{"id":21011,"date":"2020-06-15T21:25:13","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T21:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=21011"},"modified":"2020-06-17T15:42:13","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T15:42:13","slug":"no-justice-no-peace-why-catholic-priests-are-kneeling-with-george-floyd-protesters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/no-justice-no-peace-why-catholic-priests-are-kneeling-with-george-floyd-protesters\/","title":{"rendered":"No justice, no peace: Why Catholic priests are kneeling with George Floyd protesters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anna L. Peterson<\/a>, University of Florida<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Two days after the Catholic bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, knelt with a dozen other priests in a silent prayer for George Floyd<\/a> holding a \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d sign, he received a phone call from Pope Francis.<\/p>\n

In an earlier era Seitz, the first known Catholic bishop to join the anti-racism protests spurred by Floyd\u2019s killing, might have expected censure from the Vatican, which is often associated with social conservatism.<\/p>\n

Instead, Steitz told the Texas news site El Paso Matters<\/a>, the pope \u201cthanked me<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Days earlier Pope Francis had posted a message to Americans on the Vatican\u2019s website<\/a> saying he \u201cwitnessed with great concern the disturbing social unrest\u201d in the United States and calling Floyd\u2019s death \u201ctragic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy friends,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwe cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francis is seen as a progressive pope, but these are not isolated examples of his personal values. As a scholar of religion and politics<\/a>, I recognize that both Steitz\u2019s actions and the pope\u2019s approval reflect a distinctive commitment to social justice that has entered the Catholic mainstream over the past 50 years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Bishop Seitz in 2019 with migrants at the US-Mexico border.<\/span>
\nMario Tama\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Changing social role<\/h2>\n

This commitment has transformed a millennia-old Catholic tradition of valuing peace over justice.<\/p>\n

Writing in the chaos surrounding the fall of the Roman Empire, the prominent fifth-century theologian St. Augustine asserted that peace was the greatest good humans can attain on Earth<\/a>. While both peace and justice are valuable, Augustine believed, peace \u2013 meaning civil order \u2013 takes priority. He thought justice could not be sustained amid violence.<\/p>\n

Many bishops, priests and theologians since Augustine have used similar arguments to criticize social changes and legitimize the status quo<\/a>, insisting that the faithful should bear worldly injustices and seek their reward in heaven. This moral theology provided justification for the church to ally with economic, political and military elites, from medieval kings<\/a> to Latin American dictators<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That began to change with the Second Vatican Council of 1962 to 1965<\/a>, which brought together bishops from around the world to reevaluate the church\u2019s role in modern society. The council\u2019s final document<\/a> sided firmly with social justice.<\/p>\n

Inverting Augustine\u2019s thinking, Catholic bishops asserted that peace cannot \u201cbe reduced to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies.\u201d The only way to achieve lasting peace, they asserted, was to address the sources of unrest.<\/p>\n

As Pope Paul VI stated in 1972<\/a>: \u201cIf you want peace, work for justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Fr. Joseph Rahal of Washington, D.C. honors George Floyd on Friday, June 5, 2020.<\/span>
\nTom Williams\/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Liberation at any cost<\/h2>\n

Pope Paul\u2019s rhetoric echoed a core principle of liberation theology<\/a>, a Catholic movement that was emerging from Latin America around the same time.<\/p>\n

Liberation theologians see violence not as an individual flaw but as a feature of unjust social or political structures. This \u201cinstitutionalized violence,\u201d as the Peruvian theologian Gustavo Guti\u00e9rrez termed it<\/a>, is the root cause of all violence \u2013 including government repression and popular uprisings against that repression.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Liberation theology delegates at their sixth international meeting, in 1986.<\/span>
\nBernard Bisson\/Sygma via Getty Images)<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The best way to avoid violence, as the Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador wrote<\/a> in 1979, is \u201cto guarantee a truly democratic state, one that defends the fundamental rights of all its citizens, based on a just economic order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Romero\u2019s leadership, large sectors of the Salvadoran Catholic Church backed the popular uprising against the country\u2019s oppressive military regime in what became the Salvadoran Civil War<\/a>. Catholic leaders and laypeople also supported opposition movements<\/a> in Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile and other Latin American countries.<\/p>\n

Romero, who was assassinated in 1980, became a Catholic saint in 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not \u2018both sides\u2019<\/h2>\n

Liberation theologians believe that those seeking change should employ peaceful methods whenever possible. But when nonviolent protests and legislative channels prove fruitless or are met with violence, new tactics might be necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe church cannot state, in a simplistic fashion, that it condemns every kind of violence,\u201d Romero wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Romero criticized Salvadoran \u201cmoderates\u201d who saw violence on both sides of the country\u2019s civil war as equally wrong, implying a moral equality between those who uphold injustices and those who challenge them. The church, he insisted, must side with the victims of institutionalized violence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador in 1979.<\/span>
\nAlex Bowie\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This principle, known as the \u201cpreferential option for the poor,\u201d guided Bishop Seitz\u2019s decision to protest in El Paso.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen religion becomes stagnant, we can forget that the Word always comes to us crucified and powerless,\u201d Seitz told the National Catholic Reporter<\/a> on June 4 to explain his silent protest. In Christian tradition, \u201cthe Word\u201d refers to Jesus, the word of God incarnate.<\/p>\n

Seitz then cited the prominent midcentury theologian James Cone<\/a>, who said U.S. Christians must fight for racial justice because, \u201cIn America, the Word comes tortured, black and lynched.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time Seitz has sided with society\u2019s most marginalized. In March 2019, he apologized to migrants for their treatment at the U.S.-Texas border<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo say\u2026that black lives matter is just another way of repeating something we in the United States seem to so often forget,\u201d Seitz continued: \u201cThat God has a special love for the forgotten and oppressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Deep knowledge, daily.<\/em> Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter<\/a>.]\"The<\/p>\n

Anna L. Peterson<\/a>, Professor of Religion, University of Florida<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anna L. Peterson, University of Florida Two days after the Catholic bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, knelt with a dozen other priests in a silent prayer for George Floyd holding a \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d sign, he received a phone call from Pope Francis. In an earlier era Seitz, the first known Catholic bishop to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":21012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2450],"tags":[8200,2620,8131,1979,777,6610,8201,4691,8202],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21011"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21026,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21011\/revisions\/21026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}