Pope Francis speaks out against racism

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Mi_Rose said:
I know what the Pope said. Why are people from the US acting like our country was being called out? Didn’t Shakespeare say something about protesting too much?
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My thinking is because of the current controversy and we tend to relate things back to our own life experiences. If you have only lived next to billy bob, you might be prone to thinking all billy bobs love tinkering with old cars, partying , and become very unhappy about life when old, to take the example of repentent.

The Pope and the conference attendees would have a much broader global mindset. Especially the Pope, with all his travel and meet and greets.
 
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Hey @Rhubarb fwiw, one of the posters you were engaging said some things about immigrants over half a year ago that still has me terrified because of the level of dehumanization the person expressed.

I mean, it still causes me a deep impression every time I come across that person’s posts.
 
American Catholics seem to forget that the Pope is the pope of the Catholic Church, not the American Church. Even if there’s little to no racism in the West (which isn’t true), people are getting killed over their race and heritage in many other places. There’s a tendency to be very ‘euro centric’ here tbh.

Also, if your first reaction was to be defensive and point to the other side of the political aisle…let’s just say that it’s worth looking into. Especially since Pope Francis didn’t name a group.
 
repentant2 said:
Not wanting to live in a neighborhood with a certain group people is a far cry from thinking an entire race is inferior/subhuman/etc
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Not to be cheesy, but what do you think Jesus would say? We can accurately guess based on the gospels.

There’s a difference between not wanting to live near a particular individual because of their actions, and not wanting to live with a “certain group” of people based on your assumption of them.
 
I used to believe that, too, until shortly after Obama was elected. Then the racists came crawling out of the woodwork. And they haven’t gone away with the election of Trump, only become more bold as they perceive that someone who is on their side is in power.
 
If you say that and it does exist, you are at least helping it out by your (possibly willful) ignorance.
 
So…if racism doesn’t exist because nobody denies it was terrible when it was practiced openly and it doesn’t exist because someone can make an accusation of racism when there is no racism and it doesn’t exist because there are too many complaints about it and it doesn’t exist because nobody wants to think they are racist, then by that logic: There is no prejudice against Catholics. It is all in our heads, and the worst anti-Catholics are the people who say that there are people in this country who are anti-Catholic. Nobody has any bigoted notions about priests, it’s all fair, because the sexual abuse was covered up and they’re a bunch of child molesters and don’t tell me otherwise because I read the news and how many clergy from any other denomination do you see in the news charged with being sexual predators and you know if the Catholic Church weren’t so foolish and just acted the way anybody on the outside could tell them they need to act to solve their problems, they’d be OK like everybody else.

What am I missing?
 
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No doubt the problem is global, but I will note that there has been a surge of populist nationalism (Trump, Brexit, etc.) in Western Europe and the U.S., in part triggered by global migration of people.

A certain amount of nativism and xenophobia always seems to arise when a culture is faced with immigrants that are “different” in appearance, culture, or religion. Our Catholic forebears faced the same in previous eras. It would be nice if someone would eventually learn from the last cycle and avoid the pattern the next time, but Original Sin messes with us as in all things…
 
The USCCB page on Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration and the Movement of Peoples is a good introduction to a complex topic. One of the main points is that mass migrations usually take place because of horrible conditions. If your neighbor is invading your back yard and you don’t want him doing it, it is worth asking whether his house is on fire. If it is, you’re not going to keep him out of your yard with a fence or a guard and you wouldn’t want to do that if you could. You want to help him make his own home safe so he wants to be there. People do want to be on the soil where they buried their parents and grandparents and great grandparents. Sometimes a nation has few options but to accept as many refugees as their society can handle, but the ideal is to help to address conditions in the home nation. (They’re usually conditions that only a lucky few escape while most of the population goes through deep suffering.)

That is not to say that people don’t legitimately move to other countries during times of peace. I’'m referring to situations where there are mass migrations. Usually, the home country is something of a basket case. That doesn’t strip the other countries of their rights to have sovereignty over their own borders, but it does raise the caution flag that this won’t be a simple matter to solve.
 
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Usagi said:
I used to believe that, too, until shortly after Obama was elected. Then the racists came crawling out of the woodwork. And they haven’t gone away with the election of Trump, only become more bold as they perceive that someone who is on their side is in power.
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Bold enough to chant racist comments at his rallies. And he stands there like a tailor’s dummy and does nothing to discourage it. The man is beneath contempt.
 
Coloman of Stockerau (of Melk) Martyr
Died in Stockerau, Austria, on October 18, 1012. Saint Coloman, an Irish or Scottish monk of royal lineage who began a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem and was stopped at Stockerau, about six miles from Vienna. At that time there were continual skirmishes between Austria, Moravia, and Bohemia. So the stranger, who spoke no German, was accused of being a spy and, after various tortures, hanged to death with several robbers.
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Text is from the website of St Patrick’s in DC, thanks to the efforts of a parishioner to keep hagiography alive.
 
Nobody is saying that it doesn’t exist anywhere. What people have been saying that, for all practical purposes, it does not exist.
 
Of course he wasn’t talking about the US… but everyone on this thread assumes he was it seems. He is looking at the entire world, not just the 5% of Catholics who live in the US.
 
repentant2 said:
Does Kanye West not have privilege then? Or Thomas Sowell? Or does their skin color trump their net worth?
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If Kanye West was driving down his luxury vehicle down the street how likely is it that a cop, who has not heard of Kanye, pull him over?

If a black men and white man, of equal wealth, were driving down their luxury vehicles in their neighborhood, how likely is one of them to be pulled over?
 
redbetta said:
That is not a defense of racism. You don’t defend something by saying you don’t believe it really exists anymore.
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Of course you could. If you insult someone and they respond by saying “stop insulting me” and you say “I didn’t insult you, I just told you the truth and you don’t like it,” then you are defending your offensive behavior by denying there was any offense and instead insisting your speech was praiseworthy!!

That’s just an example. Another example, of course, is to commit an offensive act and then to deny it ever happened, implying that the person who said you did is either lying or delusional. That’s called gaslighting.

A third way to defend against charges of offensive behavior by denying that it happened is to refuse to believe any evidence of an offense because you refuse to hear anything bad said about the accused. If a person accuses someone else of misconduct and they can’t get a hearing for their evidence because the accused has literally been placed above reproach, that is how that would work. The person above reproach obviously has carte blanche to do what they want, because no one will believe the person is capable of serious wrongdoing. Simply refusing to hear evidence of a particular kind of offense regardless of who is accusing and who stands accused would also fall into the same category.

That’s a few ways someone could defend an offensive behavior by denying that it exists, even if they’re the actual person who committed the offense!!

That doesn’t mean you don’t honestly believe racism has been wiped out, but on the other hand I don’t know why you’d deny hearing people who are trying to tell you that it is unfortunately alive and thriving? You can’t be everywhere. Why do you disbelieve them? Why would anyone minimize their accounts as inconsequential without investigation? If someone tells you they’ve seen rats or cockroaches, do you wait until you’ve seen enough to satisfy yourself that there is really an infestation? No! Rats are stealthy, just as racism is not open any more. If you see a rat, you are most likely to have not just one but a LOT of rats. You wouldn’t believe you got rid of all of them until your traps were empty for a good long while and you could find no more new signs of them living clandestinely in your territory. (Otherwise, bad news: you still have rats.)
 
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twf said:
Of course he wasn’t talking about the US… but everyone on this thread assumes he was it seems. He is looking at the entire world, not just the 5% of Catholics who live in the US.
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http://w2.vatican.va/content/france...a-francesco_20180920_conferenza-razzismo.html

Here is the speech.

Here are a few snippets:
In a world in which access to information and communication tools is ever more widespread, a special responsibility falls to those who work in the field of social communication, who have the duty to put themselves at the service of truth and to broadcast information taking care to promote a culture of encounter and openness to others with mutual respect for diversity.

Those, then, who reap economic benefits from the climate of distrusting the foreigner, whose irregular or illegal residence fosters and feeds the system of precariousness and exploitation — which at times reaches a level that gives rise to real forms of slavery — should make a profound examination of conscience in the knowledge that one day they will be held accountable before God for the choices they have made. [Note: he referred not to the illegal worker but to the party that knowingly takes advantage of that worker and makes a profit off how much more vulnerable that worker is to exploitation. This harms both the undocumented worker and legal workers whose work is in competition with the ones being used wrongly by the unscrupulous.]

and

In this perspective, the other is not only a being to be respected by virtue of his or her inherent dignity but above all a brother or sister to be loved. In Christ, tolerance is transformed into fraternal love, into tenderness and active solidarity. This applies above all in regard to the least of our brothers and sisters, among whom we can recognize the stranger, the foreigner with whom Jesus identified himself. On the Day of Judgment, the Lord will recall “I was a stranger and you did not welcome me” (Mt 25:43). But today too he asks us: ‘I am a foreigner, do you not recognize me?’.
 
If the original poster we were talking about, I like to believe the best of him unless it becomes clear otherwise that he genuinely believes, given his knowledge and experience, that racism is not a huge issue nowadays. I doubt he believes it 100% does not exist, I just interpreted his original statement to mean that it is not a big a deal as it is made out to be.
 
redbetta said:
If the original poster we were talking about, I like to believe the best of him unless it becomes clear otherwise that he genuinely believes, given his knowledge and experience, that racism is not a huge issue nowadays. I doubt he believes it 100% does not exist, I just interpreted his original statement to mean that it is not a big a deal as it is made out to be.
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Yes, I mean that there are people who honestly believe this because they don’t see it themselves and believe that those who complain about it must be exaggerating. Once you see it, though, you wonder why they don’t complain more than they do.
 
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