Lesson 20: Community Life II--Racism

AGENDA

• Racism and Abortion--A Concluding Comparison
• Discuss Case #12: Racism and Moral Dissonance in the Church

RACISM AND ABORTION—A CONCLUDING COMPARISON

1. There are basically two frameworks to introduce the case of abortion: the discussion of abortion inside the church and discussion of abortion in the wider public sphere (under the realm of civil law).
1. In this final session, I want us to consider how opposition to abortion is a case of the Church’s consistent moral witness, and then ask what kind of witness the Church has been providing, at least in the United States, on the problem of racism. Are we as consistent on issues of human life and human dignity as we might suppose?
2. These issues are not quite as far apart as one might at first think, and these have frequently been cited together in religiously charged political discourse in terms of assaults on personhood. Most likely the following cases are cited:
1. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate but equal facilities did not violate the equal protection clause. Passage of the 13^thamendment (prohibiting slavery) and 14^thamendment had rendered moot the Dred Scott decision of 1857 that bared African-Americans from U.S. Citizenship.
2. This separate but equal standard was overturned in the 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
3. It was the same Amendment, the 14^th, that was at issue in Roe v. Wade (1973), legalizing abortion, which declined to take up the issue of the personhood of the fetus (even if the court did take up the issue of what constitutes a person with respect to corporations [in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886)] and African Americans [those cases cited above]), even as it did take up the possibility of a constitutional right to privacy.
3. Compare your answers these two questions:
1. Why is abortion morally wrong for a Christian? [per CDF]
2. Why is racism morally wrong for a Christian? [per Massingale]
1. For bishops: “sin against fraternal charity”; creation and incarnation teach us that all life is good. Creation: we are all human and the product of one creator. Incarnation: we are all called to one family of brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Both would be a denial of human dignity, and for both, human dignity is located in common creation and the common salvific destiny of humankind.
3. Majority bishops response: interpersonal manifestation, moral suasion, and calls for civility
3. Are these issues primarily institutional or social problems? Or in the language suggested last time, terminal or cumulative moral problems?
4. We tend to think of abortion as a personal evil that must have a cultural (that is to say, moderated through law) solution (something which will transform the culture of death into the culture of life in John Paul II's locutions).
5. However, when we think about racism, we tend to locate it as a sin of individuals and press no such cultural (or broad ranging legal and social) dimension.
4. Massingale provides the following diagnosis of the US Catholic Bishops’ teaching on racism in his article "James Cone and Recent Catholic Episcopal Teaching on Racism" (Theological Studies 61 [2000]).
1. He cites James Cone’s challenge that the Church’s “failure to deal effectively with the problem of racism” causes him to question its commitment to other justice issues, especially those who pertaining to the sanctity of life and economic injustice. Massingale then goes on to review 21 documents by US Catholic bishops that appear in Origins between 1990 and 2000 and concludes that, with only a few exceptions, treat counsel the faithful on racism from the perspective of individual moral persuasion and appeal to individual conscience, rather than to social analysis and intentional solidarity that focuses on listening and internalizing the narratives of those who have lived through oppression and discrimination.
2. The problem, Massingale thinks, it a problem of the constriction of our forms of moral thinking to an act centered analysis which presumes to sort out all moral problems for us, where an act-centered analysis tends to be communicated to the faithful through attempts at moral persuasion.
3. Massingale’s proposals:
1. A shift in stress from racism to white privilege
2. A shift from parenesis to analysis
3. A shift from personal sin to structures of sin
4. A shift from decency to distributive justice
5. A shift from moral suasion to liberating awareness
6. A shift from unconscious racial supremacy to intentional racial solidarity
4. Do you agree with Massingale that the real issue for White Americans is privilege rather than overt racism?
5. Why is this an issue that ought to concern the Catholic celebration of the Eucharist?
5. Discuss Case #12: Racism and Moral Dissonance in the Church