do get more vocations in total, with an increase in vocations from minority groups, what happens then? More priests means the possibility of smaller parishes, and in smaller parishes you can actually get to know a majority of the people of your parish, and you know and can welcome someone who is new.

In other words, we are more likely to be forced into encounter, and we can practice in seeing Christ in the other. Even if the other with whom you have your parish disputes is of the same race or ethnic background, being engaged in true community and working out your differences is a formative experience that can be translated into racial encounter as well.

I fear that out of expediency, we’d be tempted to keep our larger parishes and just add priests to them. There could be benefits to this; a greater number of parishioners or wider parish boundaries may equal more diversity in the parish at large. But within a large parish, like gravitates to like. (I see this often - my parish is large.) You know the people who are interested in the same issues or devotions as you are, and everyone else is just the person who stole your preferred seat at Mass. While you may see a black Catholic at your Sunday Mass occasionally, you may well not know him.

Formation in encounter is not currently a reality in many of our parishes. In fact, as Jennifer Fitz states in this Patheos post from 2015, “We have set our standards for parish life so low that we’ve forgotten even basic social skills like knowing each others’ names.” While we do need to tackle this related but separate issue with parish life, the priest is the person whose name almost everyone in the parish knows.

These are the stakes:

Servant of God Augustus Tolton,
the first priest in America known to be black,
was sent by Rome to Quincy, Illinois
because the Vatican thought
America needed to have or see a black priest.
(The American bishops of the time
thought America was not yet ready.)
He opened an important door;
his white parishioners also drove him to exhaustion
and an early death with their prejudice.

We need black priests in predominantly white parishes, for the sake of encounter.

We need black priests in predominantly black parishes, for the sake of representation.

We need black priests who have grown up experiencing the particular difficulties of being black in America, so that they can inspire other young black men that the priesthood is an option available to them.

We need priests whose families came here illegally in order to prioritize their first responsibility and vocation - keeping their family together and safe.

We need white Catholics to see a person they would easily dismiss as a racial stereotype standing in persona Christi at the altar and reckon with that image, so that they might more easily see the imago Dei - see the face of Christ - in that priest’s brother or sister of the same race and background.

There will still be some people who say, “I have a black pastor, so I can’t be racist.” Others will retreat behind statements like, “Katharine Drexel was founding Catholic schools specifically for black and Native children when no one else was!” There is room for pointing to the best among us as an illustration of Christ’s goodness seen within the Church, but we must avoid pulling out our token saints and clerics, patting ourselves on the back for having a better record on human rights than many organizations, and moving on with our day.

I fear we will never truly live in a post-racism society, as long as we have a diversity of cultures to celebrate. In short, sin will always exist. But this would be a start.

TRH on Racism No. 2: CST and Engaging the Problem

by Dan Masterton

A rudimentary definition of white privilege is “inherent advantages possessed by a white person on the basis of their race in a society characterized by racial inequality and injustice,” and I am the basic embodiment of this, pun intended. Though the son of an immigrant, I, as a white kid and now a white man, have enjoyed socioeconomic stability, unmitigated opportunity, and social security my whole life. As such, I am increasingly intimately aware of my privileged upbringing and adulthood.

I will not damage the dialogue by commenting from my point of privilege. I also make no claim that the Catholic Church or Catholicism overall are not at all complicit in racism. Instead, I want to write as a theologian and pastoral minister and share the prophetic insight of Catholic Social Teaching and how it plays its small part in the way forward. I think that theology is often simply a vocabulary to describe and articulate the good things people are already thinking, feeling, and doing, to lend voice to the desire to do good that exists in parts of our world. In this case, the two principles of CST most central to my spirituality resonate with momentum that is chipping away at the racism we perpetuate either by our blindness and deference, or worse, by our active complicity.

Solidarity

This principle challenges us actively and intentionally to put aside ideas of “us” and “them,” to disavow ideas of the “other.” Instead, Solidarity calls us to love and be mindful of every person as our brother and sister. Imagine that the homeless person begging on the off ramp were your sibling -- would you, could you ignore them them? Solidarity challenges us to extend the same love we feel for our family and closest friends to all people, such that the pains and triumphs of any person are intimately felt as if they are our own.

I will admit that I am not much of an activist. I have never attended a demonstration or participated in a protest. I don’t canvass door to door or work phone banks. I am fairly skeptical of the efficacy of a lot of these things, which don’t feel all that impactful sometimes. However, I have realized that sometimes it’s not about the direct change that may or may not directly and immediately follow from these things, but rather the opportunity for accompaniment and acknowledgement that cooperative demonstrations can manifest.

Movements to restore or establish the standing of marginalized groups are important to realize the full dignity and value of lives that may be endangered for various reasons. I’m thinking of groups like unborn children, the LGBTQ community, and Black Lives Matter. And the tricky thing here for a born, heterosexual, white man, is that I do not and cannot belong to any of these groups. A small thing I, and others, can do -- something I first saw modeled by rainbow ribbons and pins seen across my college campus -- is be an ally, someone who openly and overtly expresses my relationship, support, and companionship for a group who is being forgotten or overlooked. It can even be a small way of acknowledging one’s privilege and using it to stand with a group that lacks that same social standing.

Here in Chicago, that ideal of Solidarity was beautifully expressed toward victims of homicide, largely fell by gun violence, through a powerful demonstration at the end of 2016, a year which saw over 700 murders in the city. While gun violence and homicide disproportionately affect neighborhoods that are primarily people of color, people from all over Chicagoland turned out to honor the memory of these victims. Carrying four-foot crosses -- each marked with a heart, a name, and an age -- family members of victims, alongside allies of victims who otherwise would have been unrepresented, marched in silence down Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, a stretch usually dominated by tourists, window shoppers, and happy consumption. Their silent march was broken only by the amplified reading of 29 pages worth of those names that adorned the crosses.



While not everyone who held up a cross was directly affected by the loss of a murder victim, those who came as allies walked in solidarity. Acknowledging Christ’s call to see all people as our brothers and sisters, attendees not personally touched by gun violence nonetheless stepped in to march alongside the victims’ families. While allies must be careful not to assume familiarity with the wounds these families have felt, their respectful, earnest desire to walk alongside those families can evaporate some of the distance mainstream society may otherwise attempt to place between apparently violent, undesirable communities and itself.

A solidarity march won’t pass reasonable gun control laws or push back against undue lobbying influence from pro-gun camps; it will manifest the bonds that tie humanity to each other across neighborhood and racial boundaries and show small ways that people can and should accompany one another. That’s not enough, but it’s a small piece worth doing.

Preferential Option for the Poor and Marginalized

This CST challenges us not to block out those in need from our mindsets. Rather, we need to intentionally and consciously consider people on the margins in every decision we make individually, communally, and socially. This means everything from budgeting and spending habits to voting and law-making. Anytime we make a decision that intentionally excludes its ramifications for people on the margins -- or even fails to specifically consider these people -- we are falling short. The Preferential Option invites an intentional mindset that adds a needed layer to conventional decision-making.

While some people criticize things like affirmative action as “reverse racism” or something, the principle is sound. Consider parents with multiple children, one of whom is sick. Should the parents continue caring for all children the same way, status quo? Or should the parents dedicate extra care and attention to the sick child -- adding things like a doctor visit, medication administration, and extra rest time? Surely, parents shouldn’t just treat all kids equally and assume the sick kid will naturally catch up. That specific care to help the sick child get better is what more effectively and more compassionately helps your kids feel equally well again. And no one would accuse a parent of loving that child more because they provided extra attention while the kid was sick. The idea is that we specifically consider and respond to the needs of those on the margins such that our social activity will draw everyone back together into one society.

When it comes to the Church, I think the most concrete and effective way that the Church is accompanying those on the margins is the Cristo Rey model of secondary education. The approach is more akin to development than charity, an example of working for justice by creating access to private education in a new way. While Catholic schools certainly must all fundraise, and many rightly provide robust financial aid to families who could not otherwise afford it, Cristo Rey takes a slightly different approach to bridge that financial divide, and does so in a more sustainable fashion. The Cristo Rey model creates access to exceptional education for those who could not otherwise afford it, primarily serving people of color.

The Cristo Rey Network depends on its schools establishing corporate partnerships to animate a Corporate Work Study Program (CWSP). Companies create and supervise entry-level positions for students from their partner school; they can also underwrite positions at non-profits. The school groups students into work days and places them with CWSP jobs, where they work five days a month such that they and a few other students together do the work of one employee; their academic schedules are built around their work days in a way that the four (sometimes three) days of school they attend each week are comparable to the instructional time for a traditional high school student. The student then earns an income from their CWSP placement that pays for most of their tuition. Families, who have applied, interviewed, and qualified for admission based on financial need, then make a more manageable contribution to tuition (usually, a few thousand dollars), and schools fundraise to complete the cost to educate (usually, a few more thousand dollars per student).

Financially, students gain access to a private, Catholic education, primarily on the backs of their own work at their placement; likewise, families still have skin in the game and must contribute. Practically speaking, students gain unique experience at their placement. They must maintain appropriate dress, professional behavior, and become accountable workers. Students become substantially work experienced, not just at your typical teenager job behind a fast food counter or stocking shelves at a store but in a corporate setting, where their employers report strong satisfaction with the performance of their student-workers. In addition to the practical experience they gain, they are exposed to a world and lifestyle beyond minimum-wage, blue-collar jobs and ideally realize they have a choice in their future and career via their experience and education. Rather than blue-collar labor by necessity, their experience and education can hopefully liberate them from that cycle to choose a path that fits their gifts and abilities, be it skilled labor or a more white-collar path.

This model of education goes beyond charity. It is a unique combination that puts students on the spot to commit to a program and dedicate themselves to maturity and responsibility, requires them to invest in themselves, and provides the means to choose an outcome that can bring both fulfillment and stability. Opting for these students on the margins by executing and sustaining this model ideally means that these students’ children will not need the CR model for their education, that coming generations can proceed from their parents’ liberation and thus thrive.

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This is just the tip of the iceberg in applying Catholic Social Teaching to the racial issues in our country and our world. And these are just two small ways I’ve witnessed CST lived out in substantial ways. There is ever deeper resonance between the prophetic teachings our Tradition imputes and the perennial problems society faces. We’ll always have more to understand and more justice to enact. Though often brought up with respect to ecumenical and interfaith ministry and dialogue, I hear the prayer of Jesus echoing through our racial friction and feel the tension in considering Jesus’ yet unrealized hope: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.” (John 17:20-21)

TRH on Racism No. 1: Name the Tension. Call it Racism.

by Erin M. Conway

Recently I read Jon Sobrino, SJ’s book No Salvation Outside the Poor. In it, he writes about the necessity and impact of calling things by name. Theologically, the simple act of naming, he writes, “means making things real, calling them into existence.”¹ Sobrino cites Genesis here as the first example of the power of names. Names give validity. They give power. They take things previously unacknowledged and confirm their existence.

As a liberation theologian, Sobrino is deeply concerned with Catholics’ particular acknowledgment of and encounter with the poor. Writing in the aftermath of the Salvadoran Civil War, he seeks especially to call attention to the thousands of Salvadorans who were disappeared² or killed in those years. “Just by mentioning the names of the tortured, dead, and disappeared,” he writes, “we recognize their fundamental dignity as human beings who deserve to be remembered as such.” Knowing the names of the poor allows us to enter into relationship with them, and in doing so we are able to acknowledge the dignity that exists within them as children of God. After all, God herself tells us in Isaiah 43, “I have called you by name, you are mine.”

Sobrino examined his historical and cultural moment and cried out for justice. He believed that the central mission of the church is and would be lost when a society lost sight of her poor.

As I finished Sobrino’s book, I was confronted with questions. What massive poverty or injustice threatens our nation today? Who are the people whose fundamental dignity we should be remembering? Who or what, should we, as people of faith, be calling by name?

You don’t have to look too hard in our country today to discover situations fraught with injustice.

• The killing of unarmed black men and women by police with seemingly little legal recourse.
• A president who ran an election campaign inundated with references to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” “murderers,” and even “bad hombres.”
• Children separated from their parents as they seek asylum on our Southern Border.
• A twitter storm that consumed our country in response to the behavior of students from Covington Catholic High School.
• The divisive rhetoric surrounding Colin Kaepernick’s insistence on kneeling during the National Anthem and the backlash that has met those who followed suit.
• Four years worth of unclean water for families and children in Flint, Michigan.
• A so-called “Muslim ban” which prohibited foreign nationals from Muslim majority countries from entering the United States.

As much as we speak about these events, as much as we talk about them with our friends or post about them on social media, we often fail to name what they all hold in common.

What if we acknowledged that each and every one of those events is affected by, escalated by, or defined by race? What if we called the systemic inequalities that ravage our country by the name of racism? What if we, as people of faith, pushed our country to talk about race and racism in a way that honors the humanity of all people? What if we, as white Catholics, examined the ways in which our privilege has blinded us to the struggles of our brothers and sisters of color? What if as a church we spoke more intentionally and consistently about the racism that exists not only in our country but in our church? What if we spent time encountering and accompanying people of color rather the seeking constantly to explain why we aren’t actually racist? How could this naming change our nation?

To be fair, our world does not often provide us with strong examples. Mainstream media, for example, seems to bend over backward in order to avoid specifically naming any incidents or individuals as “racist.” For example, NPR recently reported on how, in response to remarks by Iowa Representative Steve King, an editor from NBC News sent an email to their staff which read, “Be careful to avoid characterizing [King’s] remarks as racist. It is okay to attribute to others as in ‘what many are calling racist’ or something like that.”

If you listen closely, you’ll hear similar, more subtle rhetoric everywhere. We’d rather say that our immigration policies stem from “concerns over national security,” not an underlying racism for those who look different than us. We’d prefer to argue that poverty in our cities is not the result of historically racist policies such as redlining, but is instead connected to “laziness” or “poor decision making.” It is more comfortable to claim black Americans are killed by police because they “were reaching for their waistband,” not because of implicit racial bias.

We cannot create justice and move beyond the racism that divides our country if we don’t first name it.

Father Bryan Massingale, Professor of Theological and Social Ethics at Fordham, speaks adamantly that “virtually every social challenge facing the United States [...] is entangled with or aggravated by racial bias against people of color.” He calls racism “the subtext of almost every social concern in our nation”³ and insists that Catholics lead the way in conversations about racial justice.

Instead of shying away, let’s use names.

Tamir Rice.
Trayvon Martin.
LaQuan McDonald.
Sandra Bland.
Jakelin Caal Maquin.
Felipe Gomez Alonzo.

When we name the black men and women killed at the hands of the police, when we name the children who died in the custody of Customs and Border Patrol, it becomes much harder to look away. It becomes harder to imagine that their lives and deaths have nothing to do with us.

In my own life, I have been able to name the racism I see in our country because of my experiences as a teacher. Working in places like Baltimore City, the Coachella Valley, and Cleveland has caused me to look deep inside, recognize my own privilege, and realize I can no longer stay silent. Once I listened to the stories of my students I realized the privileged place I occupy in the universe and there has been no turning back. I learned names and stories and I haven’t been able to look away.

My job has enabled me, a white Catholic woman, to walk in the door each day and encounter people of color in a meaningful and intimate way. This accompaniment doesn’t mean I perfectly handle conversations surrounding race, however. They are moments my students and I struggle to understand one another, moments when I fail in my role as a compassionate educator, when I put my foot in my mouth and fail to recognize fundamental differences that lies between our experiences and realities. But in these encounters, I’ve been able to NAME the struggle. Racism is real. I see and hear it every day and I truly believe that my students have allowed me to recognize this in a way I never have before.

As a people of faith, we can do what God asks of us and lead the way in the naming of racism. We can recognize that racism and its implications are things we should absolutely care about. We can work actively to dismantle its effects. For many of us, meaningful encounter with people of color is not an everyday occurrence. So we must change our behavior. We must learn names, we must learn stories, and we must enter into meaningful relationship.

But in this effort, we shouldn’t put the burden of story sharing on our brothers and sisters of color. We have to do the work ourselves first. Read books. Listen to podcasts. Check out The Restless Hearts over the next several weeks as we dive more deeply into the ways race and racism intersects with our existence as Catholics. We can examine our own prejudices and begin to recognize our own privilege, and perhaps more importantly, our own blind spots. Let’s begin to call this thing by its name: racism.

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1 No Salvation Outside the Poor, Jon Sobrino, Orbis Books, 2008.^↩

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2 There are thousands of Salvadoran’s who went missing during the Civil War whose deaths have never been accounted for - these individuals are referred to as having been “disappeared.”^↩

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3 Racial Justice and the Catholic Church, Bryan N. Massingale, Orbis Books, 2010. ^↩