Father Joseph Fessio, founder of Ignatius Press, gave a 10-minute homily to staff members in San Francisco on Tuesday, July 7.
Father Fessio in citing the day’s readings from Hosea about idols, made the point that we can make false idols out of words which take the place of the truth.
As an example he quoted the following words from the Black Lives Matter website ” ‘We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family by supporting each other in extended families in villages, collectively care for one another, especially our children….’ ”
Go to the 6 minute 39 second marker of the video:
“That has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter. But actually it does, because one of the problems with Blacks in this country is the break-up of the family, precisely the break-up of the nuclear family. A very large percentage of the Black males in prison are fatherless.”
Thank you Fr. Fessio, and thank you for founding Ignatius Press, one of the few publishers of faithful Catholic literature.
BLM = A racist organization telling everyone that racism is bad.
The actual quote from Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc (which is not the #BlackLivesMatter movement) is “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”
Every time I see BLM criticized on Catholic websites it is misquoted. They are not disrupting the nuclear family but the structure requirement and it has the caveat “to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.”
Point One- It’ is their organization. Father Fessio, we belong to a very controversial organization and you don’t want people who don’t belong to it criticizing and misquoting it. Give them the same courtesy.
Point Two, the Catholic Church does not have a nuclear family structure requirement either. It has many saints who took care of children whose families did not meet that requirement well. It includes many cultures where extended families are the norm.
Point Three- We hear the same thing at church all the time. (although it is a little creepy) “We are a family.” “We are a community.” Once I even heard “We are your family.” That was too weird. We left that parish. Sometimes it is people who mean we need to care for each other. Sometimes it is just people with really bad boundaries.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“The conjugal community is established upon the consent of the spouses. Marriage and the family are ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of children. The love of the spouses and the begetting of children create among members of the same family personal relationships and primordial responsibilities.
2202 A man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children, form a family. This institution is prior to any recognition by public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it. It should be considered the normal reference point by which the different forms of family relationship are to be evaluated.”
Thank you for quoting the catechism but, especially now, the whole teaching on the family is important. Too long to post here but there is this:
2208 The family should live in such a way that its members learn to care and take responsibility for the young, the old, the sick, the handicapped, and the poor. There are many families who are at times incapable of providing this help. It devolves then on other persons, other families, and, in a subsidiary way, society to provide for their needs: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”12
2209 The family must be helped and defended by appropriate social measures. Where families cannot fulfill their responsibilities, other social bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting the institution of the family. Following the principle of subsidiarity, larger communities should take care not to usurp the family’s prerogatives or interfere in its life.
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”
In the intentional omission of ‘fathers’ from this statement, the organization shows it’s hand to a great extent. This is a widely radical progressive feminist ideology that excludes a masculine role in family dynamic. Can’t say I blame them as they are coming from a position of injury in the context of a fatherless culture. It’s why the LGBT (most notably, L) narrative is so intimately woven into the BLM narrative.
In watching the 10 minute homily, he brings out how Jesus in the Gospel reading of the day (Mt. 9:32-38) reacts to the crowds. “His heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples,”The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for His harvest.” And he mentions Mark’s Gospel that says “so He began to teach them.”
This is good.
He reads Psalm 37. Then Psalm 43. He seems to be praying from the perspective of someone who is distressed by the civil unrest in our country. I am disappointed that he did not make the connection to what the protests are about.
He does say that Black LIves Matter is a true slogan.
I’m not sure what the fatherlessness of black prisoners has anything to do with why black men are being shot at from behind by police or are dieing because they were put in stranglholds far longer than is necessary to subdue them, or being transferred from one prison with COVID to a larger prison that didn’t have COVID, or why black drivers are pulled over for no ostensible reason on every highway in this country. Black lives matter for all kinds of reasons, but he doesn’t address why it is that black men are so harshly treated by police above and beyond what is required for police to do their real work. This has zero to do with whether these men have fathers or not.
It is impossible for any human being to be fatherless. Every person comes from a mother and a father. If by fatherless, he means that the father was absent during the child’s upbringing, that social condition is very important. The impact of having an absent parent cannot be underestimated whether the loss is from neglect, abandonment, death, imprisonment, military service, employment in another geographical areas, rejection of or from the mother or other family members, using a sperm donor. I think what Father Fessio meant and said poorly was that the quality of black lives matter. The breakdown of the nuclear family in the black community is important and he feels it should be included as an issue by Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc. I too feel that he should have addressed the causes of the civil unrest.
Of course every person has a father. But what is any of this to do with why police shoot at black men when their backs are turned to them and they have their hands up? Or why they are being pulled over for only the sake that they are black. Or put in chokeholds to the point of asphyxiation?
Are you, or was Father Fessio trying to say that if a man grows up without a father in the household that he should be pulled over on the highway because he is black and fatherless? That he should be 3 times
more likely to encounter a bullet by police even while unarmed than a non-black person in a similar situation?
I hope you weren’t saying that, I’m not suggesting you were, but I think we need to be clearer about what we are saying, all of us.
No, neither I nor Father Fessio said that or implied that. How on earth could you even get that out of what he said or what I wrote?
As a graduate of a Jesuit high school, I am surprised Fr Fessio, a Jesuit, would use such convoluted language in making his point about black lives. I had to read it three times and am still not sure I got it. I’m pretty sure my ‘oldtimers’ wasn’t kicking up.
“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking…”
The devastating result of fatherless families in the Black community is evident to anyone with eyes to see. The lesbian, feminist founders of BLM are of a different mind, and IMHO, only add to the problem.
They are getting a lot of free advertising on Catholic websites. The devil, the flesh and the world…