Bishop Robert McElroy has said that it’s important to identify the ways racism undermines people’s lives in many arenas, and be “willing to take the hard steps to combat them.”
In October, the San Diego Diocese is continuing its virtual conversation about racism in the faith, called “My Church, My Story.” The goal is to provide a platform where Catholics can share their experiences, learn from their fellow faithful through dialogue and propose ways that parishes and the greater Church can tackle racism. The insights gleaned from the sessions will be presented to the diocese’s leadership and priests.
Around 100 faithful participated in each of the initial three forums held in August, organized by the Office of Ethnic and Intercultural Communities. Held via Zoom, they were focused on the African American community.
On Oct. 7, the office will hold the second of two bilingual forums focused on the Latino experience. (The first was held on Sept. 30.) The featured speaker will be Monserrat Ramírez, a member of the Parish Council at Christ the King Church and a columnist for The Southern Cross. The session will be facilitated by Jesuit Father Eduardo Samaniego, the director of the diocesan Office for the Permanent Diaconate.
The focus of the forums on Oct. 21 and Oct. 28 is the Native American experience. The speakers include Patricia Dixon, a member of the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians and chair of the American Indian Studies Department at Palomar College.
The above comes from a Sept. 29 story in the Southern Cross, the San Diego diocesan paper.
Just what we don’t need: more race-focusing and racialist thinking. You will never get beyond racism, which isn’t a problem in America by the way, by continuing to hyper-focus on race, especially not by accepting the critical race theory premise that whiteness is inherently evil. Democrats are deliberately fomenting racial tensions in order to claim that America is racist for the purpose of appealing for votes. Nobody called Trump a racist until he was elected president. America had put racism behind us until Obama was elected president and stoked racial tensions as a strategy. Now we’ve been seeing the beginnings of a racial uprising that could become civil war.
We as “comfortably living” Americans of European descent should have learned this summer, if not earlier in life, that there are many unpleasant aspects of our national history that our collective blinders let us ignore. On what day before Mr. Obama’s election did racism stop? I will pray that you make a choice to learn and empathize with the experiences of your fellow citizens who have been continuously excluded from many of the benefits that we take for granted. I believe our Catholic teachings require this.
Amen!
The bishop is addressing an important issue here. But, it’s difficult to take Bishop Bob seriously when he ignores the fact that sexual immorality (and often subsequent abortion) “undermines people’s lives in many arenas, and be ‘willing to take the hard steps to combat them.’”
Selective outrage at injustice?
Any reason these sessions need to be held this month and not after November 3?
It is truly a challenge remaining a practicing Catholic in the Diocese of San Diego when such Catholics have to put up with the garbage being spewed by their Bishop dressed in the checkered shirt.
So true.
I harken back to Bishop McElroy’s previous admonition to the faithful about our society’s “systemic racism” and just shake my head in disbelief that he’s still hammering away at this divisiveness. The percentage of racial supremacists in this country is far too insignificant for the Bishop to continue to promote this intellectual contortionism. He is again lecturing the faithful about our intrinsic racism, when we ourselves feel no personal racial prejudice. We also cannot confess to sins we did not, and would not, commit.
I believe Pres Trump and his father had administrative proceedings with the Feds due to the Trump’s discriminatory practices in apartment leasing.
Is Mr. McElroy wearing plaid because he thinks it’s racist to wear black clerical clothing?
Maybe wearing clerical attire is “white privilege,” even if the clergyman isn’t white?
Did you ever notice that the collar tab is white (even when the shirt is black)?
Plaid still segregates colors.
Maybe we should return to the “bleeding madras” shirts of the 70’s, where the colors all blend in the wash?
But, maybe not, since the fabric takes its name from the former name of the city of Chennai in India and washing machines might be signs of white privilege (ever notice the color of most washing machines?)
Something sinister is going on here.
Probably!
Look at the picture with this story. Does this man look like a bishop? No, and neither does he provide wise leadership expected of one in that position. Couldn’t even bother to dress according to his holy office. His BLM t shirt was probably in the wash.
How is religion racist? Really? An activist dressed up (well, not really) as a bishop? In the 1800’s the black community was one of the most religious communities there was…In the 1940’s the black community held on to their faith, not always the Catholic faith, but still faith…in the 1960’s-70’s it became acceptable for single mothers to raise children, and be paid based on the number of children they produced! Does this not sound like the plantation days? Bishop, please dress accordingly and stop the race baiting!!!!
What month will be for whites who also experience racism? This separating by skin color is wrong, we are one body.
Why are some clergy dismissive of their clerical garb? Are they ashamed of it? Is it too uncomfortable? Are they trying to be “one of us”? It’s another thing about the “new Catholicism” that makes me disgusted.Yes, yes, I know — I’m being cranky, and committing the liberal sin of being judgmental.
And when will the families of the 300,000+ white Union soldiers who died fighting in the Civil War to free the black slaves get reparations?
Most white people, according to the PEW research studies from year to year, do not feel there is much racism in the US. Black people think the opposite, and the Latinx and Asians experience racism less than blacks, but still, they experience it. To say that there is no racism in the US is to put one’s head in the sand and to deny reality. Much, I suppose, depends on how one defines racism. We have more Blacks in our prisons for not violent crimes than other nations and more on a percentage basis. Black schools are known to be inferior because of the lack of economic support. We know there is racism because of the way we separate communities in the same town or city. We know there is racism because of the way people talk on this site.
Bob One wants everyone to know that he is the real arbiter of who is and who is not a racist. He will not define what racism is but gladly accuse you of being a racist. He cites the black prison population and poor schools. However he does not once mention underlying culprit, the destruction of the black family. Blacks experience 70 percent of out wedlock births and fatherless homes. That Bob One is the real problem that faces blacks in this country. Another unsupported comment he makes is blacks not having economic support, but their schools exist in the places where the schools tax is among highest in the country.
So the NBA has a much higher percentage of African American than the general population. Does this mean the NBA is racist.
This is the same bishop who in February, 2017 at the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Modesto, CA, directed the Catholics in attendance to disrupt the newly-elected President Trump.
So Bob, since America is such a racist country as you have stated, how come America elected a black Democrat as president, not once but twice?
Ist it possible that most Americans are not personally racist, but inherited a system that advantages people who may have accumulated over generations homes and businesses and access to good education that their black sisters and brothers didn’t? My goodness, it wasn’t until the 1960s that the Voting Rights Act was passed, guaranteeing black people access to the ballot box.
Do we have an obligation as Americans and Catholics to level the playing field for later generations who may not have personally experienced slavery and Jim Crowe, and segregation, and housing discrimination, and job discrimination, but who never got the generational advantages that white people had? This is the distinction between personal racism and systemic racism.
Is it possible that the 40+% of Americans who never voted for Obama are personally racist? No
.It is possible that some people who are not personally racist didn’t vote for him because they didn’t like his policies.
But it is also possible that Ssome of them are personally racist.
Mr. Obama was not elected based on his ethnicity. He was elected based on the failure if the G. W. Bush administration. He was reelected on the basis of the work of his first term. Please learn that the problem of institutional racism in no way means that only white Americans can succeed.
No Anon you must unlearn leftist propaganda
Yes, these racial consciousness-raising meetings are illuminating.
I sat through a yearly corporate meeting
And we heard a professional Black woman tell how she was offended by a young White man as they waited on the printer line for their print-outs
He was telling her that he just moved into his own apt
and now had to do his own cooking and laundry.
He talked about learning to separate items and when to use bleach etc.
She was severely insulted that he (a stranger) would think she was interest in discussing menial work, so reminiscent of domestics and servitude.
Where do these complaints get filed ?
In the “omnipresent perpetual race awareness” or the “chip on the shoulder” drawer.
Too bad actor Rick Moranis couldn’t come. Unavoidably detained.