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Maryland’s Catholic bishops urge people of faith to act to end racism

Mark Zimmermann | Catholic News Service

Josephite Father Cornelius Ejiogu, pastor of St. Luke Parish in Washington, leads a prayerful protest outside the White House in Washington June 8, 2020, following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man whose neck was pinned to the ground by police for more than eight minutes before he was taken to the hospital. (CNS photo/Bob Roller)

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Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori and the Rev. Eugene Sutton, Episcopal Bishop of Maryland, talk before an interfaith prayer vigil in Baltimore June 3, 2020, to pray for justice and peace following the May 25 death of George Floyd — an unarmed black man said to have spent several minutes under a Minnesota police officer’s knee before becoming unconscious. (CNS photo/Tim Swift, Catholic Review)

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WASHINGTON (CNS) — In the wake of nationwide protests
against racial injustice and police brutality sparked by the killings of
African Americans under police custody, the Catholic bishops of Maryland called
on people of faith to act to end racism.

 

“Prayer
and dialogue, alone, are not enough. We must act to bring about true change.
United, we seek healing, harmony and solutions that recognize that every person
has been created in the image of God and that every person possesses human
dignity,” the bishops said in the June 15 letter.

 

Titled
“Building Bridges of Understanding and Hope,” the letter was released
by the Maryland Catholic Conference, the public policy arm for the state’s
Catholic dioceses. It was signed by the Catholic bishops serving in dioceses
whose territory includes Maryland counties, including Washington Archbishop
Wilton D. Gregory.

 

Archbishop
Gregory was installed in 2019 as the seventh archbishop of Washington, becoming
the first African American to lead the archdiocese, which includes five
Maryland counties surrounding the nation’s capital.

 

Also
signing the letter were Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori and Bishop W.
Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Delaware, whose diocese includes counties on
Maryland’s Eastern Shore. They were joined by the auxiliary bishops of
Washington and Baltimore, including Washington Auxiliary Bishops Mario E.
Dorsonville and Roy E. Campbell Jr., who is president of the Baltimore-based
National Black Catholic Congress; Baltimore Auxiliary Bishops Michael W. Fisher
and Adam J. Parker; retired Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop Denis J. Madden; and
Bishop-designate Bruce A. Lewandowski, named a Baltimore auxiliary June 10.

 

The
bishops acknowledged “our own church’s past sins and failings.”

 

In
colonial times and in the first decades of the new United States, the Jesuits
in Maryland were slaveholders and operated plantations to support their
ministries. In 1838, the order sold 272 enslaved men, women and children, with
some of the proceeds helping to secure the future of Georgetown College, now
Georgetown University. After the Civil War during times of segregation, Black
Catholics in Maryland and the District of Columbia had to sit in the back of
church or in galleries and wait until the end of the Communion line to receive
the Eucharist.

 

The
letter noted, “With regret and humility, we must recognize that as
Catholic leaders and as an institution we have, at times, not followed the
Gospel to which we profess and have been too slow in correcting our
shortcomings. For this reason, it is incumbent upon us to place ourselves at
the forefront of efforts to remove the inequalities and discrimination that are
still present in Maryland and our nation today.”

 

The
bishops also acknowledged how “the church in Maryland has been deeply
enriched by the gifts of Black Catholics.” They noted how Mother Mary
Lange, whose cause for sainthood is underway, founded the first Catholic school
for Black children in the U.S. in Baltimore in 1828. She also founded the
Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first religious order for women of African
descent. The Josephite order of priests and brothers, based in Baltimore,
serves African American communities throughout the U.S.

 

The
letter explains how two earlier bishops in Maryland, Cardinal Lawrence J.
Shehan of Baltimore and Cardinal Patrick A. O’Boyle of Washington, integrated
Catholic schools and parishes in the state in the mid-1900s when segregation remained
a widespread practice.

 

Shortly
after becoming the first resident archbishop of Washington in 1948,
then-Archbishop O’Boyle began the process of integrating Catholic schools and
parishes in the nation’s capital and the surrounding Maryland counties. His
action came six years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of
Education ruling that outlawed segregated schools. In 1963, he offered the
invocation at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

 

Noting
the church’s own “painful history” of racism and its work to end it,
the bishops wrote, “This history provides the context for us today and
should act to animate our prayers, thoughts and actions for an end, finally, to
the sin of racism that remains with us and in us. The unjust killing of George
Floyd and other Black Americans, and the subsequent protests, rallies and
vigils that continue to take place make it clear that the conscience of our
nation is on trial as questions of race and equality confront each and every
one of us.”

 

Floyd’s
May 25 death after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly
nine minutes during an arrest and other recent deaths of African Americans
during police actions sparked protests across the country. A June 8 prayerful
protest near the White House, led by Josephite Father Cornelius Ejiogu, pastor
of St. Luke Parish in Washington, drew more than 40 priests and deacons,
several bishops, and more than 200 other Catholics, including women religious
and laypeople.

 

In
their letter the bishops called on Catholics to pray and examine their own
hearts and then to work together for racial justice.

 

“We
call all people of goodwill to prayer, to root out any hatred and animosity that
has taken hold in one’s own heart,” the bishops wrote.

 

The
bishops said they will continue their efforts to support laws seeking “to
bring about justice and an end to unequal treatment based on race. This
includes access to health and maternal care, meaningful educational
opportunities, prison reforms, restorative justice initiatives, housing
anti-discrimination efforts, juvenile justice reforms and ending the grossly
disparate practice of capital punishment.”

 

Communities
of color have been hit hard by the coronavirus health crisis and the resulting
economic downturn. Analysts have said that long-standing systems of inequality
have played a key role in the sufferings and deaths among minorities during the
coronavirus pandemic.

 

               

 

 

 

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