Happy Fucking Pentecost
Some bad Catholic responses to the protests and riots
“Come, Thou Father of the poor,
Come with treasures which endure,
Come, Thou Light of all that live…
Bend the stubborn heart and will;
Melt the frozen, warm the chill;
Guide the steps that go astray.”
-The Pentecost Sequence
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
They’re at it again, folks. Or, rather, they’re not at it again, because the bishops did not collectively issue a statement on the death of George Floyd and the protests ripping through the country right now. Seven bishops, who are chairs of different conference committees, did release a statement - and it was honestly better than I expected it to be - but I can only assume that the reliable Republican-voting bishops like Dolan or Strickland or Tobin didn’t want to have their name on the thing, because in their minds, the real racists are those pesky activists disrupting decorum in the name of “asking the state to stop killing us”.
But the seven bishops that did say something said the right things [emphasis mine]:
“Racism is not a thing of the past or simply a throwaway political issue to be bandied about when convenient. It is a real and present danger that must be met head on. As members of the Church, we must stand for the more difficult right and just actions instead of the easy wrongs of indifference…While it is expected that we will plead for peaceful non-violent protests, and we certainly do, we also stand in passionate support of communities that are understandably outraged. Too many communities around this country feel their voices are not being heard, their complaints about racist treatment are unheeded, and we are not doing enough to point out that this deadly treatment is antithetical to the Gospel of Life.”
The church is not doing enough. It’s not helped when, as we’ll see, the bishops and Catholic media can’t even speak with one voice on racism or violence, on the root causes of this crisis, on whether the true victims are human beings or property. It’s not helped when the Catholic church, whose moral witnessed is desperately needed, talks past itself just like everyone else does today. The church is not doing enough.
Bernard Hebda, Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis
“You ask how it is that we’re responding, we’re responding with prayer…we’re blessed that it was just this week that we started having larger mass gatherings.”
Archbishop Hebda, quoted above in a Relevant Radio interview, as well as the other five bishops in the state of Minnesota, spent last week publicly defying their governor’s stay-at-home orders in the name of religious freedom, on a call with the far-right Becket Foundation. So, when he notes in the interview how sad it is that the COVID pandemic has been disproportionately hurting the black community in his diocese, and how it’s sad that black parishoners are really reluctant to return to worship, I personally think he can shove it up his ass. And when he talks about the bishops’ 2018 letter on racism, a letter which his archdiocese did nothing to act upon and which certainly didn’t influence Hebda’s original statement on Floyd’s killing, which didn’t mention racism at all, I think he can also shove it up his fucking ass.
The church is not doing enough.
Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York
While Dolan, who I will say once again is a dipshit, chose not to sign on to the statement from the USCCB, he did sign on to a statement from the interfaith Commission of Religious Leaders, which is short enough that I can just post it in full here:
“The Book of Ecclesiastes teaches us, “There is a time to be silent and a time to speak out.” We of different faiths cannot remain silent after we watched the shattering video of a police officer keeping his knee on the neck of George Floyd who was crying out “I can’t breathe.” Such inhumane treatment of another human being requires a collective response from all people of conscience. The pursuit of justice is a fundamental tenet of our respective religious traditions, and thus we stand together to declare that all life is sacred, and all people are equal before the law in a democratic society.
We respect those who want to honor George Floyd’s memory with peaceful protest against the horror, evil, and sin that is racism. We also support the members of Floyd’s family who said, in part, “We cannot endanger each other as we respond to the necessary urge to raise our voices in unison and in outrage. Looting and violence distract from the strength of our collective voice.”
We often speak of “thoughts and prayers.” We will offer our many prayers of healing, but we need not only serious thoughts but also firm action as we work together with all members of our community to find that critical cure for human hatred.”
Dolan asks for “collective action”, but won’t join the USCCB’s statement. He respects protestors, but only if it’s the good type of protest. He’ll make a statement, but only if it’s milder than the already mild statement from the other bishops. He can’t upset his best friend Donald Trump. He can’t upset the white people that sit in his pews. The church is not doing enough.
First Thaaaaaaaaangs
Remarkably, as of Monday morning, First Things magazine hasn’t appeared to post anything on the recent police killings, or any of the protests that have arisen as a response. This is surprising to me, as First Things has, on multiple occasions, openly advocated for overthrowing or defying the American government for not being sufficiently conservative, and their editor has spent most of the past two months trying to single-handedly undercut public health guidance on the COVID pandemic. Maybe the owners told him to take some vacation time.
Sohrab Ahmari
You’ll never guess what side Sohrab ended up on.
Anyways, that’s all I’m willing to screenshot after pulling up his Twitter in a private window because he blocked me several months ago.
The church is not doing enough.
National Catholic Register/EWTN
The Basilica is insured. So is Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, shown in the photo at the top of this piece. They’ll get the pews replaced and the spray paint powerwashed off (also, I’m not clear by what standard St. Patrick’s Cathedral is considered “one of the most sacred Catholic Churches in the world”). Leading with burned pews in a basilica, instead of the violence currently being borne by the poor and powerless among us, is a very clear political choice for a publication that purports to be Catholic but in practice has functioned as a repository of excuses for Catholics to own Trumpist political thinking.
If you’re going to lead with that, you may want to ask questions about who the churches really belong to, and for whom the damage is a tragedy. Is spray-painting Black Lives Matter on a cathedral desecrating it or is it recognizing the Gospel? Well, the cathedral is private property, so it’s at least a crime. Why is it private property? Should it belong to all of us in the church? What does a church “belonging” to the Body of Christ really look like? Should it belong to the ones being pepper-sprayed and beaten with batons, the lowly, the oppressed, the hungry? Or does it belong to the bishops? Does Saint Patrick’s specifically belong to Timothy Dolan, who cheerleads at Trump campaign events, who moved diocesan funds around to avoid paying settlements to victims of sexual abuse, who has teaching authority in the church while you don’t?
The church is not doing enough. But at least the Register can pass for an actual media organization, one that hires actual editors and writers; it’s not just a right-wing blog written by a psychopath. Anyways let’s check in on the right-wing blogs written by psychopaths.
Rorate Caeli
An article headed up by a picture of a Minneapolis diner burning and leading with “Once again, in this tumultuous period started by the Communist Party of China and its actions” caused my brain to switch to static pretty quickly. Perhaps more stunning was that the article quoted heavily from Rerum Novarum, the late nineteenth-century encyclical that formally established many of the principles of Catholic social teaching, including preferential option for the poor and the dignity and rights of labor. Here’s what Rorate chose to quote [emphasis theirs]:
“First of all, there is the duty of safeguarding private property by legal enactment and protection. Most of all it is essential, where the passion of greed is so strong, to keep the populace within the line of duty; for, if all may justly strive to better their condition, neither justice nor the common good allows any individual to seize upon that which belongs to another, or, under the futile and shallow pretext of equality, to lay violent hands on other people's possessions. Most true it is that by far the larger part of the workers prefer to better themselves by honest labor rather than by doing any wrong to others. But there are not a few who are imbued with evil principles and eager for revolutionary change, whose main purpose is to stir up disorder and incite their fellows to acts of violence. The authority of the law should intervene to put restraint upon such firebrands, to save the working classes from being led astray by their maneuvers, and to protect lawful owners from spoliation.”
I’ve mocked people in the church before for “not reading Rerum Novarum” and ignoring the cry of the poor, but this is the first time I've found someone who actually read Rerum and took away “we have to protect private property”.
The church is not doing enough.
The Remnant
“As the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis descend into a state of emergency, Michael Matt discusses the root cause of this Godless madness--the total rejection of His moral law. The vile tragedy of George Floyd's murder is herein set in the context of the international lockdown which left millions (including Mr. Floyd) unemployed, desperate and addicted.”
It’s unclear where the Remnant’s article is actually going. Is the unemployment, desperation, and addiction something that should be addressed through collective action or government programs? Or is it just a smokescreen that the “professional leftist agitators” mentioned in the piece’s second paragraph are using to commit violence? Because yes, desperation and skyrocketing unemployment, with no real meaningful protections for the most vulnerable in our cities, have brought this crisis to a boiling point. So should we do something about that or jut go ahead and re-open the states as the pandemic continues?
“Positive Notes: The Bishops of Minnesota defy the Governor of Minnesota, New Yorkers have had enough of the lockdown and the governor of South Dakota, aside from beating Covid without a lockdown, may be the most pro-life governor in the country.”
Ah yes, South Dakota beat COVID without a lockdown, I forgot to commend them on that since I had trouble seeing past the 4,500 total cases and deaths hitting a peak two days ago. But I didn’t really expect anything different, the Remnant is basically nothing but bangers, just look at the stories advertised on the side of the page:
The church is not doing enough.
Church Militant
Uh, Michael Voris hasn’t written anything on the protests yet, but he is still doing this:
The church is not doing enough, but Church Militant? Um, yes, they’re doing enough. They, uh, they should not be doing any more.