August 27, 2017 - "Recent Events"

On August 12, 2017, a young man from Ohio slammed his car into a crowd of protestors and onlookers at Charlottesville, VA.  A young woman died and many more people suffered serious injuries.  On the same day two state troopers were killed when their helicopter accidentally crashed while assisting in law enforcement efforts.  I think Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia captured well what we experienced in Charlottesville.  Let’s look at what he said in a recent statement:
 
                Racism is a poison of the soul.  It’s the ugly, original sin of our country, an illness that has never fully healed.  Blending it with the Nazi salute, the relic of a regime that murdered millions, compounds the obscenity.  We especially need to pray for those injured in the violence.
 
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida also called people of goodwill to join in prayer in response to the violent protest and deadly attack.  They also spoke frankly about the cause of the violence that wreaked havoc on Charlottesville:
 
We stand against the evil of racism, white supremacy, and neo-nazism.  We stand with our sisters and brothers united in the sacrifice of Jesus, by which love’s victory over every form of evil is assured.  At Mass, let us offer a special prayer of gratitude for the brave souls who sought to protect us from the violent ideology displayed yesterday [August 12].  Let us especially remember those who lost their lives.  Let us join their witness and stand against every form of oppression.
I
I think that we would should remember the life and example of two saints whose work was the opposed racist attitudes of their time.  St. Peter Claver (1581-1654), a member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), left his native land (Spain) in 1610 to be a missionary in the New World.  He arrived in Cartagena (now Colombia), which was a chief center of the slave trade in South America.  For forty years he exercised his pastoral care among the slaves. The city magistrates considered him to be a nuisance because of his solicitude for the black outcasts.   In time he became known as the apostle of Cartagena.  He preached in the city square, gave missions to sailors and traders as well as country missions.  When he would give missions in the country side, he would avoid the hospitality of the planters and owners and would lodge in the slave quarters.
 
St. Katharine Drexel (1858-1955) and her community of Blessed Sacrament Sisters established a network of schools for Native American and African American children.  By 1942, she had a system of black Catholic schools in 13 states, plus 40 mission centers and 23 rural schools.  Segregationists harassed her work, even burning a school in Pennsylvania.  When the state legislature in Louisiana refused to build and fund public schools for African American children, she built school buildings, paid for the education of public school teachers at Xavier University in New Orleans (which her community had founded as a Catholic college where African Americans could receive a college education), and then paid their salaries.  All this she did through money that she had inherited from her father who had been a wealthy millionaire.
 
Let’s ask these two saints to pray for us in these times when racism, white supremacy, and new-nazism are reemerging in our time.
Finally, I think Cardinal Wuerl gives us some good advice on how we move forward after these terrible events in Charlottesville in his blogpost of August 13, 2017:   At this time, as Christians, as disciples of Jesus, we must  redouble our efforts to bear a witness for peace and the   common good.  As people of good will and faith in God, in solidarity with the victims of hate and violence, let us stand together in prayer and work for healing and unity in our country.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John Dillon