The Catholic Worker Movement and Racial Justice: A Precarious Relationship (original) (raw)
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When remembering the revolutionary period in American history known as the civil rights movement-a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign that set out to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States and lasted from 1954 to 1968-several key figures come to mind. Perhaps it is Thurgood Marshall and his groundbreaking work on the Supreme Court case that came to be known as Brown vs. Board of Education; Rosa Parks, whose unwillingness to give up her seat on the bus played a pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott; or maybe the most prominent figure, pastor and theologian Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was a key participant and organizer for the March on Washington, the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the Poor Peopleʼs Campaign to name just a few. But what o en doesnʼt happen in our recollections of this tumultuous and challenging time is considering the active role that many Catholics, specifically Black Catholics,
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The author analyses 21 published statements by U.S. Catholic bishops from 1990 to 2000 on different aspects of racism. He explores the texts' understanding of racism, and highlights the deficits in many of these statements. Apart from several documents of Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and Bishop Thomas Daily of Brooklyn, the texts typically fail to stress social sinful structures. The author examines Cone's understanding of racism and White supremacy, as well as Cone's conviction that simple moral suasion is ineffective. The author concludes with an enumeration of six shifts needed in Catholic reflection on racism.] A T A CATHOLIC SPONSORED justice conference held in 1983, Professor James Cone gave what he called "a theological challenge to the American Catholic Church." His contention, in short, is that there are critical faults and deficits in Catholic reflection on racism. He adduces this, in part, from a disparity between Catholic concern regarding issues, on the one hand, such as poverty and the sanctity of life, and, on the other hand, the peripheral attention given to the endemic racism of U.S. society. Here are his stirring words: "What is it about the Catholic definition of justice that makes many persons of that faith progressive in their attitude toward the poor in Central America but reactionary in their views toward the poor in black America?. .. It is the failure of the Catholic Church to deal effectively with the problem of racism that causes me to question the quality of its commitment to justice in other areas. I do not wish to minimize the importance of Catholic contributions to poor people's struggles for justice, but I must point out the ambiguity of the Catholic stand on justice when racism is not addressed forthrightly." 1 Given that virtually
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