Catholic theologians on racial justice

Yesterday, my colleague Tobias Winright, a former corrections and police officer and now the Hubert Mäder Endowed Chair of Health Care Ethics and Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Saint Louis University, posted the Statement of Catholic Theologians on Racial Justice at the catholicmoraltheology.com blog. I am a signatory of that document.

The document is a statement of solidarity with people affected by racial injustice, an attempt to simply be with people for whom racial prejudice is a daily burden. To be sure, it is occasioned by the recent stories of police killings and riots which have broken our hearts. Yet its aim is more fundamental: to simply state that as followers of Jesus Christ we wait in hope for the coming of God’s kingdom, a kingdom in which there is neither Jew nor Greek.

The season of Advent is meant to be a time when Christians remember the birth of Jesus Christ, when God became human, born on the margins of society. To the poor shepherds, the angelic host proclaimed “peace, goodwill among people” (Luke 2:14), which refers to a shalom that is not merely the absence of conflict, but rather a just and lasting peace, wherein people are reconciled with one another, with God, and indeed with all creation.  But this Advent, hope for a just peace must face the flagrant failures of a nation still bound by sin, our bondage to and complicity in racial injustice.

I wrestled with whether or not to sign the statement. I claim no competency to judge the legality or morality of the actions of the police officers, who daily place themselves in harm’s way. For me, the statement is not about demanding indictments or interrogating grand juries. The cases are complex. Rather, I understand the statement as a way of taking a long, loving look at cases which–whether they have been judged rightly or wrongly–have elicited strong moral outrage that transcends the specific cases themselves. Such outrage is the manifestation of a much more deep and lasting pain in the body politic, visited with particular poignancy on certain fellow citizens, sons and daughters of God.

The statement recalls words of Dr. Martin Luther King which have haunted me for the many years I have required students to read his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a document I consider to be one of the most poignant statements of moral philosophy of the twentieth century.

King challenged “white moderate” Christians for being “more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice;” and for preferring “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” This challenge to the White Christian community is as relevant today as it was over 50 years ago. Such a negative peace calls to mind the warning by the prophet Ezekiel, “They led my people astray, saying, ‘Peace!’ when there was no peace” (13:10).

It also recalls the recent words of Pope Francis, “warning of the explosive consequences of exclusion and fearful seeking of ‘security’ based on such a negative peace”:

Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence. The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence, yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode. When a society – whether local, national or global – is willing to leave a part of itself on the fringes, no political programmes or resources spent on law enforcement or surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility. This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root. Just as goodness tends to spread, the toleration of evil, which is injustice, tends to expand its baneful influence and quietly to undermine any political and social system, no matter how solid it may appear.” Evangelii Gaudium, 59

Both King and Pope Francis, rooted as they are in the gospel hope for God’s kingdom, understand the nature of Christian hope. Cornel West has distinguished hope and optimism, the former being rooted in a theological vision of how the world is supposed to be while the latter observes the way things actually are. It is hard to be optimistic when one sees racial divides.

During Advent our liturgy moves us to pray for the coming of the Messiah, to make straight a highway in the desert. It is a way of saying “we are in a mess we cannot fix, and need the Lord to save us from it.” As a father, I have at times considered how difficult it is to intervene when my children are having a fight: you desperately love them both and do not want to take sides, but you simply cannot let them live out the consequences of their distorted desires. Greg Boyle, SJ, the Jesuit priest who has worked with former gang members in East Los Angeles for over twenty five years, writes insightfully of the quandary:

Sometimes it’s enough simply to acknowledge how wide the gulf is that we all hope to bridge. But isn’t the highest honing of compassion that which is hospitable to victim and victimizer both? (Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, pp. 66-67)

With Boyle, I believe that the real challenge of compassion is loving people on both sides of a contentious issue. He recalls the Advent and Christmas hymn O Holy Night, and the line “Long lay the world in sin and error pining—’til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Do not we all long for intimate knowledge of the worth which God has given us?

By happy coincidence, the song was used by abolitionists during the Civil War.

Truly he taught us to love one another; his law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother; and in his name all oppression shall cease. (from the third verse)

My prayer this Advent is for racial reconciliation. And with my fellow Catholic theologians I have pledged fasting and abstinence, the Biblical practices of repentance. We also pledge support for our police and solidarity with those affected by racism. Finally, we commit ourselves as a body to being part of conversations that will ameliorate race relations.

The closing line of the document summarizes our prayer:

We pray that all of these actions will move us closer toward the fulfillment of the hope of the Advent season, toward a time when “love and truth will meet; justice and peace will kiss” (Psalm 85:10).

*Revision: the original statement made reference to the killings of Black men. A revised statement included reference to the killings of Black women and children as well, thanks to the intervention of Shannen Dee Williams of the University of Tennessee.