Racism

"Tolton's Legacy: A Roadmap to Unity," was organized by the Tolton Ambassador Corps, a nationwide group of Catholics commissioned to spread awareness about the significance of Father Tolton's cause for sainthood.

Washington Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory preaches his homily during an Aug. 28, 2020, Mass of Peace and Justice at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, marking the 57th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (CNS photo/Andrew Biraj, Catholic Standard)

As racial unrest continues in parts of the United States, the Archbishop of Milwaukee appeals for peace and respect for the common good. US Bishops also urge people of faith to participate in a day of prayer and fasting on September 9, the Feast of St. Peter Claver.

Professor Angela Alaimo O’Donnell has studied Flannery O’Connor, an American Catholic author from the South, rather extensively. She wrote a book on O’Connor’s treatment of racial issues specifically, entitled “Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor.”

"We will have time for prayer, for silence, for calling to mind their names, both of those who died and those who were wounded on that day," said Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, recalling the mass shooting at an area Walmart Aug. 3, 2019.

As the pandemic has "disproportionately affected" predominately Black communities and the Catholic schools that serve them, Congress must provide immediate financial help to families who have chosen these schools for their children's education, said the chairmen of three U.S. bishops' committees.

A Hawaiian Catholic catechist said that St. Damien of Molokai is a “hero” to the Hawaiian people, after a prominent congresswoman claimed the statue honoring him in the U.S. Capitol is part of colonialism and “patriarchy and white supremacist culture.”

The president of Loyola University Maryland announced Friday that the Flannery O'Connor Residence Hall was being renamed, saying, “some of her personal writings reflected a racist perspective.”

The late Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, and another giant of the civil rights movement, the Rev. Cordy Tindell "C.T." Vivian, who died the same day as Lewis, "changed the course of history for our nation" because of their civil rights work, said Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer of Atlanta.

"St. Katharine Drexel used to say, 'We go in to go out,'" said Father Stephen Thorne, pastor of St. Martin de Porres in North Philadelphia. "What she meant was that (our time with) the Blessed Sacrament gives us the energy to go forth and do justice."

"This feels real," he said. "The diversity of people coming together for the common good … the empathy is there, people are invested in this."

Drawing from the example of the late Sister Thea Bowman, the only African American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, and the U.S. bishops' 2018 pastoral letter on racism, the two bishops of Mississippi denounced racism as "a plague among us."

To start that conversation, he decided to share the story of his parents, an African American woman and an Irish American man who fell in love and married in a time of segregation.

By defacing and toppling a statue of St. Junipero Serra in Sacramento, protesters may have meant "to draw attention to the sorrowful, angry memories over California's past," but "this act of vandalism does little to build the future,"

"Our valiant police officers have one of the most perilous, stressful duties around, and from what I have seen in my nearly dozen years here, they do it with care, compassion and competence,"

"Ignorance of the other is the soil in which hatred and bigotry grow," he said. "If we do not know each other, share our fears and share our hopes, we make it possible for hatred to grow." - Archbishop Wilton Gregory