Catholic groups slam Archbishop Gomez for speech on ‘woke’ movements – Catholic Philly

0

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, sits in the cathedra, or episcopal chair, as he concelebrates Mass at the National Shrine Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Nov. 15, 2021, in Baltimore during the Fall General Assembly of Bishops. (SNC Photo/Bob Roller)

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Ahead of the general assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore Nov. 15-18, a group of Catholic and other religious leaders called on Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the USCCB, to apologize for his remarks he spoke about social justice movements in a November 4 speech.

Bishop Gomez made the comments in a videotaped address for the 23rd Catholic and Public Life Congress in Madrid, which focused on political correctness and “the dangers of this mega-ideology,” such as preventing debate and limit freedoms.

He spoke of “the rise of new secular ideologies and movements for social change in the United States and the implications for the Catholic Church“.

The Church must ‘boldly’ and ‘creatively’ proclaim Jesus Christ in the face of new secular movements that promote ‘social justice’, ‘awakening’ and ‘intersectionality’, among other beliefs, as the answer to all the ills of society, Bishop Gomez said.

The church must understand these movements “as pseudo-religions, and even substitutes and rivals to traditional Christian beliefs,” he said, because “they claim to offer what religion provides.”

A Nov. 12 petition organized by Faith in Public Life and Faithful America and signed by Catholic theologians and approximately 9,000 grassroots Catholic and ecumenical religious advocates called on the archbishop to apologize for his criticism of these groups, especially the social justice movements, and urged him to support black activists.

Faith in Public Life is an advocacy group whose goal is to influence state and federal government policies. Faithful America is an online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice.

The National Conference of Black Sisters, Pax Christi USA and the Association of American Catholic Priests have also demanded an apology from Archbishop Gomez.

The Faith in Public Life and Faithful America petition noted that the social justice movements that have sprung up in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd “have helped raise our national awareness of the epidemic of police brutality and racism. systemic”.

Catholic bishops and other religious leaders should be on the streets with these movement organizers, not belittle them with language that only emboldens opponents of racial equity,” the petition reads.

“Your speech was particularly painful and offensive to advocates for black Catholics in the United States who have organized for racial justice in the face of indifference and even hostility from many white Christians,” he said. . “Please apologize for your statements and stand in solidarity with social movements, as Pope Francis has done.”

However, in his address to the Madrid conference, Bishop Gomez specifically addressed the tragedy of the “murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white policeman” and the many questions it raised.

“For many people in my country, myself included, the (Floyd) tragedy has become a stark reminder that racial and economic inequality still runs deep in our society,” said the Prelate, a Mexican American. born in Mexico.

These new movements are part of a larger “absolutely essential” discussion “about how to build an American society that expands opportunity for everyone, regardless of skin color, background or economic status,” added Bishop Gomez.

What he described as problematic is that people are increasingly turning to these “woke” movements, rather than religion, for “an explanation of events and conditions in the world”, a- he declared.

“New social movements and ideologies that we talk about today have been sown and prepared for many years in our universities and cultural institutions,” he said.

In the United States, amid the tension and fear created by the pandemic and social isolation, “these movements have been fully unleashed in our society” with the killing of Floyd and the subsequent protests in many cities , he added.

Petition signatories included Father Bryan Massingale, Fordham University theologian and author of “Racial Justice and the Catholic Church”; Miguel Diaz, former US Ambassador to the Vatican and theologian at Loyola University in Chicago; Kathleen Dorsey Bellow, director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana; Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University; and Father Clete Kiley, chaplain of the Chicago Federation of Labor and board member of the Catholic Labor Network.

“Catholic social justice ministry is not a ‘pseudo-religion’ but a constituent part of the life of the Gospel,” said Fr. Kiley, who added that the Archbishop’s comments have “caused grief and confusion”.

“I hope he can apologize for these comments and help us all move on to more constructive dialogues,” added the priest.

John Gehring, director of the Catholic program at Faith in Public Life, said Archbishop Gomez “spends a lot of time in dialogue and partnership with donors and conservative Catholic movements in the church” which, according to Gehring, “ often degrade social justice activism”.

“The Archbishop has an opportunity to start listening and learning from a new generation of grassroots advocates who are putting their faith into action,” he added.

“As a faithful Catholic, I pray that Bishop Gomez will see how his harmful remarks undermine the wisdom that the black Catholic community and racial justice organizers have to offer us all, as well as their potential for renewing our country and the world,” Kyle said. de Beausset, Catholic organizer and board member of Faithful America.

In a Nov. 16 statement released by the National Conference of Black Sisters, Sister Josita Colbert, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, who serves as the conference’s president, encouraged the archbishop to “rethink” his “misguided and to cancel them. and invited him to meet the leaders of his organization.

“If we intend to proclaim the authentic gospel of Jesus, we must recognize our sinful state as a church with regard to the sin of racism and give more than lip service to the fight against racism in our church and our nation,” Sister Colbert said.

“It is time for a determined effort from all people of good will and especially from our church leaders,” she said.

Two other prominent Catholics in opinion pieces in Religion News Service and America magazine, respectively, urged Archbishop Gomez’s critics to re-examine his record as a Catholic leader who is himself a person of color and who has repeatedly spoken out on issues of racism and the treatment of immigrants and various marginalized groups in this country.

Both authors suggested that his critics had been too reckless in their scathing criticism of his November 4 speech.

Archbishop Gomez “clearly opposes” a broader worldview on groups “often explicitly hostile to mainstream Christianity,” wrote Charles Camosy in a Nov. 12 article for RNS. He is an associate professor of theological and social ethics at the Jesuit University of Fordham.

Camosy, however, added that he thought the Archbishop “could have been clearer on the obvious fact that not all individuals or organizations associated with these new movements, obviously, are responsible for all the hostile threats to which the church was confronted”.

In a U.S. opinion piece also dated Nov. 12, Stephen White, executive director of the Catholic University of America’s Catholic Project in Washington, said Archbishop Gomez — as head of the nation’s largest archdiocese , an immigrant, a minority, and the USCCB president — speaks out on the issue of racism and social injustice, “it’s worth paying attention to.”

He highlighted the Archbishop’s “long experience in intervening on these issues in a way that consistently challenges both the injustice of the status quo and the instrumentalization of the faith as a mere means to political ends.” “.

White said some of the criticism was “measured” and “promised honest engagement” with Archbishop Gomez’s argument.

He said it was fair to say, as some have, that the Archbishop “has painted social movements with too broad a brush” and that he “has given little thought to the Catholic faithful who work for find a common cause with these same movements”.

But other critics were an ‘unedifying crash’ on Archbishop Gomez’s speech ‘is a reminder of how the church’s witness to the world is hampered by our own inability to trust one another, even within of the church,” White said.

Share.

Comments are closed.