More than Just Sex: The Church’s Racist Self-Immolation
A White(ness) Grievance
On all things wrong (and some things right) with the Catholic Church...
Even the most jaded atheist might look at the love affair between the Republican Party and the Jesus “Che” Christ of Scripture–flipping tables (and the bird) at the rich and powerful–and ask, “How did those two end up together?” We all know the standard diagnoses, how sexual “ethics” and pre-Vatican II nostalgia (both temporal and clerical) have worn Cardinal Bernadin’s seamless garment down to the moth-eaten, inconsistent ethic of life espoused by his posthumous confreres today (I’ve made a meal of as much myself). But focusing entirely on these doctrinal deformities and canonical conniptions almost gives the Bishops too much credit. Because whatever else the Church is (and I could hardly tell you at this point), it’s also a business—and a failing one, at that. As with most such endeavors, the twin gods of race and money invariably come into play.
Yes, the US Bishops acknowledge racism is a sin, but let’s get this out of the way: I don’t buy it. I mean, obviously racism meets the criteria for “sin” (so defined in the Catechism as “failure in genuine love for God and neighbor”), but very little in USCCB’s political and institutional oeuvre suggests they actually take this notion to heart. Samesies for their official positions on immigration, which include nominal support for the “rich body of Church teaching” which “has consistently reinforced our moral obligation to treat the stranger as we would treat Christ himself.” And while I do plan to offer a thoughtful, reasoned defense of these allegations, I probably needn’t bother. Post-2016, a single word suffices: Trump.
Race schism
Look, I’m not much interested in revisiting Trump in his own right. However, the icky relationship between US Church leadership and this flaxen-locked siren with a tongue of corroded silver serves as a sort of colonoscope, helping to pinpoint exactly where along the partisan digestive tract our ignoble heirs to the Apostles have wandered—and why. But first, it’s helpful to consider how Trump’s anxieties over the perceived diminishing of national white identity (he really hated having a black president) are mirrored in the internal (and infernal) debates currently plaguing the Church.
Much has been made of the opposition by many bishops to Pope Francis, whether on liturgical and theological grounds. Again I’ve addressed some of this myself, but Francis also represents much more than being nicer about the sacraments and to the poor. Take, for example, his Synod on Synodality, a two-year process emphasizing listening and dialogue amid typically ignored voices. It doesn’t take a prophet to guess why the white Princes of the Church might take issue with this, and on their face many of their (dumb) critiques can be seen as transparent misdirection and “what about me”-isms: a posthumously published op-ed by Cardinal George Pell croaked (too mean?) that the Synod thus far has ignored the “moral matters” that the Church already never shuts up about; many “traditionalists” balk at any inclusive notion of Church as anti-Magisterial, all while griping about being silenced under Francis and labeling him a False Pope. And when you also have progressive Catholics praising the Synod’s potential to “transform race relations in the US Church,” it’s not hard to put two and two together.
To fully comprehend this escalation of clerical vitriol you need consider the seismic ethnic and cultural shift the Pope is placing on the Church. I’m not just talking about Francis being a (white) guy from Argentina (or what one dweeb priest on Twitter describes as a “pastor for the barrios”), but also the shifting of rhetorical and practical emphases towards the Global South, such as diversifying the College of Cardinals, raising concern for issues such as deforestation in Africa, and grappling seriously with social and ecclesiological challenges facing indigenous communities. You would think this flagging institution would welcome a fresh (as the Gospel) approach to engaging a diversifying nation. How else could the Church possibly hope to capture the hearts of an equity- and justice-conscious younger generation which wants nothing to do with the Church, or the majority of Latinx people in the US who no longer identify as Catholic?
The simple answer: it doesn’t. Indeed, if you follow any of the (miserable) discourse about declines in religiosity and church attendance, you’ll notice something telling: most of the debated solutions–Traditional Latin Mass! “Hip” praise and worship music! Evangelization courses!–seem to focus almost exclusively on the dwindling number of Anglo Catholics (but not those pesky, “woke” ones, thank you very much!).
No Class
Given this, it’s not too difficult to understand the appeal of a pugilistic, repugnant racist like Trump to many among the Catholic elite. Indeed, many Catholic bishops rabidly embrace his style. But the Church also has to face its flock, of which adults born outside the US make up more than a quarter, and it’s hard to overstate the traumatic psychic impact of the mere fact of Trump’s presidency on many immigrants in the US.
On children, most especially. In October 2016, a mother recounted to me in Spanish how her children would come home sobbing, asking why their classmates hate Mexicans. Earlier that year, a Catholic high school basketball game made national news for white devolving into racist, pro-Trump chants by white students against their Latinx cross-town rivals. Once Trump did take office, teachers I know spoke of students from mixed immigration status families crying in fear during class, and some dioceses even felt it necessary to direct schools not to allow ICE agents on the premises without a warrant.
Given this, you might think a Catholic school which counts Spanish and Creole among its families’ predominant native languages wouldn’t force its students and faculty to endure and entertain a newly-elected Racist-in-Chief on campus. Yet this is precisely what the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education did in March 2017, when Trump, accompanied by “Education” Secretary Betsy DeVos and a clown car of fascist toadies, visited one of their “ACE Academies” in Orlando, FL. As described in an ACE news bulletin lauding the event, during the visit a high school student and a teacher, both Haitian-born, each spoke to the then-president about their immigrant backgrounds, noting (re: defending) their strong values and work ethic.
The ACE bulletin frames all this almost as a sort of “truth to power” moment, which, in terms of the courage displayed by students and teachers, it was. But for Notre Dame to facilitate the encounter in the first place was exploitative and next-level cynical. After all, the whole sordid affair was just a ploy to promote Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program, which provides tax incentives for donations to private schools (more on that in a moment). Essentially, ACE asked black and brown children and employees to justify their own existence (and right to education) to the most powerful man in the country/world, who opened his presidential by labeling immigrants much like them as “people with lots of problems” who are “bringing those problems” to the US.
I mean, maybe they actually did believe seeing the words “excel, love, and serve” in three languages would awaken the most virulent public racist in modern US politics to Dr. King’s dream, but the pains they took to imply as much really just indicate awareness of their own indecency. (Less than a year later, Trump would deride Haiti explicitly as a “shithole” and question why the US doesn’t instead welcome “those who can contribute to our society.”)
Unholy alliance
Needless to say, none of this a particularly good look for an institution which describes itself as serving children “on the margins, frequently immigrants, and always treated with respect and dignity” (no questions, please). While the insensitivity is perhaps unsurprising considering how ACE’s own alumni have criticized it for actively perpetuating racism, you wonder why the program would subject its students (and PR department) to any of this.
There, in many ways, this deal with the Drumpfian devil can be traced to the Church’s affinity for another Republican president, George W. Bush. That Born Again warmonger’s 2001 “No Child Left Behind Act” instituted a hyper-hostile Federal approach to public schools, labeling many as “failing” out the gate. The preferred conservative solution, unsurprisingly, was to route students (and resources) to private schools often run by religious (well, Christian) groups and corporate interests. In 2002, the Supreme Court opened the door to exactly that, ruling that states can “give parents tuition vouchers that allow their children to attend a private or religious school of their choice.”
At this point I should clarify I have no beef with Catholic schools as a concept. For one thing, many students are being failed by the public education system, and meeting that need has always been foundational to the mission of Catholic education. But the SCOTUS decision placed the Catholic education in direct competition for tax dollars with already underfunded public schools, giving the Church a stake in accelerating the cycle of disinvestment leading to the “unsuccessful” and “underutilized” schools they use to justify their claim to public funding. No wonder, then, in his first statement in observance of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., new USCCB President (and, again, raging homophobe) Archbishop Timothy Broglio mentions racial disparities in “the criminal justice, access to affordable housing and healthcare, and economic opportunities,” but not public education. And here I thought we followed Catholic Social Teaching, which says “how we organize our society–in economics and politics, in law and policy–directly affects human dignity.”
Indeed, the USCCB’s own Faithful Citizenship document describes education as a “basic need” alongside food, housing, and health care (under the right to life, no less). Yet in its legislative advocacy for education they make a point to frame education as a parental responsibility. In this way, they can pretend they are merely expanding the menu and making sure everyone can afford the meal (and, implicitly, blame those who choose not to partake). But that meal will only ever be available to a tiny fraction of school age children (currently about 3%), especially considering all the students requiring the busing and educational/social-emotional supports most Catholic schools don’t provide, or couldn’t get in to begin with due to selective enrollment criteria based on academic and behavioral profiles.
Back where we discarded
You may argue this is simply what happens when you try to serve both God and manna. We gotta keep the lights on, right, and besides, isn’t school choice aimed at least partially at driving school enrollment among the Latinx children who comprise 60% of all Catholic youth? But while historically the Church has benefitted from upward mobility among descendents of earlier (white) immigrants, today it conspires with the Republican Party to destabilize Catholic communities through repressive economic, educational and immigration policies, thus cannibalizing their own coffers.
When it comes to actually ministering to and retaining Latinx Catholics, at best Church leaders treat this as a perhaps sensible but ultimately superfluous pet project: host an academic, hold a “dialogue,” then get back to the white supremacist culture war. In many ways, we’ve been here before: according to Pew, in the second half of the 20th Century, “Black clergy and religious sisters,” concerned over the declining numbers of black congregants, “increasingly pressed the U.S. bishops to address Black Catholics’ concerns on issues such as inclusion, liturgy and music in parishes.” You can guess how that went, just as you can likely guess where the US Bishops' anti-inclusion, anti-change and, what our good friend Bishop morally Barron would call “anti-woke,” crusade will lead them.