A cynical take on the Church's anti-racism campaign

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StudentMI said:
Am I the only one who has a suspicion that this is an attempt by the Church to be relevant and ‘with it’ in today’s world?
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I’m not sure that’s the most charitable way of interpreting our Church’s motivations.
StudentMI said:
What better way to stay in the news and maybe get some young people back in the Church than jump on the bandwagon of anti-racism and black lives matter?
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Your Archbishop has made a stand on this issue. Does racism exist in our society? If so, how?
 
blackforest said:
How/where do you see it in ours?
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Everywhere. From the comments about Dearborn, to the casual hatred of whites of a former coworker, to talk of Mexicans invading us, to hatred of blacks, jokes about Asians, etc. Do I need to go on?
 
At the end of the day, what matters is that the participants are genuine. You’ll go crazy trying to mind-read everyone’s motives, but give them the benefit of the doubt. Pray for the Archdiocese, and pray that some good comes from it.
 
blackforest said:
At the end of the day, what matters is that the participants are genuine. You’ll go crazy trying to mind-read everyone’s motives, but give them the benefit of the doubt. Pray for the Archdiocese, and pray that some good comes from it.
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🤔
 
Are you going to carry a grudge for years because Catholic diocese evangelical initiatives often sound a bit silly and sometimes, usually due to societal factors (such as church attendance and religious faith in general dropping across the board, and many people moving out of an area that’s economicaly depressed), do not result in huge gains in attendance?
 
PeterT said:
Success will look like when we no longer have incidents like the murder of George Floyd by law enforcement, when blacks don’t have to worry about being manhandled unnecessarily by police, when blacks like Ahmaud Arbery can go jogging without the fear our being murdered by racists. That’s how success will look like.
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Then we will never be successful.

Hatred has been with us since the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. It will never be totally gone until the Lord returns and establishes His Kingdom, and banishes Satan and his angels and followers to hell for eternity.

If total elimination of hateful acts is the goal of Black Lives Matter supporters, they need to come to terms with the fact that it is an unrealistic goal, a fantastical goal, that will never happen.

I think they need to stop looking at all that hasn’t happened (and probably never will), and make an honest assessment of all the good that has happened every since the passing of the Civil Rights Act.

E.g., yesterday on my day off, I was running errands that took me through the neighborhood where I grew up. Back then, there were no black people living there, and when a black family moved into one of the new houses, everyone was talking about it and expressing fears about the property values and safety issues.

Now the neighborhood is filled with many black families, along with white families, and quite a few Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and Asian families. It’s still considered a prime neighborhood, perfect for raising families, with several beautiful parks, and some of the best schools in our city.

The neighborhood where Peeps and Mr. Peeps lives is about half and half–black and white, with a good mix of Hispanics. It’s fun! Everyone is friendly and once the COVID-19 shelter-in-place is over, the Peeps family plans on having some kind of party, probably a music party, with food! We have done a lot of thinking about this during those dreary days of being shut up in the house, and think that we need to be more outgoing.

THIS IS the kind of thing that BLM needs to take a good hard look at, and then start from there, rather than giving the impression to their younger followers that little or no progress has been made in race relations.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Are you going to carry a grudge for years because Catholic diocese evangelical initiatives often sound a bit silly and sometimes, usually due to societal factors (such as church attendance and religious faith in general dropping across the board, and many people moving out of an area that’s economicaly depressed), do not result in huge gains in attendance?
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Yes. What else did you expect me to say?

I like you. You’re sassy.
 
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StudentMI said:
Everywhere. From the comments about Dearborn, to the casual hatred of whites of a former coworker, to talk of Mexicans invading us, to hatred of blacks, jokes about Asians, etc. Do I need to go on?
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This is not just a white thing. Just sayin’.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Well, at least you’re honest about it.

I’m not sure that it helps anything though.
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Nothing helps anything. The world will keep spinning until it doesn’t anymore. The Church will become smaller. Hopefully the end won’t be too long in coming.

All you can do is pray for others.
 
StudentMI said:
He may be but I just have the feeling it’s not genuine.
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Yeah, it might not be genuine. Or it might just be.
But look at what your Archbishop has to overcome.
The hour of worship in churches on Sunday is probably the most racially segregated hour in America.

As I read through your various threads, you are weighing heavily on my heart, StudentMI.

There is much pain in the nation right now, an rightfully so. I hear your pain in your responses.

Some people in this country sowed seeds of dissension over the decades and centuries and it has created a festering wound that needs to be addressed.

It is a very serious wound to our conscience, like a horrible pressure sore that looks way healthier on the outside than it actually is on the inside. It goes through the meat of our nation down to the bone of our collective being. The riots and rage are the pus and infection bursting forth. We as a nation have to take charge and address this wound. Determine the depth of the damage, and chart a course of treatment may take years to heal.

We can’t rush this process, because the destruction is so deep that it has to be healed in layers with different courses of action depending upon the type of injury and its location within the wound. Some of the damage is from direct pressure, like the murder of George Floyd. Other damage is from inflammation, like the ongoing disparities that are a direct result of past oppression.
Part of the infection is the nature of the wound itself, which is reflected in the biases and prejudices the nation was founded upon (no system is perfect even though we had a revolution to create “a more perfect union”). Other parts of the wound are infected from outside sources, like those foreign agents that are actively creating dissension using our social media to spread disinformation.

It’s going to take time and a lot of work for our nation to heal, but we are strong and we believe in liberty and justice for all. We can and will work together to make a more perfect union because we have it in us to do so.

Please don’t lose hope.
 
A Catholic Church organizing a response to a social crisis? Oh my goodness it can’t be anything but virtue signaling.
 
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