Posted on December 4, 2021

Black Catholics Are Leaving the Church. An Archbishop’s Remarks Show Why.

Anthea Butler, MSNBC, November 29, 2021

November is Black Catholic History Month, but the faithful’s ignorance of the historical issues of race, racism and invisibility continue to strain Black Catholics’ relationship with American Catholics and bishops. The insensitive and incendiary Nov. 4 speech by Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, helps explain why.

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Gomez managed to offend Black Catholics, lay and clergy alike, with his ill-advised, ill-timed remarks about social justice movements being “pseudo-religions.” The speech, given online to the Congress of Catholics and Public Life in Madrid, obliquely referred to, but avoided explicitly naming, the Black Lives Matter movement. Calling social justice movements “a rival ‘salvation’ narrative,” Gomez went on to say social justice movements are political religious movements and “replacements and rivals to traditional Christian beliefs.”

Clearly the archbishop did not consider the Pew Research Center survey from February that showed 77 percent of Black Catholics consider opposing racism essential to their faith. This kind of white supremacist culture war talk from the head of the USCCB is, frankly, a disaster for the American church — if it wants Black Catholics to remain in the pews.

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{snip} The Catholic church in America has time and time again claimed to be aware of the deep wound of slavery and racism in the church. Yet from the top of the bishops’ conference to the diocesan priest, it seems the need to identify with racism and white supremacy continues to destroy any progress the church has tried to make. Consider thesuspension of an Indiana priest over statements he made in summer 2020 about Black Lives Matter protesters being “maggots and parasites,” or the Michigan priest who compared Black Lives Matter protesters to terrorists.

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The consequences include the alienation and departure of Black Catholics from the church. The Pew survey “Faith Among Black Americans” estimated that 6 percent of Black Americans are Catholic, but Religion News Service, which reported on the study, pointed out that “nearly half of those raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic (46%, compared to 39% of all Americans raised Catholic). About 1 in 5 Black adults who were raised Catholic have become unaffiliated (19%), and a quarter have become Protestant (24%).

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