Hundreds of Catholic theologians in the US have criticised the “deep racial injustice” that in recent years contributed to the killings of a number of black men, women and children by white police officers and the failure to indict those responsible.
Some 300 theologians have signed a statement initiated and drafted by Professor Tobias Winright, Mäder Chair of health care ethics and associate professor of theological ethics at St Louis University in Missouri. They include Alex Mikulich of the Jesuit Social Research Institute, Loyola University, New Orleans and M. Shawn Copeland, Professor of Systematic Theology, Boston College.
In it the scholars call for Catholics to speak out for just peace “in a fragmented and violent world”.
“The killings of black men, women and children – including but not limited to Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, John Crawford, seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones and 12 year-old Tamir Rice – by white policemen, and the failures of the grand jury process to indict some of the police officers involved, brought to our attention not only problems in law enforcement today, but also deeper racial injustice in our nation, our communities, and even our Churches,” the statement said.
They quoted both Dr Martin Luther King and Pope Francis as challenging Christians to act in the face of injustice.
The statement concluded: “As Catholic theologians, we wish to go on the record in calling for a serious examination of both policing and racial injustice in the US. The time demands that we leave some mark that US Catholic theologians did not ignore what is happening in our midst – as the vast majority sadly did during the 1960s Civil Rights movement".
Professor Winright told The Tablet that the diversity of the signatories - black and white people from across the political spectrum - was particularly noteworthy. He explained:
"Given my past experience in criminal justice as a correctional officer and a reserve police officer, and given what has been happening here in the Saint Louis area and elsewhere around the US, I felt that I had a duty to do something."
The statement also pledges signatories to 12 action points, which include examining “our complicity in the sin of racism”; fasting on Fridays between Advent and Lent “as a sign of our penitence”; showing “visible solidarity” with protest movements; and calling upon the US bishops’ conference to stand against racism.
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