[Barf Alert] Archbishop addresses Notre Dame community on ‘moral imperative’ of anti-racism

Archbishop Wilton Gregory, of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., addressed the Notre Dame community virtually Aug. 21 in the inaugural lecture of this fall’s “Building an Anti-Racist Vocabulary” series, hosted by the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights.

In his lecture, “Anti-Racism as a Moral Imperative,” Gregory spoke to the 110 students enrolled in the course, as well as other students, faculty and alumni who tuned in. Klau Center associate director Dory Mitros Durham moderated the event and posed questions submitted by students to the archbishop.

Gregory’s lecture laid out the history of Catholic leaders’ involvement and inaction in racial justice efforts. Church leaders’ stances on racial justice issues have not been uniformly positive, Gregory said.

Bishops in the 19th century failed to voice support for the anti-slavery movement, Gregory said, and the consequences of that silence are clear in the demographics of the church today.

“Who will ever know the numbers of African American Catholics we might have had if the Catholic Church had publicly and prominently and enthusiastically, jointly chosen to be identified with the anti-slavery movement?”

By the late 20th century, Gregory said the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had grown bolder in calling for racial justice.

Gregory, who formerly served as president of the USCCB, commended U.S. bishops for their “increasingly direct and forceful” statements condemning racism. However, he said the Church has not done enough for its more than three million Black Catholics.

“All too often the church in our country has been for many a white church, a racist institution,” Gregory said, quoting “Brothers and Sisters to Us,” the bishops’ 1979 pastoral letter.

Gregory shared stories from the course of his ministry, describing the need to center the experiences of Black Catholics. One of only eight Black bishops in the U.S., he said he has witnessed the need for racial reconciliation in the Church time and again.

As the first Black auxiliary bishop in Chicago’s history, Gregory was assigned to preside at the Catholic sacrament of Confirmation for children in predominantly Black parishes on the South Side, but he asked to confirm children across the diocese as well. Gregory told the story of one white parishioner who, after a Confirmation service, told him, “I was prepared not to like you, but my kids like you.”

The experience shaped Gregory’s perspective on the importance of Black role models for all Catholics.

“The need for African American bishops was clearly not limited to the African American community,” Gregory said. “It was for the life and the growth and the development of the whole church.”

Now, Gregory believes it’s a crucial moment for Church leaders to speak out for racial justice. Pointing to current events, he said the U.S. is confronting two viruses at once: COVID-19 and racism.

“[Racism] too destroys lives,” he said. “It destroys the lives of those who are hated — because of their race, their culture, their language, their legal status — and it destroys the lives of those who hate.”

Gregory said the Church has an important role to play in combatting this virus of racism.

“The brutal killing of Mr. Floyd has triggered something in this nation,” he said. “And I think it’s triggered something in the Church, too, that we need to be about this much more aggressively and much more consistently.”

Gregory said he sees young people “on fire” for racial justice as a particular source of hope.

“I bow to my young audience,” he said. “At this moment, because of their concern about racial injustice and racism, probably at a greater level of participation than we have experienced in the past. I’m hopeful. I really am very hopeful that the end result will be a step forward.”

Gregory challenged his audience to look honestly at the Church’s legacy of racism, but he also called on listeners to respond with hope.

“To turn a blind eye to the past is dangerous, but not to see the possibility of a hopeful future is even more dangerous,” Gregory said.

The thing that triggered these riots was the MSM reporting of the Floyd demise and spiking the facts behind his condition at the time. Because of that getting those facts out are desperately needed.

Why not print this up and pass around in your precinct and send this to Wilson.

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The democrat controlled media racist killing reporting was a deliberate miss portraying of the six foot seven inch 200 plus pound Floyd as an innocent black who was being forceably restrained because he was black not because he was resisting arrest.When He was legitimately arrested for passing a counterfeit $20 dollar bill he was resisting arrest and was a threat if not secured. But the media was not mentioning his size or reporting that Floyd was removed from a squad car because he was acting up under the influence of drugs and also later was discovered to have COVID 19. Which suggests his physical condition may have led to his death which the media turned into a murder change and a charge of serious abuse by police because of police efforts that were tried to get him who under control. Check out
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3853159/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3855598/posts Latest post
further confirmation here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3865226/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3850910/posts Floyd on drugs
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3851693/posts (confirm had covid19)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3852373/posts (2 cops were trainees)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3852275/posts#16 neck hold use world wide
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3863889/posts Floyd complained 20 times
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/38723395/posts more facts
This posting has comments that reveals that both the arresting officer and Floyd knew each other and had worked together in bar security
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3851100/posts
If Obama had urged blacks to believe in the justice system and comply with the police would we be confronting his use of creating racial division now ?
The results of politically induced miss reporting incidents where blacks have resisted legitimate arrest began to be used earlier during and after the post Zimmmerman trial, then on to the Ferguson episode. Obama’s abuse of the “Bully Pulpit” which seemed to promote resistance to legitimate arrest led to black gangs attacking non blacks found innocently traversing black neighborhoods and to a score of murders or life changing injuries and later attacks of theft and vandalism on local businesses as well as attacks and murders of police officers during that period

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