A Litany of Lament

A litany of lament praying for those wounded by people who claim the name of Jesus. Please pray with me.

Christians love to honor our martyrs, the men, women, and children who died in imitation of their Savior, refusing to betray the one who laid down his life for them.

But we forget that historically, we aren’t always the oppressed. We have all too often been the oppressors. Nations have committed atrocities in the name of Jesus. Christian cultures have victimized those who don’t embrace our creed or who break moral or even cultural norms. Those who represent the Church have abused children and adults, sometimes secretly and sometimes to public acclaim.

On this account, I generally highlight the heroes, the ones who remind us who we ought to be and who show us how to fight against evil within the Church as much as without.

But we can’t ignore the atrocities perpetrated in the name of Jesus, in our names. We can’t gloss over the evils of the past (and, Lord have mercy, the present) with a glib statement that racism and misogyny and rape and murder were never *Church teaching* as though the wickedness doesn’t matter because we have doctrines against it.

These were our people.

These were our ancestors.

We share a name, a heritage, a faith.

And when we look away from the evil, we take their side. When we brush off the ugliness committed in our name, we stand with the aggressors. When we say, “Yes, but…” and hold up our own examples of oppression or our human rights heroes or our doctrine that decries the actions that were still praised or accepted or ignored—then we further wound the marginalized and abused.

Praise God that we can do something. We can learn about the atrocities. We can refuse to look away. We can donate to groups that are doing the work of bringing healing.

We can fast and pray, offering reparations for the ways the Church and her members have wounded the people so deeply loved by God, the people Jesus died for. We can enter into the burning, wounded, beating Sacred Heart of Jesus and hold our brothers and sisters there, begging the Lord for mercy, for healing, for justice.

Let us pray.

A Litany of Lament

For Native children stolen from their families and poisoned against their people, for the cultures destroyed and the souls driven from Jesus, we pray,

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, bring healing.
Lord, let there be justice.

For the people kidnapped and enslaved, abused by Christians and told that resistance was a sin, we pray,

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, bring healing.
Lord, let there be justice.

For the Jewish people discriminated against, forced to convert, abused, and murdered for sharing a faith with Jesus and his mother, we pray,

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, bring healing.
Lord, let there be justice.

For all people who have suffered at the hands of Catholics because they were not themselves Catholic, for fellow Christians disdained or killed, for Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and pagans and every member of every religion abused, oppressed, robbed of their faith, forced to convert, or killed, we pray,

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, bring healing.
Lord, let there be justice.

For the children and vulnerable adults abused by priests and religious and others who claimed the name of Jesus, for those who lost peace and innocence and trust in God’s Church, we pray,

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, bring healing.
Lord, let there be justice.

For those women in crisis pregnancies who were vilified, who were lied to, who were forced or coerced into making an adoption plan, who were sent away, whose babies were stolen, who were advised to abort, who were abandoned, we pray,

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, bring healing.
Lord, let there be justice.

For people denied access to the Sacraments, barred from religious orders, made to receive communion last, forced into segregated churches, othered, excluded, not represented, and made to feel like they don’t belong because of their race, we pray,

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, bring healing.
Lord, let there be justice.

For the people excluded, ignored, rejected, vilified, taught to hate themselves, or taught that God hates them for their sexuality, their gender identity, their mental illness, their disability, their poverty, their addiction, their marital status, their infertility, their chronic illness, their bereavement, or the circumstances of their birth, we pray,

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, bring healing.
Lord, let there be justice.

(Feel free to print and share)

A Trinity Sunday Homily on Racism

Dear Fathers,

I know that many of you haven’t spoken out on racism because you’re not sure what to say. Or because you think it’s too political an issue. Or because you think it goes without saying. But our Church is filled with people who unthinkingly benefit from oppressive structures, with people who are openly or subtly racist, with people who mean well but are unaware of the need to stand with the oppressed and marginalized right now.

Your Black parishioners need to know that you will fight for them. Your other parishioners need your prophetic voice to call them out of sin (sins of omission and sins of commission). So I wrote this homily for Trinity Sunday for those who might benefit. Use it as a jumping-off point or just read it from the pulpit—no need to attribute anything to me.

******

Today is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, the feast that celebrates the central mystery of our faith: that God is one God in three persons, distinct but not separate.

It’s a truth of the faith that we often ignore. We acknowledge that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and mutter something about a shamrock, feeling rather uncertain about what seems to be a faulty mathematical equation. And once a year you hear about the Trinity from the pulpit and the rest of the year we all go about our lives.

But the mystery of the Trinity reveals something powerful to us about God: that God is communion. When we say God is love, we don’t just mean that God is nice or that he loves you, but that he is love. He has always been love and will always be love, because he in himself is a communion of love.

Since before there was time, the Father has been pouring himself out in love to the Son and the Spirit, the Son pouring himself out in love to the Father and the Spirit, the Spirit pouring himself out in love to the Father and the Son. And when God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to live and die and rise for us, Jesus called on his follower to love in the same way. Not just to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Not just to “love your neighbor as yourself.” So much more than that: to love as he loves you (Jn 13:34). And how does Jesus love you? He tells us at the Last Supper: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” (Jn 15:9).

As the Father has loved him.

That makes the dogma of the Trinity rather more practical than theoretical. The Father loves the Son wildly, ceaselessly, eternally. Which means God loves you wildly, ceaselessly, eternally. And you have to love others wildly, ceaselessly, eternally.

It’s not enough just not to hate. You have to love, to pour yourself out, to sacrifice.

Imagine if God the Son had looked down on his people trapped in sin and plagued by the devil and said, “That’s not my problem.” Imagine if he had seen children abused and said, “Well, I didn’t abuse any children.” Imagine if he had murmured something about “human-on-human crime” and allowed every one of us to wend our way to damnation.

It’s a horrifying image, isn’t it?

God doesn’t love like that. God doesn’t ignore your pain.

My friends, there is a plague in this country. There has been since our founding: a plague of racism and injustice. And let me be very clear: racism is evil. It is a grave sin.

Now I know that many of you don’t hate Black and Brown people. Lots of you don’t even discriminate against them. That’s not enough. You have to fight for them, as Jesus fought for you. You have to listen to their stories. You have to learn about the systems of injustice that have oppressed people in this country for centuries. You have to examine your own areas of prejudice and beg the Lord to make you more like him, with a heart that pours itself out in love.

When Paul talks in the second reading about mending our ways and living in peace, he says that this fighting for justice and unity is the only way that our God who is love will truly be with us. Ignoring suffering and division doesn’t build up the body of Christ, even if you genuinely had nothing to do with it. Loving suffering people, listening to them, fighting for justice in our schools, in our justice system, in our Church—that’s what builds up the body of Christ.

God’s nature teaches us about our nature. He has made us to be like himself: merciful, gracious, slow to anger, rich in kindness. He has made us to pour ourselves out in love. But unlike God’s love, our love is not a pure gift of mercy. It’s demanded by justice. We have to recognize the ways we’ve been complicit, the jokes we shouldn’t have laughed at, the suffering we shouldn’t have ignored. And if we’re going to call ourselves Christians, we have to follow the Spirit’s prompting to grow and learn and love better.

To my Black brothers and sisters1: I’m sorry. I don’t just mean some vague expression of sympathy. I mean I apologize. I apologize on behalf of Church leadership that has failed so many times over the centuries to honor your dignity and fight for your freedom. I apologize on behalf of people who wear the name of Christian while harboring the sin of racism in their hearts. And I apologize for my own behavior, for the ways I’ve been complicit, for failing to listen to you, to fight for you. I’m so sorry.

My friends, this is not a political homily. This is not about police. This is not about protests. This is about a God who is love and is calling you to love sacrificially, even when it’s uncomfortable. I’m just not sure how we can mark ourselves with the sign of the Cross if we’re unwilling to share in the Cross, even in the smallest way, for love of our brothers and sisters.

Ask the Holy Spirit to make you uncomfortable. Ask the crucified Son of God to lead you to love sacrificially. Ask the Father for mercy, mercy, mercy. Pray for justice. Pray for peace. But do the work.

Let us love one another. Whatever it costs.

  1. If I were delivering this address, I would livestream it. And if there weren’t any Black people in the church, I would turn to the camera and say, “To my Black brothers and sisters listening here or online. I would not omit this paragraph. []

What the Saints Did in the Face of Racism

This weekend a bunch of men (and some women) in polo shirts and khaki pants grabbed their tiki torches and showed their true colors to a world of white people who responded in stunned disbelief while people of color raised an eyebrow at how very shocked we all were. They flew swastikas and screamed hatred without even having the decency to hide behind hoods and masks and while there weren’t many there were far too many. And they were heavily armed, many of them, but unmolested by police, though it doesn’t take much research to see that other protestors aren’t accorded the same rights. And didn’t they go to middle school and read Anne Frank’s diary and don’t they know this wasn’t their land and can’t they see that nothing about what they’re doing is okay???

So we wring our hands and #Charlottesville because what do you say when people who look like you have gone absolutely crazy? Obviously you condemn it. Obviously. But these things keep happening and everybody knows racism is bad and I’m just so tired of it all.

We don’t get to be tired.

Or rather, if you’re tired, you get to push through. You get to nap and get up and keep going. You get to keep fighting this because if you’re reading this you’re likely white and so you have an obligation. We can talk some other time about the use of the word privilege, but right now I just need you to know that your privilege is a currency that you can spend on yourself or on others. If you have the ability to ignore this situation and you do, that is privilege spent on yourself. If you have the ability to ignore this situation and you choose instead to speak, to fight, to donate, to pray until your knees are bruised, that is privilege spent on the marginalized.

That’s what the Saints did.

We’re a 2,000-year-old Church with some Saints who were very much products of their time (not to mention the racist sinners who have often been the face of the Church), but we’ve also got Saints who poured their life’s blood out for the truth that racism is evil. We’ve got Saints who were prophets against slavery and Nazism, Saints who literally gave their lives to protest the filth being spewed by white supremacists in Charlottesville this weekend. So if you’re staring at your phone unsure what to do or say or retweet, maybe their witness will help.

St. Katharine Drexel gave up an enormous fortune and a brilliant future as a socialite to begin a religious order devoted to working with African-American and Native American children. She literally gave up everything–most especially the respect of her peers–in order to fight individual and institutional racism, taking a fourth vow “to be the mother and servant of the Indian and Negro races.” And she suffered for it, notably through the opposition of the Klan. Once members of the KKK threatened a white pastor at one of the churches where Drexel’s Sisters worked; the Sisters prayed, a tornado hit the Klan headquarters, and the cowards in white hoods kept their distance from the warriors clad in black.

  • Make a donation to a Cristo Rey school, a system of Jesuit high schools that work with largely minority populations to educate them and prepare them for the work force.
  • If you’re a teacher, consider working at a school that serves underprivileged minority students. If you’re a student, reach out to inner city summer programs and see if you can volunteer. (Try the Missionaries of Charity.)
  • Pray for the conversion of white supremacists (or, barring that, for the necessary acts of God).

St. Josephine Bakhita was kidnapped from her Sudanese village when she was about 7 years old and sold into slavery; she was so traumatized by the events that she forgot her own name and was called “Bakhita,” which means “lucky one,” by the slavers. She was beaten bloody and ritually scarred for years until she was sold to a “kind” Italian family of slave owners. Serving as their little daughter’s lady’s maid, she accompanied the little girl to a convent school, where she heard the Gospel for the first time and determined to be baptized. When the family returned and told her to go with them to Sudan, Bakhita refused. After nearly 15 years of doing everything she was told, she threw a metaphorical fist in the air and resisted, unwilling to leave the Sisters before being baptized. Eventually, the case went to court where a judge ruled that Bakhita (who had the support of the future Pope St. Pius X) had been free from the moment she arrived in Italy, establishing a precedent that not only was the slave trade illegal in Italy but also the possession of slaves. She went on to become a Canossian sister and at the end of her life declared that if she met her captors again she would kiss their feet because without their evil acts she would never have come to know Christ.

  • Contribute to a group that provides legal aid to the underprivileged.
  • Choose to forgive people whose racism has impacted you or those you love.

St. Peter Claver gave his whole life to serve slaves, calling himself “the slave of the Negroes forever.” Born in Spain, he became a Jesuit priest and spent 40 years in Colombia, where he would meet slave ships as they arrived from Africa and plunge into the hold with food, medicine, and the Sacrament of Baptism. He said, “We must speak to them with our hands before we try to speak to them with our lips,” and in so doing earned himself the right to preach of the gentle, loving Savior common to all men. He preached to Europeans as well, but avoided the hospitality of the slave owners whenever he could, preferring to sleep in the slaves’ quarters instead. He visited hospitals and prisons, making friends for God and securing the enmity of many who profited by the ignorance of their slaves. It’s said that he baptized nearly 300,000 people in his 40 years as a priest.

  • Consider the importance of corporal works of mercy as well as spiritual works. Feed hungry people.
  • Research the ways in which black people today are still suffering from cycles of poverty and incarceration that began with slavery. We are not saying this is your fault. But learning how people have suffered and continue to suffer can make us more compassionate.
  • Educate yourself on how human trafficking happens in this country and around the world. Do something about it.

Blessed Emilian Kovch is one of dozens of Saints killed for their opposition to Nazism. Some were killed simply for being Catholic, but many lost their lives specifically for fighting the racism of the Nazi regime. Fr. Kovch was a husband, a father of 6, and an Eastern Rite Catholic priest. He preached against anti-Semitism, stared down a mob of Nazis, and baptized Jews by the thousands in defiance of Nazi orders forbidding it. He was arrested and sent to a concentration camp, from which he wrote his family asking that they not seek his release as the prisoners had need of a priest. After celebrating Sacraments for a year in the camp, he died far from his family but surrounded by his children.

  • Consider marching in just protests (for example, counter-protests against guys with swastikas) and taking a much smaller risk than Bl. Emilian’s.
  • If you’re a priest or deacon, preach against racismSomehow Christians have missed the message that you can’t be a follower of Jesus and a racist–fix that.
  • Use your privilege as currency, speaking up when you don’t have to about issues of race and injustice.

Venerable Henriette Delille could have passed. Her mother called herself white when asked by the census, as did her siblings. But Henriette wanted to show other free women of color that their lives didn’t have to be dictated by the racist system, that they could be black and truly free. While Henriette’s mother wanted her to live as the concubine of a rich white man, as she herself had done and as Henriette’s sister had as well, Henriette chose Christ. She began a religious order of women of color to serve the elderly. Though many Church and state officials opposed a religious order of African-American women, her small group of educated black women eventually became the Sisters of the Holy Family.

  • Talk about issues of race, both with people who are comfortable with the topic and with those who aren’t.
  • Attend Mass at an African-American or Filipino parish or go to the Spanish or Vietnamese or Portuguese Mass at your parish and get to know people who are different from you.

Servant of God Augustus Tolton was the first African-American Catholic priest to acknowledge his African heritage publicly. (The Healy brothers were mixed race and chose to live as white men.) Born a slave in 1854, Tolton and his family escaped to Illinois where he first began to discern a call to the priesthood, despite the racism he endured at the hands of white Catholics. But while his pastor supported his vocation, he was rejected by every American seminary because of his race. For years, Tolton persevered, waiting in hope that he would one day be permitted to serve at the altar. Finally, he was accepted at a seminary in Rome and prepared to serve in the African missions as the American bishops were quite sure that the American Church wasn’t ready for black priests. But Rome saw differently, and Fr. Augustus was sent first to Quincy, IL and then to Chicago where, despite constant struggles with prejudiced clergy and laity, he served his people tirelessly, dying of exhaustion at only 43.

  • Work to be welcoming of international priests serving in your parishes, getting to know them as individuals and encouraging other parishioners not to write them off because they’re “hard to understand.”
  • Learn about the history of racism in the American Catholic Church–and the issues we still deal with today.

Servant of God Bartolomé de las Casas worked for 50 years to end the enslavement of Native American peoples, advocating to the Spanish crown that they be permitted to rule themselves. Though he had been a slave owner himself, he was struck by the Christmas Eve sermon of Antonio de Montesinos, in which the good friar condemned the leading citizens of Santo Domingo:

You are in mortal sin, and live and die therein by reason of the cruelty and tyranny that you practice on these innocent people. Tell me, by what right or justice do you hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible slavery? By what right do you wage such detestable wars on these people who lived mildly and peacefully in their own lands, where you have consumed infinite numbers of them with unheard of murders and desolations? Why do you so greatly oppress and fatigue them, not giving them enough to eat or caring for them when they fall ill from excessive labors, so that they die or rather are slain by you, so that you may extract and acquire gold every day? And what care do you take that they receive religious instruction and come to know their God and creator, or that they be baptized, hear mass, or observe holidays and Sundays? Are they not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves? How can you lie in such profound and lethargic slumber? Be sure that in your present state you can no more be saved than the Moors or Turks who do not have and do not want the faith of Jesus Christ.

Las Casas, already a priest at the time, said hearing Montesinos was a pivotal point in his life and it sparked him on a course that made him the first great advocate of the rights of native peoples in the New World.

  • Interact with your elected officials in meaningful ways and help them see that there is no ethical or prudential justification for pandering to racists.
  • Have the courage to speak up when people make mildly–or appallingly–racist comments.

There are others, of course, other missionaries who valued the differences of those they served (St. Francis Xavier, much?), other priests who publicly decried racism (like St. Paul), other Sisters who served minorities (St. Theodore Guerin), other Saints of color who endured racism (Kibe). But here you have a start, a witness to the fact that Christians have to take a stand against racism in word and in deed. For many of us, the most we’ll suffer is discomfort. Not concentration camps or lynchings or death threats on social media. That is a privilege. Exercise your privilege by refusing to be silent.

 

(Here are 50 more suggestions of how to imitate the Saints in seeking to heal our divided nation. Please feel free to recommend more Saints in the comments.)

I Wore a Hoodie Today

I wore a hoodie today.

I was pretty excited about it. It had been in my trunk, so it was actually my first hoodie day of the season. “I love hoodies!” I thought. “I love them so much it almost makes hoodie weather worth it!”

This is what I think about hoodies. Because wearing a hoodie has never made me a target.

I got pulled over for speeding a few months ago. When the officer approached the car, I was annoyed at myself for not hitting the brakes when the speed limit changed. I wasn’t scared. Because police officers won’t hurt me. They won’t harass me or assault me or strangle me while I beg for breath.

I don’t get followed in upscale stores. I don’t have cops called when I walk with my hands in my pockets.

I read the #iftheygunnedmedown hashtag on Twitter and think wryly that they’d probably use something sweet and wholesome like this:

2014-06-07 14.45.44And then I remember. They won’t gun me down.

Since Mike Brown and Tamir Rice and Eric Garner and a dozen other dead black1 men whose names I haven’t bothered to learn because it’s not news, my Facebook feed has been split. Some people are sharing posts left, right, and center about racism and violence and solidarity and protest.2 A few are sharing articles with titles so ignorant I know clicking them is just going to enrage me. And most of us are still talking about turkey and sales and weather and everyday life like thousands of our brothers and sisters aren’t angry and desperate and running for their lives.

I’m in that third group. People are being killed and I can’t even manage to be a slacktivist. Because I don’t know what to say. I’ve wrestled with this in adoration every day for the past week and a half. I don’t know how to say I’m so sorry and I wish I could suffer this for you. I’m so sorry for the ways I’ve done this to you and I didn’t even know it. I’m so sorry I’m afraid to pick a side without feeling like I know everything I need to know to defend it.

I’m on the side of lives. Black, brown, white, old, gay, disabled–all lives. But right now I am particularly and vocally on the side of black lives. Because that’s where the attack is. I know white people are killed by cops,3 too–but young black men are 21 times more likely to be. THAT IS NOT OKAY! And your misdirect about looting or your blatantly racist claim that black people are criminals doesn’t fix it.

NOT the same thing!
NOT the same thing!

I don’t know what fixes it. I like to rant about injustice and suffering and then tie everything up with a sweet Jesus bow because he makes everything all right. And he does. But today, I just need to say this, to my largely white audience: this should upset you. Your black brothers and sisters are being judged and jailed and killed while their white counterparts get a slap on the wrist.4

I Can't BreatheDon’t deny it. Don’t defend it. Just listen. Read the articles that make you uncomfortable. Stop reading The Conservative Tribune. Move past the specifics of the one homicide you know about and look at the underlying problem. Because whatever you think happened with Michael Brown, you can’t deny that something’s wrong with our country. And burying yourself in Duggar pregnancy announcements and Dancing with the Stars won’t make it go away. Pray. Pray for the victims, the families, the killers, the innocent officers, the bigots, the oppressed, the lawmakers, the nation. Pray for yourself–for mercy and for justice and for eyes to see.

I hate that I can’t do anything about this. But at least that feeling of desperate futility gives me something I can share with people of color in this country. I guess I’ll be grateful for that. And wrap myself in my hoodie while I pray and love and listen and try to be better.

Written by Senator Cory Booker--22 years ago. Progress?
Written by Senator Cory Booker–22 years ago. Progress?

 

  1. I’m leaving both black and white uncapitalized. This is basically why. []
  2. Thank you! []
  3. And I know that most cops are good. And I understand they’re just trying to stay alive. But there’s a lot of cops killing unarmed black people without so much as a slap on the wrist. The problem isn’t cops–the problem’s the culture they (and we) come out of. []
  4. Really. Check out #crimingwhilewhite. []